The news is out there. I have accepted a position with a WordPress-oriented startup here in Austin. This means that, effectively immediately, Emmense Technologies will no longer be accepting new clients. We will, of course, live up to our contractual agreements with existing clients.

For WordPress consulting, I recommend Mark Jaquith of Covered Web Services or Andrew Nacin, both of whom are intimately familiar with WordPress.

For about 10 years, I have been providing a variety of services to clients, first as a guy who would build web pages on weekends and evenings, and then as an independent entrepreneur. While the scope of the work performed has varied over the years, I’ve always been focused on the web. In recent years, this has become particularly difficult with the widespread adoption of the iPhone and Android phones. It would be easy to jump from web-centric business to building apps for popular phones.

Emmense Technologies is a WordPress service provider though. This is what we’re good at, but you already know this. We’ve never sent out a newsletter but increasingly, it is becoming important. In just a few weeks, WordPress 3.0 will be hitting the Internet. What should you know about it? What can you do to be prepared? How can you get ahead of your competition?

Plus, of course, we want to let you know about special deals that you might not want to pass up. But first, let’s get into WordPress a little.

WordPress 3.0 – What’s new?

WordPress 3.0 is a radical new release that merges all the best of multi-site WordPress into the standard WordPress software. This integration, known by the epic name “The Merge”, should be a seamless migration for prior WordPress MU clients.

There is a paradigm shift in WordPress 3.0, however. A terminology shift. In prior releases, we called it WordPress MU. In WordPress 3.0, we are exposing WordPress Multi Site capability via a Network option.

Besides the merge, WordPress 3.0 is also bringing custom content types to full fruition. For those of you who may have looked at robust content management systems like Joomla or Dupal before can now get all the custom content type functionality in WordPress.

We do offer upgrade services. Some plugins may not work with WordPress 3.0 and I highly recommend testing, testing, testing. We can do this for you so you can focus on your business. We can also help you take advantage of some of the new features in WordPress 3.0 so that you are one step ahead of your competition.

WordPress Bible

The WordPress Bible was released on Jan 27, 2010 and continues to rank as the top selling book on WordPress. For every new project, I will be providing a copy of this book. That’s every new project, not every new client. So if you’ve done work with Emmense Technologoies before, you’re still eligible.

Read what some readers have said:

Of the various WordPress books in the marketplace, few excel in the ways that this book does. The author writes in an engaging way that never makes you feel like you can’t grasp his points or aren’t technically savvy enough to understand. The book therefore appeals to both the learning student of WordPress as well as more experienced developers. -Mike Erb, Syracuse, NY

Clear. Concise. Easy-to-follow. A stellar effort by Mr. Brazell that I would *highly* recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress — whether neophyte or expert. -Melissa Delgaudio, Shepherdstown, WV

March Discount

Existing customers get 20% off on new projects with Emmense Technologies.

SXSW

Finally, I will be at SXSW Interactive. If you’re going to be there, find me. I’d like to catch up, buy you a beer and talk about the future.

Best,

Aaron Brazell

In a little over a week and a half, the lion share of the web technology community will be descending on Austin, Texas for the 2010 edition of SXSW Interactive. As in the last 3 years, I will be there as well.

My agenda this year is very simple:

• Promote the WordPress Bible,
• Find new and interesting companies and individuals working with WordPress and looking to bring on a consultant to help them achieve their goals,
• Find possibilities for full time job opportunities in Austin.

The last one might seem a little odd. Why would I look for full time employment while owning a consultancy? The answer is counter-intuitive but frankly, I miss working with others, collaborating and seeing a project through. I want to be closer to the action, and I’m looking for a reason to move to Austin on a permanent basis.

Austin has some fantastic companies, in my search. They are, of course, known as a somewhat high-tech center with chip manufacturing and enterprise software manufacturers. They do, of course, have a growing startup scene as well. It’s also cheaper than DC, something that I find very attractive.

Primarily, I’m looking for a senior management role that would allow me to utilize my extensive technical background with a team of developers, but with a product/project management twist. I’d like to be able to interface on the business side as well and I think the public facing capital I’ve built up over the years would serve any company well. An online version of my resumé (with a direct PDF download link) can be found here.

I will be in town for a week and am able to meet during that time. Drop me a line at aaron@technosailor.com or at (443) 455-1056.

We’ve all been a little miserable lately with all the snow. I mean, here in the DC area, we’ve been struck by three blizzards in two months, something that I don’t recall happening ever in my 20+ years living around here. In Dallas, they got a freak 8 inches.

Then there’s Vancouver where the winter games are occurring. They have hardly any snow. IT’s a miserable winter.

That’s why I’d like to offer you a special deal in honor of President’s Day and this weather. For $150, I will spend 30 minutes on the phone with you discussing strategy and recommendations pertaining to your WordPress-powered site. This is the same amount of time that I usually spend speaking to a room of people at conferences. Except, in this case, it’s one on one.

Now of course, there is some fine print. Not a lot, but important. You must email me at aaron@technosailor.com and schedule the call. Secondly, the consultation must happen on Monday, February 15 or Tuesday, February 16. I’m on the east coast of the United States, so I’ll be arranging appointments between 10am and 6pm ET.

The other piece of fine print is bonus for you: You get a free copy of the WordPress Bible, the book I wrote, shipped straight to your door! It’s one of the hottest selling WordPress books right now.

So drop me an email. Let me know when you cannot meet. I’ll see what I can do to help you out.

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

It is our intention, here at Emmense, to support the Facebook HipHop methodology where appropriate. We will be exploring the use and implementation of this technology in the days and weeks to come and will be working to build solutions that leverage it in the WordPress world for our clients. Where possible, our work will be conributed back to the WordPress core where appropriate.

While we expect that many more service providers will likely leverage this technology, we want to continue to lead in the WordPress community in an ever-open exchange of ideas between the PHP and WordPress communities.

Quick How-to here on folder permissions to allow for WordPress image uploading. Some have reported seeing an error similar to below.

This error is confusing for non-technical users. How to fix it?

Well, it turns out it’s pretty easy. First, you need to make sure you have an FTP client. This will allow you to manage files and folders directly on your server. Be aware of the dangers of FTP, however, and if you have the option, use Secure FTP (SFTP) or SSH instead.

For Mac users, I highly recommend Transmit from Panic software. Fetch is a solid second. Windows users can look at Filezilla.

Having done that, log into your server with your FTP credentials (ask your host if you don’t know this). Browse to your wp-content/ folder. Highlight the uploads/ folder. If it doesn’t exist, create it.

Right click or context click and look for an option to change permission or view information about the folder. In that dialog, there will likely be a setting for changing file permissions. Every FTP client is slightly different, so poke around a bit if it’s not readily obvious.

Once you find the permission settings, set the permission number to 777 (or Read, Write, Execute for User, Group and All). This is a very liberal permission setting and not to be used everywhere. Only on this directory!. You can apply the permission to all files and folders underneath this folder if you’d like.

If you want to login via SSH and apply the same permission setting, you can issue this command:

.

For more information about using WordPress, setting permissions or FTP security, make sure you buy my book, the WordPress Bible.

I’ve been working with Linux for years now, and one of the main things you learn early on is that it’s better to use an SSHKey than it is to use a password. It gets confusing to some people (including myself), sometimes, where things are supposed to go to make it simple to do password-less entry into a server.

I started using this script in 2007 and have kept it around and use it regularly (whenever I need to log on to other servers other than my own). It was originally somewhere on the internet, and I’ve taken it and modified it further.

Make sure this script is executable. It won’t work on Windows since Microsoft still hasn’t introduced native SSH. But it will work on Mac OS X or Linux variants.

It is invoked simply by typing:

Clearly, substitute sshuser with your username and sshhost.tld with your IP address or servername. (Also, ncc-1701$ is my command prompt – don’t type that) You’ll have to enter the password the first time, then the script will take your DSA public key and place it in the appropriate place on the remote server. Logout and try logging in normally and, if all goes well, you’ll login without having to enter your password.

If there’s one thing I have been consistent on in the past (almost) 6 years of blogging and engaging on the web, it’s that I believe in the mantra “no sacred cows”. In politics, I confound and confuse members of both parties who look at life through sterilized lenses that reflect their party platform. I will often stir up controversy by dragging people into a process of debate that, while respectful, causes them to think and re-think their positions. At least that’s the goal. I am a fiercely independent thinker and though some of my closest friends are on the left, I’ve ruthlessly challenged the parts of the left that I don’t like while supporting the ones I do. I’ve done the same thing with folks on the right.

So as I prepare to write this article with an admittedly slightly inflammatory title, I expect it will cause some controversies – maybe, and perhaps intentionally, it will cause some rancor in the leadership of the WordPress community itself – the ones who set the tone and cadence for the rest of the community. This is not all bad and nobody can ever accuse me of not being consistent in how I approach issues I feel strongly about.

For nearly 10 years, I have been coding in PHP. For the past 4, I have spent my time focusing my energies on WordPress specifically. It seems to me that for software that is built on PHP, then, there should be some consistent crossover between the WordPress community and the PHP community. That natural convergence does not seem to exist however.

Early on, when getting started on the web, I hung out a lot over at the SitePoint Forums. It was there that, through a community of PHP developers of varying skill levels, that I cut my teeth. I knew nothing at the time and there were folks who were much more skilled than me. It was in the PHP 4 era (that era had just begun and has since ended) so there was no such thing as real classes and object orientation. XML parsing became a hot topic during those days as PHP devs wrestled with the best way (they were all ugly!) to parse XML. I was just trying hard to figure out how to connect to a database.

I spent months learning and picking up what I could and contributing back my learnt wisdom to other newbies along the way. The cycle of karma was great as people learned and taught each other.

Shortly after I left SitePoint in 2003, I started blogging (May of 2004). I started on Textpattern but within a week, as my curiosity about this new WordPress platform started hitting my ears, I switched over to WordPress. I joined the wp-hackers mailing list and began immersing myself in the WordPress community. Generally speaking, people were very helpful and I learned a lot.

Eventually, as part of that community, I would lead the technology efforts at b5media where my team was responsible for a very large WordPress farm. Having some of the best and the brightest working alongside me meant that my good understanding of the PHP involved in WordPress, and the event driven nature of its core, would increase to maybe very good.

Today, my business is WordPress. I just wrote the WordPress Bible. I do WordPress consulting. I run all my blogs on WordPress. I speak at WordCamps all over. Heck, I’m organizing WordCamp Mid-Atlantic again this year. I love the WordPress community.

During the writing of the Bible, Keith Casey, my friend and also a top developer in the PHP community (He works with Marco Tabini of PHP Architect – if that doesn’t give him street cred, I don’t know what will), offered to review anything I wrote along the way. I took him up on it even though I already had editors including a very WordPress-specific technical editor. My thinking? Having someone from the greater PHP community look at my code for the WordPress world can only make it better.

My question is, why doesn’t the rest of the WordPress world do this as well? We, as a community, can only be better by embracing the greater PHP community. We can learn things from them. They can learn things from us. Of course, the greater PHP community is going to scorn WordPress for remaining PHP 4 compatible when PHP 4 is end of life and I think that point has validity but that’s not the point. I think both sides can agree that WordPress has its way and it is not likely to change its philosophy on this soon.

However, what about the rest of the converging community? Why do WordPress people not participate in the major PHP conferences like Tek-X or ZendCon? Why was Beau Lebens the only WordPress guy that I’m aware of that attended any of the 7-conferences-in-14-days-roaming-conference CodeWorks?

Why is it that when WordPress developers are asked to speak at these events, they look down their nose in scorn (I can think of two specific incidents that have been related to me)?

Hey, if we’re going to have a war on PHP coding ability, I’ve got to side with the PHP coders of the world, not the WordPress coders. If we’re going to have a war on extensible platforms, well, I’ll probably go with WordPress.

My point is really simple: The WordPress community needs to abandon this concept of elitism and isolationism. Yes, isolationism only makes you isolated. Over the past six months, I have come to appreciate the greater PHP community more. I’ve rekindled my love for that community and the karma and learning that comes from it. I’ve discovered new things about PHP because I’ve opened my horizons again and got outside the WordPress box. Fortunately, by doing so, I can apply that knowledge and karma inside the WordPress world as well. It’s sort of like finally getting that water after being parched and thirsty for so long. It’s refreshing and gives new energy and drive.

So in 2010, I will continue to work inside the WordPress world to try to influence change. My code will reflect that change. I’ve abandoned PHP 4 (but again, that’s beside the point) and won’t work with it in my own work, plugins, etc. I hope to make a major announcement regarding some crossover and convergence in the next few weeks as well.

To the PHP World: Understand that the WordPress world is different. You already know this. We are a PHP 4 world for a reason, like it or not. We need some understanding. We also have our feelings on GPL and open source which don’t always jive. Work with us. Help us be better.

To the WordPress world: Get outside your comfort zone and embrace the leaders in the PHP world. I already mentioned Keith. Add Marco Tabini, Ben Ramsey and Cal Evans to the list of people to pay attention to.

Quick documenting of a little known edge-case fix. If you head to the BuddyPress forums to find out why users can’t access BuddyPress links anymore, you’re likely to find answers involving a change in how BuddyPress handles themes between version 1.0.3 and version 1.1. The answer typically goes something along the lines of, “Make sure that if you upgrade from BuddyPress 1.0.3 to BuddyPress 1.1, you delete any evidence of the wp-content/bp-themes folder”.

While generally this is the case, there is another gotcha that I discovered today with some help from Andy Peatling. This seems to be a result of a series of actions and “features” in WordPress MU. Let me paint the picture.

1) If you import usernames with spaces in them from a WordPress import into WordPress MU, you will find it impossible to perform some functions in WordPress MU with those “spaced out” users. This is due to an oddity between the two platforms where WordPress allows usernames with spaces in them but WordPress MU does not. The importer in WordPress MU doesn’t respect this fact so it will happily import (or rather create) usernames with spaces. This will need to be ironed out in the merge as there should be consistency between the two platforms.

2) Having imported all content from WordPress into WordPress MU, you need to run some SQL along the lines of

This of course is not ideal but will do a SQL search and replace of usernames replacing spaces with hyphens effectively sanitizing the username for use in WordPress MU.

3) If you’ve done this with BuddyPress 1.0.3 active, then you should be functional but it creates an orphaned data potential that gets ugly later. Upgrading to BuddyPress 1.1 creates a new problem. Username sanitization is in BP 1.1. It is not in BP 1.0.3. Now there’s an incompatibility, in some cases, with user slugs. Try this solution. Add the following line to your wp-config.php file to enforce compatibility of usernames.

This is not a perfect solution but it does fix the crazy edge case. Verification should show you that accessing BuddyPress links for users works again. Starting from scratch, though, you should be on WPMU with BuddyPress 1.1.2 at minimum.

Lot’s of people have been using the php-twitter class that we released last year. We’re grateful that so many people have chosen to use the library. However, we also acknowledge that the class has significant shortcoming, not the least has been bugs and, well, things just not working as prescribed.

With that in mind, version 2 of the library is a complete rewrite. It will support all of the current Twitter API and I hope we’ll be able to release upgrades as Twitter releases more API. Even more notable, since Emmense Technologies is a WordPress-shop, the Twitter class is built on BackPress. Specifically, it is built on the HTTP class that supports more than just cURL since not every server supports cURL and those that do carry problems surrounding uploading of images.

The library is only available on SVN and it is not ready for primetime yet. There are dragons in those hills!

Roadmap for Version 2:

• Support for all basic Twitter API supported in the v1.x branch
• Support for Twitter List API
• Support for oAuth
• Support for Retweet API (Coming soon)
• Built on BackPress
• Fully PHP 5 compatible (Visibility, Objects, Child Classes, JSON)
• Error Catching
• Use All APIs together or use parts as needed
• Full Laconica/Identi.ca Support

Thank you for your patience as we roll this product together.

Aaron