That Web Man

Well, well. As I reported here, the Number 10 website is a Wordpress site. An almighty row has now broken out because their web designers apparently started with a theme written by someone else - as is common with Wordpress themes - and despite making the site look completely different to the theme, many people have latched onto the Creative Commons licence requirements and how they should have given an attribution to the original theme designer.

I think that would definitely apply if the site now looked like the original theme, but it doesn’t so just how much of the original work remains? It’s a tricky issue.

Well, well, well.

I’ve been developing some client sites using Wordpress for a CMS and its ability to be updated from wherever, whenever. It’s a very mature product now and being so widely used there are a number of developers working on various plug-ins and widgets to extend its functionality.

So yesterday I saw a brief news item about the new website for the Prime Minister - Number10.gov.uk - and immediately thought how much it looked like a Wordpress site … and lo and behold it is.

It looks as though my decision to do this sort of thing a couple of years back was a good one and is now something I can pass on as being recommended by the Government!

Well WordPress 2.5 has been released so I spent some time over the weekend updating 21 WordPress sites (and at the same time I updated another 6 Gallery installations).

WordPress 2.5 is very nice with a much better interface. Its built-in gallery/multiple file uploader is great - providing you use the latest versions of Firefox/Flash, it seems, as this doesn’t seem to work on some of my browser/platform configurations here).

Automatic plug-in updating is a nice touch too.

It’s also much, much better to be able to ‘upload’ images from a URL rather than coding by hand for this. All it needs now is built-in support for embedding YouTube videos and they’ll be there.

[edited to add]

The IE7/PC issue is fixed with the very latest Flash version and some patching from the WordPress Trac

One of the main annoyances in the Internet age are spammers.

They’re still obviously hitting e-mail addresses aplenty and they moved on to spamming feedback forms from websites. As if anyone with even half a braincell would buy any shite that way!

The problem with blogs is with comment and trackback spam - usually dealt with by Akismet - and also with user registration spam. I’m not entirely sure what the point is with the latter unless it’s to get over comments requiring user registration first.

Anyway, I’ve just added two plugins to my main blogs:

1. reCaptcha for comments; and
2. Recapture for user registrations.

We’ll see how these fare.

I’d received some copy text and some photographs from a friend who’s asked me to do his business a web site. He’s a hands-on guy and marketing brochures aren’t his forté so there wasn’t a great deal to work with.

So I sorted out some crops, re-sizes and thumbnails, decided to use WordPress just because, added a few tweaks like a “lightbox”, put together a formmail page (with a “thanks” redirect) and Bob’s your uncle: one classy web site in just a few hours.

Well I added some more affiliate links as I mentioned earlier and one of them has already produced a $50 referral fee, so that’s paid for the domain name a few times over.

It’s probably still early days yet in terms of search engine positioning, but the site is already producing a number of clicks if not too many actual conversions.

So this evening, I registered two new domain names pointing at the same site: sexynylonwomen.com and women-in-nylon.com. I am hoping this will eventually drive more traffic that way and I am after all only re-investing some of the affiliate income into the site.

What I wanted to do was have both new domains mirror the existing site, but I have set my WordPress installation up to serve pages as the main domain name so they actually end up being effectively redirected. This is a pity as I really wanted the content to be available (and hence listed) as being from three sites - which is a tad naughty in terms of some search engine rules. Never mind though: at least it makes them ‘legal’ in terms of those guidelines.

The alternative was to set up two new WordPress installations and syndicate the main site to the two new sites, but this would have meant syndicating syndicated feeds which could then have its own repercussions. And of course it would mean two additional sites to update when there are new WordPress software releases.

Can I apologise to everyone else who uses WordPress: it’s my fault they’ve just released a security update - I was just thinking it had been two months since the last release and lo and behold a security release is … er … released.

In my case that means updating 14 web sites running WordPress. Eek!

Fortunately that only involved manually updating three sites (i.e. downloading the updated version, uploading it over the three installations and running the upgrade script).

The other 11 sites are all hosted at DreamHost* which boasts one-click installations and upgrades, so for these sites the upgrades required a theme back-up for each of the sites just in case and then clicking the upgrade link in the DreamHost web control panel, waiting a few minutes and then clicking the link in the confirmation e-mail. Once done, a quick upload of the customised themes and all done.

* Don’t forget to enter the promo code THATWEBMAN to get your $50 discount.

I followed a link to another site and from there to this guy’s site - another WordPress lover like me.

He’s set out his Top 53 Blog Designs of 2007 and there are some fab ones to look at and to get some inspiration from.

Talking of domain names, one of the best things about my US-based hosts and the .coms I can register with them is the speed with which I can go from ideas to sites.

I use DreamHost in the States. Even on their cheapest hosting plans, they allow me to register multiple domain names and host multiple sites. Through my control panel, I simply register the domain(s), set up the site hosting and then to make things even easier, have them install WordPress with a new MySQL database. I did this with this site yesterday: start to finish was less than an hour. I also did this with a client web site a few weeks ago: start to finish including a fancy photo lightbox and site banner image was a few hours.

The ‘problem’ comes with .co.uk domain names that take hours to get registered (and also cannot be registered ‘anonymously’ or by proxy) and even longer to get propagated across the Internet.

So yes, I thoroughly recommend DreamHost and all the features that come with it:

Oh and if you click that image and proceed to set up a new account, you can have $50 off a year’s hosting fee if you quote the promo code “THATWEBMAN”.

Instant web presence for anyone. It’s the future and it’s here now.