What Is Your WordPress Rockstar Power?

Comments

1. bubazoo (213 comments.) says:

   8/29/2009 at 10:13 pm

   I am a blind blogger, and have been blogging since the wordpress 1.2 days. I was a big fan of Six Apart’s Moveable Type, until 3.0 was released and required people to pay for their blogging platform. It was then, like many others, that I switched to wordpress, and have never looked back. I don’t think it was so much MT being paid that bothered me so much, as the typekey service. I didn’t want my blog comments to be dependent upon an outside companies server being up. Its one thing to use a service like typekey to authenticate legit users, but its completely different to “require” a service like typekey to be able to post a comment, thats what bothered me. At first, I was skeptical about moving to a new blogging platform, because I assumed upgrading wordpress every few months meant upgrading theme template code, but I’ve learned that once you create a theme, or install a pre-built theme, then you don’t have to mess with the theme ever again, which put my mind at ease and was my biggest selling point to finally make the plunge to stick to wordpress and never look back.
   Unlike many others, I didn’t care rather the blogging platform was in PHP, CGI, or whatever. I could have cared less what the language was that the blogging solution was written in. I just didn’t want to have to modify theme code all the time, alot of MT users assume you have to with wordpress, I was one of those skeptics, but I know better now.
   • bubazoo (213 comments.) says:

     8/29/2009 at 10:20 pm

     what I mean by a blind blogger,
     I have been completely blind since birth from a condition called Congenital Rubella Syndrome. I was born with scar tissue around my eyes that cannot be removed or treated. I’ve been this way all my life, so the lack of eyesight doesn’t mean anything to me. I use a braille display and screen reader software called Window Eyes to read content on the internet and to write blog posts. I can’t design plugins or themes for obvious visual reasons, but I love to blog, and thanks to widgets and plugins, I don’t have to sit and code sidebar items by hand and all that. Makes my blogging life simple. I wish I could design my own theme, I do coding fairly well like XHTML, CSS, javascript, PHP, etc etc, but getting it right visually is what I have troubles with.
2. Andrew says:

   8/30/2009 at 7:42 am

   I am amazing at blogging and HTML, but I cannot seem to get WordPress going on my Mac. Ive always badly wanted to use WordPress on my Mac, but I cannot get it running, can somebody help???
   • lex says:

     8/31/2009 at 4:21 pm

     What do you mean you can’t get it running on your Mac? You don’t host Worpress on your hardware (unless you’ve got your computer setup as a server), so if you can access the internet you can use WordPress.
3. James Joyner (5 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 8:59 am

   This is surely the silliest post ever to appear on this blog. The vast majority of WordPress users are bloggers who create content, not coders. Um, so what?

   That’s like saying Michael Phelps isn’t a swimming rock star but the people at Nike who invented that new suit are. It’s an apples/oranges thing.
4. theCount (4 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 1:07 pm

   I hate self-proclaimed Rockstars, and besides which WordPress versions are named after Jazz Musicians as far as I know. I would love to see the point in this post but I just can´t.

   If you ask me it´s people like bubazoo who are real blogging rockstars overcoming adversity and enriching the blogosphere.

   The self-proclaimed “I wrote a plug-in therefore I am important” rockstars are missing the point and many are writing “plug-ins” or “themes” only to drive traffic to their blogs and cash in on Ad dollars.

   poor post – I expect better from a blog that is “force fed” onto my WP dashboard on a daily basis.
5. Mark Ghosh (386 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 1:23 pm

   While it could have been communicated better, the point of this post was to solicit comments on how WordPress users are looking to give back to the WordPress community and how they have already done so. If we know more about the accomplishments our readers or any ideas/work we can highlight, we can then provide better exposure for them through our posts. Again, all of this is aimed at helping the community and not at self promotion.

   I am a little disappointed at the entitlement attitude of the comments above. We provide a service and try our best to consistently be a good value and resource to WordPress and its community. Occasionally in cases such as the above post, we do not quite get the idea represented in words as we had thought of it.

   I sincerely hope our readers would point out the missed opportunity and provide constructive criticism, instead of veiled threats that sound bitter and acrimonious.

   In that we, as a team, failed to get this post as high as we have set our own bar, I apologize. Our readers have come to expect more from us and we will try our best to not let you down.
6. Andrea_R (29 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 1:42 pm

   Honestly, I had to pick between two options that didn’t quite cover what I do. Or at least what I feel I contribute: that is, documentation, tutorial, time spent in forums, and just educating the community.

   The only other thing to me was “You are filed for all the goodies” didn’t seem to make any sense to me.

   On the poll topic in general, we could all use a little lightening up.

   I do agree that bubazoo is a rockstar – so keep on rockin’!
7. kovshenin (13 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 5:37 pm

   I’m not sure what you mean by ‘rockstar’ but yes, I do develop plugins and themes for WordPress. Mostly for my own, but some grew up to be cool plugins that other people like to use like ‘Twitter Friendly Links’ or ‘Quick Flickr Widget’, thus I had to open a support page for my plugins and help people, which made my plugins more user friendly

   Themes I did are mostly for myself and I don’t plan on releasing them public, not just yet, but I am thinking about drawing some cool stuff and uploading it to the WordPress themes directory for other to use free of charge.

   Does that make me a rockstar?

   ~ @kovshenin
8. Chloe C. (1 comments.) says:

   8/30/2009 at 11:05 pm

   as a newbie dumba** I am impressed with buzzaboo & don’t get the rants of the rest.
   This may not be the input you were looking for.
9. ..::DeUCeD::.. (1 comments.) says:

   8/31/2009 at 2:33 am

   I usually do not leave comments but since you asked about rockstars, nope, i m not one because i made a couple of plugins and a couple of themes, NOT because i feel like a developer BUT because i loved wordpress and what i develop is what i need which later i release it and share it and that makes me a pure old ROCKER who just plays his tunes for whoever likes it and that is what wordpress and rock n roll is about, isnt it? But there are some rockstars in wordpress community who inspire all of us and we like hearing their tunes, again and again, cheers!
10. DQ (2 comments.) says:

    8/31/2009 at 6:47 am

    Hi,

    I’ve using WordPress for 2 years now. I’ve created themes, modified plugins according to my requirements, but I’ve really shared all this. So i don’t know if I’m a WordPress Rockstar…
11. James Joyner (5 comments.) says:

    9/1/2009 at 8:42 am

    Mark, I’ve been using WordPress for going on five years now on multiple blogs. I’ve probably been reading this site for two years and appreciate what you do.

    My point is simply that the vast majority of people who use WordPress as a publishing platform are writers, not coders. It’s rather insulting to insinuate that we’re second-class WordPress citizens because we don’t write-plugins or contribute to the code base.
    • Mark (386 comments.) says:

      9/1/2009 at 9:39 am

      Agreed and point well taken.