Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category
by Regnard Raquedan on December 22nd, 2009
I won’t be surprised if 9 out of 10 people who came to this blog post spent around 10 seconds looking at the picture above. It’s just human nature to be attracted to content that convey sexual messages.
As a blogger, it would be good to consider that nature of people when writing blog posts. From the age old “Sex sells” mantra to sensational headlines, there is wisdom in putting a little spice to make thinks interesting in blogs. Sex is just one of this things that raise a flag in people’s brains.
But the picture above is really an extreme example of audience titillation– the image really has no place in a blog about blogging (or maybe not). But my point is that find the right amount of sexiness in the proper context. Here are a couple of ideas:
- Provocative images – Haven’t you ever wondered why a company like GoDaddy, a domain and web hosting seller, uses models like Danica Partick in its advertising and marketing campaigns? If you ask me, it’s really for audience titillation. Placing a provocative image in your blog post that related to your topic may provide that spark.
- Sensational Headlines – Following the “Man Bites Dog” adage, a crafty and clever headline with the proper innuendos may pique the interest of the most indifferent of readers. Instead of saying “Blogger Wins Award,” a sexy version could be “Female Teen Blogger Grabs Top Spot”.
Of course, sexifying your blog posts doesn’t mean that all ounces of decency are thrown out of the window. Just the right amount and right context, coupled with the ethical considerations will make your blog spicy and sexy.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
Tags: blogging, tips, writing
by Franky Branckaute on December 8th, 2009
The WordPress Core Commit Team ended their meeting after WordCamp Orlando and has announced on the development blog that there will be canonical plugins in the future.
What are ‘canonical plugins’?
The first question which comes to mind is ‘What are canonical plugins?‘. The team has provided the following definition:
Canonical plugins would be plugins that are community developed (multiple developers, not just one person) and address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution. These plugins would be GPL and live in the WordPress.org repo, and would be developed in close connection with WordPress core. There would be a very strong relationship between core and these plugins that ensured that a) the plugin code would be secure and the best possible example of coding standards, and b) that new versions of WordPress would be tested against these plugins prior to release to ensure compatibility.
Canonical plugins will not be developed by one plugin developer anymore but by the community. They will also have their official web presence on the wordpress.org plugin repository instead of on website of the (original) developer.
What does this mean for several plugin developers? If you have a popular plugin and your plugin contains a ‘Donate’ button, be prepared to ditch this button if you want your plugin to be taken in consideration. This would be the case for example for. Arne Brachold’s Google (XML) Sitemap Generator and Donncha’s WP Super Cache plugin.
How to name ‘canonical plugins’?
The team clearly identified that the term canonical rather niche is and asks the community to vote on how these ’super plugins’ should be categorised/labelled. The entry on the develop blog offers some names for canonical plugins:
Read More
Categories: Opinion, WordPress News, WordPress Plugins
Tags: Canonical Plugins, News, wordpress, WordPress Plugins
by Franky Branckaute on September 9th, 2009
Last weekend was filled with controversy and the reason for this was a worm hitting many self-hosted WordPress blogs. We warned and urged everyone to upgrade, although the most recent version of WordPress, 2.8.4, was released almost 3 weeks earlier. WordPress 2.8.4 was the second security update for the 2.8 branch in less than 2 weeks. This update was released only 2 days after the vulnerability was discovered, proving how hard the WordPress community has worked to improve and secure the platform.
Ever since WordPress 2.3, which was released almost exactly 2 years ago, every WordPress blogger receives an update notification whenever a new version available is. The majority of new releases are bug fixes and security updates.
Personally, whenever I see that yellow new release notification I can not hit update now fast enough. If it weren’t for the security aspect then it is for the ugliness of the notification.
Nevertheless, in these days some people are given a megaphone online and can not resist the need to be vocal, even though they were the only ones who were to blame. One of these people last weekend was Robert Scoble. His post I don’t feel safe with WordPress, Hackers broke in and took things quickly went viral Robert received support but also bashing. Gruber even went as far to say that Movable Type safer is. Read More
Categories: Opinion, WordPress News
Tags: Editorial, John Gruber, robert scoble, Security, wordpress
by David Peralty on June 16th, 2009
Cozmoslabs.com has an interesting post up about the future of WordPress as a social platform.
Here’s a little sample to wet your whistle, so to speak.
Right now Wordpress can be a forum, multi blogs platform, social media platform, microblog, social bookmarking and these are just a few of the possibilities.
Wordpress is slowly making it’s way into the corporate world as well: Yahoo, CNN, New York Times, Ford, Nike are just a few of big names that implemented it for it’s ease of use, fast development times, cost reduction and easy maintenance of the platform. Oh… and U.S. Government Agencies are also using WordPress.
So where do we go from here? Recently it was announced Wordpress to merge with Wordpress MU. This will probably appear with the 3.0 launch. This seams to be just one of the big steps towards a social web platform. The next step will probably be to integrate more social media features from BuddyPress.
It goes on to discuss some of the implications of the new (and future) changes and additions to WordPress, as well as some of the issues surrounding GPL licensing and themes.
Personally I can’t wait for more social features in WordPress. Allowing the building of a framework for an entire social community within the WordPress platform would be a huge step forward in a lot of ways.
The one major downside to that I suppose would be the idea of “core bloat”. That is to say, the more features built directly into the core, the slower WordPress tends to get. Though I’m conflicted on just how much of an effect that has on most people, it’s certainly interesting to discuss.
All in all I’d say good things are in store for WordPress users in the coming months/years. Especially if you’re looking to use WordPress as the foundation for a site which includes a lot of social features.
Categories: Opinion
Tags: cozmoslabs.com, future, social platform, wordpress
by David Peralty on June 11th, 2009
This is a bit different than the usual stuff I post about, but I just have to spread this little gem around.
This morning a few people I follow on Twitter were practically raving about this new blog based on a the story of 2 characters from a play-through of the Sims 3, and after checking it out, I have to say that it’s entertaining, hilarious, and more than the slightly tragic.
It’s called “Alice and Kev, The story of being homeless in The Sims 3“, and it’s being put together by Robin Burkinshaw, who is a student of Games Design (and likely has a glorious future in it if this blog is any indication).
Here’s what Robin has to say about this “experiment”…
This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.
I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.
The resulting blog entries, complete with many MANY screen shots, tell the story of the two main characters and their interactions with the world around them. You really get a sense of their personalities and emotions, which is amazing given that they are semi-autonomous game characters.
I highly suggest checking it out if you want a laugh (and occasionally feel sad for Alice). Whether or not you’re a fan of The Sims, the story of these two characters is surprisingly compelling. I for one can’t wait to see what’s next in store for them on their adventure to survive on stolen apples and live on the digital streets of their virtual town.
Categories: Opinion
Tags: alice and kev, blog, sims 3, unique wordpress use
by David Peralty on June 8th, 2009
In a recent guest post on problogger.net, Maryan Pelland of ontext.com, talks about how easy it can be to fall into the trap of trusting information online.
Here’s a sample from the intro…
Bad and inaccurate information from websites isn’t new. The Internet can be a fabulous tool, but it should not be the sole source of information for any factual writing from blogs, to research for fiction, to magazine or newspaper articles. Anyone can create a website and fill it with text. There’s never a guarantee that information online is accurate or current. That’s why writers and journalists should not rely on the Internet.
I couldn’t agree more that the internet can be a source of misleading information, made all the more dangerous due to how fast information spreads through things like blogs, twitter, etc.
There is a tendency to want to trust sources of information online, and there is good reason for that: There is a lot of great information out there. The problem is simply that literally ANYONE can dump whatever they want onto a website, blog, wiki, etc, and there is often little or no fact checking happening by anyone other than the writer.
It’s all too common to see someone post something to twitter or their blog and then within minutes (or seconds) dozens or more people are tweeting/blogging away about their opinion of the original statement/event/whatever, only to find out hours later that the original poster was wrong, or just seeing who would believe them.
If the internet is truly to become a great source of fast and accurate information (and for the most part is CAN be already), we all have to work a little harder at sifting through the river of information to find the nuggets of truth. Hopefully before the misleading info has spread too far.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
by David Peralty on May 22nd, 2009
WPTavern has posted an interesting discussion in the form of a chat transcript pertaining to the issues surrounding GPL(and Non-GPL) licensing of WordPress themes. If you are a theme creator, or just have an interest in the legal aspects of GPL licensing of WordPress themes, I’d recommend checking it out.
It’s a fairly informal discussion between Ryan Hellyer (of PixelPoint.com) and an unnamed “specialist in copyright law”. And while Ryan freely admits to not knowing whether what this “specialist” says is true or not, the discussion is pretty interesting.
They get into some details that often seem to be overlooked when discussing GPL licensing, such as having a copyright to the design of a theme separate from the backend code, and beach of contract issues. Law geeks will probably get the most of out it, but it’s not too full of legalese, so most people should be able to follow it if they are interested to learn more about the subject.
Take it all with a grain of salt though, since the “specialist” is unnamed, and his opinion is just that, HIS opinion.
That said, what are YOUR thoughts on the matter of GPL and Non-GPL licensed themes?
Categories: Opinion, WordPress News
by David Peralty on January 26th, 2009
Since the inception of WordPress there have been fights over licensing plugins and themes. Some people believe that WordPress themes and plugins automatically inherit the GPL license, and others contest this, but does the licensing really matter?
I believe two things matter: what is in it for the developer, and is the community served?
I don’t believe that the GPL is providing for the developers nor truly living up to what the community needs.
Consider this:
You’ve just created an amazing plugin, it took you over a dozen hours, and you’ve given it out to the community for free.
Now they come to you for support, and you try your best to provide them with the answers they need, adding another two hours per week to your “work”. WordPress then changes in some major way, and you have to recode your plugin to work under the new “rules” of WordPress, adding another two hours of development time to your plugin.
All of this time spent is from the goodness of your heart, but it becomes tiring. One day, you decide to start charging for support. Each request is only two dollars, and you go from needing to spend two hours a week to only spending two hours a month on support related inquiries.
The problems didn’t disappear though, instead the WordPress community forums are littered with people asking for help with your plugin, and they are getting answers, thus bypassing your new business enterprise completely.
You feel frustrated that the hours you originally and continue to put have been rewarded in such a way, and in the end you never make back in community currency, links or actual money the investment that you had put into the project.
Where is the benefit to continue? You either end up discontinuing your work or finding ways to try to drive business to yourself, only to have your plugin removed from the WordPress Plugins repository for not being “GPL enough”. Someone else forks your work and continues on, paying no homage to the original idea creator, you.
Sound like fiction? I have no doubt that this has been the case for at least a few WordPress theme and plugin developers as the GPL creates a number of limitations with no business model set up to reward those that spend the time adding to the community.
Flip that around and remove the GPL, and the plugin author could have built a business around the plugin, while still remaining in the forefront of the community. The monetary benefit would have hopefully changed the market in two ways.
The first way would be that the plugin developer would have been more likely to spend time developing their plugin continually. The second change would be that popular plugins would have to compete in the market in both price and features.
I don’t believe that GPL is the great equalizer and protector, and I also believe that within five years, WordPress will see much of their current plugin and theme development rock stars move onto other platforms that don’t have such restrictive licensing.
iThemes now has a Movable Type store. How long will it be until more theme developers follow suit? Habari’s license allows the creators to manage and sell their work under any license they like, allowing for true business to be built around their platform.
Categories: Opinion, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes
by jim on October 23rd, 2008
Wired.com writer Paul Boutin recently wrote an article in the entertainment/web section about how blog writing is so 2004. He says that:
Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.
I found myself nodding a little because I too have seen too many blogs that are more inclined to echo the hype about something great, something awesome or something to buy. There’s a place for that, I know. But sometimes I sense it isn’t just right. Like if I use something and I blog about it, i believe that’s pure. But if I write something and say it’s great but haven’t tried it, well there’s the rub. But in the same breath I’d say too that I’ve read blogs that are deep, well thought of, sharing true-blue useful stuff.
If you want to start blog writing, go ahead. Easier to setup now than way back 2004. Write for others or write for yourself or for your community, your choice. Just be aware that readers sense what your stuff is really about. And are wise to dismiss you with a click. We are all just a click away.
I like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr too by the way.
Is blogging sooo 2004 for you? Tell me, tell me, tell me…
Categories: Opinion
by jim on September 18th, 2008
CNet’s Loaded (Sept 10 episode) with Natalie del Conte is spot on when she says that AT&T’s and Verizon’s try on adding a social networking feature as add-on services for their mobile users are “unthinkables”. She’s right, it is for suckers, why would you pay to access a social network on your phone when there are several ways you can do it for FREE. AT&T’s “social life” and Verizon’s “my community” is charging its users monthly fees of $2.99 and $1.49 respectively.
(hey, isn’t this part of their wireless stake they’re trying to plant since way back 2007)
Both of them will allow you to aggregate your social networking accounts into one application and manage them from there.
At any rate, this seems to be a clear indication about the growth of social networks… blogging networks in particular too. If big companies, specially the telcos, are now looking into making money with content (or easy access to it) you can predict that soon enough, they’d be digging their hands into content too.
Is that good or bad news for us… well, honestly I couldn’t tell now. But my opinion would be these telcos will give us all a great service if they focus on improving easy access to content, and much sensible rates too… like FREE! :) Or premium services for much more in return.
Categories: Opinion
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