What’s Been Going On?

As some of you already know, I took a job for Bruce County as a web specialist. This meant moving nearly three hours away from my wife and home in St. Thomas. I’ve been up here, living in a low cost apartment for half a year now. The job pays reasonably well, but having two expenses for nearly everything has been eating up more money than I originally predicted. Sabine and I have decided to sell our house in St. Thomas, and she’ll move to an apartment in London, near school, so she can finish out her Nursing at UWO.

One of the reasons that I decided to take this job was because I was dealing with some pretty deep, dark depression, and thought a change of focus, job, and scenery would help me shake myself out of it. Unfortunately, it had more of the opposite effect, despite the great people I work with.

I’ve since gotten over the hump with my depression, but I am having a hard time focusing on what used to be my passions: writing, new media and online marketing. Mostly, I think this has to do with the fact that I am spending my days coding websites, and that all of my writing, and social media endeavors are primarily supposed to be for my own goals of running a business, but in the end, I just don’t enjoy running my own business. I enjoy tasks, completing said tasks and seeing the result. The management of billing, finding clients, organizing writers, and other such tasks don’t interest me as much as I thought they would. I like to get things done.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to step even further back from blogging in the coming months as I continue to work on bettering myself, keeping my eyes and ears open for great opportunities, and working on staying as positive and happy as I can.

Hopefully, as spring is around the corner, a refreshed me will come out with a new sense of direction, purpose, and energy.

A huge thanks goes out to those that have been so supportive during my personal and professional confusions and I hope to talk to you all soon.

@andrea_r wrote: set a time line, get someone to hold you accountable (re: Nag you ) Pick one to finish first.

I got this same response, more or less from @jeremywright who wrote: for me, 120 day plans. Gets you out of forest for the trees mode. Consecutive ones keeps you moving.

See, I knew this tip and tried to do so when writing my work in progress novel. I had actually paid someone to help me in part by nagging me about updates. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel accountable to this person, and they weren’t the type to push me hard enough to deliver results, and so the project fell by the wayside.

I am getting ready to pick it back up, but before I do, I wanted to work towards learning the tricks to keeping the project going to completion.

After Jeremy, came a response from @chrisgarrett and @malcolmbastien about accountability as well.

Doing something in the public light doesn’t equal accountability though. As sort of a double-shot at trying to give my writing the potential for success, I published it online as I wrote it, in its unedited form. I had hoped the story would gain a small following of people that would help compel me to continue.

This didn’t work out and even today, most of the traffic to the site is related to spammers.

@chrisgarrett then put forth the idea that I didn’t really want to complete the project, saying “sometimes we don’t actually want to finish, no matter what.”

I felt a little attacked by his message, but, at least in part, he was right. People that really want to finish something are able to find the determination that others lack. For me, determination is linked to my perceived sense of difficulty. I’ll skip sleeping to figure out a programming problem. I’ll play the same level of a video game hundreds of times to unlock the secret to beating it. The potential reward at the end has very little to do with my interest in completing the puzzle. I just like victories, and I like feeling victorious as often as possible.

Many people have noticed and commented on this trait of mine, both in a positive and negative way.

andrea_r then said “so.. what’s holding you back? Not into the project? Is it still viable, still a good idea?”

Thankfully, the projects I want to complete are still good ideas, and they are still viable. All they need is some time and attention, and maybe setting them down for a while, to focus on other things will, in the end, have benefited them.

I have always found it hard to pick back up on a story though, as my emotions, ideas, and experiences shape how I attack the story, and lead to it being very disjointed. Personally, some of my best articles, posts, and stories have all been written within a day to a maximum period of a week.

I don’t yet understand how other writers deal with this constant shift of perception and emotion, but as a barrier to continue a project, it is fairly weak, and something I need to be aware of so that it doesn’t stop my progress.

chrisgarrett then asked, “what is different about the projects you DO finish?”

To which I responded, “they are short term, highly focused, with a very finite beginning, middle and end. They are challenging.”

I think my issue on focusing over the long term has more to do with two things: goals and perceived challenges.

chrisgarrett then gave me two great tips: “my secret for writing books? In my head they are not books, they’re blog article series. Write an article at a time” and “find someone who is also doing the same type of project and make a bet”

These tips bring together the two things I need most in order to keep pushing ahead. They help me find a challenge by putting myself in direct competition with someone else, a technique that I’ve used successfully before in tracking my blog against other blogs in my same niche, as well as reminding me to give myself constant goals in order to stay focused on the smaller victories that will help build out the larger project.

I will likely follow both of these by working on making public goals once again on this blog, tracking my progress publicly and finding someone, hopefully, on the Problogger.com forums that would like to have a friendly competition with me.

In the end though, any long term focus has to come from me. I need to take this advice, and practice it. I won’t always be successful, and since I am also my worst critic, I also need to learn to be more forgiving when I stumble or hit a wall, so that I can then turn around and start running again.

If you are on twitter, I hope you all follow:
andrea_r
jeremywright
chrisgarrett
malcolmbastien

They are great people, with great advice.

Here is my pretty simple formula for maximum guest post approval on the “right” sites. *The right ones being the type of sites you are most interested in.

1.) Go to AllTop.com or Technorati and find sites listed under the niche/topics/tags you are interested in. List them all out in a text editor or a spreadsheet application.

2.) Go to each site and check to see if it shows off its subscriber count. If it uses Feedburner and doesn’t have the subscriber count, add ~fc to the url before their feed name, and if Feedcount is active, it will show you their count. (http://feeds.feedburner.com/myfeed becomes http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/myfeed)

3.) Do a quick scan to see how many comments its articles get. This can also be a great way of judging popularity, if feed count is not available. Sites with more comments can be more popular and thus usually gets more inbound links.

4.) Remove sites from your list that don’t fit what you are looking for or filter them away to be done later when you have more time.

5.) Take the sites that are left and check their Google PageRank, Alexa, and Compete rankings. While not a perfect judge, this too can help you determine the size or popularity of a site, especially in the USA and even more so when creating a measuring stick for sites in the same niche.

6.) Next, take the ones you’d like to target and run their sites through PostRank. Look at their more popular posts over the last month or two, and start leaving comments. Don’t spam! These comments, because they are popular posts, give you the best chance of creating conversations, and gaining a little traffic through the link in your comment associated with your name.

7.) Once you’ve left comments for about a week or two, (might only be three or four, but fewer great comments are better than many forgettable comments) contact the author and ask if they’d be willing to publish a guest post from you on their blog. Be completely honest about what’s in it for you, and make sure to give them a good idea of your skill, expertise, and potential topic choices.

8.) If they say that they are interested, make sure to have the guest post ready quickly. I sometimes write guest posts before hand, and then fine-tune them for the site that it will be published on, thus saving time, and making it easier for me to get things published on sites willing to run my content.

The great thing about guest posts is that both people get something from the content. Guest posters get a platform that might be larger than their own, access to a community, and even a chance to get a natural looking link back to their blog. The blog owners get free content and hopefully a boatload of traffic and links.

While everything I’ve listed might not always be a factor in your guest posting work, I suggest making each guest post count for as much as possible towards your marketing and community growth efforts. In my experience, the acceptance rate is usually around 75% and up, and so for every ten sites you ask, make sure you have around eight posts or post ideas ready to go.

Guest posting can be an awesome way to build up your own blog, and getting your posts on high powered, top tier blogs can be amazing for growth, but I haven’t heard much from those getting a guest post on Darren’s site about the effects on their own brands, sites, and goals.

Taking a look at the last month, from November 9th, 2009 to December 9th, 2009, I looked at the posts, and found twenty-two of them to be by Darren, and eleven to have been by guest posters. Out of the twenty-two posts by Darren, one was a video shot by someone else that he added a small commentary to, and a few were focused on Problogger.com updates, his re-launched newsletter and his e-book. Two were in depth reviews of blogs, leaving around fifteen posts written by Darren to help teach.

Fifteen posts in a given month of unique, original content organized to reflect on things he’s learned and help you blog better. I’d hazard a guess that most of us would still be deeply interested in his writings even if his blog only featured these fifteen posts, but with the addition of the posts done by guest bloggers, I begin to wonder what effects they have on the overall brand.

Darren gets more content, thus providing a stronger attachment to his own brand, and bigger net of keywords for grabbing search visitors. Guest bloggers get their content posted on an upper tier blog with a loyal audience.

Even if you wrote the best blog post on Problogger.net, I wonder how long it would grab people’s attention before Darren either adds another guest post, or puts up something of his own?

Also, as a reader, I wonder how these posts are being edited, filtered and controlled? Are we really receiving the best content available? Don’t we visit Problogger.net to read Darren’s insights?

Still to this day, despite Darren’s hard work to change this issue, people assume all posts that appear on the site were written by Darren. When this happens, it is probably a testament of how well written the guest author’s post was, but if people make such assumptions, where is the brand benefit to the contributor?

If more blogs were run in the same way, what would be the net effect for guest blogging as a whole? Would you give up one third of your blog to guest bloggers? Would you give up one third of your blogging time to write guest posts?

For me, I think it would be more valuable to my audience and brand building to have Darren guest blog on one of my sites rather than spend my time to guest blog on his.

My post today isn’t about my involvement with WordPress though. Instead it is about WordPress itself, and the unfortunate state of the WordPress community today. It isn’t the WordPress community of a few years ago. Things are a mess, and I feel like I need to stand up, one more time, and go over my thoughts on the current state of the WordPress project.

What Made WordPress Great

The things that made WordPress great included its community, the open source ideal, the low barrier for entry, its simplicity, and the excitement of something new. WordPress and its community, back around the time of version 1.5, was energetic. Many people felt like the decisions they were making were helping build a great product, one that would be used by millions of people. Even those that only contributed a theme could eventually find themselves famous within that community. A great example of this, in my mind, is Michael Heilemann.

Many of you might not know this, but the default theme for WordPress was designed, developed, and released by Michael. He spent a great deal of time on the theme, and was honoured to have it become a staple part of WordPress. Everyone thanked him, and nearly every community member, at that time, knew who he was, and where to find his blog Binary Bonsai. Then, as things continued to move forward, everyone forgot about his contribution, and as WordPress aged, people got bored of the default theme. Today, I would hazard a bet that less than five percent of those using WordPress know of Michael Heilemann, and so, it is of no surprise to me that his blog now runs on Habari rather than WordPress.

Automattic: Good and Bad

Back when WordPress was a young project, the idea of creating a corporation around it probably seemed ridiculous to many community members, especially since it was open source, but Automattic came to existence without asking the community if it was a smart idea, or even needed, and it became the controlling power behind WordPress and all related brands.

Then in January 2008, it received Venture Capital funding, and not just a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, but instead twenty-nine point five million dollars (via GigaOm). Surely, they spread this money around to everyone that has contributed to WordPress, right? Nope, they used the funds to purchase web applications, hire staff, and build out WordPress.com.

Automattic as a company isn’t bad, evil or negative, but they have positioned themselves, especially one of their employees, as gatekeepers over WordPress, and as an open source, community project, I don’t feel that it is entirely right. All corporations, no matter how good their public relations, are focused on one thing: increasing profit.

Do you think that the poking and prodding that Automattic does regarding WordPress, WordPress.com, Akismet, BuddyPress, and the half a dozen other projects they manager, are solely for our benefit? I am not against a company making money, but I think far too many people have an idealized version of Automattic and its pursuits. I’ve found people treating the company as though it were Apple or Linux in such that they feel that the company or idea can do no wrong.

When was the last time that Automattic worked to bring a new project to the foreground, and I don’t mean one that they acquired? They are a business and should be treated as such by the community. I’d hate to see WordPress split in many directions like Linux is today, but we’ve all witnessed what happens in the Linux world when a company decides that their corporate version is the best. I mean, when was the last time anyone installed Red Hat Linux on their desktop? Oh right, the free version doesn’t really exist anymore, and Red Hat Enterprise Desktop is around $80 (Yes, I know about Fedora), and that’s just one of many examples of the commercialization of an open source project.

Think that WordPress will never go commercial, then take a look at WordPress.com. Domain mapping is $10 per year, custom CSS is $15 per year, no ads is $30 per year, and access to VideoPress video hosting is $60 per year, and that isn’t all of the potential upgrades you can purchase.

Matt Mullenweg: Smart Business Person

Matt Mullenweg is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. His ability to manage his brand image is almost supernatural. Fighting against any ideal he comes up for the WordPress community seems to be like fighting mother nature herself. Matt has made himself the word of God when it comes to WordPress, and millions of people follow that blindly.

When WordCamps started, I wondered how long it would take before the Church of WordPress was created. Matt traveled the world like a holy crusader, talking to his flock about the good that was WordPress. He was their Messiah, and saved them from the horrible web publishing systems of the past.

He isn’t infallible though and has made mistakes. The issue today is that most of the major mistakes he has made either happened before mass adoption of WordPress (Pre-2.0) or have been relatively unknown as they’ve happened behind closed doors, or outcries have only existed on smaller blogs.

Say anything wrong about Matt Mullenweg, and the hordes of his followers would descend upon you taking you to task. Say anything negative about a choice he has made, and you’ll find millions defending that choice, even if they themselves don’t fully understand it.

Back in 2005, Matt added thousands of pages to WordPress.org for the express purpose of using its immensely high Google PageRank to earn money. (Source – Waxy.org)

One great question from that post that really struck me was:

First, do organizers of open-source projects need to disclose how they’re making money off the project? Matt isn’t disclosing anything about this activity to the community. I don’t think anyone would be upset about Matt trying to support Wordpress with outside sources of revenue, but as an open-source project, they should be held to a higher level of transparency. Without the users and developers all working for free, it wouldn’t exist.

Sure, he has apologized for this since then, and swept it under the rug. It has been a long time, but he continues to make project-threatening mistakes which could easily be managed through a small council of source code submitters looking over decisions that could effect the project, the brand, and its future.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve met Matt on a few occasions, and seen him speak. I think he’s a smart guy, and a savvy business person, but the “nice guy” persona that he puts out there doesn’t seem to be quite the same as the person behind the scenes, away from the microphone.

Drinking the WordPress Kool-Aid

So many people are fooled into believing that WordPress is the best blogging platform of our time, but to me, that is like saying Microsoft Windows is the best operating system of our time. While most fans of WordPress will probably fight me on the comparison, I think the similarities are too many to ignore. We have a company that works back room deals in order to get big players on board, makes a fair bit of money through its self-serving attitude, brands itself as something that it isn’t, and is run by a single voice that feels somewhat like a dictatorship. Just because it is everywhere, and there are lots of additions that make it more useful, that doesn’t make it the best.

Matt Mullenweg was great for the project back when it started. He helped it gets its footing, and took care of the project. He was able to quickly navigate the business world so that WordPress could grow into the massive project that it is today, but I think it is time for him to step back and allow those with the community focused ideal that he once held to take over so that he can focus on building his company, and maybe join back in on the community aspect that he seems to enjoy so much.

His single minded approach of what is good for the community is only going to be its downfall. He needs to let go and let the community vote for what it wants. If any portion, no matter how small, wants to purchase themes, plugins and whatever else, then Matt should have no bearing on their decision. His job should be to inform them of their options, market WordPress to the world and contribute code to the project.

Should that code usurp work that premium theme and plugin developers have created, then that’s within his right, but he shouldn’t have any bearing on those third party projects through manipulating the community to see the additions as a negative thing, removing them from the community focal points, downplaying their work, or directly fighting against them in back rooms.

The WordPress community, if it is going to survive, has to evolve, change and meet the needs of everyone, not just those that believe they have the right to vote on behalf of everyone, and especially not by those that want to uphold an ideal.

GPL: It’s the Law

One of the biggest issues in the community right now is GPL. It creates a divide that shouldn’t exist. The idea of GPL is to promote community, and I had hope that it was why Matt stuck to his guns when defending GPL, but unfortunately, GPL does not a community make. If the idea was to promote open source, and give back to the community, then why wouldn’t Automattic release the source code behind Akismet, or the code behind other online services they’ve acquired?

In December 2008, over 200 WordPress themes were pulled from the Theme Repository because they didn’t fit either GPL licensing, or the spirit of GPL licensing. The second half of that sentence is the giant power hammer that Matt Mullenweg and Automattic have over the community. Some themes that were pulled complied with GPL but the creators used the themes to promote non-GPL compliant themes on their own sites. The fact that the themes on the repository had no real bearing on Matt’s decision to have them removed because there was potential to lead people astray from his GPL ideal.

It is assumed that becoming GPL gets you in good graces with Automattic, and after they put up a page for Premium WordPress themes on their site, everyone applauded their decision. Matt had been against Premium themes for a long time, but quickly his tune changed as nearly every developer announced their GPL compliance.

Earlier this year, some Premium WordPress plugins started looking at how they could feel the love from the WordPress community, specifically Automattic, in hopes of having their own page on the illustrious community site, but while Matt changed his tune regarding themes, he was quick to stand fast against any paid plugins for WordPress. His worry that the extendability of his beloved software would become commercialized lead him to publicly state his dislike of such developments.

Plugin developers went on the offensive and made their new additions GPL compliant in hopes of pleasing Matt, but even their hard work to follow his rules left them feeling the cold shoulder.

It isn’t GPL that has become law in the world of WordPress, but instead the ideal of GPL. The “spirit” that things should be given away for free if they are a product, and businesses should be built around service. This “spirit” protects Automattic from having to give away any of their prized jewels, and allows them to charge as they see fit. It allows them to hide behind a shield as they work against companies that seek only to provide powerful additions to the WordPress community. Additions that require one hundred times the effort of earlier plugins, themes and extensions on the WordPress platform.

Conclusion

WordPress and its community has matured. The ideals of Matt Mullenweg and Automattic are becoming a limitation and a hindrance. While they are still great at spinning positive press, and continuing to appease the masses, they’ve lost the spirit of WordPress somewhere along the way, and it is my hope that someone out there will take blogging to the next level through true community building, and the ability to keep an open mind as things change.

WordPress is still a great piece of software, despite all of the flaws in leadership, community, and in the system itself. I have no doubt that it will continue to expand all the while lining the pockets of Automattic, and fulfilling the ideals of a young developer that can’t let go of his community project.

I quickly presented him with my new set of rules.

1. No more writing for other people.
2. Only start projects that I can see myself doing for 5 or more years
3. No more selling projects

Of course there are always exceptions to rules, but I think that following this set of ideals will help me become more passionate and successful online. I’ve always had issues with staying focused, and that was usually because I was chasing money instead of chasing passion or my dreams.

It is hard to be passionate for a long period of time, and even more so when you aren’t doing exactly what you want to be doing. I’ve had numerous people in the past tell me how cool it must be to work as a blogger full time, but they don’t give thought to the types of topics I have to cover in order to pay my wages. I’ve written about so many things I have no interest in, and worked very hard, only to end up at the end of a period of time with “nothing”.

What are your own “rules” for working, either online or offline?

The laptop got sent back to Dell again to get fixed. Soon after, it was back and the screen was working fine. Unfortunately, they didn’t take any time to look at the other issues we’ve been complaining about since the start. It seems Dell can only fix one issue at a time, and have a one track mind. Despite the display issue apparently being fixed, they’ve ignored the other stuff.

I mean, my wife can now see as the computer automatically deletes text she’s written, and tries to print things out no matter what she touches. Or when she moves the mouse and the browser increases the text size, despite her not touching any of the keys. “But wait”, you’ll say, thinking that such settings can be configured within the operating system. I’ve turned off all the special features of the track pad, and not only that, what special feature makes it press the windows key at random times? Or highlight strings of text at random times?

At this point, my wife and I are now adamant. We want a replacement machine. We got a “lemon” and want a replacement of comparable features.

My wife is not able to use the machine to complete school work, and she is feeling very stressed, and frustrated. When paying thousands of dollars for school, the last thing we want is for her grades to drop over computer problems. I really don’t think I am crazy to be asking for a replacement at this point.

They want to send out a technician to look at the machine, but have pretty much stated that the issue they are still trying to help resolve is the screen issue. This isn’t the issue that is plaguing my wife now, and would be a waste of time for him to come out if he isn’t going to help with the main issue. There is something wrong with the hardware of the keyboard and palm rest area.

I don’t understand why Dell can’t be more helpful in these cases. I am not trying to screw them out of money or anything, and think that at this point, it would have been cheaper to send out a replacement machine. Even if they gave a slightly smaller or less capable machine, as long as it worked perfectly, reasonably quickly, and efficiently, I am sure my wife would be more than happy.

At this point, I am so angry that no matter the resolution, I probably won’t buy anything from Dell again, even third party products they sell, nor will I recommend them, solely based on the fact that anyone that buys from them will be out of luck when it comes to hardware support that may require more than one replacement. Shame really, as I still think the people that I’ve met that work there are good people, but how can they push out a message of change regarding Dell when I am living through the fact that they haven’t?

The blog now has three posts on, two of which are from possible staff writers for the blog. I e-mailed a dozen candidates early in the week to let them know they were finalists, and told them I would pay them for their submissions. Each one was sent back a notice asking them to send in a post that would display their writing style for LifeSnips. Out of these dozen final candidates, there are only four staff writer positions available, and the competition is fierce.

I have also been able to find the time to get a post up about buying a computer.

I hope you’ll all check it out, subscribe, and if you have something interesting you’d like to cover, or see us cover, please let me know through the contact form on that site.

So, five more days have gone by, and due in part to my special circumstances of not having a home phone line, I haven’t been able to talk to the representative they’ve set up to help me with the problems my wife is having with the Dell laptop that I bought her.

I have since bought a cell phone, so that should help. And I’ve been contacting them as often as I can through Skype, but every time I call, Sunny is on another call.

I am getting more and more frustrated, and each time I talk to my wife, she mentions about how quickly the laptop is degrading. Now, the screen is dim most of the time, with it only going to a normal brightness when she presses on the frame near the hinge. She just told me today that we should send it back, and they’ll be able to see the issue no matter what this time but she forgets how narrow minded the technicians are at Dell. They’ll fix the cable for the back light display, but probably won’t look to fix whatever is shorting out on the wrist rest area or the other weird quirks that her laptop is quickly picking up.

I truly believe that we received a lemon for a Dell and that we should receive a replacement with the same features. The laptop isn’t very old, and so I assume they still have one sitting around. My wife wouldn’t even care if it had slightly less hard drive space, or was slightly slower, as long as it was mostly comparable. The goal of course is to get a machine that is built right and that will make her happy.

The longer this goes on, the more layers I am exposed to within Dell’s corporate structure, the more frustrated I get. I still believe that Dell has good products, but that they do sometimes have build quality issues that need to be resolved quickly. The reason why Dell gets so much bad press isn’t because their products suck, but instead because their support in dealing with products that don’t work is poor.

Had Dell been wise enough to vigorously test the laptop when we sent it the first time, I am sure they would have come across our issue and been able to fix or replace the components with issues. Then all of this fall out, and negative press that I am working so hard to write, would have never occurred, and I would have continued to sing their praises.

Skipping over that, if Dell had been wise enough to put me in touch with someone that could instantly just ship out a replacement unit of similar specs, and taken back the one that I had issues with, they could have reconditioned it, and sold it as a discount. Their loss on this exchange would have been noticeable, but the good will would have been huge.

Now, I am sitting here, frustrated that I still don’t have a working laptop for my wife, and she starts school in a week, and all of this goes back to Dell not being able to solve an issue that was brought to their attention more than a month ago.

I’ve been beta testing the plugin for some time now, and have found it useful for a variety of different needs, and the more I use it, the more ideas I come up with on what it could do for me with regards to taking in information from visitors and displaying it to me.

The first thought that people have is that Gravity Forms is “just another Contact Form plugin”, but it can do so much more than that.

Want to do a visitor survey? Want to do a “send this post to a friend”? Want to have user guest post submissions? Gravity Forms can do all of that and more. I’ve even used it for a basic product inventory system, as well as a tool to sign players up for an online RPG. The uses for the plugin are wide, and according to the Rocket Genius team, they’ll continue to expand.

Gravity Forms is a premium plugin, but I like to call it the first “extension” of WordPress, because I feel like marketing it as a plugin is too limiting. It does so much more. There are three price points for Gravity Forms, $39 gets you a one-site personal license, $99 gets you a five site license, and $199 gets you the unlimited developer license.

The Developer license comes with Priority Support and Free Add-Ons and allows you to install it on as many sites as you want. This is the license I will be purchasing, and the one I hope you’ll all purchase as well.

Why go for the Developer License?

It might seem pretty pricey to shell out nearly two-hundred dollars for a WordPress plugin, but I assure you, there is more than two hundred dollars in value that you’ll receive. If not from the initial 1.0 version, then from future version, the free add-ons and the priority support.

What other plugin will allow you to quickly and easily make contact forms on all of your blogs? What other plugin will make it easy for you to take feedback, guest posts and other information from your users? What other plugin will allow you to make a basic help-desk? We are just scratching the surface of the types of input and data management this plugin will allow, and you’d be silly not to try to take full advantage of what Gravity Forms is offering you.

Affiliate Offer

Yes, the links in my post are affiliate links, and you too could sign up, receiving a 20% commission on any sales you generate. I think this is very fair, and look forward to hearing from the Rocket Genius team how this does for them.

Follow the Rocket Genius Team on Twitter

If you are like me, and want to keep up to date on everything happening with Gravity Forms, make sure to jump on Twitter, and follow the following people:

• Rocket Genius
• Kevin Flahaut
• Carl Hancock

Don’t forget to check your server first to make sure Gravity Forms will work on it. Use their Gravity Forms Server Test plugin to double check, or just make sure your server is using WordPress 2.8+, MySQL 5+ and PHP 5+.