In our office at Semper Fi Web Design, we decided there weren’t enough WordPress things on display. So to correct that, we decked the tree boughs with WordPress ornaments, with WordPress shirts as a tree skirt.

As Christmas gets closer, I’m reminded of how thankful I am to have such an amazing job, with great coworkers, and to be part of an incredible WordPress community.

This is pretty cool. WordPress.com sent out stats for blogs from 2010. It’s nice to have a glance at my info for michaeltorbert.wordpress.com. Wow, only 11 blog posts. I need to get with it this year.
(I would love to know what made the Blog-Health-o-Meter report that my blog is “Wow”.)

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 11 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 103 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 656mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was September 10th with 297 views. The most popular post that day was WordPress Audi Spotted.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, michaeltorbert.com, WordPress Dashboard, facebook.com, and healthfitnesstherapy.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for michael torbert, wordpress car, wordpress license, wordpress shirts, and michael torbert wordpress.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

WordPress Audi Spotted September 2010
4 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

WordPress Embroidered Shirts September 2010
2 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

wp-admin WordPress shirt December 2010
2 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

I just received the first batch of All in One SEO Pack (WordPress plugin) stickers. If you want one, send me your address via the contact form and I’ll be happy to send you one for free!

A box came today and it was filled with WordPress goodies! Steve said it looked like the Automattic office threw up on his dining room table. (Sorry if anyone wanted XL olive green WordPress shirts, I bought them all.)

Some pictures were taken with my iPhone, some with my DSLR, so quality will vary.

I just noticed that wordpress.org now has an active versions chart for plugins! Hopefully soon we’ll be able to know the versions of WordPress people are using also.

Cory Miller is part of the British Invasion… he’s also available for voiceovers.

Tonight, Steve Mortiboy and I went to the WPHackathon in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was great seeing other local WordPress people again like Glenn Ansley, Sam England, Steve Ollice, and Chad Simon, as well as meeting a number of new people.

If you’re local to the Triangle area, and a WordPress enthusiast, make sure you join the WordPress Meetup Group. With over 178 members, we’re a very active group with monthly meetings, and a WordCamp.

Everyone’s favorite iThemes owner gave a profound and inspiring presentation about the trials of owning your own WordPress-based enterprise. I saw a lot of parallels to my own experiences as a WordPress entrepreneur in his talk, and certainly took away a lot from it. To those who attended, it was a very moving experience.

Take a look at the video  where we show our appreciation:

On the topic of WordCamp, make sure you’re keeping up with the latest WordCamp Raleigh news… we’ve been away in Chicago but will continue to post slideshows, videos, pictures, recaps, etc at wordcampraleigh.com.

Cory Miller (of iThemes and webdesign.com) wearing his All in One SEO Pack shirt. Cory told me he likes this one better since this is his normal face. Which picture do you like better, this one or the one from WordCamp?

WordCamp closing thoughts by my favorite WordPress Developer.

WordPress 3.0 RC1 released tonight.

WordCamp 2010

I’m trying to decide which picture from WordCamp last weekend is my favorite. There are so many great ones but it has to be either this one of Matt Danner or this other that I like the best. Matt Danner (who works for Cory Miller at iThemes) is a great photographer, but somehow always managers to end up in great shots himself!

Check out the WordCamp pictures from this year’s WordCamp Raleigh!

Today I received a couple iThemes shirts from Cory Miller of webdesign.com. Add this to my lot of other WordPress shirts from the official WordPress shop, and I’m getting quite the collection of WordPress gear. I’m always up for more WordPress gear/attire, so if you’re aware of any others, please let me know!

iThemes Michael Torbert

Fellow Semper Fi WordPress geek, Steve Mortiboy, likes his iThemes WordPress shirt as well…

iThemes Steve Mortiboy

Had a great time meeting everyone at WordCamp Miami yesterday. Mark Jaquith’s Tips and Tricks presentation was pretty interesting. Watch the video after it’s posted if you haven’t seen it yet. Enjoyed hanging out with Scott Basgaard again. Met a number of great new people. Got several great photography tips from Travis Ballard and Carlos Miller. Of course riding in Blanca Stella’s car with Steve Mortiboy and Aaron Brazell driving to different bars in Miami was crazy.

Overall, I had a great time. and I’m looking forward to coming back down next year.

The January Meetup was cancelled due to snow, and even though it snowed again last night we weren’t going to let that keep us from this month’s meetup.  Craig Tuller of StudioPress gave and excellent presentation on theme news, customization, tweak hints, and development.

Lately, there has been talk about WordPress Plugin and Theme developers not receiving enough credit and appreciation for their work, if any at all.  While this may be true, I want to make sure we acknowledge those who do express their appreciation and gratitude through Paypal donations, sending a gift on my Amazon wishlist, or even just sending a message of thanks on Twitter.

Today UPS delivered a mid-sized to my home.  As I opened the cardboard shipping box, I was amazed to find a gift-wrapped package inside.  Someone had purchased the book Do the Right Thing, by Mike Huckabee, from my Amazon wishlist.  The book was gift-wrapped, and included a note which read

Thanks heaps for creating the All in One SEO WordPress Plug-in.  Great Work.

I want to send a huge “Thank You” to Brad Younger, of Vickley Marketing.  It is always nice to know that your hard work is appreciated, and his thoughtfulness certainly went a long way.

I don’t have some crazy linkbait title bashing some plugin, developer, or Automattic employee/executive, but you’re here so I guess you still found the post somehow.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about a variety of issues related to the commercialization and GPLness of plugins, themes, and Automattic.  Some of these discussions have been overlapping and conflicting.  Most of them are crap, and it’s getting harder and harder to weed through all the crap to find the legitimate stuff.

It’s been made clear before, but I’ll say it one last time, if you develop a plugin or theme for WordPress and plan on hosting it at wordpress.org, giving it away, selling it, or distributing it to the public in any fashion it must be GPL.  If you don’t like this, then go develop for something else.  When I started developing for WordPress, I did so with the knowledge that someone could take the fruits of my hard work, and redistribute it as their own.  This is seen by some as a crutch, a roadblock to making money with GPL software development.  Some people have decided that the GPL is some sort of burden (whether by design, flaws, or implementation) to making money.  Tell that to Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, our own Automattic, or the countless thousands of people and companies making their living from WordPress in some way (including fully compliant plugin and theme development).

For one thing, if you’re developing plugins because you think you’ll get rich off the donations, then stop right now before you waste your time.  Aside from the fact that we do it for other reasons that you’ll never understand, your average wp.org plugin just isn’t going to provide you with donations on a level that will afford you early retirement.  Open source software development is about the community being able to bring together collective and individual efforts to create applications that best serve everyone. It’s not about getting software free of charge, even though that often can be a great side effect.

I sometimes wonder if some of the GPL misconceptions we see in the WordPress community are largely due to people having their first exposure to “free and open source” software with WordPress.  They see this great free software with lots of free community supporting, plugins, and themes, and perhaps think that everything has to be free, or that everything touched by GPL software has to be free (in either sense of the word).

Let’s look at Akismet.  You can download the Akismet plugin, which of course is free of charge, but also the GPL kind of free.  This plugin interfaces with a proprietary Akismet service.  The Akismet service doesn’t have GPL freedoms, that doesn’t even apply here.  Whether or not the Akismet plugin costs money has absolutely nothing to do with it being GPL, and whether or not the Akismet service it interacts with costs money has nothing to do with the plugin being GPL.  Another example would be any one of the many Google-related plugins.  There are plugins to interact with Google Maps, Google Analytics, Youtube, Google Translate, Google search, etc.  These plugins are all GPL (free as in liberty).  They interact with a service that is not.  We don’t have access to the source code of Google, and have no liberties with it, other than being able to use their API.  Whether or not Google charges for any of these services is irrelavent.  The code that the GPL applies to is the plugin itself.  The fact that it happens to interface with something that may or may not be commercial, and may or may not be GPL doesn’t affect the GPLness of the plugin itself.

Making money with WordPress Themes and Plugins

There have been some recent movements to help plugin developers either be better compensated for their work, or to develop a solid business model.

There has been talk a while back, and again recently, about Automattic creating a commercial themes repository for the community theme developers to use.  Now people have been talking about a commercial plugin repository, which could possibly be similar to the iPhone App store.  While I wouldn’t be opposed to this happening, I won’t lose any sleep at night if it doesn’t.  I keep seeing all these posts and comments lately that Automattic or Matt needs to define a list of business models.  Although I suppose it would be great to have someone tell me how to make tons of money, it really isn’t their responsibility to hold the hand of someone trying to figure out how.  They’ve made it clear that they pretty much don’t care (and fully support) whatever business model you dream up, just as long as you comply with the GPL.

Another topic being discussed lately is the fact that donations to plugins are fairly meager. Again, I have to point out, that if you’re concerned about how you’re going to make money with the plugin you uploaded to the repository, you’re missing the point of creating that plugin.  As someone who develops several popular WordPress plugins, I can testify that you aren’t likely to make a living from the donations.  Do I enjoy receiving and appreciate donations of any size?  Of course I do.  Do I require it or look down on someone just because they don’t donate?  Absolutely not.  I have no problems with receiving little or no donations from most people for my contributions, that’s not why I do it.  If I never get another donation I would still continue to work on developing my public and private plugins and love doing it!

Some people wonder about a plugin developer who’s had part or all of the functionality of their plugin intergrated into the core of WordPress.  I suppose I can see why someone could be upset if they just lost what was their primary means of income, but again, this is missing the point of the GPL.  (I need to point out that certain functionality of a plugin winding up in the core doesn’t mean that the specific code they used is the same as the code to achieve that functionality in the core, but that’s a topic for another day.)  The point of the GPL isn’t to enable someone to have access to free (of charge) software, or to be able to take someone elses’ software and put their own name on it.  Are the developers of SimplePie or TinyMCE upset that WordPress uses their software in the core?  I doubt it, especially since SimplePie themselves makes a WordPress plugin.  The whole point is that we can all benefit.  It may not be much consolation to tell you that you should be honored that the functionality of your plugin was so great and so desired that it made it’s way into the core, but that’s what it’s all about.

The new version of All in One SEO Pack now has increased support for using WordPress as a Content Management System.  There are also various bug fixes and security updates.  Make sure you stay up to date with the ONLY All in One SEO Pack.

This past month we had our first official WordPress Raleigh Meetup. If you didn’t make it out this time, be sure to join and stop by!

Pictures from the May Raleigh WordPress Meetup.

Hosts:

Michael Torbert, Semper Fi Web Design

Aaron Brodney, Linux Virtuoso

Today we received our shipment of WordPress gear for our next event. I’ll be there speaking on a variety of topics. Seats are limited so make sure to reserve your spot today!
Sign up for the Raleigh WordPress MeetUp.

I checked my mail today and found a relatively large, padded envelope. I opened it to find a signed copy of the latest album, Crazy Water, from Stan Crawford.

Stan Crawford is a singer/songwriter from Mineral Wells, a small town in the heart of Texas. After graduating from Texas A&M, Stan went on to discover sharing his love of music with others. Somehow he is still able to find the time to volunteer teaching children to play music when between tours.

Best of all, his site is powered by WordPress.

Click to hear Crazy Water

I’m speaking at the Raleigh WordPress Meetup event on May 23.  We’ll be discussing SEO for WordPress, Apache directives and configurations, how to use WordPress as a Content Management System, and general blogging/design/development issues. This meetup will have something for everyone, whether you’re a new to WordPress or a pro.

WordPress Meetup hosted by Michael Torbert

Introducing the WordPress Skin for the iPhone 3G.  As a lover of all things iPhone and WordPress, as soon as I saw this I knew I needed it immediately.

iPhone 3G WordPress Skin