Possible WordPress Book

Podz,

You seem like a nice guy, you generally respond in a pleasant fashion to people’s questions in the forums, and, though I haven’t looked at much of “your” material, it seems you’ve put together some nice tutorials for the benefit of the community. Good on you for all of these things ??

Having said that, you are not the “be all and end all” of the WordPress scene. You are not the WordPress guru we all come running to when we have a problem. There are other ways a person could research a book on WordPress than run to your site and “steal” “your” material. You’re being very paranoid. There’s really no need ??

I’m really not trying to start any silly arguments here, but your actions and manner are rather immature. You have certain opinions, fine; I respect you for that. But at least try to express those opinions in a civilised, grown-up fashion. This frothiness of yours is really not conducive to healthy debate ??

I might also note that given your position as a WordPress developer, what you say, and how you say it, may well have a particular influence on people’s attitudes towards the WordPress product. Something to bear in mind, perhaps.

Mfiszman,

Most of what fuels Podz’ fire is that he’s devoted a great deal of his time to supporting and contributing to WordPress, but I’ve never heard of Larry Ayers until he made this forum post about his book plans. In fact, this topic is the first topic he’s ever made. Since then, he’s added several replies to this topic and posted one reply to another topic in which he recommended Emacs for composing your WordPress posts. Larry has also only used WordPress for less than three months and only made a total of 29 posts using WordPress. In short, there are other people far more qualified to write a WordPress book. This is not to say that Larry may not write a good book, but it would seem that most of us (Podz included) would rather not have the author of this book be someone who just appeared in the WordPress community. And, if you look at Larry’s blog he hasn’t been the most mature either. Call that what you may, but when you start using someone’s mental condition as evidence for why they’re wrong, you’re hitting pretty far below the belt. And, remember, any developer has the right to be passionate about his project.

To the hundreds who have no doubt read this by now, and have said nothing, cheers, great, lovely.

To the very few who have posted here and supported me, Thank You.

To Larry – that was a low, low thing to do. It had no fucking place on your site.

And for the powers that be ? WP Community ? Fuck I’ve been ignorant.

macmanx,

Fair enough ??

But just a note on a “developer being passionate”…

I (generally) think it’s wonderful that people are passionate about ideas, but anger and aggression are (generally) not the best ways to convey those ideas to others.

Also, re. Larry’s blog: that’s really more of a personal forum ??

Yes, of course, others are invited in. But Larry’s blog is Larry’s blog; he sets the agenda, he can write what he likes.

The WordPress forums belong to the entire community and shouldn’t really be used for personal agendas.

I think it’s a bit selfish to talk too much about yourself here ??

I guess this means I’m qualified to write a book about WP then, yes? ??

Seriously, whatever. I’m not in the demographic for an introductory-level WordPress book, “WordPress for Dummies” kinda thang, so that makes me qualified to write it. Don’t get mad, it’s true. I have the necessary amount of PHP, *NIX, Windows, Apache/IIS, and MySQL knowledge/experience to cover 99% of the bases when it comes to installing and using WP at a beginner level.

On the other hand, I don’t see any point in doing so. How hard is WP to install? Not very. Odd server configurations can make it more difficult, but all of the common problems are well documented already. How hard is WP to actually use? Not very. Click Write, then write. Easy easy. Again, the features are well documented already.

But on the other other hand, this information is NOT all gathered in one spot. It’s spread and sprinkled over blogs, wikis, forums and brains. Someone should collect this information into a single, highly searchable and accesible location. The Codex comes to mind, though it doesn’t necessarily need to be the place.

Yes, everyone says “someone should…” and no one does it. I am, unfortunately, no exception this time. I don’t have the time, but I definitely would if I did. Actually, I will have the time in a few weeks or so, but hey – changing the world is hard work and takes a surprising amount of paperwork ??

So Larry, I can’t say I see any real market for a printed WP book. Some people would buy it, most wouldn’t. If profits went to support WP itself, though, that might be different ?? It would be smart to gain the support and input of the community instead of alienating them in that case, though.

Podz, I haven’t bothered reading this whole thread, but I did get the picture. I am one of the hundreds who never read the posts here before just now, and I am saying something. I love WordPress, end of story. I don’t care if Cybil (or Sybil… or Truddi Chase for that matter) writes the thing. NuclearMoose could be a 300 pound sumo wrestler from Sweden for all I know, and it wouldn’t matter. You guys have done a spectacular job here.

Shallow folk care about image – “oh, this dev’s a trans-gendered cross-dressing homophobic midget with herpes” is a deal-killer for them (I’m not calling anyone a herpes-riddled trans-gendered cross-dressing homophobic midget, it’s just an example off the top of my head), but many of us don’t. Shallow folk care about a buck more than they care about “right,” but many of us don’t. Shallow folk resort to personal attacks when they have nothing stronger to make their points with, but many of us don’t.

Am I coming through? I wrote too much….

In short, I say let Larry write his book and keep the money. If he can write a decent WP book after such short experience, power to him. I won’t buy it. If he violates copyrights, bend him over and do him dry (sorry, crude analogy there, but apt given the legal system these days). If he decides to do the smart thing (in my humble opinion) and write the book with the profits donated to WP (or even other F/OSS projects related to it), then I’ll buy the thing whether I need it or not.

In closing (the length, sorry, I can’t help it), I don’t need any flak for this post. Don’t like my opinion? Fine ?? I suspect I’ll be happier if I ignore what remains of life in this thread, at least until certain folk start acting their ages instead of their shoe sizes (nope, not going to be more specific than that – if this sentence insulted you, then you’re probably one of those folk, and you know it; don’t get mad at me for pointing it out).

Did anyone count how many grammar rules I’ve senselessly broken here?

It’s all moot at this point as O’Reilly hasn’t yet responded to my proposal.

As for donating profits to WP: who would these even go to? The developers of WP don’t seem to be in it for the money, as they have turned down offers of money in exchange for features. Is there some sort of WP non-profit organization in existence? I’m open to the idea of donating a portion of any profit I might make on a book to some sort of WP organization, if such an entity exists.

Larry

See that Button at the top there Larry, it says DONATE. Simple concept actually. It doesn’t say DONATE FOR FEATURES :).

After spending an hour reading thru this post for the first time, let me add my two cents. First things first, I would not buy an online book for a blog. Second of all I think Larry has done much harm to himself as to why he would be a good author for this book, through his own admission of only three weeks use age of WP.

The point of writing a book was compared to the hundreds of books written about Windows sticks out to me as a valid comparison.

Who am I to say that Larry might not make the best author, well I have taken the time to read his posts here and a minute on his own blog, writing skills are shown better by other posters within this thread.

As fas as the knock on bipolor, I found this to be a cheap shot, I did go to Podz site and found his own reference to it but in the light he made it I felt it was facetious. This reminds me of a page I saw on thirty some reasons for not posting your picture on the internet.

While some points by Larry are made, I just do not feel that this book would go over well so it will join Amber Frey’s book on the list, along with Hillary’s of things I will not read

I support Podz because Podz has done a great deal of WP help. WP is the way it is because of hard working helpers like Podz and the others. I myself couldn’t do all the work Podz does.

A book would be thrown away when the information is dated. Free online PDFs or books would be there and updated.

Anyone who has been around here for any length of time knows all about the the countless hours of work Podz has put into his guides and the THOUSANDS of posts here on the forum helping people. He has the right to be protective of his own work in what way he sees fit.

You or I or the next person can go ahead and create a unique product using WordPress as the basis. It’s all part of the big scheme of things.

This thread is now starting to meander into darkness and it is getting far too personal for my taste. I can’t close this thread, but if I could, I would. Enough said, people.

I don’t think anyone was suggesting Podz’s work or anyone else’s be stolen. Please consider this thread closed, until I upgrade bbPress to actually close it, which I don’t have time to do right now because I’m working on 1.5.

CLOSED – REPLIES WILL BE DELETED

I am a newbie to WordPress and I am very imPress’ed by it;)

I wanted to know more about the under the hood stuff so I googled “books WordPress” and this forum was top of the list.

I am glad I read all the postings as now I know that all the information I need is available online. This is a change of paradigm for me as I normally tend to run towards linear media such as books when faced with the challenge of learning something new.

I am sure as WP continues to grow that more and more people will seek info about WP and its capabilities just as I did and looking for a book may probably be their first attempt to accomplish this.

Had I not read this particular heated forum topic I probably still would be looking for a printed guide.

Educationally speaking, people like me need to quickly learn the methods, etiquette and conventions associated with the online, do-it-yourself nature of learning about software such as WP. I need to build CONFIDENCE so that I can do this without a book beside me.

Now, my first step is to learn “how to learn” from online resources. I will set about researching WP through the fantastic resources that this community has contributed for free. THANK YOU to all who have provided beginners like me with very useful and encouraging information and the support to get me through this.

Thank you for your COMMUNITY

Thanks for the positive note, sea. We’re here to help you when the online documentation doesn’t give you what you need.

And now that threads can be closed, I’ll go ahead and close this!