My post today isn’t about my involvement with WordPress though. Instead it is about WordPress itself, and the unfortunate state of the WordPress community today. It isn’t the WordPress community of a few years ago. Things are a mess, and I feel like I need to stand up, one more time, and go over my thoughts on the current state of the WordPress project.

What Made WordPress Great

The things that made WordPress great included its community, the open source ideal, the low barrier for entry, its simplicity, and the excitement of something new. WordPress and its community, back around the time of version 1.5, was energetic. Many people felt like the decisions they were making were helping build a great product, one that would be used by millions of people. Even those that only contributed a theme could eventually find themselves famous within that community. A great example of this, in my mind, is Michael Heilemann.

Many of you might not know this, but the default theme for WordPress was designed, developed, and released by Michael. He spent a great deal of time on the theme, and was honoured to have it become a staple part of WordPress. Everyone thanked him, and nearly every community member, at that time, knew who he was, and where to find his blog Binary Bonsai. Then, as things continued to move forward, everyone forgot about his contribution, and as WordPress aged, people got bored of the default theme. Today, I would hazard a bet that less than five percent of those using WordPress know of Michael Heilemann, and so, it is of no surprise to me that his blog now runs on Habari rather than WordPress.

Automattic: Good and Bad

Back when WordPress was a young project, the idea of creating a corporation around it probably seemed ridiculous to many community members, especially since it was open source, but Automattic came to existence without asking the community if it was a smart idea, or even needed, and it became the controlling power behind WordPress and all related brands.

Then in January 2008, it received Venture Capital funding, and not just a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, but instead twenty-nine point five million dollars (via GigaOm). Surely, they spread this money around to everyone that has contributed to WordPress, right? Nope, they used the funds to purchase web applications, hire staff, and build out WordPress.com.

Automattic as a company isn’t bad, evil or negative, but they have positioned themselves, especially one of their employees, as gatekeepers over WordPress, and as an open source, community project, I don’t feel that it is entirely right. All corporations, no matter how good their public relations, are focused on one thing: increasing profit.

Do you think that the poking and prodding that Automattic does regarding WordPress, WordPress.com, Akismet, BuddyPress, and the half a dozen other projects they manager, are solely for our benefit? I am not against a company making money, but I think far too many people have an idealized version of Automattic and its pursuits. I’ve found people treating the company as though it were Apple or Linux in such that they feel that the company or idea can do no wrong.

When was the last time that Automattic worked to bring a new project to the foreground, and I don’t mean one that they acquired? They are a business and should be treated as such by the community. I’d hate to see WordPress split in many directions like Linux is today, but we’ve all witnessed what happens in the Linux world when a company decides that their corporate version is the best. I mean, when was the last time anyone installed Red Hat Linux on their desktop? Oh right, the free version doesn’t really exist anymore, and Red Hat Enterprise Desktop is around $80 (Yes, I know about Fedora), and that’s just one of many examples of the commercialization of an open source project.

Think that WordPress will never go commercial, then take a look at WordPress.com. Domain mapping is $10 per year, custom CSS is $15 per year, no ads is $30 per year, and access to VideoPress video hosting is $60 per year, and that isn’t all of the potential upgrades you can purchase.

Matt Mullenweg: Smart Business Person

Matt Mullenweg is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. His ability to manage his brand image is almost supernatural. Fighting against any ideal he comes up for the WordPress community seems to be like fighting mother nature herself. Matt has made himself the word of God when it comes to WordPress, and millions of people follow that blindly.

When WordCamps started, I wondered how long it would take before the Church of WordPress was created. Matt traveled the world like a holy crusader, talking to his flock about the good that was WordPress. He was their Messiah, and saved them from the horrible web publishing systems of the past.

He isn’t infallible though and has made mistakes. The issue today is that most of the major mistakes he has made either happened before mass adoption of WordPress (Pre-2.0) or have been relatively unknown as they’ve happened behind closed doors, or outcries have only existed on smaller blogs.

Say anything wrong about Matt Mullenweg, and the hordes of his followers would descend upon you taking you to task. Say anything negative about a choice he has made, and you’ll find millions defending that choice, even if they themselves don’t fully understand it.

Back in 2005, Matt added thousands of pages to WordPress.org for the express purpose of using its immensely high Google PageRank to earn money. (Source – Waxy.org)

One great question from that post that really struck me was:

First, do organizers of open-source projects need to disclose how they’re making money off the project? Matt isn’t disclosing anything about this activity to the community. I don’t think anyone would be upset about Matt trying to support Wordpress with outside sources of revenue, but as an open-source project, they should be held to a higher level of transparency. Without the users and developers all working for free, it wouldn’t exist.

Sure, he has apologized for this since then, and swept it under the rug. It has been a long time, but he continues to make project-threatening mistakes which could easily be managed through a small council of source code submitters looking over decisions that could effect the project, the brand, and its future.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve met Matt on a few occasions, and seen him speak. I think he’s a smart guy, and a savvy business person, but the “nice guy” persona that he puts out there doesn’t seem to be quite the same as the person behind the scenes, away from the microphone.

Drinking the WordPress Kool-Aid

So many people are fooled into believing that WordPress is the best blogging platform of our time, but to me, that is like saying Microsoft Windows is the best operating system of our time. While most fans of WordPress will probably fight me on the comparison, I think the similarities are too many to ignore. We have a company that works back room deals in order to get big players on board, makes a fair bit of money through its self-serving attitude, brands itself as something that it isn’t, and is run by a single voice that feels somewhat like a dictatorship. Just because it is everywhere, and there are lots of additions that make it more useful, that doesn’t make it the best.

Matt Mullenweg was great for the project back when it started. He helped it gets its footing, and took care of the project. He was able to quickly navigate the business world so that WordPress could grow into the massive project that it is today, but I think it is time for him to step back and allow those with the community focused ideal that he once held to take over so that he can focus on building his company, and maybe join back in on the community aspect that he seems to enjoy so much.

His single minded approach of what is good for the community is only going to be its downfall. He needs to let go and let the community vote for what it wants. If any portion, no matter how small, wants to purchase themes, plugins and whatever else, then Matt should have no bearing on their decision. His job should be to inform them of their options, market WordPress to the world and contribute code to the project.

Should that code usurp work that premium theme and plugin developers have created, then that’s within his right, but he shouldn’t have any bearing on those third party projects through manipulating the community to see the additions as a negative thing, removing them from the community focal points, downplaying their work, or directly fighting against them in back rooms.

The WordPress community, if it is going to survive, has to evolve, change and meet the needs of everyone, not just those that believe they have the right to vote on behalf of everyone, and especially not by those that want to uphold an ideal.

GPL: It’s the Law

One of the biggest issues in the community right now is GPL. It creates a divide that shouldn’t exist. The idea of GPL is to promote community, and I had hope that it was why Matt stuck to his guns when defending GPL, but unfortunately, GPL does not a community make. If the idea was to promote open source, and give back to the community, then why wouldn’t Automattic release the source code behind Akismet, or the code behind other online services they’ve acquired?

In December 2008, over 200 WordPress themes were pulled from the Theme Repository because they didn’t fit either GPL licensing, or the spirit of GPL licensing. The second half of that sentence is the giant power hammer that Matt Mullenweg and Automattic have over the community. Some themes that were pulled complied with GPL but the creators used the themes to promote non-GPL compliant themes on their own sites. The fact that the themes on the repository had no real bearing on Matt’s decision to have them removed because there was potential to lead people astray from his GPL ideal.

It is assumed that becoming GPL gets you in good graces with Automattic, and after they put up a page for Premium WordPress themes on their site, everyone applauded their decision. Matt had been against Premium themes for a long time, but quickly his tune changed as nearly every developer announced their GPL compliance.

Earlier this year, some Premium WordPress plugins started looking at how they could feel the love from the WordPress community, specifically Automattic, in hopes of having their own page on the illustrious community site, but while Matt changed his tune regarding themes, he was quick to stand fast against any paid plugins for WordPress. His worry that the extendability of his beloved software would become commercialized lead him to publicly state his dislike of such developments.

Plugin developers went on the offensive and made their new additions GPL compliant in hopes of pleasing Matt, but even their hard work to follow his rules left them feeling the cold shoulder.

It isn’t GPL that has become law in the world of WordPress, but instead the ideal of GPL. The “spirit” that things should be given away for free if they are a product, and businesses should be built around service. This “spirit” protects Automattic from having to give away any of their prized jewels, and allows them to charge as they see fit. It allows them to hide behind a shield as they work against companies that seek only to provide powerful additions to the WordPress community. Additions that require one hundred times the effort of earlier plugins, themes and extensions on the WordPress platform.

Conclusion

WordPress and its community has matured. The ideals of Matt Mullenweg and Automattic are becoming a limitation and a hindrance. While they are still great at spinning positive press, and continuing to appease the masses, they’ve lost the spirit of WordPress somewhere along the way, and it is my hope that someone out there will take blogging to the next level through true community building, and the ability to keep an open mind as things change.

WordPress is still a great piece of software, despite all of the flaws in leadership, community, and in the system itself. I have no doubt that it will continue to expand all the while lining the pockets of Automattic, and fulfilling the ideals of a young developer that can’t let go of his community project.

I’ve been beta testing the plugin for some time now, and have found it useful for a variety of different needs, and the more I use it, the more ideas I come up with on what it could do for me with regards to taking in information from visitors and displaying it to me.

The first thought that people have is that Gravity Forms is “just another Contact Form plugin”, but it can do so much more than that.

Want to do a visitor survey? Want to do a “send this post to a friend”? Want to have user guest post submissions? Gravity Forms can do all of that and more. I’ve even used it for a basic product inventory system, as well as a tool to sign players up for an online RPG. The uses for the plugin are wide, and according to the Rocket Genius team, they’ll continue to expand.

Gravity Forms is a premium plugin, but I like to call it the first “extension” of WordPress, because I feel like marketing it as a plugin is too limiting. It does so much more. There are three price points for Gravity Forms, $39 gets you a one-site personal license, $99 gets you a five site license, and $199 gets you the unlimited developer license.

The Developer license comes with Priority Support and Free Add-Ons and allows you to install it on as many sites as you want. This is the license I will be purchasing, and the one I hope you’ll all purchase as well.

Why go for the Developer License?

It might seem pretty pricey to shell out nearly two-hundred dollars for a WordPress plugin, but I assure you, there is more than two hundred dollars in value that you’ll receive. If not from the initial 1.0 version, then from future version, the free add-ons and the priority support.

What other plugin will allow you to quickly and easily make contact forms on all of your blogs? What other plugin will make it easy for you to take feedback, guest posts and other information from your users? What other plugin will allow you to make a basic help-desk? We are just scratching the surface of the types of input and data management this plugin will allow, and you’d be silly not to try to take full advantage of what Gravity Forms is offering you.

Affiliate Offer

Yes, the links in my post are affiliate links, and you too could sign up, receiving a 20% commission on any sales you generate. I think this is very fair, and look forward to hearing from the Rocket Genius team how this does for them.

Follow the Rocket Genius Team on Twitter

If you are like me, and want to keep up to date on everything happening with Gravity Forms, make sure to jump on Twitter, and follow the following people:

• Rocket Genius
• Kevin Flahaut
• Carl Hancock

Don’t forget to check your server first to make sure Gravity Forms will work on it. Use their Gravity Forms Server Test plugin to double check, or just make sure your server is using WordPress 2.8+, MySQL 5+ and PHP 5+.

Sure, it might be that I want to be lazy, but I sigh when I have to try to dig through a theme authors code.

Over the last few months, I have been working on a theme system that deals with my own issues in WordPress themes, and today, it is finally being released. The theme is entitled WPUnlimited, and is a paid theme system.

It will be constantly updated, support will be included through a support forum and e-mail responses.

WPUnlimited does two things that I hope everyone will enjoy. First off, it takes plugins out of the hands of plugin authors. I have spent far too much time waiting for plugin authors to keep up with new versions of WordPress as they come out, and by integrating the plugins into the theme, the onus is now on me to keep those features working within the theme.

Secondly, I wanted to make sure I could change the layout, colors, typography, and header image without editing a line of CSS and WPUnlimited allows for this level of customization. The theme truly takes little to no coding knowledge to create custom look and feel results.

WPUnlimited costs $59 for a single user license, and $150 for a developer license. Don’t let the “developer” term scare you though. The license is for anyone that wants to deploy WPUnlimited on more than one blog, either for themselves or their clients.

Check out WPUnlimited today, and let me know what you think.

Combine this with my writing on Blogging Pro, and I feel like I have gone years back in time. I am writing on the blog that really started my career, and working on a WordPress related podcast. I am excited to see what happens next as I really enjoy working with Jeff, and have distinct opinions on WordPress.

If you are interested in listening to WordPress news and information rather than reading it, I suggest you check out the WordPress Weekly podcast and if you need reminders on when it is going to be on, please check out Blogging Pro, as I’ll be leaving reminders on there each week.

I will be trying to publish one post per week day on various WordPress and blogging related topics in hopes of once again pushing forward my own brand while helping Splashpress Media achieve its goals with the site. Also, it is nice to get back to talking about one of my favourite subjects: WordPress blogging.

It also feels really nice to increase my archive on that site, as I have over one thousand posts within its pages, and I am looking forward to adding another thousand over the next few years.

If you are interested in WordPress, I hope you’ll check out Blogging Pro.

Some things that were discussed include:

• WordPress 2.7 was released
• Microsoft enters the Open Source blogware world with Oxite
• New Media Expo merges with Blog World Expo
• WordPress Theme Repository purged of hundreds of themes
• Six Apart shuts down Pownce
• Dates announced for WordCamp San Francisco 2009, WordCamp Chicago 2009, WordCamp Dallas 2009 and WordCamp Columbus 2009
• WordPress.com passes the 5 million blog mark
• Media Uploader Overview
• Learning to love comment moderation
• The Many Ways to Configure Your New Dashboard
• WordPress.com Goes Gravatar Crazy
• 43 Degrees, but it’s snowing

I got to give my opinions, which hopefully people will enjoy and not disagree with too harshly. A huge thanks to Charles and Jonathan for having me on and I hope you’ll all check out the episode.