Oh dear, that's really not good. Podzy seems to be a bit unhappy about what's going on with people using his guides to make money. Podz has spends HOURS on the forums helping people out whenever he can. He's also responsible for both writing up and hosting the WP guides, which for many people (myself included) have been an invaluable resourse of information. I just tried to access the things, and got my IP banned as he's password protected the guides. For example when I was moving my host over the guy (and macmanx) both came to reassure me that everything was going to be ok, and that I wasn't going to loose all my posts.As far as I can tell a certain Larry on the forums said he was going to make a WordPress manual, which he was going to write from scratch. Yeah well if you need information about the ins and outs of WordPress you either check the Codex or the Forums or the Manuals. Guess who's name comes across the board on all these things? Yup Podz. So understandably the man is a bit miffed, that's not how this particular community has worked so far.
So it took me all of 10 seconds, seriously, to offer to help out Podz make an offical book of sorts using his pages already. It would be a long hard road, but one that's ultimately pretty gratifying. Ahh, but I'm not a publisher you say? No, I'm not but I've got CafePress at my fingertips if I want. He's decided not to help anymore, which seems a bit rash, hopefully he'll reconsider. My offer to pull the book together still stands, he can sort out the content of the book and the cafepress site ^_^.
What's CafePress you ask? Well it's a way for anyone to set up a store online selling personalised merchandise revolving around whatever it is they're website is about. This has beenmainly T-shirts, mugs, etc. Recently (i.e 8 months ago) they added books in there as well. They come in a different range of bindings (saddle-stitch, ring binder and perfect bound), have a flat rate per type and then additional cost per page. Soo the idea is you have to price a 100 page perfect bound book at $10, because that's how much they're charging, and then you add whatever you want as a mark-up.
I've toyed around with the idea a lot, but it only allows black and white content. That's why I personally find it slightly limiting for my comic book work, however I might actually use it for a sketchbook. As time goes by I'm collecting more and more sketches.
Oh sure they're not the cheapest thing in the world, and it's not as easy to have a look at what you're getting before you buy it, but it's one method. In that thread I was pointed to another service, which seems like a good idea. It's called BlogBinders and converts your blog into a book in the same 3 formats as provided by CafePress.
From my point of view, I think it would be great to collect my posts as a book for myself. Hey I might be online a lot but I'm a complete book junkie. I've only started thinking about this, but I'd need to edit everything to show the links in full, and I'd probably have to delete or not include a few of the earlier posts as they were pretty rubbish (or do I include them to see how rubbish they actually where?).
Where did Podz get his info from?
You mean in general? He's been testing things and trying to make things work on several platforms, helping people out EVERY SINGLE DAY. You kind of pick things up that way ^_^.
Do you think WP is such a complicated system that an intelligent, relatively tech-savvy person couldn't work out how it all works reasonably quickly without having to "steal" Podz's content?
^_^
No you're right, someone who is tech savy would be able to deal with it pretty quickly but would he know what the pertinent questions are? Would he know what level to aim it at for the general WP user?
If I'm going to write a book I research the hell out of it, as I'm sure you do as well ^_-. Otherwise the reader knows what a poor writer you are.
Larry says that he is not completely familiar with wordpress ins and outs. He's going to need to go somewhere for the information...
Don't you think a person could conduct some pretty good research by just playing around with the WP system?
Really, that would be a big chunk of your book right there. Just play around with it and explain how the whole things works.
Add some stuff on CSS, writing style, the culture of blogging, etc., and there you go: a nice introductory guide to the blogging "phenomenon" and how you can get involved, probably geared towards less technical users.
As for my own writing, yes, I conduct plenty of research ;)
Yes you're right, WP isn't rocket science if you know PHP and Mysql you could do whatever you wanted. The thing is from my point of view, a new WP user comes along and says that he's going to be writing a wordpress manual.
Cool, let's have a look at what he's done, oh not so sure, never written a plugin, or a hack, or a template, never posted anything to help anyone out. Oh that's strange what makes him think he's got what it takes?
Erm has he been involved with any PHP projects before? He claims so, but erm nothing that I can see.
Well ok I've got to accept that this man knows what he's doing. I've got to accept that he's going to be doing this from scratch rather than searching the already available documentation.
I've got to accept he's going to take it the hard way, rather than the easy way.
Don't you think that's all a bit much to accept? No it's not rocket science, but someone has spent time explaining it to those who don't know how. Spent HOURS and hours. If I was him I wouldn't accept it either. Nothing except Larry's word that he knows PHP and has the skill to understand everything in a week proves to the contrary.
I'm in Podz's corner for a couple of reason, he's helped me out in the past several times. He's helped out hundreds of users on the forums as well.
I can accept a guy who's been doing the WP rounds for a while, going 'You know what, I'm going to write a book to get all these ideas I write down every day out there'.
If Chris Davis decided to write a book on WP, I guarantee you Podz would have offered to give EVERYTHING to him (with some credit attribution probably). The reason is Chris has proven himself time and time again in the WP community.
Larry is an unknown entity that unfortunately has come across as someone that doesn't get the ethos of the WP community as a whole. He might be the biggest PHP guru, but he's got a lot to learn about WP.
I've certainly learned quite a bit about the WP community the past couple of days! I've met several interesting people and visited many excellent WP blogs. I can understand the scepticism of longtime WP users when a newcomer (as Podz eloquently put it) "swans in" and expresses a desire to write a WP book. Sure there are others more qualified than I am, but I have the advantage that I can make the time available for such a project.
You say I "don't get the ethos of the WP community". Help me out and briefly describe your take on this ethos. If it's anything like the ethos of the general free software community I've been familar with that for years and whole-heartedly support it.
Larry
Larry I will gladly talk about the WP Community and what it means to me and what I've learnt through it. The thing is as you can see I don't mince words and do write really long posts. I've got to dash now, but when I get back I'll talk about it in a lot more detail for sure.
There's no reason why you can't reconsile with Podz about all of this. Seems that it's been blown a bit out of proportion so cooler heads should prevail.
Khaled,
Nice to read a reasoned response from the "other side" :)
Personally, my main objection to Podz's attitude was the childish manner in which he presented it. I find it difficult to listen to people when they're overflowing like that :)
Anyway, enough from me. Looking forward to Shuttle ;)
[...] er’s work. In fact, one of the contributors to the thread has even gone so far as to intimate I stole too. His response was arrogant. He then scoured my website - an [...]