WordPress.org

We hereby declare 2012 as the Year of the WordPress Meetup. You’ll want to get in on this action.

meet·up \mēt-əp\ noun
A meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking Web site: a meetup for new moms in the neighborhood; a meetup to plan the trip; a meetup for WordPress users.¹

So what is a WordPress Meetup? Basically, it’s people in a community getting together — meeting up — who share an interest in WordPress, whether they be bloggers, business users, developers, consultants, or any other category of person able to say, “I use WordPress in some way and I like it, and I want to meet other people who can say the same.” Meetups come in different shapes and sizes, but they all carry the benefit of connecting you with potential collaborators and friends, and helping you learn more about what you can do with WordPress. Here are some of the common types of WordPress meetups:

• Hang out and work on your WordPress sites together
• Social/happy hour type gatherings
• Mini-lectures/presentations
• Developer hacking meetups
• Show & tell of how group members are using WordPress
• Formal instruction on how to use WordPress
• Lecture series (possibly with visiting speakers)
• Genius bar/help desk

There’s no prescribed format, as each local group can decide for itself what they want to do. Some groups mix it up from month to month, while others have multiple events each month to satisfy the needs of their community.

The tough part? Running a popular group takes time and money. Just as we worked last year to remove the financial burden for WordCamp organizers and provide logistical support so they could focus more on their event content and experience, we want to start extending that kind of support to meetup groups as well. We don’t want it to cost anything for someone to run a WordPress meetup, or to attend one — building local communities should be as free as WordPress itself!

Since there are so many more meetups than there are WordCamps, we’re going to start with the cost that is the same for every group: meetup.com organizer dues. We’re setting up an official WordPress account on Meetup.com right now, and over the next couple of weeks will be working with existing meetup group organizers, people who want to start a new meetup group, and the helpful folks at Meetup.com to put this program in place. WordPress meetup groups that choose to have their group become part of the WordPress account will no longer pay organizer dues for that group, as the WordPress Foundation will be footing the bill.

This is exciting for several reasons. First, it means local organizers who are giving something back to the project by way of their time won’t also have shell out $12-19/month for the privilege. That alone is a big step. Second, it will open the door to more events and leaders within a community, since leadership and event planning won’t need to be tied to “owning” the meetup group. Third, more active meetup groups means more WordCamps, yay!

In addition to the financial aspects, we’ll be working on ways to improve social recognition of meetup activity by incorporating feeds from the official meetup groups into the WordPress.org site, and including meetup group participation in the activity stream on your WordPress.org profile.² I’m also hoping we can do something around providing video equipment to meetup groups (like we already do for WordCamps) to record presentations and tutorials that can be posted to WordPress.tv, helping meetup groups offer WordPress classes in their community, and getting involved with mentoring WordPress clubs at local schools and universities. Oh, and we’ll send out some WordPress buttons and stickers to the groups that join in, because everyone loves buttons and stickers.

We’re also putting together some cool resources for people who want to start a new meetup group. There will be a field guide to getting started and some supplies to help you get your group going, and a forum for organizers to talk to and learn from each other.

Over time, we’ll be talking to organizers and looking at what other expenses we can absorb and what other support we can provide to local groups. For now, we’re starting with the organizer dues. If you currently run a WordPress meetup group (whether you are using Meetup.com or not) or would like to start a WordPress meetup group in your area, please fill out our WordPress Meetup Groups survey. Filling in the survey doesn’t obligate you to join the official group, it just gives us a starting point to a) find out what groups are around/interested, and b) get some information on existing groups and their expenses and needs. Meetup.com will contact the group organizers who’ve said they’d like to join the new program, and will walk them through the logistics of the change and answer questions before helping them to opt-in officially.

So, if you currently run a WordPress meetup group, or you would like to start one, please  fill out our WordPress Meetup Groups survey. I can’t wait to see more meetups!

1 – Adapted from “meetup” definition at dictionary.com.
2 – Didn’t know about profiles? Check out http://profiles.wordpress.org/users/yourwordpressdotorgusernamehere (put in the username you use in the WordPress.org forums) to see yours!

PressTrends has released a rather fascinating plugin for WordPress blogs. The plugin will allow you to measure various metrics for your posts, comments, and plugin usage, and compare these to averages across the entire PressTrends community.

The feature list may be just a bit basic now, but there are more features on the way, the design is very clean-cut, and if you’re interested to see how you’re doing versus “the status quo,” this is definitely the way to do it.

If you’re a theme designer, you might also be interested in their core product, which provides metrics for theme usage.

ManageWP is a new service that aims to make managing multiple websites as easy as possible. They’ve recently opened their doors to the public and Vladimir Prelovac was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to answer a few questions I had. Enjoy!

Is ManageWP a webhosting company or simply a means of managing websites that are hosted elsewhere?

We are not a webhosting company, as ManageWP provides an efficient way to manage any number of websites that are hosted on your own servers, but we do offer something new and unique to the WordPress community: one dashboard for all their websites no matter where they are hosted. This ensures that our users maintain total control over their websites while also ensuring that they can continue to expand, without restriction, far into the future.

What was the idea or inspiration behind creating ManageWP?

As with all plugins I have developed, ManageWP was created out of the pure need to solve a problem. The problem here was having to do repetitive tasks — like updating and maintaining your sites (something computers and Internet services are supposed to be good at).

As you surely know, managing numerous WordPress sites can be somewhat time consuming. Add several WordPress sites into the mix, and you quickly become a slave to your CMS. I wanted to simplify the process, so that was when ManageWP became reality.

What are some of the things going on behind the scenes to make ManageWP function like a well oiled machine?

It requires a tremendous amount of effort by all of our team members. That’s the first thing that springs to mind. It’s not easy to create and maintain a service this complex, one which also remains in sync with the WordPress development cycle, all while having it work with thousands of different WordPress setups and with thousands of different server/hosting configurations.

It’s not an easy job. But we also have no intention of stopping anytime soon!

What are some of the benefits of using ManageWP versus using WordPress Multisite?

The most notable benefit is ManageWP’s ease of us. While being a good idea on paper, WordPress Multisite demands a certain level of technical knowledge to install, manage, and maintain. It also takes time, time which many people find valuable. And while Multisite might be good enough for some people, we always want to offer our users so much more value and time-saving functionality.

And we differentiate ourselves by providing many awesome features:

• you can set up and monitor fully automated backups for all of your websites from one location, along with being able to specify exactly where you want those backups stored;
• you can use ManageWP to monitor your website’s up-time;
• you can use ManageWP to monitor crucial SEO performance metrics;
• you can take advantage of incredible third-party services like Google Analytics and DropBox;
• you can change passwords for your admin user on all of your WordPress sites from within ManageWP;
• and the list goes on and on.

As for the similarities between ManageWP and WordPress Multisite — it ends with the ability to update plugins. ManageWP goes far beyond that. However, if you’re already setup with WordPress Multisite, that’s no problem. ManageWP fully integrates with that too!

What types of security practices have been put into place to protect customers?

We know that the success of our business depends a lot on security; this has been our focus since day one. To ensure that our user’s data is secure, we dropped the built-in XML RPC protocol — it’s inherently insecure to work with as it exposes sensitive data. We replaced it with OpenSSL encryption. Because of this, the transmission of your data remains completely secure.

We also never ask users to enter their admin passwords for any websites they are managing with us. We do not have access to your site’s credentials and other crucial information. Our technology is innovative in that it allows ManageWP to talk directly to your WordPress sites through our ManageWP Worker plugin. So by utilizing WordPress’ built-in plugin architecture, we are able to do amazing things to help you manage all of your sites.

As for protecting your ManageWP account, we utilize multiple layers of protection: restricting the login by IP address and two-factor authentication (wherein a security code is sent to user’s email or phone via SMS). This is far beyond industry standards, and it’s only a handful of the things we do to ensure that our users’ sites are safe.

We take great pride in this.

Are there any differences between the self-hosted product of ManageWP and the ManageWP website?

The Enterprise (self-hosted) version of ManageWP is essentially the same as our hosted version. But we offer this to companies and organizations that want all of the benefits of ManageWP in the privacy of their own hosting environment. For example, this can be (and usually is) important for data compliance within larger organizations.

Our Enterprise users also enjoy our full attention and dedicated support. We often work with our Enterprise customers to provide them with the special features that they need. We always make the extra effort to ensure that our customers’ needs are served.

How has your experience in developing plugins and working with sites such as Mashable contribute to what you’ve accomplished with ManageWP?

I started making WordPress plugins almost five years ago, so getting to know WordPress inside-out helped me tremendously in understanding the needs of the average WordPress user — if such user exists at all, as there are so many uses for WordPress today. After that, it was then only a matter of coordinating with our team to develop a high-quality solution that works on almost any number of different WordPress setups.

And now that we have launched ManageWP, I can direct my focus my attention on improving it further and adding new and amazing functionality. That makes me very happy. I hope it will continue to make our incredible customers happy as well.

Related posts:

1. Talking WordPress With Vladimir Prelovac
2. WordPress And How It Changed Content Management

Apparently, this site has been around for a little while but I’ve just now seen it being shared across WordPress folks on Twitter. It’s the WordPress Honey Badger who has a bad attitude and does things the way it wants to do them which is not always the right way. I’ve been reading some of the recent posts and honey badger is a pretty funny animal. Crude language aside, there is some educational value in the website in that you shouldn’t accomplish tasks the same way Honey Badger does. For example, Honey Badger edits the core files to get things done which is not necessarily the best way to get things accomplished. I personally like Honey Badgers stance on the Capital P filter.

No related posts.

New plugins

Site Background Slider uses fullscreen images (read from a specified folder) to create a slideshow inside your background area.

Updated plugins

Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent.

FoxyPress is a custom plugin made to integrate FoxyCart e-commerce functionality into your WordPress website.

Slick Social Share Buttons allows you to add Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Digg, Google Buzz, Linkedin, and Stumbledupon social media buttons in a floating or slide out tab.

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

It’s been a while since we have posted about the current scale of Gravatar. Since that post in 2008, things have changed quite a bit. We are now serving over 100,000 requests per second. That is over 8.6 billion requests per day – more than the number of people currently alive.

With the help of our partners, Edgecast and Dyn, Gravatar is faster than ever. Distributing content across the world allows the majority of requests to complete in under 100 milliseconds – that is 4 times faster than the blink of an eye! No wonder more people are using Gravatar every day.

In 2007, we replaced the (ugly) image URL /avatar.php?gravatar_id=HASH with the (pretty) URL /avatar/HASH. As firm believers in backwards compatibility, we continue to support both URL formats. In order to ensure the freshest content is served to all users, we now redirect the old URLs to the new ones. We suggest that if you are still using the old avatar.php?gravatar_id=HASH style URLs that you switch to the new style – it will be prettier and faster for your users. If you have any questions about this change, please refer to our documentation.

Since Gravatar support has been added to WordPress, there are millions of WordPress sites using Gravatar every day. But did you know these other sites also use Gravatar?

Want to learn how to integrate Gravatar with your website? Check out our implemetation documentation.

One of the refinements that was part of WordPress 3.3 is that posts that have certain characters within the post title are ignored thus, creating a cleaner permalink. Jeff Starr of Digging Into WordPress explains in better detail on what actually happens when you use those characters within the post title but further into the post, he also brings up the fact that WordPress can automatically detect duplicate post titles within the database and append a dash with a number to the end of the post title. However, as Dave Clements mentions in the comments, this could possibly lead to broken links:

I read something that’s a little concerning in your post. Let’s assume that I create test-post and then create test-post-2. I publish them both and then trash test-post. Are you saying that test-post-2 will automatically become test-post, potentially screwing up any links that have been published with the original permalink of test-post-2? Just wondering what impact this has.

Perhaps Otto could shed some light as to what happens regarding this scenario. Jeff Starr will be looking into it and will be reporting back his findings.

Related posts:

1. Ask Jeff: Is The Submit A Post Link A Plugin?

It’s been a long time since I published any episodes of WordPress Weekly and it’s not without good reason. I am still in the middle of transitioning from one dwelling to another and this is the primary reason why I haven’t been able to produce an episode. During the past few months, I’ve not been able to spend as much time behind the PC as I’d like which also explains why I’ve been publishing more short form content versus long form. I’d like to explain everything I’ve personally been through during 2011 and now going into 2012 but it would take up a novels worth of space. Lets just say that in 2011, we had to purchase a new roof for our home, new vinyl soffits, other home improvements and some of them were forced on us thanks to the appraiser who told us some items needed to be repaired or renewed before he would approve of the home in order for us to transfer the mortgage.

Putting all that personal stuff aside, I’ve been making strides and within the next 2-3 months, I expect to be moved into a new home as well as have my new office put together. Once this happens, I’ll be able to concentrate on producing the show on a weekly basis again. Regarding the show, I’ve decided not to produce it live on a weekly basis. Instead, the majority of episodes will be pre-recorded via Skype which is not only a benefit in terms of audio quality, but makes it much more convenient for both myself and the people I’ll be interviewing. There are plenty of people that I want to talk to throughout the course of the year and I look forward to being able to engage in spirited conversations with the people that are doing great things with WordPress.

Related posts:

1. My Thoughts On WordPress Weekly
2. First WordPress Weekly Listening Party
3. Whats In Store For WordPress Weekly

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, turned 28 two weeks ago. It’s been a busy year for Matt. Three major WordPress versions were released, he switched back to using a Mac after 8 years on Windows, and he travelled 190,000 miles over 245 days.

Even though two weeks have gone by, it’s not too late to say “happy birthday” to Matt. In fact, he would prefer to receive all of his birthday gifts this year in the form of donations to Charity: Water through his birthday campaign. Matt has set an ambitious goal to reach $28,000 in donations by April, but if that goal is reached, his “birthday presents” will have provided clean water for 280 families in developing countries. Not everyone can head to the nearest faucet for a clean glass of water, so say “happy birthday” to Matt and help someone else enjoy some clean water today!

Simon D reminded me that it is now nine years since my fateful comment on Matt’s blog that kicked off this whole WordPress thing!

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WordPress is really shaping up, and is an evermore stable and functional CMS platform. The statistics continue to be astonishing, with more than 70 million sites around the world. That’s nearly 16% of the web!

WordPress is supporting a whole industry of WordPress experts, including me: I’m just starting my fourth year as an independent WordPress specialist.

Praise must go as usual to the fantastic community around WordPress, the singular vision of Matt Mullenweg, and the awesome power of the GNU GPL open source license.

With version 3.4 currently in the making, I predict it will be another great year for WordPress.

Today Y Combinator announced they are adding two new partners, Garry Tan and Aaron Iba. This announcement is unique because it does not list their academic credentials, their previous investments, the boards of companies or non-profits they have sat on, how many years of experience they have, or any of the usual badges of honor investors parade in their biographies and Crunchbase profiles.

Instead we get accolades of “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.” Take note of this moment.

I was part of a dinner conversation the other night that included institutional and angel investors, entrepreneurs, and someone who was part of the YC program. The group circled with alarming intent on grilling the YC entrepreneur: “How much time did you actually get with PG?” “It’s a cult of personality.” “The average quality of the companies has really dropped as they’ve broadened.” “I can’t wait for this bubble to pop.” I believe it was mostly in jest — few topics were spared that night — but there was some truth in the defensive undertone.

The hackers and engineers of Y Combinator are doing what hackers and engineers do to any industry, they’re efficiently and ruthlessly disrupting the traditional model of venture capital and are going to destroy far more more wealth for their contemporaries than they create for themselves, as broadband did to entertainment, Craigslist did to newspapers, and Amazon did to traditional retailers. This is what outsiders, by definition, do.

The dark humor in this is that the same people who delight and celebrate investing in disrupting other industries are blind or in denial about it happening to their own.

The question then becomes if you’re an investor with a traditional LP model (and expectations), or a more financial background than an operational one, or an operational background more in management than in design or coding, what should you do to stay relevant through this shift?

This is just a friendly reminder that the WPTavern watering hole also known as the forum, is still open for business. I have kept the forums maintained over the past few weeks and last night, I updated everything to the current version as well as cleaned up a couple of different spots. While the forum is not as active as it was two years ago, there are still new members registering to the forum and every now and then, a good discussion will pop up. If you are looking for a place to hang out and talk WordPress without the fear of being shunned into oblivion, this is the place to do it. I highly encourage you to browse through the archive of the forum as a number of interesting conversations have taken place over the past two years. The archive is a little bit like a WordPress museum.

Registration is free as are the drinks. If you take this opportunity to register, be sure to answer the anti spam question during registration which asks, “Why would you like to join this forum?“. I’m looking for a short response that doesn’t look like spam. Once you register, consider leaving a message in the Tavern chat box located near the top of the forum. Or, introduce yourself to the community via the Forum Lobby.

If you’re already a member of the forum, stop by and check-in. Let us know what you’ve been up to.

Related posts:

1. WPTavern Business Thinktank

Daniel Immke has published his own primer on using native user interface elements for the administration of plugins. By following his basic primer, you’ll be on your way to creating a plugin that looks and functions as if it were a part of the core of WordPress which is what plugin developers should be aiming for. WooCommerce is an excellent example of the various UI elements that are built within WordPress that plugin authors should be taking advantage of.

Related posts:

1. Tips On Creating A Good Plugin Readme.txt File
2. Good Guide On Avoiding Theme/Plugin Lock-In
3. How Commercial Plugin Developers Are Monetizing Through The Plugin Respository

Evergreen is a colorful theme that packs a visual punch.

Famous is an advanced theme for business, portfolio or blog usage.

Knowing that a lot of people use DreamHost for their WordPress powered websites, it’s a bit unsettling to see that suspicious activity was detected within one of their databases and thus, passwords have been reset across FTP/Shell and VPS customer accounts. If you use DreamHost and have not been able to log-in recently, this may explain why.

Related posts:

1. GoDaddy Hacks Due To Old Software – Bad Passwords

It started off with a link and turned into something disgusting. KevinJohn Gallagher explained the various reasons for why his company decided not to pursue using WordPress anymore for their clients and I linked to that article because I thought it raised some points that were good for discussion. After I linked to the article on WPTavern as well as Twitter, his article made the front page of HackerNews. ReadWrite/Web also linked to the article with their own thoughts. One of the reactions to his article that I witnessed was that a lot of people agreed with Kevin and the points he made. However, a number of people disagreed with him and in fact, disagreed so passionately that KevinJohn stated within the comments of my article that he had received death threats as well as had DDoS attacks performed to his website.

Sadly in the last 7 days I’ve had 3 ddos attacks, 14 threats (4 “credible”) against myself or my family, multiple requests to have me removed from speaking at WordPress events to which I’m already signed up and personally sponsor, and 31 people roll-back their purchase for Open Source Scotland because I’m involved. All because my staff, not me, but the good folks I work with every day, don’t want want to use WordPress anymore. I’m being punished by this community, for doing the right thing: listening to my colleagues and my clients.

On the one hand, this is ridiculous behaviour. There is no reason what so ever to give someone death threats because their company has decided not to use WordPress anymore. Mark Jaquith was strongly opposed to the harassment Kevin was receiving and even Jane Wells offered to help out KevinJohn.

On the other hand, crazy people exist within the realm of reality and they can not be controlled. Most of the conversation that occurred as the result of Kevin’s article were from sane individuals that make up the WordPress community. It’s unfortunate what Keven had to go through because of that post but I strongly disagree that it’s a reflection of how the actual WordPress community is like. There are pricks and jerks within the WordPress community, no doubt about that. But, in my experience the nicer people far outweigh the jerks.

I’m a big fan of WordPress but I’m not going to cry myself to sleep if someone tells me they are ditching the software for something else. It’s common sense to use the best tool for the job instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s important to listen to the reasons why people switch from WordPress or desert the software but it’s not something anyone should lose sleep over. It’s definitely not worth threatening someone’s life. It’s an opportunity to learn and figure out how the software can be improved. This is the type of attitude we should have towards folks like KevinJohn Gallagher or others that publish their discontent for WordPress. We shouldn’t be slapping people around with an elitist, cult like hand that twitches every time someone criticizes the software. We are better than that. Let’s prove it.

Related posts:

1. What WordPress Needs From Its New Community Leader
2. Community Oriented WordPress Magazine Idea
3. WordPress Reverts To Original Ping Behavior

iThemes has now added a huge student discount to their popular Web Designer’s Toolkit. The new Student Edition offers full-time students in the US and Canada access to over 150 themes, over 20 plugins, and over 300 hours of training for only $97 ($880 less than the original).

Folks with a strong memory may notice the similarity to iThemes’s Educator Program. While the Student Edition of the toolkit is not free, the $880 discount is something that can’t be beat, especially if you’re busy spending money on your tuition. If you have plans to launch a WordPress-focused career in design, consulting, maintenance, and other such things, this is a great way to get a head start.

Disclaimer: iThemes is one of our advertisers.

I’ve packaged beta 2 of the next generation version of Twitter Tools. Version 3.0 is a ground-up rewrite on top of the Social platform, with a few features included for backward compatibility. If you’d like to test the beta, grab it from GitHub.

This version fixes several bugs that were found in our QA process, as well as a few enhancements and initial integration points. The changes since beta 1:

• fix several taxonomy reference bugs that were causing shortcodes and widgets to fail to show tweets
• fix logical flaws that were causing the “include RTs/replies” settings in widgets to behave inconsistently
• disconnect Twitter accounts when they are deleted from Social only when they are shared accounts
• manual tweet download is now an AJAX call instead of a full page refresh
• cleaner failures if Social plugin is not active
• add integration points so that other plugins can extend Twitter Tools

Due to some of these taxonomy issues, you may need to delete your existing Tweets and allow them to be recreated so that tweets appear in the widget and shortcodes as expected (any newly imported tweets should be fine with this version).

Still no README file (contributions from testers are welcome), but I expect to get started on that along with final tweaks and packaging for a full release in the near future.

Developers, please feel free to open issues and submit pull requests in GitHub.