The previous two years, I’ve helped put together a WordPress meetup in Amersfoort. While this was fun to do, it didn’t really make sense, because I do not live in (or even really near) Amersfoort. As a result know very little about essential things like venues there. It looks like this year, local WordPress people will take over “their” meetup, and I’ve been thinking about setting up a brand new one in “my” 035 area of The Netherlands.

Ideally, I’d like to do something that’s a little more informal than the Amersfoort ones were, and probably also more frequent. If there’s anyone who’d like to help organize, speak at, or simply attend such a meetup, please let me know in the comments. Oh, and despite the little joke I pulled with the logo, I’m hoping to keep it as low-key and relaxed as possible. Suit and tie entirely optional, perhaps even frowned upon .

One of the biggest, and most useful additions to WordPress in recent years has been the introduction of Custom Post Types. Before CPTs, all the content in your site needed to either be in pages or in blog posts. If your site needed a lot of different types of data, you’d typically use categories (or even tags) to tell them apart. I’ve seen (and probably built) examples where “products” and “news” were post categories, and the site’s front-end would continuously filter out one of the two. In hindsight: madness.

Since the introduction of Custom Post Types, it makes sense to declare separate types for different types of data. When doing so, there’s a crucial argument (passed to the register_post_type function) called “supports”. This argument tells WordPress which post features should be available for the new post type. This allows you to mix and match various features. No need for an excerpt? Require a “featured image”? Need custom fields? No problem. But there’s a catch.

Built-in features only

There’s a fixed list of features you can enable or disable. They correspond to the features present in WordPress’s two built-in types, post and pages. Nothing else. And as far as I know, there’s no (easy, developer-friendly) way to add new features. As nice as CPTs are, I think this seriously limits their potential.

Imagine being able to do something like this to create a CPT for a travel video blog.

'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'subtitle' 'video', 'geo-coords', 'event-time' )

The first four features come standard, but the real fun is in the other (fictitious) ones. Being able to add a video to a post in a manner similar to how featured images work could have many potential advantages over simply adding it into the post’s content. And although there are plugins that’ll let you geo-tag and add timestamps, not all of those support CPTs, and they do not all store data in the same way. They’re all adding data to posts, but they’re all doing it in their own way.

Plugin territory

I’m not saying all these features should be in WordPress’s lean and mean core. Most of the ones I can come up with are arguably plugin territory. But it would be nice to be able to define custom post features once, and then be able to add them to any (custom) post type. WordPress could offer a coherent, standardized way for them to present themselves and store their data. A Widget API of sorts, for the backend.

One might argue that you can do all these things using meta boxes, post meta (or extra database tables) and such, but I feel there’s a certain elegance to opening up “post features” as an API. For one thing, there are plugins that let end users define CPTs without any coding, and this would give them more things to mix and match. And perhaps, something like the functionality of those plugins could eventually make it into core…?

WordPress has recently been described as “the dark matter of the web”. It’s absolutely everywhere. The WordPress ecosystem is probably bigger than Facebook. But at the same time, most of the WordPress people I know are “flying solo”. There are a lot of freelancers out there who work with a small team, or none at all.

That’s why things like WordCamps and meetups are important. They offer the WordPress community a way to share experiences, exchange ideas and get inspired. Thinking along those same lines, Dutch Automattic “Happiness Engineer” Karim Osman is organizing a “WordPress Coworking Trip” called “WP On Tour”. Or as Karim puts it:

“The idea is to step out of your daily (office) environment and work at a challenging location somewhere in the world. Like a holiday, but then with WordPress geeks Everybody is welcome: bloggers, designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc.”

Sounds like fun, right? So much so in fact that the first trip, which takes place in Spain early next year, is now fully booked. And one of the lucky people who “got in” is me . In January, I’ll be working from a luxurious villa in Sitges for 7 days. The villa only accommodates twelve people, so about 99.999% of the WordPress community won’t fit. Fortunately, there’s a form on Karim’s site in case you’d like to be kept up to date about future tours.

There’s a Twitter list of attendees too.

Because WP-Cumulus is open source software, the source files are available online. I didn’t package them with the regular plugin download, but you can download the Flash files from wordpress.org and my blog. Included in those downloads is a file called “tagcloud.xml”, which is mainly used to test the Flash movie locally, within Flash’s IDE. Unfortunately, that file sometimes ends up online. And, in most cases, it shouldn’t.

This is not the cloud you’re looking for…

To properly (or rather: easily) develop and test the Flash movie that’s the heart of WP-Cumulus, it needs content. Without a set of tags, there’s nothing to see. So I created a file called “tagcloud.xml”. It’s loaded into the movie only if no tags are supplied through the regular route (flashvars). The tagcloud.xml bundled with the source code download is an older, outdated “dump” of my blog’s tags. That’s okay for testing, as long as its contents don’t get indexed by search engines.

Until recently, Google wasn’t very good at looking into swf (Flash) files, but it appears that this has changed. From what I can tell, Google now processes the actionscript inside, at least well enough to detect calls to external files. Unfortunately, Google’s bot isn’t quite smart enough to realize this particular file is only loaded as a fallback mechanism. And as a result, it tries to index the tag cloud xml file. This results in three possible scenarios.

Option 1: No tagcloud.xml file: 404 errors

If you’re running the stock WordPress implementation of WP-Cumulus, there should be no tagcloud.xml on your server. It’s not in the standard plugin distribution. Yet, Google will try to access it because it is potentially called from the Flash movie, resulting in a 404 “not found” error.

If you’re using something like Google’s Webmaster Tools to keep track of 404′s, you might have seen this error pop up. Rest assured, it’s not a missing file. The flash movie won’t actually call it. Since the plugin provides the tag cloud through flashvars, there’s no need to fall back to the static file.

Option 2: You’re using tagcloud.xml to provide the tags

If your website is “homebrew”, you may be using the tagcloud.xml to actually provide the Flash movie with its data. In this case, there’s nothing wrong with it getting indexed. At least not from a technological standpoint, SEO experts may disagree.

Option 3: A tagcloud.xml exists in error, and is getting indexed

If you’re using one of WP-Cumulus’s many ports to other platforms, you may have a tagcloud.xml in place. Chances are it’s not actually used, and it still has “my” data in it. In this case you really should remove the file from your web server. My website’s statistic indicate that a lot of websites have this scenario in place, and it’s causing a lot of unintended links from those sites to mine.

So, please check if your site has a tagcloud.xml, and whether it’s used. If not, please remove the file. If you’re the author of a port, please see if the file is needed in your distribution, and remove it if not. Thanks!

(image by Gurato)

Last night’s WordPress meetup in Amersfoort was, at least as far as I’m concerned, a resounding success. Around 70 people attended, and we had a lot of interesting speakers. Most of the presentations were captured on video, and will be placed online later. For now, I’ve put the snapshots I managed to take on Flickr for you. Enjoy!

I’ve also created a Flickr pool for Dutch meetup images. Please feel free to add you pics there. I’m still pretty new to Flickr, but I think I allowed everyone to contribute…

A few days ago, @bakkel tweeted about WP Time Machine. This WordPress backup solution turned out to be exactly what I’d been looking for. It gathers all the relevant bits (like your blog’s database, uploaded images, etc) and uploads them to Dropbox, Amazon’s S3 or FTP. It even adds a file with comprehensive restore instructions. I’ve argued before that backups need to be absolutely painless, and with this plugin they are.

Dropbox

I’d recommend setting the plugin to use Dropbox. Their free subscription only offers 2 GB of space, but as long as you’re not creating daily backups in seperate folders, that should be plenty. And you probably don’t need seperate folders because Dropbox keeps a 30-day file revision history. My site’s backup files take up around 70 MB of my 2 GB, and I’m able to restore previous versions, up to a month old, through Dropbox’s interface.

A somewhat eccentric options page

Setting up the plugin is very easy, but the options page is a little awkward. For some options, it show a clickable link that toggles the setting to whatever it isn’t currently. There’s no indication of the option’s current state, except that it’s not what the link says. In my opinion, this is poor usability, and I’d really love for the author to change the options page to simply use radio buttons or checkboxes.

Setting up recurring backups

This is the hardest part. The plugin has an option to create a new backup every time a new post is published, but in most cases this is not ideal. The alternative is to set up a cron job on your server. Most hosts allow you to do this, but it can be a little tricky to get up and running. The plugin’s website has a guide on how to set up a cron job, but I think this should probably be made easier.

That being said, WP Time Machine is the best free solution I’m aware of for backing up your WordPress install. It does more that the typical database-only backup plugins, and storing backup files off-site adds extra security. Recommended.

I don’t make a habit out of “reblogging” or linkdumping, but since a lot of WordPress people seem to be finding their way to my blog, I wanted to write about this. I got an email regarding a new WordPress plugin called BlogPress SEO this morning. Normally, I would have considered reviewing it, but fortunately I’d already read Joost de Valk’s review-of-sorts. And so should you. BlogPress SEO is spam. It’s a link farm, and goes against every rule Google and other search engines have about linking. Read all about it on yoast.com.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Nexx Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you’re looking to move your blog from wordpress.com to a self-hosted install, this may be a good deal. Nexx.com has recently been rebranded, and is now offering a new Unlimited Web Hosting. To celebrate their new plan they’re offering it at $10 for the first year, including a free .com domain name. I know plenty of hosts where the domain alone would cost that. And to make things even better, they offer a 1-click WordPress install. You should be able to have your blog up and running in mere minutes.

Each $10 Nexx hosting plan includes:

• Diskspace: Unlimited
• Bandwidth: Unlimited
• E-mail: Unlimited
• Free Domains: 1
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Google Adwords Credits: $50
• Facebook Ads Credits: $50
• One-Click WordPress and Blog installations

All Nexx hosting services are powered by a top tier North American datacenter which utilizes clustered server technology, allowing proper resource allocation at all times so customers’ websites will never go down or slow down.

“We’re committed to providing customers with affordable solutions to establish and grow web presence. At just $10 for the first year, this unlimited hosting package provides a great opportunity to those who have not yet experienced our state-of-the-art technology and top quality customer service,” says Suat Alaybeyoglu, Director of Marketing. “On top of all the included rich features, we’re also providing a money back guarantee to all new customers.”

Once you have WP installed on your Nexx plan, you could use wordpress’s import/export feature to move your current posts to your Nexx account, and enjoy the freedoms that come with a wordpress.org install that you control. Like the ability to install an unlimited number of plugins, themes and hacks. And the ability to upload as many images as you like. Unlimited hosting indeed.

The great thing about WordPress is that there’s a huge, active and helpful community of users and developers. There have been WordCamps organized all of the world, as well as many smaller meetups. Last week, Kaj Rietberg and I put together just such a meetup in the Dutch city of Amersfoort.

The event was sponsored by open source development company 4WORX and hosted at the neighboring Dara restaurant (recommended!). Kaj and I were happy to welcome around 25 WordPress enthusiasts, a couple of whom had been tricked beforehand into preparing presentations. Kaj has written a more detailed account over at the WordCampNL website (in Dutch) which includes the slides from two speakers.

More images are on Flickr (sets by Kaj and 4WORX).

I’d like to thank 4WORX for helping us out. That was cool.

When I first heard about gdgt.com, I thought the startup founded by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block was terribly clever, and right up my alley. The idea of having gadget freaks keep “had”, “have” and “want” lists makes sense both from a user’s perspective and from an advertiser’s. When the website opened to the public I was quick to register and started adding things to my lists. Some stuff that wasn’t in there yet. It was amazing to see how much stuff was entered by users.

But I don’t buy a new gadget every day, so keeping the lists up-to-date doesn’t require me to visit GDGT daily. Considering how Rojas and Block were also involved in Engadget and Gizmodo, I was hoping their new effort would replace both those blogs and become a one-stop shop for technology enthusiasts. So far, at least for me, it hasn’t.

Looks

I don’t dislike the way GDGT looks, but it’s not the friendly mess that is Engadget either. Images are small, the color scheme is high-contrast and it all rather looks like a listing, not a magazine. All the elements look great, but the design hasn’t won over my heart, and chances are it won’t.

Auto-generated

Another thing I rather like about both the major gadget blogs is the humor. Gizmodo especially has some pretty funny writers. Gadget news can be pretty boring (who cares about yet another point-n-snap camera?), so some comic relief is in order from time to time. Because your GDGT homepage is auto-generated, most of it isn’t funny. And currently, not all of it is relevant to me either. The above screenshot is from my GDGT stream, and I can’t help but wonder how a USB headset ended up on there. I hate those and would never use or buy one.

Community

As a community, the only thing connecting me to other users is possibly owning (or having owned) the same gadgets. I find it a little awkward to befriend someone just because he or she also has an iPod Touch. Unlike with other social networks, very few of the people I know in real life are on GDGT. Basically, I feel lonely .

So, i guess what it comes down to is that GDGT isn’t a blog, and not a very natural community either. It’s one f those websites I really wanted to love but find myself visiting less and less.