Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on the internet. All of this post is speculation by a blogger.
WordPress, everyone’s favorite blogging platform, is released under the GNU GPL, an open source software license. The GPL is notable in that it not only requires that source code be made available, but that it stipulates that anyone may modify and redistribute that source code as long as the derivative works are also licensed under the GPL.
Is a theme integrated into WordPress closely enough that it’s required to be licensed under the GPL? This morning, Matt Mullenweg (creator of WordPress) posted a piece stating the “official” view that WordPress themes must be GPL.
How does this play with the premium (read: $$$) themes which are available for WordPress? I’m a big fan of Thesis (so much of a fan that I offer up that affiliate link), but a GPL-ed theme would wipe out the basic revenue model of “pay to use the theme.” There would still be opportunity for payment for services such as the excellent Thesis support forums, but the basic pay-to-use notion would be gone, since the code would be freely available from any number of sources.
I decided to pop the question of Thesis’ future to Chris Pearson (@pearsonified), the man behind DIYthemes which is the company that releases Thesis:
ahockley: Curious to see how this affects some premium themes, namely Thesis: http://bit.ly/txqE0 @pearsonified
pearsonified: @ahockley It won’t affect Thesis at all.
ahockley: @pearsonified Thanks for the reply… but… Thesis isn’t GPL, is it?
pearsonified: No
ahockley: @pearsonified So if Automattic says themes need to be GPL, and Thesis isn’t GPL, how does this not affect Thesis? Connect the dots for me
pearsonified: @ahockley Automattic says that, but they cannot and will not enforce it. Therefore, DIYthemes will continue to operate as normal.
Interesting way of handling the situation… sounds like Pearson isn’t planning to change his operation unless forced, and he’s confident that Automattic won’t press the issue.
Photo by stopnlook, used under Creative Commons licensing
Last month I launched Social Photo Talk, a new blog powered by WordPress. I kept track of the steps as I put the site together. This is not a comprehensive guide, but a rough list of the various tasks that I took care of in the preparation and launch of the site.
Beginnings
- Purchase domain
- Setup domain on web host (I use A2 Hosting and have been quite happy)
- Install WordPress
- Install Maintenance Mode and activate
- Setup user account (not the admin account)
- Activate Akismet
- Go through each Settings panel, update as needed, paying particular attention to permalinks and the discussion (comment) options
- Install Thesis and make it the active theme. That’s an affiliate link
- Install initial plugins:
- Customize the Theme
- Write “About” Page
- Setup sidebar widgets
- subscription options (rss, twitter)
- affiliate/ads
- category archives
- recent comments
- delicious links
- OpenID integration
- Setup analytics (Mint)
- Custom 404 page
- Custom Archives page powered by Clean Archives Reloaded
- Setup Twitter account + avatar
- Favicon
Launching
- Deactivate Maintenance Mode
- Disable Twitter Tools*
- Publish queued posts for initial site content
- Announce Site to the Public
- Re-enable Twitter Tools
- Setup Feedburner (create feed, redirect WordPress)
- Feedburner email subscription
- Skribit widget
- Vanity/search feeds
* Be sure to disable Twitter Tools while publishing content before you announce the site, lest someone discover it before you’re ready. Once your initial content is on the site, re-enable the plugin before you forget.
Obviously this is a fairly rough list, with some steps being quite vague (like “Customize the theme”), but I wanted to get this online both as a reference for myself and others in the future.
If you can read this, I’ve figured out how to blog from TextMate. Oh yes, I’m becoming Macified.
I asterisked the word “painless” in the title of this post since Vidoop’s downfall certainly isn’t painless for its employees, many of whom I call friends. But as an OpenID user taking advantage of delegation, the process of switching providers is fairly straightforward.
The quick backstory for those of you wondering What Is OpenID Delegation: Delegation allows one to use a URL that is not an OpenID provider as their claimed OpenID URL. A bit of code that is embedded in the headers of that URL contains redirection code so that OpenID requests are sent to the actual OpenID provider.
In my case, I’d been using Vidoop’s MyVidoop product as my OpenID provider. I added code to the header section of http://www.aaronhockley.com so that I could give that out as my OpenID URL. When I made an OpenID claim using that URL, the code would redirect the request to Vidoop, where I would authenticate, and be redirected back to the relying party. The sites that use OpenID record my aaronhockley.com address, but I authenticated using Vidoop’s secure system.
With Vidoop about to disappear, I needed a new OpenID provider. I chose VeriSign’s PIP system due to their support for two-factor authentication. After signing up for PIP, I updated the code on aaronhockley.com to point to VeriSign’s servers, and that’s the end of the story. I can continue to use aaronhockley.com as my OpenID URL even though my provider has changed, and all of my accounts across the web that are linked to that URL will still work without any disruption in service.
