WordPress.tv Blog

Feeds glorious feeds – WordPress.tv to your door

Posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 7:45 am by Michael Pick

We’ve been working behind the scenes to make it easier for you to watch WordPress.tv tutorials wherever you are – online or off.

So you’ll notice now that on the front page of WordPress.tv  (scroll down to the bottom) you can click to subscribe to our videos via the awesome, cross-platform, Open Source media center Miro. If you haven’t checked out Miro, yet, it’s an excellent way to download, watch, sort and browse web video, video podcasts, and even the video files on your computer. Better still, it’s totally Open, free to use, runs on pretty much any computer out there (although if you have a 10 year old system it might struggle with HD) and even brings you YouTube and other web-based video in glorious full-screen HD (source files allowing).

We’re big fans, if you haven’t guessed.

You can also subscribe to WordPress.tv in your feed reader of choice, or iTunes, via the feed URL http://wordpress.tv/feed

In iTunes, head to Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast, and drop in the URL above. You’ll be good to go and can then download any videos that tickle your fancy. 

We’re still working out a few kinks, but if you’re anxious to get your hands on our free (as in beer, as in freedom) tutorials in iPod-friendly MP4 format – you now have a bunch of ways you can do so.

Enjoy!

WordPress.tv – now playing on dotSUB

Posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm by Michael Pick

We’re listening to your feedback and trying to make WordPress.tv a resource that as many people as possible can enjoy.

So, in addition to wanting to share your videos and content, we’re also keen to make the content made over here as accessible as possible.

Last week, as the next step in making this happen, I uploaded our current batch of tutorials to an excellent online video community called dotSUB. So as of now, there’s a complete collection of videos for you to browse.

The difference is, at dotSUB you can quickly and easily add translations and transcriptions to the videos, as inline (but also downloadable) subtitles. To get the ball rolling I’ve transcribed almost all of the videos into English – which will hopefully make them more accessible to people – both those who might have English as a second language, and those that might have accessibility issues.

But that’s just the first step!

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WordPress.tv: the shape of things to come, blow-by-blow

Posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 12:12 pm by Michael Pick

Making WordPress.tv – the future, now

We’ve just switched on Making WordPress.tv, a development blog with real-time updates on what’s cooking at WordPress.tv labs. It makes use of the freshly launched P2 theme, which you can use yourself on your WordPress.com blog (coming to a self-hosted blog near you, soon).

So what’s the idea with having a WordPress.tv dev blog?

For one, to give you at-a-glance, real time updates of what’s being made, features under consideration, and content underway.We’re big fans of transparency, and this is really an experiment into how making the process of putting out a stream of bite-sized development updates in public might make for an all round better experience for everyone.

But the idea goes a bit deeper than that. In sharing the process, ideas on what could be better, and the day-to-day running of things, we’re inviting you to have your say, share your ideas, and help shape the way WordPress.tv evolves over time. We’re still only just getting warmed up, and for major signposts you’ll be able to check in here in the WordPress.tv blog. But if you want to get a bit more up close and personal, or are just interested in what goes on behind the scenes, Making WordPress.tv is there for you.

Things you’ve been telling us= the future of WordPress.tv

We’ve had some excellent feedback from you, and encourage you to share more of it – through the content form up there in the menu, or directly on the WordPress.tv dev blog as it unfolds. Some of the things you’ve been asking about include:

  • Making it easier to experience WordPress.tv in your language
  • Being able to subscribe to content in your RSS reader or podcatcher app (read Miro or iTunes)
  • Being able to download content for the sake of portability

We made our first step towards making WordPress.tv a global community by adding language filtering recently. I wrote about it yesterday. This is, of course, a small step, and we’re starting to receive lots of ideas about what we could do to push things further in this direction for the international WordPress community. I’m looking forward to seeing how that unfolds.

As for being able to subscribe to feeds of your favorite categories, or a global feed – and by extension of that, download content – these are features that aren’t too far away. We’re fans of being able to take your media with you, whichever way you choose to access it – and I personally can’t wait to be able to subscribe to WordPress.tv feeds in, say, Miro or iTunes. Stay tuned.

WordPress.tv needs you

As always, we’re keen to hear your ideas, to share your videos, and to make WordPress.tv easier and more enjoyable for you to use. Every video you submit is reviewed, every idea logged, and every email responded to. If you experience differently, let us know – we’re all ears.

As always, your comments are welcome here, and of course on the new dev blog.

WordPress.tv – in your language

Posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 8:24 pm by Michael Pick

WordPress has a lot of users who don’t speak English as a first language, or at all. Thanks to the work of volunteers and the hard-working localization teams, experiencing WordPress in your language is easier than ever, whatever it might be.

But what about WordPress.tv?

Well, at the moment a lot of the content you’ll find here is in English. However, we’re keen to make it as easy as possible for people to add their own content, in their own language. Hopefully, in time, it’ll also be possible to translate some of the content you’ll find here to help fellow users out.

While we work towards a solution for making it easy to localize our content, you’ve started adding your own, which is awesome. 

And to make it easier, you can now filter the content on WordPress.tv by language. When you head to the How-To or WordCampTV sections of the site, you’ll now find the option to filter the content you see by language.

Ok, right now there’s a lot of English language content, and a handful of Spanish and Italian videos – thanks to the contributions of WordPress users like you. But we hope that in time this will grow to encompass as many languages as WordPress itself does. 

Remember, if you’d like to submit a video to be shared on WordPress.tv, you can do that from the contact form up in the menu. We’re looking forward to seeing them.

What other things could we be doing to make experiencing WordPress.tv in your language easier?

Screencasting Resources (Part One)

Posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 2:14 pm by Michael Pick

We’re keen to curate the best WordPress-flavored screencasts, videos and WordCamp presentations here at WordPress.tv.

Over time we hope to start adding all kinds of video content from members of the WordPress.com and WordPress.org communities. If you’ve thought about putting screencasts together yourself but aren’t sure where to start, check out some of the links below:

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WordPress.tv and You – One Week On

Posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 5:54 am by Michael Pick

It’s been an awesome first week for WordPress.tv, and we’ve already received a huge amount of really helpful feedback, and some great suggestions and submissions for content.

We’re taking notes here and logging all of your requests, suggestions and the links to videos you’ve been sending in. Please do keep them coming.

If you’re thinking about submitting a video, we now have some submission guidelines that should help you to zero in on the kind of thing we’re looking for. The key things are to keep your videos (be they screencasts, vodcasts or WordCamp footage) clear, current, concise and concentrated. Think about the kind of things you’d look for in a video about WordPress, and you won’t go far wrong.

And whether you’ve made some videos yourself, or have stumbled upon some cool stuff out there on the interweb, ping us some links via our contact form. Likewise, if you find something that’s missing and you’d like to see – we’re all ears.

Some of the things you’ve been telling us you’d like to see more of include WordPress.org basics – such as getting installed and set up; tips on theme design (check out the three part CSS-Tricks series we just published); plugin demos and development videos; better filtering of WordPress.com & WordPress.org content; tutorials for intemediate and advanced users; and a bunch more stuff besides. As we start to add more international content, we’ll make sure you can filter by language, too.

We’re working on making all that happen – and hope you’ll join us in making WordPress.tv a killer resource for all things WordPress.

Welcome to WordPress.tv

Posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 4:00 am by Michael Pick

Our goal with WordPress.tv is simple:

To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations. There’s a quick intro video if you’re curious:
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