The Inquisitr » WordPress

Boo-Hoo: Mullenweg calls foul while continuing to ignore WordPress Automattic Conflict of Interest

Duncan Riley — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:28:21 +0000

WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has called foul today while dodging issues on the ongoing conflict of interest between his involvement at Automattic and WordPress.

Several sites, including this one, published stories today suggesting that WordPress.com was moving to Microsoft’s Azure cloud hosting platform based on Mullenweg deciding to plug Azure at a Microsoft event. We’ve amended that earlier post, and we are the first to admit that the post was based on false reports elsewhere. I mentioned in the original copy that I hadn’t seen the transcript and in retrospect I should have waited for it, and it was my mistake entirely.

Unlike Mullenweg though I know that I’m fallible and can make the occasional mistake, and I’m happy to admit it. Mullenweg though continues to take a highly hypocritical role between his role at Automattic and his role behind the WordPress open source effort.

For those who aren’t up to speed: Mullenweg has undertaken a jihad of sorts for several years against commercial operators in the WordPress community. Mullenweg argues that anything that links in to WordPress must itself be offered open source (and be offered by extension for free,) a position that has punished unfairly many of the early supporters Mullenweg had behind WordPress in its early days as it took over from MovableType as the most popular self-hosted blogging platform.

In more recent times, Mullenweg has decided to take on James Farmer, one of Australia’s strongest WordPress supporters, and the founder of sites including Edublogs (perhaps the biggest WordPress education blog network) and the WPMU site and related entities.

James’ crime according to Mullenweg is that he both offers money for the development of, and sells (be it via a membership) premium WordPress plugins. We documented part of the spat here, and James has now been completely banned from WordPress.org sites (link.)

Let me make it clear at this point (particularly to the army of Mullenweg fans who immediately comment in his favor anytime I write about this): I have ZERO problem with him making money from Automattic. What I have a problem with is the conflict between him arbitrarily controlling who WordPress.org likes or dislikes based on how open source they are, when negative decisions are often made against competitors to Automattic and by extension WordPress.com.

You can’t have it both ways: either you’re an open source purist who hates commercial applications, or you aren’t. You can’t say you hate commercial operations except where they involve the company I founded off the very same code.

I appeal to all supporters of WordPress: put a stop to this ongoing hypocrisy. If Automattic wants to support the code base, that’s fine. But put the decision making for WordPress in independent hands with people who irrespective of whether they are pro or against commercial use of WordPress at least maintain the same policy for all, not just some. That is the only way that the open source effort behind WordPress can ultimately be beyond reproach.

Automattic, Those Champions of Open Source Plug The Microsoft Cloud

Duncan Riley — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:06:51 +0000

Automattic, the company behind WordPress and self-proclaimed nazis when it comes to enforcing the strictest interpretation of open source on others, ~~have announced that they’re moving WordPress.com to~~ are plugging Microsoft’s Azure cloud hosting.

At the Microsoft (MSFT) Professional Developers Conference on Tuesday, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg took to the stage alongside Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie to ~~announce the move~~ plug the service.

We can’t find a full transcript of what Mullenweg said on stage yet (update, see below), although other sites are suggesting that the tie-in with WordPress was used to highlight how Microsoft Azure will (or soon will) support PHP, MySQL and other open-source tools.

I don’t doubt that what Microsoft is doing with Azure is great, and that it is offering a highly appealing product. That they’ll support open source platforms is probably overdue, but likewise will make Azure that much more competitive.

That aside, how is it that one of the most over the top purists in the open source world is now in bed with a company that at its very core is all about proprietary software and has long been seen as a combatant against the open source movement?

Still, Automattic’s and Mullenweg’s hypocrisy when in comes to open source has long been documented: the company likes nothing more than attacking those who dare profit from WordPress code while they themselves act as if they believe that only Automattic alone should be able to profit from it. That they’d get into bed with Microsoft really shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise.

Update: the transcript for the appearance doesn’t say that Automattic is switching to Azure, only some how backing it.

A number of outlets, including at the time of writing AOL’s Daily Finance is reporting that WordPress.com is going to Azure.

The contention either way remains the same: Mullenweg is an open source nazi who stops at very little to cut off or make life difficult for those outside of Automattic who seek to profit from the WordPress code.

Don’t believe me on Automattic’s support? , ask ReadWriteWeb, who wrote “Mullenwegg appeared on stage to show that his company, Automattic, is fully supporting Azure. Automattic is the company behind Wordpress.”

The Epic Wordpress + MediaTemple Failure

Kyle Brady — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:53:40 +0000

A week ago I, Kyle the Invincible!, was hit by an injection attack on the majority of my own sites, and it took a large handful of hours to even figure out what was wrong. Once I discovered that a file had been somehow uploaded to my server, which executed itself and inserted malicious code onto my site’s pages, I wrote about it – in fact, you can find the full technical details on my blog and some more details on the Wordpress bug ticket.

Everything seemed like it was OK afterwards, since MediaTemple (my host) had worked pretty heavily with me to find the problem and determine the solution – I even wrote about how I was happy with the interaction and name-dropped the techs who had helped me. But then when my post on the issue started getting popular, because this is apparently a common problem at the moment, they stopped talking to me, especially when I started pushing for more answers.

The key to all of this is that a file is somehow uploaded to the server, which I had initially thought might be a fault of my CMS. Wordpress claims it isn’t their fault, but they released a security update (2.8.6) pretty quickly after my security and bug reports on the issue. MediaTemple claims it’s not their fault either, because Wordpress is “notoriously insecure”. But when the same issue started appearing for other users that don’t even use Wordpress, I became concerned – even more so when I learned most, if not all, of them are MediaTemple (gridserver) customers.

I’ve been pressing them for answers for the last four days, since I decided it was a hosting security issue, and have been ignored pretty stoically. But imagine my surprise today when I notice that I’ve been hit by the exact same attack, just a week later, this time running Wordpress 2.8.6.

If there’s a security issue floating around, you’d imagine that those behind the problem would be extremely interested in fixing it as soon as possible… right? Well, apparently not. It seems to be more important for both Wordpress and MediaTemple to act more like the Camel Lights camel rather than Boris from Goldeneye, and this is absolutely unacceptable from a user standpoint. Any vulnerability that allows unauthorized access to data, breaks a site, makes a huge list of SPAM links to porn, and redirects links to a malware distribution site is entirely not something to laugh at.

This is not a chain mail letter you can ignore without repercussions – this could effect a very big swath of the Internet, no matter who has caused the security hole.

I’ve been relatively happy with the (gridserver) plan from MediaTemple, and I know most people have been too. If this keeps up, however, I’ll be leaving them for someone who’s more interested in my data security than they appear to be, especially since all evidence points to this being a server issue rather than that of public-level software.

MediaTemple: step up, and do what we pay you for. If not, there will be a user reckoning.

Wordpress: you need to make an announcement. If it’s not your fault, that’s fine – but recognize the issue publicly, publish steps to fix the issue, and make a definitive claim against MediaTemple; however, you better have concrete evidence that it isn’t your fault.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

A Very Wordpress World

Kyle Brady — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:05:52 +0000

Since 2003, an open source, Internet-oriented software package has done what is exceedingly rare within that community: becoming not only immensely popular and wildly loved, but also profitable. Matt Mullenweg has managed to turn what began as a fork of an aging content management system (CMS) into a worldwide empire that doesn’t even technically have a central office – Automattic’s Wordpress.

And there’s more coming.

Wordpress has evolved into one of the leading CMS packages in the world, in large part thanks to its many features and intense focus. Over the years it’s morphed from a rough-around-the-edges, but useful, software tool into a fully featured and easy-to-use content management endpoint with de facto deployment status. With built-in features like automatic upgrade, an increasingly intelligent editing interface, and an extensive plugin system, it’s easy to see why, and viewing the list of features in the upcoming 2.9 release is evidence enough that they’re moving toward a singular goal, given their prior history.

One of the complaints with Wordpress has always been relatively simple: while it’s easier to use than Drupal or Joomla for non-programmers, a basic familiarity with programming and advanced “Internet skills” are necessary to establish an enjoyable and highly functional site/blog. Themes use direct PHP references, plugins (until recently) had to be uploaded via FTP, and content was typically written externally – none of these facets of software lend themselves to attracting the proverbial Grandma as a user. Yes, the interface is more slick and friendly than their competitors’, but the Wordpress team still has far to go.

Wordpress 2.9 will supposedly see public access to easier rich-media embedding, inline image editing, and an operating system-like Trashcan – these are the most standout features of the impending upgrade, and they are definitively GUI- and Grandma-oriented. For some time now, Automattic has been playing both sides of the coin by enhancing the software backend and functionality while simultaneously smoothing over the user experience for the world-at-large, and this is admirable. It is, therefore, not a significant stretch to assume that Wordpress is intended to one day have rich functionality and extensibility, but with an interface that caters to the general public – the Gmail, Facebook, or Firefox of CMS packages.

There is, however, a problem.

Unless a user chooses the watered-down, hosted version, a site/blog using Wordpress in any fashion still requires significant setup and configuration – hosting, databases, and the initial software setup are all required elements to achieving functionality, and they all require some technological knowledge. Even worse are those sites that use Wordpress and begin to see traffic, because there is still a significant memory/load issue at its very core. The Inquisitr uses Wordpress, and I’ve always used it for my own site, business, and clients, but it is almost always heavily modified for any popular or load-bearing use.

All of us use some sort of content caching option, but a step further is still required: in my case, all sites are hosted with MediaTemple’s (gridserver) plan, with extra database-only memory resources, but in the case of the Inquisitr, an extensive hosting solution, involving Amazon’s AWS products, was necessary for the site to remain functional. How is this still a problem for Wordpress installations?

For Wordpress to achieve its high-minded goals, it needs to begin work on the core immediately. Given that Automattic has been slowly acquiring plugins and other software that advances its ideals, it would make more sense for Wordpress to come prepackaged with certain features, not as plugins, in order to enhance its basic usability – page caching should be first on the list.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic, and Wordpress, I salute you. You’ve done an admirable job and the world generally loves you – but it’s time to step up to what you’ve created, and do things right.

You don’t want to become the Microsoft of content management systems, do you?

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Fail: Automattic CEO takes on WPMU

Duncan Riley — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:15:54 +0000

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has once again highlighted the gross conflict of interest between his commercial interests and involvement in WordPress.org by wishing that WordPress development team WPMU would go out of business.

WPMU, run by Edublogs founder James Farmer, offers a range of free and paid services, including WPMU Dev Premium, a subscription service which offers members exclusive WordPress templates and plugins. The site runs a yearly plugin contest, offering prize money to the best plugins submitted. Plugins entered in the contest must be released under a GPL compatible license, complying with the arguable claim by Matt Mullenweg that everything that is built on top of WordPress must be offered under the GPL.

WPMU contributes a lot back to the WordPress community, including plugins, code and free templates, but the problem for Mullenweg rests with that fact that some parts are offered under a paid model. In a comment he left on Weblog Tools Collection, Mullenweg writes that “It would be nice if someone entered in the contest plugins that do everything theirs do,” referring to the paid plugins offered by WPMU Dev Premium.

Whether you agree with Mullenweg’s thoughts on claiming everything offered on top of WordPress should be offered for free and under the GPL is a moot point, because Automattic profits from WordPress day in, day out, and the company competes with WPMU. What we haven’t mentioned so far is that the WPMU team also own and operate Blogs.mu, a free and paid blog hosting service that competes directly with WordPress.com, Automattic’s flagship service.

I’ve said previously that you can’t have it both ways: you either believe people shouldn’t be able to profit from WordPress, or you do. Mullenweg as the head of WordPress.org says one thing, then does the opposite at Automattic, creating a conflict of interest that some might fairly argue is being exploited for commercial gain.

James Farmer’s full thoughts on the issue on the WPMU blog here.

Sociable Acquired By Startups.com

Duncan Riley — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:35:22 +0000

Excellent Wordpress social voting plugin Sociable has been acquired by Startups.com for an undisclosed sum from developer Joast de Valk.

According to a report at The Next Web, de Valk will remain on board for the mean time but will gradually relinquish development and control over to the Startups.com team.

de Valk writes on his personal blog that the decision to sell was driven by his company “OrangeValley going so well…as well as my wife being 7 months pregnant and the fact that we’ll thus have a 2nd kid soon.”

Sociable, which we currently use here at The Inquisitr (its those little voting buttons at the end of each post) has a new home on the Blogplay.com site.

Automattic Acquires After The Deadline. Bloggers Suddenly Learn How To Spell

James Allen Johnson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:12:28 +0000

After The Deadline is a popular spell check plug-in that allows users to incorporate spell checking into their online applications. Now that technology is in the hands of the Automattic team who have just acquired the company and its technology.

The new technology is already running on Wordpress blogs and works in realtime by underlining errors (spelling mistakes) as there made. Just like MS Word red highlighting signals spelling mistakes, green offers incorrect grammar and blue equals a style mistake.

Users can also choose how the program examines their content, such as turning off grammar checking and even setting up their own rules. The program then offers possible word fixes and grammar changes just like other popular word processors. Users must then choose whether to accept or ignore certain “mistakes” as they check their posts.

According to After The Deadline founder Raphael Mudge, the plug-in will continue to be upgraded under the Automattic name and will remain free for non-commercial use. They also plan to add new language support to the application.

No word yet as to whether the plug-in will eventually become a part of the Wordpress core, or if it will remain a separate plug-in as was the case with another Automattic acquisition IntenseDebate which was purchased in September of 2008.

Here’s a video of the software in action:

WordPress-tards wet their pants over not much at all

Duncan Riley — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:08:11 +0000

Hardcore WordPress groupies (hereby known as WordPress-tards) are in a flap over comments made by Chris Anderson in his new book “Free” about the WordPress model.

Without being able to see the actual book and extract, I can only take their word for it, but it’s suppose to read like this:

2. Feature limited (Basic version free, more sophisticated version paid. This is the WordPress model.)

* Upside: Best way to maximize reach. When customers convert to paid, they’re doing it for the right reason (they understand the value of what they’re paying for) and are likely to be more loyal and less price sensitive.
* Downside: Need to create two versions of the product. If you put too many features in the free version, not enough people will convert. If you put too few, not enough will use it long enough to convert.

Mark Asquith, who notes that he’s a “lead developer of the WordPress publishing platform” claims:

This is most assuredly not the WordPress model. Anyone and everyone can go to wordpress.org and download a completely free, completely unrestricted, and completely feature-complete version of WordPress to run for any purpose. There is no feature limited version of WordPress.

I’d say he’s right, but I’d be lying so much I’d have my hands cut off in an Islamic court. See the problem is, THIS IS THE WORDPRESS MODEL. The WordPress BUSINESS MODEL.

You know, business models, that thing Automattic built on top of open source code then insisted that others couldn’t play along with them?

There has been some reasonable discussion among people who can see the trees from Matt Mullenweg’s arse, like Chris Garrett who notes that Anderson is talking about Wordpress.com and not WordPress the open source code. However he does lose it a little bit when he asks whether WordPress.com is diluting the Wordpress.org brand.

The answer there is a simple no. Those who want to set up hosted blogs (the minority) are going to understand the difference between Wordpress the code and WordPress the heavily retarded unless you pay hosted blogging service. Those who use Wordpress.com either have no interest in Wordpress.org code, are too mentally challenged to know what code is, or too poor or tight arsed to spend $5 a month (and often less) for hosting and $8.99 per year for a domain name. In none of these scenarios is water added to dilute anything.

But the conflict between the benevolent arm and the evil empire does highlight one point that should be made: Wordpress.org should be hived off, or alternatively forked off from Automattic. There is a continuing and clear conflict of interest between Automattic’s commercial interests, and WordPress’ development as a free and open source blog CMS. One needs to look no further than how Automattic’s commercial decisions are constantly imposed on the WordPress (.org) community: one minute it’s sponsored links in templates, then it’s trying to force template and plugin designers to release their work under the GPL: it’s the whole the only people who can profit from WordPress is us thing, and that’s why there should be, and needs to be change.

WordPress 2.8 released, but you shouldn’t install it yet

Duncan Riley — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:49:36 +0000

The latest version of popular blogging CMS WordPress has been released.

WordPress 2.8 offers a range of enhancements and bug fixes, although is not as big an upgrade as WordPress 2.7 was (which some would argue should have been called WP 3.0). A list of some of the enhancements below.

As with any significant WordPress release (x.x.1 are patch releases so don’t count) my advice always remains the same: you shouldn’t install it yet. Although this release is less likely to break plugins vs 2.7, new Wordpress releases without fail nearly always result in compatibility issues with plugins and other features (see screenshot above.) Wait at least a couple of weeks, and then make sure any plugins you’re running on your blog have been certified as being compatible with 2.8, either in their existing form, or with updates.

Here’s the WP 2.8 highlights list:

- New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
- Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
- Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
- Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
- Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
- Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
- Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
- Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

WordTwit offers custom short URLs for WordPress blogs

Duncan Riley — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:04:52 +0000

Twitter updating plugin for WordPress WordTwithas recently released a new version with a range of extra features including a short URL service.

The short URL service allows users to use their own URL when updating Twitter, for example http://inquisitr.com/OD, the OD being the shorter version of the actual post URL. The feature delivers full control over links, overcoming an inherent risk with third party services, that is that if they fold, all your links die. The better feature is built in link tracking, so from within WordPress you can track which links are being clicked on in Twitter.

The plugin also offers the ability to use a different URL for URL shortening. For example, if you have a long blog URL, like www.thisisaverylongblogname.com, you could use another URL you owned (say tiavlb.com) for the short URL’s. The only flaw here is that the instructions for the plugin are short to non-existent, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to set this feature up.

Two additional features make the plugin amazing, or evil, depending on your point of view. Users can check a box and have the plugin dynamically convert all content links into short URLs. This could be highly useful for external link tracking, but runs the risk of sites using it not passing link juice to linked sites. The final new feature enables a banner on external sites; I haven’t seen this in practice, but it sounds similar to the DiggBar, so it might not be a wise thing to turn on.

You can download WordTwit here.

WordPress 2.7 breaks category feeds (and apologies if you got the wrong content)

Duncan Riley — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:54:33 +0000

The Inquisitr is now running WordPress 2.7, the “Coltrane” release that offers new security and a wacky new layout that takes a lot of getting use to (I hate it so far, but I’m going to give it some more time).

We’d normally not mention an upgrade except for one little fact: it broke our category feeds.

From what I can gather by one entry on the WordPress forums, the traditional feed by category format is no longer supported. In tech terms, that means if you had a feed url like yoursite.com/wp-feed.php?cat=7 it now doesn’t show content from category 7, it instead diverts to the master feed. The newer, friendlier to look at category feed of yoursite.com/category/specific-category-name/feed/ does work.

For us that means everyone subscribed to a category feed got half a days worth of full content. We obviously offer category specific feeds because we respect that not everyone wants to read everything, and we are deeply sorry for those upset by the error. We’ve reset the feeds using the supported URL into Feedburner and they should be sorted now, although they may take a short while to update.

If you’re upgrading to WordPress 2.7, the warning is simple: check everything is working! Feeds are the last thing I thought to look at.

More Hypocrisy from Mullenweg and WordPress with new themes jihad

Duncan Riley — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:21:36 +0000

WordPress has removed over 200 themes from the WordPress theme directory for the crime of the themes linking back to the sites and people that created them.

The jihad against themes started last year with Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg declaring there was no place for non-GPL licensed themes on the WordPress Themes directory.

I wrote at the time of the original jihad about the gross hypocrisy of Mullenweg in a post to TechCrunch that gained a lot of flack, including from Arrington, but it stands true today: Mullenweg has an issue with people profiting from WordPress despite the fact that he’s the one person who profits from it the most. It’s all very well and good wanting to be a open source purist, but you don’t get to play legitimate purist when you’re making money from it yourself.

The issue last year, as it seems to be this time around is primarily links out on themes to other sites. Mullenweg likes to call all links SEO scams, and while I’ll agree that some themes do meet this criteria, many don’t, and a simple link back in a theme to the person or organization who wrote the theme is hardly a scam nor by any stretch of the imagination unfair.

What’s interesting in the new round, having purged non GPL (open source) themes last year, is that Mullenweg is now purging open source themes for the link crime. The number isn’t insignificant either: 200 themes is around 35% of the themes on the WordPress Themes site. As one site put it: the decision is similar to Apple pulling apps from the iPhone App store, with the same loss of custom for theme creators.

This is yet another case of Mullenweg biting the hand that feeds him. WordPress theme designers were one of the backbones of WordPress’ spectacular rise from obscurity to the powerhouse it is today. Those same designers help drive use of WordPress, and they are continually treated with little or no respect.

I use WordPress today due to familiarity and availability of extensions, and the lack of a easy to switch to alternative (there are some, but they lack the community, features or ease of use). I can say though that I don’t use WordPress as a mark of support for the direction WordPress has taken since Automattic took over the show: there is zero church and state seperation between WordPress open source and Automattic the commercial enterprise, and until there is this great idea of an open source and free platform is a running joke. Mullenweg should excuse himself from decisions within the WordPress community while he continues to profit from Automattic if he truly believes in open source and that WordPress.org and supporting sites should maintain a strict ethos in that directions. That is the only way this decision could possibly be delivered with any authority and trust.

(via Pro Blogging/ Alistair Cameron. img credit: Duanestory)

WordPress Developer Acquires PollDaddy

JR — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:00:15 +0000

WordPress developer Automattic has acquired online poll service PollDaddy, the company has announced, and has added an integrated poll creation tool for blogs hosted on WordPress.com. A plug-in has also just been launched for externally hosted WP blogs.

The deal will bring the two-person PollDaddy team on-board with WordPress immediately and will lead to greater stability and faster-loading polls, the companies say. They also promise growth won’t be limited only to WordPress; expanded support is also being developed for MySpace, Ning, Blogger, Typepad, Hi5, Orkut, and Piczo.

The decision came when the Automattic engineers started looking at building their own poll service, WordPress founder Matt Mullenmeg says.

“It became more obvious that, while on the surface it’s a very simple problem, there’s a lot of hidden complexity and opportunities for some really powerful features under the hood. There are probably a dozen companies addressing this space right now, but as we started to survey the space I was struck by how often I’d see this ‘PollDaddy’ thing pop up,” he explains.

PollDaddy, incidentally, has been used here on The Inquisitr several times recently. It’s a very user-friendly and surprisingly easy to use utility that adds a nice layer of interactivity. We’re looking forward to seeing how its offerings will expand with the new acquistion.

PollDaddy

Automattic

Deals: Voxant, Intense Debate change hands

Duncan Riley — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:12:39 +0000

Two interesting acquisitions related to blogging this week: licensed video provider Voxant has changed hands along with commenting 2.0 service Intense Debate.

Voxant offers licensed videos from media outlets, including AP for use on websites. For bloggers the service also offers $7 CPM on ads shown with the videos, and attractive offering (we use them on occasion), although their catalog is not as extensive as competitor Clipsyndicate. Depending on the report, Voxant was either acquired or merged with Anystream, a provider of video encoding and content management to media companies including CNN and Sky. Financial details were not disclosed, but the statement from Anystream notes that the combined product will offer more content and become a leading playing the space.

Commenting 2.0 service Intense Debate, a competitor of Disqus, SezWho and JS-Kit but not widely used as it hasn’t yet launched (it’s still in closed beta) was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. Mashable reports that the deal will see Intense Debate rolled out across millions of blogs on the WordPress.com network, delivering the service a massive boost at a time all competitors are looking for more users.

Setting up your own blog is easier than you think [Blogging 101]

Duncan Riley — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:39:09 +0000

This is the start of our occasional series of posts covering the aspects of starting a blog

But it’s hard! I don’t know how to use FTP! CHMOD?!?! php is confusing! what’s CSS?

These are all typical arguments I’ve heard from people in the past when arguing against setting up their own blog under their own URL on a server. We know that setting up a blog on Blogger or WordPress.com is easy, but it doesn’t match a blog under your own name, where you control every aspect.

Naturally it helps that you’re not afraid to try, and sometimes fail along the way, but anyone can do it.

URLs are easy to buy, easy to point

Buying a domain name for your blog is as easy as visiting a domain registrar and typing in the name you want. The hard part is finding a name that isn’t taken, but using sites like Domaintools.com can help there. Once registered, the only remotely scary bit is pointing your URL to your server. Many registrars will offer easy to follow instructions, but all you have to do is find the right option, and usually enter two things, something like ns1.yourhost.com and ns2.yourhost.com, and both will be provided by your host. Not the least bit scary. If you can type, you can do this!

If you’ve decided to buy hosting from your domain registrar (I’d never recommend that you do, but some do), you don’t usually have to point the domain either.

Blog setup is often a click or two away

In the old days, setting up your own blog meant ftping the code base for your blogging platform of choice to your server, playing with permission settings, editing config files, then if you were really lucky and got every step right, you’d have your own blog. The good news is that on most hosts today, you don’t have to do any of that. Wordpress is regularly offered as an install option in Plesk, cPanel and similar offerings, and installing WordPress usually involves a few clicks, and maybe typing in a password you’d like, and an email address for the account. Very, very simple.

If you’re concerned that your host might not offer this feature, check before signing up. Long gone are the days where hosts would kick you off for running a blog, today easy installation of blogs is a selling point.

Themes, FTP! Help!

At this point, everything as been really easy. You have your own domain, you have WordPress set up, and you’re able to post. But not many people will want to stick with the default WordPress theme. This is where FTP steps in, and it’s not as scary as you think.

Can you browse files using Explorer in Windows or Finder on a Mac? Can you move a file from one folder to another? If you can, you already have every skill required to upload a theme to your blog.

I recommend Filezilla for FTP, it’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it comes with a killer price tag of $0, but there are others you can use. If you’re really keen, you can even use Windows itself, with Explorer supporting ftp addresses and logins.

The only things you’ll need: ftp details (usually ftp.mysite.com) username and password. With WordPress, you open the themes directory in wp-content (sometimes your WP install will be buried in httpdocs or user or similar folder). You download the theme, then you drag and drop the theme folder into the themes directory, and let it upload. If you’d rather not drag and drop, navigate to the folder using Filezilla, then click on upload once you’ve got the themes directory open on the right of screen. And that’s it. Might take a few minutes, but there’s nothing hard or scary there. Think of FTP and the folders/ files on your server in the same way you’d look at the same on your computer, and you’ll be fine.

Plugins

Like themes, plugins do need to be installed, in this case to the plugins folder in wp-content. There is usually instructions with the plugin, and there will be two possibilities: upload a file or upload the folder. Do as it says and they will be installed. To activate, go to plugins in the WordPress control panel, and click activate on your plugin of choice.

WordPress today makes it a lot easier to add these plugins to your site, without having to touch any code. If the theme you have installed supports widgets (and many do) all you have to do is go to the widgets tab under design in WordPress, then simply add your plugins where you want them.

There are going to be times where the widget and/ or template doesn’t support widgets. If you just can’t cope with code, I’d recommend sticking to ones that do.

Conclusion

See, it’s not really that hard. There’s no massive learning curve required to run your own blog on your own URL where you have full control. We’ll tackle the coding side in a future post because it helps to know a little, but there is no reason today why you can’t set up your own blog. If you’re reading this, and can turn on a computer and open a file, you can do this.

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Google gets serious about blogging, Automattic the target?

Duncan Riley — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:32:21 +0000

News broke earlier today that Google has acquired Korean blogging outfit TNC, the company behind the TextCube blogging service.

TNC founder Chang Kim doesn’t disclose the full details of the sale, but speculates that the acquisition may have been motivated by Google’s desire to improve its presence in South Korea, a market the American search giant has struggled in.

The comparison to Automattic is made by Kim himself, and the parallels are obvious: popular blogging platform used by A-List bloggers (65 of the top 100 bloggers in South Korea use it), with an install base of 400,000 users.

In a statement (via VentureBeat, I haven’t found it at time of writing):

Google confirmed the deal Friday morning, saying it wants to “broaden its portfolio of locally-focused products, further encourage creation of openly accessible user-generated content, and improve search experiences of Korean users.” In a statement, it also said it will add “additional resources, via acquisition or otherwise.

The emphasis is mine, but it’s key to looking at the deal past the obvious South Korea market play. Google hasn’t just bought into South Korea, they’ve purchased a platform they can use, either as a standalone product (and we’d presume that it will remain standalone given the numbers and the obvious South Korean benefits) and/ or in conjunction with existing Google properties, such as Blogger for example. Chang Kim mentions in his post that the TextCube platform is more advanced than existing players in offering social networking as part of their blogging platform, so this is another angle to consider.

Automattic as the target

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is a Google competitor today, and is moving into the social networking space through its acquisition of BuddyPress. Blogger may be the more popular free hosted blogging platform, yet WordPress.com recently passed the 4 million blog mark, and WordPress is the most popular self hosted blogging script. Google doesn’t offer a self hosted blogging platform, and so far their only effort to get into the space, aside from the near ubiquitous Adsense advertising network, is through the still in closed beta offering of Google Friend Connect. Widgets though don’t really deliver presence in the way that a self hosted platform does, and with Automattic controlling WordPress, the integration advantage will never side with Google.

Google now owns a competitor to WordPress the self hosted blogging platform, and to think that they won’t eventually use it outside of South Korea, particularly if it’s as good as some say it is, would be false. They will use it, in one form or another, and suddenly the self hosted blogging market gets interesting again. SixApart is also in the mix, but their core products tend to be upmarket, paid products vs the much lower market share of MovableType, so although Google would compete here, there’s a lot less to lose. Automattic is the company with the most to lose when Google uses this acquisition to get serious in offering an all round suite of blogging tools. If Google has decided it wants to compete in self hosted blogging, Automattic must be the target.

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The Next Social Networks Will Not Be Powered By Blog Platforms

Duncan Riley — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:22:35 +0000

Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb today argues that the next social networks will be powered By WordPress and Movable Type. She bases her conclusion on the excellent new release of MovableType that delivers a full social networking solution, and Automattic’s Buddypress acquisition for WordPress, a solution that turns WordPress MU into a social networking platform.

The offers from both WordPress (WP) and MovableType (MT) are positive steps forward in the evolution of the self hosted blogging platform, but availability doesn’t equate to takeup. Some social networks in the future may well use MT or WP, but the next wave of social networks will NOT be powered by WordPress and MovableType.

The reason is remarkably simple, and the evidence is already apparent. Time.

Time on two fronts. People are becoming time poor and are finding it harder to split their time between competing services. A new wave of social networks based on WP or MT will only add to the noise, and unless there is a compelling reason to join, most will simply ignore these new networks. The move is on to aggregation, not separation. Then there’s the need to maintain separate logins on each install. There are some OpenID solutions for WP and MT, but they are neither commonly installed nor is OpenID yet commonly used. There appears to be no interoperability between installs like Indenti.ca, so each install will be a walled garden of content, unique to the site, but unable to communicate with other installations.

The second time point is administration. The ability to add guest blogs or forums to blogs has been available in various forms for years, but how many installs do we see? A full blown social network is an administrative nightmare for all but large blogs with a lot of money to throw at staff to take care of that side of the business. And even then, is there a compelling business case to be had in administering these installs? Then there’s the real possibility that these social networks will be spam honey pots. Even in 2008, most still face comment spam, imagine dealing with spam across a full social network.

Of those sites who currently run social networks or even forums, how many are truly successful? Mashable is the only blog I can think of in this space who runs a remotely successful social network, and even then, it’s not exactly a hive of activity. TechCrunch runs a forum that at least while I was there was prone to spam and wasn’t heavily used, at least when considering the traffic of the site itself compared with the activity on the forum.

The Ning Solution

The true success story in the hosted social networking space is Ning. The site has 370,000 social networks as of July, but only manages 3.5 million to 4 million page views per month, or roughly 10 visitors per social network. That traffic aside, the selling case between a local MT or WP install vs Ning is strong. On Ning, your login works across every social network on the site, it is fully hosted so you don’t have to worry as much about spam and abuse, it’s tested, and for the basic service it’s completely free. There are plenty of Ning competitors out there as well, so choice isn’t lacking. You can also pay to map the Ning social network to your own domain and to show ads, so the control argument with a self install is negated some what. If your site did have a compelling case for including a social network (and few statically probably do) I don’t see why you wouldn’t sign up with Ning or a similar service.

Conclusion

I don’t want to sound to be too harsh on either WP or MT for these features being available. They are a positive progression in the evolution of blogging, and no doubt that some will seek to add social networking features to their blogs. However, given these features are in the most part already available both externally and within each site (BuddyPress isn’t new), and similar features such as forums are old school but are not widespread, there will be no rush of MT or WP powered social networks. Nor perhaps should there be.

Ning

One Word For Zemanta: Useful

Duncan Riley — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:22:52 +0000

Zemanta is a Slovenian blogging tool that automatically suggests contextual photos and links for any post.

Webware describes Zemanta as “a brilliant product for lazy or otherwise time-focused bloggers” and it’s a fair description. The tool is offered either as a plugin for hosted blogs (WordPress and MovableType), as a browser extension (IE and Firefox) or with hosted platforms including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal.

Image by Roebot via Flickr.

The video above walks through what it looks like on a Blogger blog, on a WordPress hosted blog I’m currently seeing a Zemanta box directly below the publish options on the right hand side. The plugin updates every 300 characters automatically, offering a gallery of context and legal pictures I can use on the this post. Below is a list of contextual articles I can place in the post at any time. Below the WordPress post box is a box labeled “links” with suggestions for links that can be inserted into the post base on words in it, for example with this post it’s showing Firefox, LiveJournal, WordPress, Zemanta and others. The tag box also gets contextual suggestions as well.

I’ve only just installed it, and have really got to give it a more serious workout, but my first thoughts: this is a really useful tool and I can see myself using it and even recommending it to others. Not having to dig around for pics (well at least less often), less stuffing around with link insertion, tag reminders, even related articles. My only two negatives: what are they getting out of this (where’s the catch) and secondly, it insists on inserting a Zemanta button at the bottom of every post every time you hit a button, so if you’re half way through you’ve then got to deal with code stuck directly after your last word. It’s easy to delete it prior to posting and ultimately it’s only a small annoyance.

Example of a contextual link below, the Zemanta button that the tool auto inserted, and the laptop picture above from their gallery suggestions.