I will start this by saying that I am the MOST unorganized person I know.  I don’t know what it is, but the idea of organization just drives me up a wall.  I am the “organized chaos” or “piles of files” kind of guy, you know?  It served me well… up until I started taking on more clients.  Now, I’m realizing that organization is going to make or break my business.

My Actual Outlook Calendar

I’ve gotten BaseCamp to keep up with my projects, and it’s served me well, but I’m in need of something more.  Rather than toil through Google and find random people’s thoughts on their “10 best ways to get organized” I thought I’d poll the audience and see what YOU use to stay on track.  Any and all ideas are considered, so don’t be afraid to speak up.

And thanks in advance for all of the great ideas!

I love helping people out with WordPress.  Sure, I don’t use the official channels like the forums or stack exchange, but I love helping out people on Twitter.  I do lurk on the aforementioned services, though, and unfortunately have noticed that there’s a recurring trend that pops up from time to time that really bothers me.

A new community member, or someone looking for a question to be answered will post the question to the email list.  No more than a few minutes later one of a few responses will filter in:

1. A link to the google search term relating to the right keywords
2. A link to “let me google that for you” with the search term highlighted
3. Some egotistical remark about how they should search elsewhere first for it
4. A response that the question is best asked elsewhere (another forum, or somewhere similar)

I have to bite my tongue to keep from speaking out of term, but we’re now at an age in the digital cycle where telling people to “Google it” isn’t working anymore.  If people are asking questions about WordPress, and found their way to one of those places, chances are they’re smart enough to realize they could have Googled it.  The number one misconception is that these people are looking for information.

It could be further from the truth.

These people don’t want information – they want wisdom.

My friend Jeff Brown posted this on his twitter stream, and it really got me thinking:

It’s totally true.  Kids as young as pre-K can Google something with the proper training, so why would a grown adult come to seek the advice of an expert if they could look it up themselves?  They want a real life person’s take on it.  Searches can be manipulated and gamed; a person’s opinion has more reason to be trusted if they have shown reason to be trusted in the past.

So, in short, don’t be a prick or a jerk if someone’s coming onto your turf with a few questions.  It’s a great opportunity to show just how knowledgeable and wise you are on the subject.  From personal experience, one answered question could even turn into a future client or even more – you just never know.

One of the most versitile tags in my arsenal that WordPress gives me is a fun little tag called <?php bloginfo(); ?>.  By itself, it’s not much fun, but when you add in a variable, it can tell you anything you need to know about your blog.  Like what, you ask?

• name
• description
• admin_email
• url
• wpurl
• stylesheet_directory
• stylesheet_url
• template_directory
• template_url
• atom_url
• rss_url
• pingback_url
• rdf_url
• comments_atom_url
• comments_rss2_url
• charset
• html_type
• language
• text_direction
• version

Look at all of the information packed into one template tag.  So, what are it’s practical uses?

Pull an Image From Your Template Folder

<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/images/image.png”>

This lets you add images into your themes, and (no matter what the url is) the image will be pulled from the theme folder directly.  Even works if the user changes the name or folder text.

Add an RSS Feed Subscription Link Anywhere!

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?>”>subscribe to the feed</a>

Add a Link to the Home Page Anywhere!

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”>Home</a>

These are just a few of the uses I’ve personally used in themes with this tag.  Do you use it for something different?

For years WordPress has been touted as the number one blogging platform.  And without mistake – it is.  But as we creep closer to WordPress 3.1 it’s nice to take a step back and see just how far its’ come.  From winning the CMS Hall of Fame Award to the multiple thousands of plugins that extend its functionality, the WordPress core has made the leap from blog to Content Management System (CMS).  Just take a look at all of the cool things WordPress can do:

Custom Post Types

In English, this means that you can have all sorts of content on your site.  Want audio files for your church’s sermon listing? Done.  Want to segment your audio, photos, and text into different areas?  Piece of cake.

Custom Taxonomies

Yes, another big word, but basically this means that all of that custom content (and your regular blog content) can be sorted, stacked, and filed however you want.  And, you get to choose between category-like and tag-like – so there’s lots of room to play.

Menus

No more fighting with which page navigation goes where – just drag and drop things where you want them to go.  Want two navigation menus?  Four? It’s super easy to drop in the code wherever you want it.

Widgets

Widgets (especially with a plugin like “Widget Logic”) will let you put content that’s not your blog posts or articles anywhere you drop a sidebar in.  Lots of plugins are out there that will even extend that functionality to allow twitter, facebook, and any other social network data to come in too.

And Much More!

These are just a few of the awesome things WordPress has going for it.  If you’ve never given it a shot, now’s the best time.  Find a host you like, look for the “install WordPress” button, and just have fun!

OK – so I’ve tallied up the results from Tuesday and came up with some really interesting results.  So, I’m going to do something a little fun.  Here are your favorite plugins as determined by the comments, my favorite plugins, and the top 5 plugins from the WordPress repository; let’s see how they match up (plugins aren’t in any order – just the top 5).

Voter’s Choice

1. NextGEN Gallery
2. Akismet
3. WordPress DB Backup
4. All In One SEO Pack
5. Google XML Sitemaps

Mitch’s Favorites

1. All In One SEO Pack
2. Kieran O’Shea’s Calendar
3. W3 Total Cache
4. Widget Logic
5. WP-Cufón

Top 5 WordPress Plugins from the Repository

FYI, these are the top 5 listed plugins from the “popular” tab under the installer.

1. Akismet
2. All In One SEO Pack
3. NextGEN Gallery
4. Contact Form 7
5. Fast Secure Contact Form

Seeing all the fun plugins you guys posted to the site today has reminded me of a topic that I’ve both seen published on other sites as of late and been pondering myself lately – the authors.  I’ve co-created a plugin, and it’s currently residing well in the plugin repository, but it hasn’t been all fun and games.  I’ve been very lucky on this point, but here is the typical cycle of a plugin developer:

• write plugin – gets published in repository
• users need help – write documentation for plugin and post
• get email asking “can you add xyz features to the plugin”
• get email asking “can plugin do this simple feature that’s documented in the documentation”
• reply to both emails saying you will when you get time
• get nasty email back from first person berating developer for not including it the first time and being lazy on updates
• get review on user’s blog – user praises plugin for changing his/her life.
• plugin is downloaded more because of review
• emails
• emails
• emails

And so the cycle goes (at least, somewhat like that).  So, what’s wrong with this picture?

I can give you three things:

1. Users think that because a plugin is released that it’s their right to have free help for it outside of the documentation
2. At this point the developer has put many hours of labor and love into the plugin, and all he’s gotten aside from a nice review is hours of answering support emails and.
3. User has received 0 tangible thanks for his work other than a few nice words – which do help, but don’t put food on the table.

Many of the plugin authors accept donations, but that doesn’t equal out to much. 

So, what happens next? Plugin authors get discouraged and stop updating their plugins, and it stagnates – we keep using plugins that haven’t been updated in God-knows-how-long and sites stagnate in that department.  Heck, I don’t think anyone would have even known Twitter Tools had competitors until it stopped working because of an API change.  Still, they stop updating, the plugin stagnates, and the community suffers a (small) blow.

But is it really that bad?

From an interview with Alex King (four years ago – still valid today):

Is it possible to make a living doing plugin work for WordPress? Is that something you have considered?
It’s definitely possible to make a living doing custom WordPress plugin and web development, but I don’t think it’s possible to make a living just building plugins and asking for donations.

Do you feel that users are ungrateful for your work?
Not really ungrateful, no, but I definitely think that some are blissfully ignorant. I imagine most folks don’t have an appropriate idea of the amount of work that actually does go into the things they can then get for free.

I definitely don’t like the attitude of folks who feel they are owed something or can place demands on someone who is donating their time.

So, what should we do?

One article suggested that plugin authors release all of their plugins as “premium” plugins – even going so far as to suggest that doing so would make the quality better.  I’ve used both free and premium plugins – quality in some cases makes no difference between the two – I’ve seen awesome free ones, and crappy pay-to-use ones.  So that option is not feasible (for everyone, that is).

I’ve seen a few “premium plugin app stores” pop up recently too – stores that sell plugins at a cheap cost, but since their not in the repository (the only guaranteed safe place for plugins), there’s always a risk for obfuscated (hidden) malware.

Two suggestions

I have two ideas that as developers, designers, and users we can implement to give back to the plugin community.  There’s two types of people that read this site: users and developer/designers.  So, I’ll address both groups.  If you’re a developer, make a list of all of the plugins you use on a site.  Then, as you’re installing them for your client, make a donation to each author who’s plugin you used.  You can even include it into the client’s bill as an expense, simply to help support and make the plugin better.  Every plugin author gets $5 a site, and they can start focusing on making the plugins better, faster, and more feature-rich. 

As a user, it can be hard to justify paying large sums of money to every single plugin author at once.  So, do it in groups.  Every month, for the cost of a cup of coffee, you can donate something to one plugin developer that has made your life easier.  That way, the author knows his work is being appreciated, and can go on to better the plugin for you and any other users that gain from it.

In a nutshell

Plugin developers for WordPress are some of the brightest stars in the WordPress universe.  They power all of the third-party functionality that makes your blog special, stand out, and do pretty much whatever you want it to.  With the current system, however, we run the risk of plugins getting stale in an environment where changes are happening all around us.  Even a small donation to a plugin developer shows them how much you care (and buys them that next cup of coffee that may keep them awake at night to make the plugin even more awesome).

Author’s Side Note: As a business person, I try to look at things in a way that helps out all parties – both users and plugin authors.  So, to you other business people, legal experts, and non-profit managers, I have a question: would it be possible to create a foundation that’s sole purpose is to accept donations for plugin authors, and make them tax deductible?  It might create more incentive to donate if the user is getting something in return (yes, a bit selfish, but incentives work – just ask the guys who wrote Freakanomics!)

WordPress released their press release about WordPress 3.0.4.  As soon as it did, I saw the WordPress hashtag on twitter light up – people complaining about having yet another security update.  I hate to get on a soapbox about this, but seriously – you’re going to complain about people working to make your site as secure as it could be?  There are people working around the clock sometimes to make sure that your site doesn’t get hacked, and most of the files that are affected by this are files that plugins won’t touch, so there’s little to no chance (unless they  mention it specifically) that there are plugins that won’t work with an update.

It takes two clicks to update and secure WordPress – that’s 20-30 seconds out of your day to put up a wall against hackers diving into your site and messing things up.  And if they did get in, I vantage to say that most of these same people would be complaining about how insecure WordPress is.

Besides, look at Drupal or Joomla – how many security patches have THEY put out, and they’re more like Swiss cheese sometimes than a CMS.  Not that they’re bad – they just don’t have the core following of people making sure things are smooth and safe.

Anyway, the new version is out – go update and make yourself safe against the cyberterrorists of the world.

Note:
I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with any of the things I talk about -
this is just me putting information out there to think about, and you
can make your own decisions about it.  You’re not sheep – I won’t treat
you as such.

Isn’t it ironic that we have a bit of a double-sided coin going on the Internet at the moment.  There’s a huge debate going on between Apple and Google, Flash and HTML5, over proprietary software.  People are clamoring for Apple to open up their platforms to allow all types of programming (Flash, specifically) instead of closing their boxes.  So, what do people do?  They tweet about it.

On the flip side, those tweets you’re sending out can now be used (and monetized) by twitter for any purpose whatsoever.  What’s more, is that if you post a tweet on your site, and it causes you to get ad revenue, Twitter is legally entitled to a share of that, because you are re-purposing their content:

In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the
advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against
any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing).

Scary stuff, eh? Your tweets, open to the free world, can now be used by Twitter for anything, including making money.  Makes you want to read those TOS clauses more closely.

So, I want to know what you think.  Where do you stand on either front?  Sure, Apple makes more money locking it’s hardware down… or does it?  Or, should Twitter really have as much power as it seems to with it’s latest Terms of Use update?

No, don’t worry, this isn’t one of those esoteric posts to be shared by those who have lived through an event such as 9/11 or whatnot.  This is more like a literal posed question to people who I think deserve to give us an answer. ~Mitch

During and after the flood that hit Nashville in 2010, I stayed glued to WKRN (and the WKRN twitter account) to see what was going on with friends and constituents who were trapped or lost stuff in the flood.

Our local news stations (WKRN, WSMV, and NewsChannel5) did a bang up job keeping everyone informed, up to date, and out of harms way as best as possible.  I mean, when flood waters get into a 500-year flood plain (where floods MIGHT happen once every 500 years) then there’s really only so much planning can do.  But they were vigilant, their news anchors showing signs of fatigue as the night went on.

The twitter stream was on in full force too.  Citizen journalists and news team twitter accounts relayed and received information at supersonic speed.  @tndotcom, @nashvillest, @wkrn and their network of followers spread the news of what was going on to their followers (sometimes) faster than the news stations were.

So… local news stations? A+.  Local Twitter account users? A+.

National Media… White House… Where were you?

It’s 2:15pm CST on May 3rd.  We have only a little coverage on FoxNews and (for most of the morning) neither CNN nor anyone else really was having much to say about it.  Sure, right now there’s concern of the giant gulf oil spill.  I’ll give em that one. But when a bomb almost explodes in New York, a whole day ago, you report on it and go on to something that has a little more meaning.  We had record level flooding, people getting forced out of their homes, and even buildings being swept down major interstates.

Where were you?

We sent a request into the Federal government on Saturday, knowing full well we’d need it after all of the heavy downpours (and we will need help with the rebuilding efforts).

Where were you?

We’ve been watching as friends and family are displaced, sent to shelters, or even lost their lives and livelihoods as the Cumberland river swept over Nashville to levels no one has seen in nearly 80 years.

And what did we get?  2nd billing under a “Happy Birthday Singing Dog” and no word from the Commander-in-Chief.

Where were you?

I guess it’s been enough time to where I can change my question up a bit:

Where are you?

Is it because we’re a red state?  Is it because we aren’t a New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, or other major city?  Is it because we fly under the scandal radar (for the most part) and keep quiet as our citizens prosper and our startups continually do great things?

I do want to go back on a statement I keep hearing: Traditional media is dead – social media is where things are going.  I want to change it a bit:

National media is dead.  Local media, and social media, are the blend of information services we need to survive, and as long as there are television sets we will still rely on our local news teams.

Why? For the same reasons mom-and-pop businesses thrive when chain stores suffer: community.  No one knows our community like we do, and no one knows what we need to hear like the people in it.  Our local news anchors are the community – they live here, they work here, and they have stake in what goes on because its happening to them too.  Some dude sitting at a news desk 1000 miles away – He hasn’t got a clue.

So, hats off to everyone who got us through this mess – i forgot a lot of people, but you know who you are.  And for those of you outside of Nashville that don’t care: yes, we’re still here.  We’re drying out our socks and shoes (and boots) and getting ready to step up and continue to do our thing.

With you, or without you.

Because, the question still bears asking:

Where are you?

A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I grew up in a small town in Kentucky.  I mean really, really small. Here’s a hint: I share a hometown with the latest “America’s Got Talent” winner.  I’ll let you do the math on that one. Anyway , the whole town had about 10,000 people in it, zero Starbucks (heck, no coffee-shops of any kind), and didn’t even have high speed internet until right around the turn of the century (how I got from there to here is a completely different story entirely). But, if you ask around in town, especially to the “old-timers”, and mention my last name, chances are the question about my grandfather or parents will come up.

My grand-dad works at the local funeral home as an usher.  He put in his years at the Goodyear tire plant in Union City, TN until he retired, but (being the ever active person he is) he decided to keep working doing something he loves – interacting with people.  He’s the song-leader at a small Baptist church, and also helps out with a friend of his who’s an auctioneer on the weekends.

But, doing all this, I swear he knows every single person in town.

Why is he so well known?  Does he have money?  Not a lot.  I mean he has enough to get by, but what he does have he’s always willing to share with a friend (or in some cases, a complete stranger).  He’s always working, as you can tell, but he’s never too busy to help out someone who needs to borrow a truck or tractor.  And at the funeral home, I guarantee that if you wanted anyone telling you that things were going to be OK, it would be my grand-dad.  People still tell me that he was one of the people that helped them get through their grieving loss.

Thing is, my grand-dad gives, and gives, and gives, without a single thought of how or even if others will pay him back.  He doesn’t expect a reward out of it – he does it simply for the thought of seeing how it can help anyone and everyone around him. 

And when he does help out people, word gets around.  People talk about the kind gentleman who handed them a tissue at the funeral home and told them everything would be OK.  They talk about the guy who brought a plate of food to their house when they were sick or bedridden.  They mention my grand-dad, who loaned them a tractor – a huge, metal farm machine – when theirs broke down, without even a mention of cost or payment.

Little by little he changes their lives, even if in a small way.  And, in doing so, I’m sure his own life is changed as well – and that keeps him doing the great things he does for people.

Those of us who truly “get” the power of social media have a power on our hands that no one has really come to realize yet.  Sure, that sounds totally cliché, but think about the people that you meet on a daily basis.  Sure, you may not have 10,000 followers (or maybe you do!) but chances are the network of reach you have on your friends list equals out to a small city, or even a small subdivision or neighborhood (around 300 people). 

Did you get that? You have the potential to impact an entire neighborhood of people.

You have the ability and means to take someone’s life, make it a small bit better, and then watch them pay the favor out to their neighborhood of influence.  The effect is truly viral in nature.

Go out and do something nice for someone else today.  In a world that reeks of bad vibes, rudeness (more and more as of late than ever), and self-serving people, a good deed is one that hardly goes unnoticed.

And once you’ve done it, don’t talk about it.  That’s the hard part, but the biggest sacrifice that we as social media users can do is not bragging about how awesome we are online.  Do your deed, step away, and know that you’ve changed someone’s life… even if it’s only one small thing, you’re making a world of difference to someone else.