habitually probing generalist

This post is for all of you running WordPress blogs.

The short version:

These guys rock hard! Buy this book!

Longer version:

In case you do not know it, there is a blog called Digging Into WordPress which puts out a lot of valuable information on all aspects of WP.

A while ago they released a book and an ebook (pdf), also entitled Digging Into WordPress.  The ebook was $27 and comes with a lifetime of free upgrades.  I bought the book back in March and had all kinds of ideas on how to use it.  As my regular readers know a couple of marriages and a move 10 hours further westward got in the way of a lot of things.  But I have read parts and skimmed many others and I’m here to tell you that this book is useful.

Eventually along came WP v. 3 and their book was out-of-date.  But unlike lots of software books that are released at the same time as, or before, the software itself—and thus how accurate can they be?—they waited until they could do it proper using a fully functional release version just like you and me.

Well, that book was released just a couple of days ago.  I saw the blog post 2 days ago right before bed and noticed that they said everyone who had previously bought it had already received the download link to the new version via email.  But I had not.  So in the morning I checked into it.  According to comments on the announcement post it looked like lots of people had not gotten their emails either, primarily due to overaggressive spam filters.

We were supposed to find our original email receipt and email it to them.  Well, I found an email and started replying and then came up short.  This was the email I got when I put my name on the preorder list in Nov 2009 and was for a $9 discount.  Sadly, I had failed to use that discount.  I found my pdf and accompanying files (comes with some templates) and doing a Cmd-I I got the Finder Info where I had added a note that I got it on 28 March 2010.  I also verified that date in my Google Doc that I keep of all book purchases.  So I sadly and tentatively wrote my reply stating that this was all that I had, the date and price I had paid, and asked if there were some other way of proving I had purchased the book.  Within a matter of hours—keep in mind this is 2 guys and they’re handling lots of email and blog comments due to what in most cases was overaggressive spam filters—I had a gracious and courteous response that my update email had gone to a long gone email address and should they resend it to my gmail address?

So long story a little shorter, I got my updated ebook and I got it with a minimum of fuss. I have since realized why I never got a purchase receipt and why the update email went to an address that I no longer had well before I bought the book.

Godamn PayPal!  I purchased the book with PayPal.  Well, not really true as I was trying not to but it took over anyway.  Grrr!  Well, my PayPal account is stuck with an email address that I am not allowed to change because I cannot reply to the email they send there to verify that I want to change it.  Seriously!  I understand the need for protection of your users but then there is idiocy.  I no longer have that email because my (previous) ISP changed it.  It was my Insight email and Verizon Comcast bought them out and hamfistedly changed everyone’s email addresses.  They also just killed those accounts in full after 30 days.  No forwarding after that date; just dead.  Now even Verizon Comcast isn’t my ISP because I live somewhere else and thankfully no Verizon Comcast here. [Corrected 5 Sep 2010 upon realizing my brain fart.]

So all of this was caused by PayPal not allowing me to update my email address because they asininely assume that we all have perpetual access to every email address we have ever used.  Brilliant.  And so utterly wrong.

Anyway, Digging Into WordPress and Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr are excellent! They did me right and they did so graciously while under fire from many others for these same sorts of technological issues that are often out of our control.

So if you are running a WordPress blog buy Digging Into WordPress v. 3.0 You will not regret it!