Scott Reilly (aka coffee2code) joins Audrey Capital

WordPress developer and self-described “prolific plugin developer” Scott Reilly has joined Audrey Capital, Matt Mullenweg’s angel investment and research company. Reilly joins Audrey’s other developers Andrew Nacin and Samuel (Otto) Wood to work on WordPress.org and whatever other special projects come their way.

Reilly has contributed to WordPress since 2004, both by contributing patches to core and by developing and releasing many, many plugins. Odds are you’ve used at least one of his slew of plugins at one point or another — I’ve certainly praised his plugin work time and time again.

Developers at Audrey Capital, put simply, work on whatever projects Mullenweg assigns. Their work often includes work on WordPress.org (the website) and other community initiatives. The work often coincides with the consumption of barbecue, as it did this past week.

Follow WordCamp Austin and Seattle from the comfort of your home

WordCamp Seattle and WordCamp Austin are happening this weekend. Actually, they’re happening right now. Since it’s far too late to snag a ticket and run over there (far, far too late), I suggest you attend the events in whatever way you can:

• WordCamp Seattle: #wcsea hashtag on Twitter and the livestream of all three stages
• WordCamp Austin: #wcatx hashtag on Twitter

Just because you can’t be there doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy (part of) the show. And hey, while you’re here in this post, why don’t you share the next WordCamp you plan to attend in the flesh. Visit WordCamp Central to see the events happening all over planet Earth in the near future.

Code Poet relaunches, expands beyond a listing service

“I’m just a huge supporter of having all these small businesses built around WordPress, whether individuals or small companies,” Pete Davies told me over the phone. “And I know there’s stuff that people struggle with everyday, and stuff you can’t help them with in the WordPress forums.”

Davies is the Premium Services Lead at Automattic, and the lead on the latest Code Poet project. He and his team have expanded CodePoet.com from a directory of high-end WordPress consultants into a resource site for anyone building website — or ”making things” — with WordPress.

The new CodePoet.com, or rather build.CodePoet.com, offers two free ebooks, interviews with WordPress professionals, and a collection of resources the team has curated that they think other Code Poets would find useful. The listings, or Code Poet Directory, can now be found at directory.codepoet.com.

For builders, not just developers

When other members of Automattic looked over the new Code Poet drafts, some said “Okay, but where’s all the code at?” Davies chuckled a bit as he told the story, since Automattic’s work usually includes clever bits of code here or there. The new site is “for builders, not just developers.”

In addition to original interviews (like the ones with business owners Wes Chyrchel and Jonathan Greeley and Ruth Thompson on the site now) Code Poet offers two free ebooks tackling big questions in professional WordPress circles right now: pricing and responsive design.

Above: Getting Pricing Right (left) features Mark Jaquith, Shane Pearlman, and Remkus de Vries walking through their own pricing strategies. WordPress and Responsive Design (right) tackles responsive design with Chris Coyier, Ian Stewart and Sara Cannon.

The new site is “for builders, not just developers.”

One of the more playful parts of the new site is the WordPress IQ Test, powered by Smarterer and featuring questions such as:

• How do you deactivate a plugin?,
• What is the default user role?, and
• How do you delete the Uncategorized category?

Smarterer scores your answers based on their accuracy and the time it takes you to answer correctly. I ended up with a 777, just three points short of the “Master” level.

Clearly the quiz is fundamentally flawed.

 

Once taken, the Code Poet site will pull in the information from Smarterer and rank Code Poets based on high scores. Eternal bragging rights not necessarily included.

The future of Code Poet

“Normally [for us] there aren’t hard deadlines for much,” Davies said. “We reached out to Seattle and Austin six weeks ago and said we wanted to do this, and having a date fixed, where we had to have everything ready by, has been an interesting experience for Automattic.” Davies and Michael Pick (who also designed the new Code Poet) will be presenting at both camps today. Each will include an announcement of the new Code Poet. The talks are called “Things We Learned the Hard Way” and are partly based on the findings of the WordPress survey taken last year.

WordCamp Seattle and WordCamp Austin will be the first to hear about the new Code Poet, but it won’t be stop there. In the near future CodePoet.com will be replacing Jetpack as the default brand representing Automattic when they sponsor WordCamps.

Aside from the specific offerings with the new Code Poet, it was clear from talking to Davies that he, and it sounded like his whole team, is very excited about the new project. He emphasized that this is just a start, and hopes to find out more about what the community would like to see as Code Poet continues to grow.

“If we get to a point where we bring in people who actually don’t event use WordPress right now, but do some website design and things like that,” Davies said, “and we can introduce them to the concepts to make WordPress work for them, then all the better.”

WPCandy Roundtable #2: JJJ, Boone Gorges, Paul Gibbs on BuddyPress

I’m happy to present episode number two of the WPCandy Roundtable Podcast, this time with the BuddyPress Core Team of John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, and Paul Gibbs. They spoke for just over an hour about issues of interest to them within the BuddyPress community, and where things are going in the near future.

This episode is sponsored by the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io and the Typecase plugin by UpThemes.

• MP3 file (41.8 MB)
• Subscribe on iTunes (coming soon!)
• Audio RSS Feed

The gentleman also wanted me to say that if there were further questions you had about BuddyPress after listening, you’re welcome to leave them here and they will stop by and have a look at them.

WordPress in place of Sharepoint

Joe Flood pitches the advantages of using WordPress and assorted plugins as your Intranet, in place of more bloated systems:

By using WordPress, you turn “add this information to the Intranet” from a frustrating task into something as simple as blogging. And just think how good your Intranet could be if people actually wanted to contribute to it.

Aftertaste #19: After WP Late Night 9

This episode of Aftertaste followed WP Late Night #9 and saw the crew discussing potential future shows (particularly for the WPCandy Roundtable Podcast), and how we want to see questions sent in to the WP Late Night show.

Oh, and we chose the “Pewed a J” episode title, of course.

• MP3 file (2.7 MB)
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Audio RSS Feed

WP Late Night #9: “Pewed a J”

On this week’s episode of WP Late Night we discussed the WordPress Community Summit, security issues and WordPress plugins, and the newly launched WP App Store. And you know you want to listen in to find out where that episode title comes from, right?

This episode is sponsored by the Typecase plugin by UpThemes and the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io.

• MP3 file (19.8 MB)
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Audio RSS Feed
• Watch on Spreecast

Episode #9 Show Notes

• Philly Tech Week
• Fundraiser Brad and his group donated to via Philly Tech Week
• Roundtable with Mike McAlister, Jake Caputo, Chris Molitor
• Submit your questions for the WPCandy Roundtable Podcast with BuddyPress Core Team
• WordPress Community Summit 2012
• Jane’s Jitterbug cafe opening Memorial Day weekend 2012 (and our story on the community support via Kickstarter)
• Official WordPress plugin directory and forcing plugin updates
• Giveaway of Typecase Pro
• Plugin header images on the WordPress.org plugin directory
• WP App Store launched
• WP App Store advisory board
• Dear theme developers, this is how you add scripts in WordPress themes
• E.Webscapes Design blog
• Brad’s guesses on Pink Pony and WP Honey Badger
• New resource: QueryPosts.com
• Dre recommends AdSanity plugin
• Monster Widget plugin by Automattic

Giveaway: Win a copy of Typecase Pro and a year’s dev club at UpThemes

Chris Wallace at UpThemes has generously offered up 10 copies of his Typecase Pro plugin (usually $19) for giveaway, in addition to one grand prize of a year’s developer club membership at UpThemes (usually $99) and an UpThemes t-shirt.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post or tweet at @wpcandy and @upthemes on Twitter and tell us your favorite font — bonus points for linking to an example of the font in use in a cool way. We’ll randomly select the winners from those who comment and tweet.

We’ll be collecting entries for the next week, and announcing the winner next Wednesday on the blog.

It’s been a while since we did a giveaway here, so this should be fun! Have at it in the comments.

Diary of WordCamp Netherlands 2012

Siobhan McKeown with an excellent writeup of WordCamp Netherlands 2012 on Smashing Magazine. Killer photos, interviews, and a day by day breakdown. Love it.

Have any questions for the BuddyPress Core team?

This week’s WPCandy Roundtable will be filled with BuddyPress Core developers: John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, and Paul Gibbs will be sitting down to chat. If you caught last week’s show with the marketplace theme developers, you’ll know a thing or two about what to expect tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be streaming the Roundtable on the WPCandy Stream at 2pm EDT (18 UTC) with the chatroom buzzing if you’d like to swing by and get your question answered by the group.

Speaking of questions, if you have one (or a few) that you’d like to see posed to these BuddyPress pros leave it in the comments below. Make ‘em good ones!