20 December

Is WordPress a platform professionals can trust?

Here we go again…

Matt Mullenweg Announces Unexpected Holiday Break for WordPress.org Services


It’s true, WordPress has always been a little bit hard to take seriously, what with the Hello Dolly plugin being part of the base installation.1

As much as I have devoted the last decade of my professional career to WordPress (and used it fairly extensively for several years before that), I have never had much appreciation for Matt’s sense of humor or his perspective on things. I’ve invested myself in WordPress despite Matt, not because of him.

But the turn things have taken over the past 3 months has come as a surprise even to a Matt skeptic like me. He really just seems to be going completely off the rails in this vendetta against WP Engine, and he’s absolutely dragging down the entire WordPress ecosystem in the process.

It’s an extremely frustrating and tenuous position to be in, as a developer of a plugin that is becoming an increasingly large portion of my livelihood. I know that the majority of the sales of my commercial plugin are fed by users starting out with the free version of the plugin that’s distributed through the WordPress Plugin Directory. It just does not sit right with me that the source that feeds so much of the WordPress ecosystem, both free and commercial, is controlled by a single individual (said individual’s disingenuous protestations otherwise notwithstanding). It’s especially concerning when that single individual makes unilateral decisions of great impact on the entire community with the kind of capriciousness and petulance Matt has been demonstrating lately. (Even though I do like pineapple on pizza.)

I know it’s dangerous to my very livelihood for me to be writing this. Much like the Rebellion’s one-man fighters against the Death Star, I’m too small to be a threat.2 But I’m also sure Matt wouldn’t think twice about kicking my plugins out of the directory if he saw this on a bad day. I’m literally nothing to him, but the WordPress Plugin Directory is immensely important to me. That kind of power imbalance is dangerous. And it is much more of a danger to the spirit of open source software than anything WP Engine is doing. I worry that WordPress as we’ve known it is dead.

1 I do not have any problem whatsoever with the existence of the Hello Dolly plugin. My problems are that a) the functionality it adds is superfluous and undermines the appearance of WordPress as a professional tool, and b) it is a bad example of how to write a plugin, which is the nominal reason for its inclusion in the base WordPress installation in the first place. It is not structured the way modern plugins are supposed to be written, and it doesn’t include any of the types of functionality a new plugin developer would need to see in action to gain any meaningful insight into how WordPress works.

2 The significant difference, of course, being that I don’t have access to any secret plans revealing the Death Star’s weakness.

Please think twice before leaving a flippant negative review

Last week I launched a new WordPress plugin, No Nonsense, and much to my surprise, it started to pick up steam after just a couple of days. It turns out, it got featured with a nice review on WP Tavern, and people took notice.

Unfortunately, almost immediately, it got a couple of really negative reviews, both of which were clearly dashed off with very little thought, or apparently even the slightest bit of effort on the part of the reviewers to try to determine the cause of their issues before leaving a negative review — rather than submitting a support ticket, which would be the correct channel for addressing a problem… if they actually wanted to solve it.

I take pride in the quality of my work, and I try hard to make sure it performs flawlessly. I respond quickly to any issues — even for a free plugin like this — because I want to make things right. So it is really painful to have the product of my efforts permanently stained with a negative review by someone who can’t be bothered to take the time to write a single cohesive sentence detailing the issues they had with it.

I understand the temptation to rip on something you think is garbage, and I’ve left a few one-star plugin reviews myself. But I feel it’s important to at least explain in detailed and objective terms why I think something is bad. And maybe if it’s clearly something brand new, I’d wait a while to see if the creators take the time to work out the kinks first.

So, no matter what you do, no matter where you are, if you are in a position to criticize someone else’s work, I implore you to take a second and think about the impact you might be having on that person and on what they’re trying to accomplish, and whether or not your criticism is truly valid and warranted. Perhaps it is not, in which case, I would respectfully suggest you stay quiet. But maybe it is. In that case, think about whether a terse and flippant negative review is really the best way you can contribute to improving the situation, or if there’s a more effective, more constructive way to share your input.

ST:TNG Treadmill Review #17: The Survivors

The Survivors
Season 3 Episode 3
Original airdate: October 7, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

The Enterprise responds to a distress call from Rana IV, a Federation colony that is under attack from an unknown alien ship.

My Brief Review

At last, a genuinely good episode. The story in this one has some of the TOS spirit in it, and it kept me genuinely in suspense until an “ah-ha” moment I won’t spoil here.

I realized, in retrospect, that the initial setup of the episode doesn’t make sense… unless the distress call has been in automated transmission for many years, because the attack clearly did not just recently happen. But once the Enterprise arrives at Rana IV, things get interesting, and it’s easy to forget that detail.

How did one house and an elderly couple survive the destruction of an entire planet? Why is Deanna Troi possessed by the music from a music box they own, even though she wasn’t part of the away team? This one is worth watching to find out the answers.

Memorable Moment

Picard shines in this episode, figuring things out several steps ahead of his dimwitted first officer and the rest of the bridge crew. The moment when Picard reveals exactly what he has finally figured out is going on gave me chills.

Crew Rando

Not sure who it was, but some rando on the bridge nearly did a backflip when the Enterprise was hit with a blast from the enemy ship.

Distance Rating: 6K

IMDb score: 7.7/10

Playlist for the end of the world

Needless to say, I do not believe the world is going to end tomorrow. OK, I said it anyway. And now that it’s said, let’s have a little fun with it.

I’ve put together an iTunes playlist of songs from my music library that seemed fitting in some way for the occasion:

  1. Steely Dan — Black Friday
  2. National Health — The Apocalypso
  3. Nine Inch Nails — The Beginning of the End
  4. Rush — In the End
  5. The Beatles — The End
  6. Styx — Don’t Let It End
  7. Zero 7 — End Theme
  8. Kraftwerk — Europe Endless
  9. Hall & Oates — Friday Let Me Down
  10. Chicago — It Better End Soon (1st Movement)
  11. Chicago — It Better End Soon (2nd Movement)
  12. Chicago — It Better End Soon (3rd Movement)
  13. Chicago — It Better End Soon (4th Movement)
  14. Prince — 1999
  15. Genesis — Los Endos
  16. King Crimson — Peace: An End
  17. R.E.M. — It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
  18. U2 — Until the End of the World
  19. Elvis Costello — Waiting for the End of the World
  20. Happy Apple — The World Begins and Ends in Your Combover
  21. Room 34 — December 22, 2012

Yes, that last one is my own… recorded earlier this year as a reflection on what the world will be like the day after it ends. You can get it here. (Interesting side note: every sound on that song — the whole album in fact — was produced on an iPhone.)

Album covers from the Mayan Apocalypse playlist