1 – Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am Stephen Ou, I am currently working on a premium WordPress editor called Artsy Editor. I also made several web apps before including iTunes Instant, TwtRoulette, OhBoard, and OneExtraLap.

2 – You’ve accomplished some pretty visible releases at the tender age of 16. Do you feel that people don’t take you as seriously at that age, or is age but a number?
I think the age is just a number. Sure, people like to talk about age (ex. in order for blogs to attract traffic, they rather have headlines like “X years-old created Y”) and put me into a different consideration (both positively and negatively). But for me, I am just doing what I enjoy doing, and I seldom mention my age unless it’s necessary.

3 – It seems that you have a repeating pattern of looking for pain points inwell-known software (e.g. iTunes Instanthttp://mashable.com/2010/09/13/itunes-instant/ and now ArtstyEditor). What other pain points are on your mind?
Well, there are a lot that I would be like to see solved. Just a few examples:
- Domain registration and hosting setup. Right now no matter where you buy your domain and hosting, it takes a pretty long time to set it up and make sure everything is working. I’d love a way where I buy the domain in one-click and the hosting is set up for me in few seconds.

- Better ways to communicate with customers. I’d love to have FaceTime made for business. I really want a tool where I can video-chat with customers live so I can solve their requests faster and more efficiently. I want online businesses to have the same customer interaction as brick-and-mortar stores.

Credit

4 – What made you think to create ArtsyEditor in the first place? Not thatI’m complaining, it’s a welcome edition to the otherwise clumsy WordPresseditor.
The reason I started building it was because people wanted it, and they were willing to pay for it. I went through a customer development process where I got in touch with 100+ people, and 38 of them liked my idea and were willing to pay. From those kinds of positive responses, I knew I was onto something. So why give up the chance?

5 – Any plans to approach WordPress directly to try to get this incorporated into the core? Woothemes was able to do something to that effect before withtheir menu code which is now part of the WordPress core.
Possibly. WordPress has been the most revolutionary platform I’ve ever been into. It had helped me and others create countless websites and blogs. So if there is ever a chance that I can contribute to the core, I’d love to. But of course, I have to focus on Artsy Editor and build up something awesome first so I can get their attention.

6 – I saw your beta launch email. How’s the reception to your product been so far?
It is going exceptionally well. I’ve reached profitability before launch with a pre-launch promotion I did. And after the official launch today, more folks were coming to our site and trying out our free demo. We also received few nice pieces of coverage on The Next Web and TechInch.

7 – What else should we know?
Just something I say in most interviews: If you are about to start building stuff, choose something that solves real problems.

For a 20% discount on all products from ArtsyEditor we are including a special code for our readers!

SPECIAL CODE: 20NOWSOURCING

Still need another reason to attend? The final project of WordCamp Louisville will feature NowSourcing’s own Brian Wallace in a one-hour, interactive presentation on putting a WordPress site together from start to finish. But not just any site. The final project will also focus on generating traffic and getting indexed in search engines and noticed in social media.

You can register and get your ticket here, and doing so will give you a shot at a prize that includes:

- $100 iTunes giftcard
- 1 hour social media consultation from NowSourcing
- 1 hour SEO consultation from Southern Indiana Webworks

WordCamp is intended for all experience levels, so there’s no excuse. It’s taking place this Saturday at the Shelby Campus of the University of Louisville. Hope to see you there.

Ever heard of WordPress.org? If you haven’t, I’ll be surprised. WordPress’ blogging software has been downloaded over 6,000,000 times since the launch of version 1.5 in 2005, the first version in which WordPress introduced the use of Themes. Fast-forward to 2009 and developing these themes has become the livelihood of many professional web designers. In other words, if you’re like most web designers and feeling the effects of the financial crisis, perhaps you should consider designing you very own WordPress Premium Theme.

Around 90,000 Google searches are made every month for the term “Wordpress themes.” This has been a trend for the last three years and the hype over WordPress doesn’t seem to be dwindling. However, something that has happened is the commercialization of the theme market. There are over 20 well-established designers working full-time to create and sell what are referred to as Premium Themes.

Designing and Selling Premium Themes

Though the commercial concept of premium themes opposes the WordPress open source freeware philosophy, it has opened up a vast new market for web designers. Some of you may already have created a WordPress theme without charging anyone for it. Ever since WordPress went mainstream, web designers have frequently contributed with free themes, mostly to promote their skills and expand their portfolios. Designing premium themes, however, isn’t a huge step in the other direction.  You simply charge for your services, make the user interface more simple than the free themes available, and provide support/updates. People interested in purchasing premium themes aren’t usually interested in tinkering or learning to hack the layout. If I, as a blogger, purchase a premium theme, chances are I probably couldn’t design one myself.

Additional features that define premium themes are quality of design (aesthetics) and flexibility.  Professional web designers can charge their customers for a theme license only because they are providing a professional and high quality product. There will always be free WordPress themes for you to choose from, but updates, tweak tips, and a community forum are all what you’ll receive when purchasing a premium theme from any of the web’s top providers. Here’s why you should consider developing your own theme:

• The WordPress blogging platform is used by tens of millions of web denizens each day.

• It is an inspirational haven for any web designer to work with.

• The demand for unique and professional WordPress themes today is higher than it has ever been. Just take a look at what they are doing over at Woo Themes and you’ll understand.

• WordPress has become a trusted free CMS, thus more frequently used in serious website-projects where web design is gladly paid for (even the NYTimes utilizes WordPress).

Creating a Premium Theme – CSS, templates and functions

Now that we have discussed some of the business advantages of designing WordPress themes, let’s take a look at a few technical pros. Creating a WordPress theme requires the standard CSS development and graphic design skills, but it also includes some PHP and XHTML/HTML programming. Not to worry, the WordPress CMS uses a framework of three theme files. First there’s the standard CSS-stylesheet, style.css, that controls the look of the website. Then there are functions files, functions.php and template files.

If user interface is your thing and you’re not interested in becoming a developer – that’s fine – just connect with a PHP / WordPress developer. You will be able to provide him designs that can be sliced up and made into WordPress themes.
Finding a web developer with working knowledge of WordPress programming won’t be hard anyway. You can even download an existing theme, install it and configure the stylesheet, functions files and template files directly from the WP-admin dashboard. One important step here is to make sure to change theme information in the stylesheet-file.

Below is an example of the first few lines of the stylesheet, including unique information for one particular theme. WordPress does not tolerate or allow direct copying when creating your own theme.

/*
Theme Name: Rose
Theme URI: the-theme’s-homepage
Description: a-brief-description
Author: your-name
Author URI: your-URI
Template: use-this-to-define-a-parent-theme–optional
Version: a-number–optional
.
General comments/License Statement if any.
.
*/

For this trial and error approach, however, you’ll need a place to experiment online. Check out WordPress hosting in order to set up a suitable hosting account.

For more technical information on creating your own WordPress theme please take a look at WordPress.org’s own Theme Development.

Last week’s WordPress Wednesday about how to select a WordPress contact form plugin seemed to generate a lot of good discussion, so let’s continue a bit on the same subject.  Since last week’s post, a recurring question I’ve been asked here and privately: What about contact form 7? (by Ideasilo)

First off: I didn’t intentionally leave out Contact Form 7, it’s just been a while since I found myself using it.  So, let’s have a look at what Contact Form 7 has to offer:

Pros: Very simple, can generate tags & CAPTCHA support (both of which are major limitations of Contact Form ][), I don't like how it is hidden in the manage menu though, really not standard for a plugin.   Great language support.  Ability to attach files (WordPress 2.7+).   There's even a bit you can do with Akismet spam integration, though if you use CAPTCHA that's kind of unnecessary.

Cons: CformsII is much more full featured (think administration, multiple forms on one page, backup/restore, built in css "themes"), and it lacks the refer tracking of Enhanced WordPress plugin.

So there you have it.  A bit better than the basic Contact Form ][, though my pick is still the Enhanced WordPress plugin.

And stay tuned for next week's WordPress Wednesday - we're going to tackle another most frequently asked question: what kind of commenting system should I use?

Related posts:

• How to Select a WordPress Contact Form Plugin (nowsourcing.com)
• Fun with WordPress (nowsourcing.com)

So, SEO friends…what do you think about displaying your entire site within WordPress? Do you prefer that over having several static pages outside WordPress? I kind of liked the thought of keeping everything simple and controlled by one system, and just am redirecting the rest.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Do You Do When Good Plugin Behaves Badly? (howtospoter.com)
• Secrets of WordPress and SEO (apriltara.com)

Technorati means business with WordPress Blogs, and rightfully so. With all the potential vulnerabilities of older, unpatched versions of WordPress out there, many blogs have become fair game to spammers worldwide.

If you have not upgraded WordPress since 2.3.2, and have a claimed blog on Technorati, you probably received an email from Technorati architect Ian Kallen, who writes:

“…Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible. These links are still seen by crawlers such as Technorati’s, Google’s and Yahoo’s. You can find these links by viewing the source of the blog pages or, when using Firefox, looking under “Tools” -> “Page Info” -> “Links”. Blogs hosted on wordpress.com are not affected by this issue; only blogs hosted on their own installations of WordPress from wordpress.org require concern…”

The NowSourcing blog was a couple versions back and noticed a couple spam links creeping up here, so we bit the bullet and upgraded to WordPress 2.5. For those of you that have not done so yet, be sure to at least be on 2.3.3.

The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin was surprisingly bump-free (be sure to check all the backup files, we noticed that the wp-content folder didn’t backup automatically).

Technorati has often been criticized of not being on top of things, but this time around I must say good job, Ian and crew! Granted that many will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off

Before you say “hey, you write about social media. Where’s the social media?” I was just getting to that Technorati authority and blog search coupled with WordPress blogging is at the heart of social media. If you woke up tomorrow and your or your client’s blog was dropped by Technorati, there could be some serious ramifications. Conversation is quickly becoming the new form of metrics in social media (sorry pageviews), and without a guide like Technorati, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.

But what if Technorati removed thousands of authority blogs en masse? Best upgrade soon, all!

Here with me is Dan Milward, CEO of Instinct Entertainment LTD – makers of the E-Commerce plugin for WordPress. Thank you for taking the time.

1 – What made you decide to go out and write an E-Commerce plugin for WordPress?

Years ago I wrote a WordPress wish list on my blog. One of those wishes was for a Shopping Cart plugin – months later when a client asked me to build them a shopping cart application for WordPress I positively jumped at the opportunity. The only other option at the time was EzStatic Micro Shop and that was not a plugin – i.e. too hard for me.

2 – There are lots of good WordPress themes out there, but I haven’t seen a lot of them that are geared for E-Commerce sites specifically. What is your favorite WordPress template for E-Commerce?

At present K2 because it is easy to use – even then though it has its quirks and a lot of my developers find it difficult to customize I still like it because it is quite powerful as far as themes go – especially when coupled with the modules plugin (which extends the widgets functionality).

I think the simpler the theme the better – people want to be able to customize their sites as much as possible which is why it makes sense for us to make as many widgets and tag includes for WP e-Commerce as possible.

Back to the point though. I don’t think that there are any really good themes designed specifically with e-Commerce in mind. This is something we have recognized and it is something we’re working on – we’re especially excited about the next generation of DropShop that we are working on with Nick La from n design studio – here is a sneak preview:

3 – Looks like you guys have been rolling out some nice new features (for those of you that haven’t tried out the drag and drop shopping module, try it out here). Care to tell the audience about any upcoming features?

Well if you like the live search feature in the Apple.com website then you’ll like the new enhanced search form coming soon. DropShop is about to get another visual overhaul, product tags are on the way in, product zooming is being planned, and future versions will be heavily optimized and we know that the next version of WP e-Commerce will load more then 70% faster then before.

4 – Are you taking appropriate steps are to make sure that your E-Commerce system is SEO ready?

Of course. This is very important to us and we have already integrated WordPress Permalinks with WP e-Commerce to make URLs more human readable and search engine friendly – plus we are about to release the new product tags feature.

I’m not sure if this is the right place to mention it but the ‘share this’ social networking feature is also integrated with WP e-Commerce and we have RSS feeds for all products and product categories.

5 – I’m under the impression that blogs are overtaking the web by force. They are indexed by search engines faster, can be a news authority, have most all of the features that a content management system (CMS) has, and now they also have the ability to do E-Commerce. How to you envision the future of blogging?

Funnily enough I was thinking about this today.

You see I use WordPress for everything, there is not much that it can’t do (and if you can think of something it can’t do then I’m sure you can make a plugin to make it do it) and so it struck me that I haven’t refereed to or even thought of WordPress as an actual “blogging tool” in years – so although you are right in that blogs are taking the web by force (I think that they always have been) I think that in some funny way the word blog is becoming synonymous with the word website. Strange huh…

But you asked about the future of blogs not WordPress. Blogs are here to stay. It is as simple as that.

Here’s a thought. When I was studying New Media one of our tutors told us that the porn industry drove website design and technology I think that now possibly it is blogs and blog developers that are changing the face of the internet. We are the new driving force…

6 – Since your E-Commerce software is a plugin, are there things that you think you will never want it to do as compared with a full scale E-Commerce system?

WP e-Commerce is becoming more and more full scaled all the time – we have OS Commerce, Zen Cart users, and e-Junkie users migrating to us all the time. I think this is because the first two pieces of software are legacy (old school) and e-Junkie users would prefer an all in one WordPress experience.

To be totally honest I believe that the only missing features in WP e-Commerce that would stop it from being called a “full scalle” solution would be UPS / Fedex shipping integration. And these are in the planning stages now. In fact if there are any readers reading this now who have experience integrating UPS etc that would care to lend a hand we would love to hear from you!

However I also think that for the average e-commerce user this does not matter – especially if you are in the business of digital downloads then it does not matter at all.

[Editors note:  more product info for the E-Commerce Plugin can be found on Instinct's Wiki located here.]

WordPress version 2.3 has officially been released. Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, is even going so far as to throw an upgrade party at his apartment.

This is a pretty major update for the WordPress blogging platform. It has added some great new features in group publishing – users can now not only save drafts, but can also save posts for pending review.

Full tagging support is now provided as well.

Read more about the latest changes in my previous post.

Keep in mind that this upgrade is for bloggers that have a self-hosted, or WordPress.org blog. Be sure to download the new version, but remember to back up all posts and database first (useful tips on how to do so here):

If you are a beta tester, you should definitely install this update, as several bug fixes are being addressed (you should join the WP-testers mailing list).

After kicking the tires on the latest WordPress release, here are some highlights worth talking about:

As discussed in the version feature list, there are some much needed user updates. NowSourcing has done the work for you, so you don’t have to wait until the final release comes out.

Tagging support

Other blogging platforms already had tagging options for some time now, so this is a welcome upgrade:

This feature plays nicely into other tag cloud plugins and integration with Technorati tags.

Improved Workflow

This improvement speaks volumes to the future of blog platforms. Content management systems (CMS) once were thought to be the answer for non-technical users to manage their websites. With blogs becoming more powerful in both features and community reach, blogs will likely steamroll over CMS and the traditional website.

What this update allows is a key piece of the blog publishing cycle. If you have multiple authors on your blog, let’s say that you work on lots of different blog post ideas that are not yet ready for publishing. If you’re like me, you probably save them as drafts (and a local copy, just to be safe). Now, what if you have an author / contributor that wants to show you something before they post it. Where do they put it? Drafts again. So, the drafts area gets crowded.

Not anymore. Now, simply classify your post status as Pending Review.

Then, you will see a post waiting for pending review:

Keep up the great work, WordPress! Looking forward to seeing this version make its way into production!

(photo source: Wikipedia)

Some of the features of 2.3 include plugin and core update notification, built-in tags support, faster javascript, and SEO-friendly URL redirection.

However all of the new functionality is still very rough, so only test the beta if you are comfortable troubleshooting PHP issues, filing tickets, and backing up your data religiously.

These sound like great updates. Couple of things, though:

1. You don’t have to worry about any of this if your blog is WordPress hosted – only if you have a WordPress blog that you host elsewhere. For more information on what that means, read my previous post on different blog platform.
2. To reiterate Matt, if you aren’t comfortable with technical issues, you shouldn’t install this WordPress update.
3. Most places that you can host WordPress blogs will not have the latest version of WordPress, and for sure not a Beta version.
4. Back up your entire blog and database. In the past, trying to upgrade WordPress wipes out your blog.
5. Until we hear that this is a somewhat stable version, it may make the most sense to set up a sandbox blog, just installing this new beta somewhere aside from your main blog.

We’ll be testing WordPress 2.3 Beta out over here, and will be presenting our review of the updates later this week. Stay tuned!