Free Technology Tutorials

Last week was a big one for Google fans in higher education. Google Wave opened its doors, and Google Voice now lets students get calls forwarded from their old numbers to their new phones. Google made one more announcement last week—about a new course-scheduling system, CloudCourse—that could potentially have implications for higher education. READ THE REST HERE.

And see the second comment in the comments section of the article…that’s coming and it’s a death sentence to the rigid, out-of-date LMS systems like Blackboard and Moodle. Blackboard may survive as it’s evolving into a full-fledged campus management system, but Moodle, being nothing more than a document repository, gradebook, and discussion forum, is well on its way to extinction.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Figaro and Tori and family.

Note: Figaro is the old, ugly one Tori, joined our family in 2009, so it’ll be hard for 2010 to top that.

This morning I made my last post on the wordpress.org forums…I think I’ve made my point for those who have followed the “moderating” issue there for the past couple of days.

To The Forum Jerks:

MichaelH: I’ll never post to the wordpress.org forums again. Congratulations…if that was your objective, you are a success.

kperrone: Who are you anyway? I’d never even seen you until two days ago. Yes, you’re a jerk and a troll…enough said.

To a few people, of many regular helpers in the forums, who are actually competent and do seem to get what Open Source support is really about:

Samboll: You’re a true mod and helper. Sorry we ended on a sour note…some people turn the other cheek…some fight back. You were the one person who chimed in on the, now closed, thread and suggested a compromise. MichaelH replied and basically told you to shove it…he will do what he wants…and you support him? You’re a better man than I. Anyway, it was a pleasure helping along with you over the past few months. No more “modlooks” from me — I think MichaelH may have a better understanding of what a real spammer is now…unfortunately, you got caught in the middle. Of course, I could be wrong…for the past 17 Hours, while MichaelH has been preoccupied with deleted dozens of my posts, some “real” paypal spam has been setting at the very top of the forums…irony at it’s best

whooami: You do have a tendency to “go off” on people, but I’ll give you two things: 1. You know your stuff. I would have never figured out the modsecurity issue without your help, and 2. You can take it as well as you can dish it out.

ClaytonJames: Remember, Woodford Reserve…can’t beat it

Now, don’t get all teary eyed…this site isn’t going anywhere, but the focus and purpose IS going to change. I’ll just find another Open Source project to provide real help for.

As I said, I will no longer make free WordPress videos, but my last exchange with whooami did give me an idea. I think I will start reposting stuff from the “creative commons” WordPress docs to this site. Of course, that is not going to provide real help to anyone…it’ll just create SEO for this site. In short, I’ll just make this site like 99.9% of the others out there…I’ll make it all about ad revenue, Google juice, and SEO.

To quote Samboll:

this is crap figaro

Yes, I agree…it is!

EDIT: If you are reading this post, thank MichaelH, rough moderator in the wordpress.org forums. Due to his actions, I will not longer create and publish free WordPress video tutorials.
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I’ve been helping out a lot over at wordpress.org in the support forums for over 18 months. I’ve dedicated untold hours of my time for free posting help in the forums there and creating free video tutorials here for some of the more common problems that WordPress users experience.

Today I see that an anonymous moderator on the forums there removed links to this site from all my posts, at least all I looked at, that were to free video tutorials on this site.

That’s a great way to say thanks, don’t you think?

I will post no more free help on this site or wordpress.org until someone addresses this issue and gives me a good reason why that happened. Moderators there post links to their own sites, and other sites, with tutorials and tips all the time–which is great. I’m not sure what is going on in “moderation land” over in the support forums…maybe it’s a rough moderator or some systemic policy change, but I’ll provide no more free help until it’s sorted. On a side note, all links posted to the wordpress.org forums are no-follow, so this isn’t a question of someone getting precious “Google juice” by posting links there. The only purpose of a link posted there is to provide more detailed help for someone than can be provided in text in those forums…some people learn better when they can “see” how to do something. I’ve posted hundreds upon hundreds of times there with help typed directly in the post as well.

If you are as confused about this as I am, maybe you should post a note in the help forums asking about this as well. Here is just one example of what I’m talking about…a person moving servers and didn’t know what to do. This is not something you can easily type instructions for, but a step-by-step video can help a lot. As you can see, no one else offered assistance, but the link to my video that shows exactly how to do this was removed.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/315349?replies=3

Pretty cheap shot WP Mods!

Edit: Seems that MichaelH (http://wordpress.org/support/profile/18989) is the power hungry mod that decided to remove all the links. Evidently he doesn’t have enough to do, so he has decided to run off WordPress helpers. My free videos must be impacting his paid support…sad. Only a few hours after he deleted all links to tutorials here, he continues to post links to his own site: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/315495?replies=5