There is much debate about Thesis vs GPL in the last 48 hours and many demonizing Chris Pearson.

I found this interview with Chris Pearson from Andrew Warner at Mixergy very interesting. Chris reveals his “inner engineer” – a guy hell bent on discovering problems and then solving them – and then sharing his solution. If you have already made up your mind about Chris then don’t watch as you might find him less evil than you wish to believe.

http://mixergy.com/chris-pearson-thesis-interview/

At the risk of being an outcast I am a strong supporter of the Thesis product for several reasons.

1. I am a developer and have tested dozens of themes – free and premium and I selected Thesis for its flexibility – I have my own personal “bake off” and Thesis won – hands down – running away mostly due to this functionality (http://www.thesishacker.com/298)

2. Chris Pearson is the guy who designed Thesis. He created it out of the frustration of using wordpress to create lots of web sites for clients – it is a great solution for web designers that need to make wordpress do things it really can’t do with the standard theme. To me it is a developer’s theme not one for just a personal blog or something simple that needs little customization.

3. While I think Chris comes off as “an arrogant jerk” I recall being 20 something and having a similar attitude. It think it is rare that someone that age, who has achieved such fast financial success (30,000 sales x $100 = $3,000,000 in sales) and notoriety, would not feel some level of arrogance. I think I would have been pretty happy with myself if it were me.

4. WP is horrible without themes.
Be honest would you have used WordPress if you could only use Kubrick and nothing else? WP clearly is not good at themes or there would be no need for a theme market. So you could argue that theme developers and designers have made WP the success it is not the other way around. Of course Themes need WP to run I get that. Really I do.

5. This is likely partially about money (see #3 above).
If Thesis was a free theme I doubt this would be on anyone’s radar.
Perhaps Thesis and ALL Premium theme owners should form an organization and pledge to donate x% of each sale to WP organization.

6. This is likely also about ego.
Look at http://ma.tt/about/ enough said. Looks like he left off a spelling bee award or 2 but little else.

Pearson rarely comments on his OWN support forum leaving Girlie and Godhammer to deal to with most of the problems. For example Girlie had to post about the code hack not Pearson. He is a bit of a Wizard of Oz character behind the curtain rather than out in front like Gardner or Tadlock. I find this annoying.

7. Georgia Tech – Atlanta connection – Since Pearson is a fellow GT alumni that increases my affinity towards him. We Techies tend to stick together. Plus his mindset is kinda typical of most Tech guys which makes him somewhat abrasive. For me I expect this and don’t really care that he is. I am used to it.

I think is worth mentioning and perhaps understanding about Chris.
Note: THIS IS MERELY MY SPECULATION AND BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE.

At GT you learn on day 1 of orientation there is only room for 50% of you in the sophomore class and even less in the Junior class. So think about this. Your are 17 or 18 years old and you have been working most of your life to get in to college. Now to graduate you must quickly adopt an achieve and survive mentality since it is now clear that others must fail while you succeed if you are to reach the goal of reaching your sophomore year and then hopefully one day graduating.

Since you are graded on a curve another’s success is your possible demise.

So this cuts down on cheating and test sharing etc with others that are in the same class (note: people that have already taken the class are more than willing to help since they have moved past this particular obstacle). Aside from the obvious risk of punishment if caught cheating it is against your best interest and you will not want others to have a free ride on your hard work and in doing so possibly cause you to fail as they succeed on your efforts. So at this particular school ( and I am sure many others) there is an emphasis on doing your own work and putting in your own time and then reaping your own reward – anything else is academic suicide or just plain stupidity.

Now this is completely opposite of the communal “lets all share and share alike” mentality that many others in the WP world want. Work on that code solution for 5 years and then give me all your work for free and then I will do what I want with it. That is a tough pill to swallow.

Pearson is fresh from that college environment and I think is likely a VERY competitive person. So don’t expect him to give away his intellectual work – I don’t think it is in his DNA and I know it is directly opposed to his academic training.

8. Give it away Give it away Give it Away, now.
I have used plenty of free widgets. Lots of them. Tons. I liked them and then guess what happened?
WP upgraded, the widget developer had lost interest and was angry since nobody donated to him and the widget was DOA. So the value of that free widget had a very short shelf life.

So while the argument that GPL causes people to never contribute without a financial reward is obviously not true – the lack of financial reward does clearly create a disincentive to CONSISTENTLY CONTINUE to contribute over time. I think this is why GPL allows you to take the quitter’s widget and consume it into your widget so at least someone will keep it alive. So as long as you have a constant churn of fresh faced people that want to become famous from GPL contributions – they will eventually tire out and fade away – but only to be replaced by the next wave. Many of these contributors are not supporting themselves much less a family so money is not important. Yet.

For me it is appears that a mob rules approach is attempting to be used to force the wild stallion Pearson into the corral. Forget it.

All you can do is try him in the court of public opinion, hang a scarlet T on him and all his “followers” and hope the community shuns them. Also hope that you create enough FUD (fear doubt uncertainty) so the novice business community becomes afraid to use Thesis. If that happens then the Thesis developers (like me) will move on to customizing and training and supporting users on other themes and Thesis theme as a brand will be less and less important.

Will this happen? Don’t know.

Is WP overstepping their boundaries? Not my call.

Are they handing it professionally and maturely? I don’t think so. I think the overall youth and lack of business experience is showing – on all sides.

Should Pearson remove any blatant WP code in his theme now that is widely known that his code contains WP core code? Yes absolutely and it is my belief that he will. Why wouldn’t he since he thinks his code is superior to WP’s code anyway.

Thanks for reading!

AJ Martin

Just installed Thesis 1.8 on WP 3.0
Upgrade has nice features

• uses wordpress nav menu or thesis nav menu
• category and tag archive custom text and titles
• crazy page options page is gone
• codepress bug is gone
• homepage SEO is simpler and easy to manage

So I talk about web page design and structure being important to SEO. I also help people target keywords and keyword phrases and then help them build their pages to rank well on for those keywords.

For example:
I would like this site to rank well for the term Atlanta Webmaster.
So how am I doing? http://www.google.com/search?q=atlanta+webmaster

Ever wondered how the world’s most valuable piece of artificial intelligence software works?
Follow along below and see how Google sees your web site – page by page and link by link.
Click the image for a close-up view.

Infographic by PPC Blog

Build this cool little widget and show your listings on your website, your Facebook page or just about anywhere else you can place it to drive traffic to your listings.

What: Real Estate Widget
Tools: Widget software from Widgetbox.com
Realbird Listing Feed

what is RSS?

So exactly what is RSS? Why should I care?

Great question. First of all RSS is short for “Really Simple Syndication”.

While syndication can mean many things, in this application definition is the verb and means “to publish simultaneously, or supply for simultaneous publication, in a number of newspapers or other periodicals in different places”. Since the web is really the ultimate publishing tool, RSS is designed to syndicate or publish simultaneously to a number of places so RSS is the standardized way in which information is syndicated across the internet.

Read more at my site
http://realestaterss.com/what-is-rss/ (link opens new window)

nice article on the new WordPress 3.0 features

http://www.wpcookies.com/wordpress-3-0-features/

Installed WordPress 3.0 beta on some test sites yesterday. Happy so far.

Good things I see:

• New default theme
• Custom header images managed from the dashboard
• Custom page background images managed from the dashboard
• Multi-site !!!!
• Widgetized Fat Footer in the default theme (4 widget areas so now default theme has 6 widgets instead of 2)

So on the bad news:
Multi-site with multiple domain names – to do this you still need

• a domain mapping plugin
• customized wildcard DNS settings in cpanel or WHM
• create a parked domain in cpanel
• eye of newt
• live owl intestines

BUT it does and did work and hopefully the days of maintaining dozens / hundreds / thousands of standard WP installs are done.
What to do with my time?

Latest video tutorial for Thesis theme for WordPress. Step by step instructions on how to add a custom header or logo to your Thesis site. No PHP or CSS required. HD version available and is recommended.

Below is a simple video on cloud hosting and the basic differences in cloud hosting vs standard hosting.

Highly anticipated release of WordPress 3.0 should be very soon (May 1st 2010 ??). This release may be fantastic or may be bug filled I won’t hazard a guess at this time.
My interest revolves around the merge of the WPMU platform into the WordPress core which should make managing multiple web sites with a single WP install much easier.

Currently if you wish to run more than one WP site or perhaps offer group blogs for your business, school or other organization then you have to either run WPMU or manage multiple installs of WordPress. WPMU has some quirkiness and the average user will not enjoy some of the limitations and widget sharing that is offered by WPMU. On the other hand managing core WP upgrades, theme installs and upgrades, widget installs and upgrades across dozens or perhaps hundreds or even thousands of WP installations is not a walk in the park either.

My fingers are crossed that WP 3.0 standalone release will solve this issues. If so I expect the use of WordPress as a lightweight CMS platform to expand even more.

Finishing the final touches on a new service for the real estate industry. More details as the site is complete.

Testing a number of custom url shorteners for a new project. Stay tuned for more.

Looking forward to attending tonight’s and Saturday’s Wordcamp here in Atlanta. I think it is officially sold out so nice to see the Atlanta WordPress community show interest and support. The weather has been a little different today but all the roads should be ice-free by this evening.
See you there!

Photo from http://www.atlantarealestateforum.com/

Having trouble explaining Web 2.0 to your boss, wife, family or friends? This video is a great starting point – as it attempts to point out the differences in text, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and begins to tap the concept of the semantic web. Enjoy.

New series of Thesis How To Videos on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/ThesisHowTo

I like using Twitter but will I have the time to test 2,163 apps? Doubtful.

Twitter Tool Round Up for you Tweeters
According the site OneForty.com is A Better Way to Discover Twitter Apps
oneforty is your Twitter outfitter, with tons of resources for all things Twitter.
Currently tracking 2163 apps that make Twitter even better.
http://oneforty.com

I like Screenr and HootSuite some of these I don’t like and some never heard of. Good place to start your Twitter tool search.

How many calls have you had about making your site #1 in Google. Blah. Blech. Go away. Makes you want to hold a police whistle to the phone and burst an eardrum on the other end. Anyway back on point. There are no gurus in search optmization – everyone knows the game and all the rules are out there.
What you want to make sure is that your guru does at least know the rules and is wearing a white hat.

Here are my rules:
1. Descriptive Domain Name
2. Avoid paid linking plans
3. Use a good theme that respects Titles, H1, H2 etc tags
4. Validate your site
5. Use a sitemap
6. Have RSS feed
7. Post good content
8. Post regularly
9. Don’t keyword spam your posts
10. Build links slowly and don’t interlink your own sites

Start there and you too could be a guru.

Markus Urban discusses different Theme options available.