Monthly Archives: March 2005

Matt, WordPress, and Search Engine Gaming

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Update:
Everyone, Please understand that this not about WordPress the software, or WordPress developers, or even WordPress Inc. It is about Matt Mullenweg allowing someone else to game Google’s search engine on the WordPress.org site.

I feel I have to comment on the current WordPress story building over the ‘discovery’ that Matt has been using the wordpress.org domain to host thousands of specially-written articles designed to attract high paying Google Adsense adverts, and their outgoing links gaining high page rank from WordPress.org’s own page rank.
Dougal Campbell has written a reasoned response to the story breaking. It is most unfortunate that Matt is currently on vacation in Europe, but Jonas has replied quite reasonable. Jonas is also saying he will answer anyone’s questions 24×7 which is most generous of him.
I will also quote Andrew’s opening disclaimer:

Disclaimer. I’m hesitant to even write about this, knowing the web’s fondness for angry mob justice, but I feel like it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed. My one request: please be calm and rational. WordPress is a great project, and Matt is a good guy. Think before piling on the hatemail and flames.

I suspect that Matt is now aware of the situation as the pages seemed to have disappeared, or else someone trusted has taken them down.

It’s worth noting that Matt already responded to a query on the support forums about this in February saying:

The content in /articles is essentially advertising by a third party that we host for a flat fee. I’m not sure if we’re going to continue it much longer, but we’re committed to this month at least, it was basically an experiment. However around the beginning of February donations were going down as expenses were ramping up, so it seemed like a good way to cover everything. The Adsense on those pages is not ours and I have no idea what they get on it, we just get a flat fee. The money is used just like donations but more specifically it’s been going to the business/trademark expenses so it’s not entirely out of my pocket anymore.

My opinion? I say, let’s not make a mountain out of a mole hill till we have all the facts. It sounds very much like Matt has made dubious decision for all the right reasons. But I believe the only thing one can consider Matt may have done wrong here is hosting these articles on wordpress.org. Hosting them at all I don’t have a problem with: It is one way that could be used to help pay for the enormous hosting costs he must have. There are articles out there explaining exactly how to do this on your own site.

Matt has my support, he has done a huge amount for this project. Far, far more than I have. I hope he can sort this one without to much fallout. The fact that he has already been open about it stands in his favour.

update:As Dr Dave pointed out in the comments, Matt didn’t respond to the forum post until Andy said he was going public with the story. I will still support Matt, but I think he really has been very silly to get involved in this and to tie it in to wordpress.org

UPA North 2

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The second meeting of UPA North took place last night at Cafe Muse in the Manchester Museum. It wasn’t as well attended as the first meeting in January, but there were some familiar faces as well as some new; Hi Roy!.

I arrived early and grabbed myself a sandwich and coffee before wandering around to shake a few familiar hands and say ‘Hi’ to some new faces. People continued to drift in for the next half an hour or so.

Dave Hawdale kicked of the meeting giving us some interesting and occasionally amusing ‘internet’ related facts from recent news, before introducing the nights guest speaker: Louise Ferguson.

Louise introduced herself and her subject ‘Ethnography’. Her talk was very interesting, if a little rushed. It was clear she had a lot more to say on the subject than time allowed. I felt she could have got some of her points across more easily with concrete examples, but she seemed determined to skirt around job specifics and client details. Louise finished with a brief question and answer session.

After another ‘shameless self-promotion’ session (which I bottled again!), Dave gave a round-up and mentioned some ideas for the next couple of meetings. He is trying to arrange a couple of speakers on Accessibility which should be very interesting.

Afterwards a small group of us retired to Kro Bar where we all chatted about all kinds of stuff; from music and record collections, to the Semantic Web and social software, to museum exhibits, categorization, folksonomies, and more. Talking to Louise, it sounds like there are some interesting things afoot, UK-centered for a change.

I think everyone gained something positive from the night. Some useful contacts were made and even some tentative agreements made for the future.

100,000

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It seems numbers are the flavour of the week: WordPress recently passed 100,000 downloads. That’s a huge number! I would like to think that no less than half those people actually got as far as installing it and trying it. Certainly judging by the number of hits I get on my site from brand new blogs that ‘s not far off.
Matt and some friends had a little party to celebrate. Congratulations guys.

200,000!

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Wow!, I’ve just had my 200,000th visitor since statistics began (on this blog anyway)! A visitor from St Louis searching for the Von Trapp Family Singers. Meanwhile, page views are well on there way to 2,500,000.

This and That, Stuff and Nonsense

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It’s been a while again, since I blogged. Quite a lot has happened in various areas.
Firstly my posting of my themes has been incredibly popular. The first two days after I posted them saw my visitors peak at over 1200 a day! I’ve got another three based on the same layout. I’ll release those too, just as soon as I can package them up.

I can now tell all about the news I mentioned recently. Jamie has been offered a place at St Bede’s College and we have accepted. Its not going to be easy but the school has such a good reputation and such fantastic results that we decided we couldn’t miss the opportunity. We’ve visited several times now and we all love the place.

I noticed that Alex King has a new version of his Tasks Task Manager software. I keep meaning to look into Tasks for use in my attempts to implement GTD. Perhaps now is an ideal opportunity.

In other news, the second Usability Professionals Association – North of England – Manchester Meeting is going to take place on Tues 29 March 2005.

The main event on the 29th March is a talk from Louise Ferguson, who is the Vice President of the UK chapter of the UPA and an expert in ethnography and how it can inform design.

I’m looking forward to it; I enjoyed the last meeting. If you are coming along, look me up and say Hi.

I’m sure there’s more…

Another 3-Column WordPress Theme

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Whilst I’m in the mood, here is another three-column theme for wordpress. This one is ‘Journalized Sand’ and is almost the same layout as Journalized Blue.

Clicking the thumbnail below will show you a full size screen shot of the theme in action.
screenshot of journalized sand theme
You can download the files from here: journalized-sand-theme-1.0.2.tar.gz (tar ball for unix or similar users) or journalized-sand-theme-1.0.2.zip (zip file for Windows users).

To install simply expand the archive on your local machine. You should have a directory called ‘journalized-sand’. Upload the directory and the files within it to your wp-content/themes folder on your server. Login to your blog’s administration pages and go to the Presentation page. The new theme should be listed there ready for you to select. If not check the permissions on your uploaded files.

You will need to tweak it a little. Not least to change the link categories in the calls to wp_get_links().
Enjoy! The theme is licensed under the GPL. So you may modify it and distribute it. Please let me know if you use it, modify it, etc. If you have any questions leave a comment on this post with your question. Comments are moderated so you won’t see your comment immediately.

Update: The permanent home of this theme is now https://journalized.zed1.com/themes/journalized-sand

Journalized Theme

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At last, a mere week late, I have released my blog layout and colour scheme as a WordPress theme.
Clicking the thumbnail below will show you a full size screen shot of the theme in action.
screenshot of journalized theme
You can download the files from here: journalized-blue-theme-1.0.3.tar.gz (tar ball for Unix or similar users) or journalized-blue-theme-1.0.3.zip (zip file for Windows users).

To install simply expand the archive on your local machine. You should have a directory called ‘journalized-blue’. Upload the directory and the files within it to your wp-content/themes folder on your server. Login to your blog’s administration pages and go to the Presentation page. The new theme will be listed there ready for you to select. If not check the permissions on your uploaded files.

You will need to tweak it a little. Not least to change the link categories in the calls to wp_get_links().
Enjoy! The theme is licensed under the GPL. So you may modify it and distribute it. Please let me know if you use it, modify it, etc. If you have any questions leave a comment on this post with your question. Comments are moderated so you won’t see your comment immediately.

Update: I have updated the download files to a new version along the rules and guidelines for the theme competition

Update: The permanent home of this theme is now https://journalized.zed1.com/themes/journalized-blue