Quarterly update: The magazine’s at the printer

By 3 days agoJanuary 31, 2012

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I’m excited to announce that we’ve begun the last stage of production on the first issue of The WPCandy Quarterly. The issue’s files are with the printer now, and barring any last-minute issues we should see printing begin in the next couple of days.

In other words: the wait is just about over, and all orders will shortly be fulfilled. The magazine is 60 pages filled to the proverbial brim with articles from some of the smartest people in the WordPress community. Personally I can’t wait until you see what we’ve all been working on.

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Pressbits 001: Introducing our latest show

By 4 days agoJanuary 30, 2012

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I’m happy to introduce the newest addition to the WPCandy shows family. It’s called Pressbits, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: bite-sized thoughts on WordPress. Ryan and I will both be contributing to Pressbits, and you can expect them at a rapid-fire pace (daily-ish).

I got inspiration for Pressbits from Paul Boag’s Audio Boos, which is one of my favorite web related podcasts. Our goal is similar, quick, off the cuff recordings of what’s on our mind. I hope you’ll enjoy, and of course, your feedback is always appreciated.

We’ll update this post shortly with a podcast feed url dedicated to Pressbits. Listen to the introductory Episode 001 of Pressbits after the jump, or download it directly.

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WP Late Night Episode 2 recording tonight at 8PM EST

By 8 days agoJanuary 26, 2012

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The WP Late Night crew is back for another episode! Tonight at 8pm EST Ryan, Brad (that’s me), and Dre will be recording their second episode of the video podcast LIVE! As always you can watch the recording on the WPCandy Stream.

Make sure to catch the first episode of WP Late Night (dubbed the Shame Edition) so you know what to expect.

If you have WordPress questions or comments to send in to the show, you can do so by:

  • Commenting on a show post (like this one)
  • Leaving a voicemail at (815) 322-WPLN
  • Emailing us at wplatenight@wpcandy.com
  • Tweeting using the #wplatenight hashtag.

We’ll see you guys tonight!

WordPress.org and .com join the SOPA protests with blackouts

By 17 days agoJanuary 18, 2012

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Earlier today WordPress.org announced its participation in the January 18th protests against the USA’s Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Earlier this evening the blackout went into effect, and will block access (initially) to all of WordPress.org including the Codex, support forums, plugin directory and theme directory. The blackout will be in effect for 24 hours.

For more about the acts and protest in question visit sopastrike.com.

But the blackout on WordPress.org is not unavoidable. Scrolling to the bottom of a page will give you a link to clear the blackout for an hour and continue on to the website. On her blog, Jane Wells explained that while she originally wanted to see the whole site blacked out, instead the WordPress.org team opted to make the blackout only partial for the sake of those who depend on WordPress.org:

The reason we did this instead of a full shut-down is that there are many businesses and people who help drive the independent web that need access to the WordPress Codex, forums, plugin/theme repos, and APIs. We wouldn’t want to penalize them in our protest, so we just made it impossible to ignore instead.

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WP Late Night 001: Shame Edition

By 17 days agoJanuary 17, 2012

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I’m excited to (finally, I know) post the recording of the first episode of WP Late Night, a production that myself, Brad Williams, and Dre Armeda put together. If you missed the live recording—and let’s face it, relatively speaking the world did—you can check it out now, lovingly crafted into a variety of media formats.

The video (yup, we recorded video for this podcast) is embedded at the top of this post’s page. Alternatively, you can listen to the audio only just after the jump. I’ll have an iTunes subscription available soon.

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Gravity Charge will integrate with WooCommerce

By 17 days agoJanuary 17, 2012

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Late last year we first learned about the next rocketgenius project called Gravity Charge. Carl Hancock, co-founder of Gravity Forms and rocketgenius, recently mentioned that he has already been in discussion with the WooThemes team about integration between Gravity Charge and WooCommerce.

I caught up with Carl about the new integration, and this is what he had to say about it:

Because Gravity Charge will have extensive and powerful content access control capabilities, one of the logical integrations would be to use Gravity Charge for controlling access to content, files and downloads and enabling WooCommerce users to use WooCommerce for the checkout process itself.

With those plans in mind from Carl, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is going to be a powerful and functional plugin, providing a great utility for e-commerce website owners.

NASA code site built using WordPress and Bootstrap framework

By 17 days agoJanuary 17, 2012

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Recently NASA announced that it was launching a new Open Source section of its website: http://code.nasa.gov. This is just another step that NASA is taking to help make its code available to the public. The web team over at NASA looked at a number of content management systems available for the website. At the end of their search they decided on using WordPress.

To take it a step further, they ended up using the Twitter Bootstrap framework for building their theme. One really awesome tool that they get to use with this framework is something called “Less.” Less gives greater control over CSS, which allows for the use of variables and many other things within the CSS itself. Normally those kinds of things are not available in CSS, but Less makes that happen.

They also decided to use Super Cache as their caching mechanism for the site.

As I’m such a huge fan of WordPress, I can easily say they made a great choice and that I’m looking forward to seeing what they release on the NASA code blog.

PressTrends out of beta Tuesday, releasing plugin for users

By 19 days agoJanuary 15, 2012

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George Ortiz presented at WordCamp Birmingham today, and announced that PressTrends will be coming out of closed beta this week on Tuesday. The public launch will also bring the launch of a plugin for WordPress users that will offer statistics and analysis based on information gathered by all sites tracked by PressTrends. PressTrends has been in private beta since November, serving statistics to selected theme authors and shops.

Based on the brief demo Ortiz gave (see the photo below) the upcoming plugin will track a site’s posts, comments, and active plugins. Based on performance, Ortiz said, he hopes that the stats will be able to offer bloggers tips for how to improve the number of comments and success that bloggers see.

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Nathan Ingram shares his WordPress backup comparison chart

By 19 days agoJanuary 15, 2012

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Nathan Ingram shared a chart at his WordCamp Birmingham workshop session, literally minutes ago, of many of the available WordPress backup solutions, their features, and their prices. It’s really quite handy. Ryan and I have been here all weekend (well, I actually live here) and it’s been a great time. This is one example of the great things people put together when they go to WordCamps.

How to manage a proper multi-author WordPress blog

By 22 days agoJanuary 13, 2012

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One thing I spend some amount of time thinking about each week is managing my multi-author blog at WPCandy. There are only a handful of authors that have joined WPCandy in the last year, but we’ve still spent a good deal of time improving our workflow as a multi-author blog. I’ve even picked up a few (what I would call) tips in the process.

If you find yourself in a similar position, hopefully some of these tips will help you along. If you run a blog with a number of authors, be sure to jump down into the comments and share your experiences too.

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