Tag: WordPress

From SVSU to Automattic

Nick Momrik26 Comments

I started attending Saginaw Valley State University in 1998. A year and a half later, I got a job in the IT Services Support Center as a Student Technician. In 2002 I was hired as a Help Desk Analyst and graduated with my Bachelor’s a few months later. A little over a year ago I took a job as Microlab Technology Specialist. After nearly 10 years, Wednesday was my last day working for SVSU.

During my time with the school, I made a lot of friends and gained great experience. I’m sad to leave the people and a place that has been good for me, but I’m happy to be moving onto something new.

For the past 6 weeks, whenever I wasn’t at SVSU, I was working for Automattic. Thursday was my first day as Happiness Engineer for the company. My main focus is to provide support for WordPress.com but I also get my hands a little dirty with WordPress and other things. Automattic is a young company with a bright future. I’m thrilled to join a very talented team.

How did this come about?

Late in 2003 I was looking for some software to run a blog. I landed at Photo Matt and liked the way the site was setup, so I shot Matt an email. He suggested I give WordPress a try and I’ve been using it ever since. Over the years, I’ve contacted Matt a few times and earlier this year at the MacWorld WordPress meetup I had a chance to meet him in person. A week later I was browsing around the Automattic web site and noticed some jobs openings, so I applied. Now here I am…it’s my job to work with WordPress. Somebody pinch me!

WordPress Plugin: Comment Author URL Stripper

Nick Momrik16 Comments

As promised, I’ve created a plugin which removes the URL from a comment author if it contains any of the words specified in the Options screen. Too many people have been leaving comments and putting in yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc. as their web site and I got tired of editing those comments all of the time. Now I simply put a few words into the Options screen and the plugin automatically does the work for me.

Comment Author URL Stripper

Could I have chosen a longer name for the plugin?

I had thought about including an option to prevent any previous comments with the specified words from displaying their URL, but decided against it. I used the following in phpMyAdmin to quickly do the work…

UPDATE `wp_comments` SET `comment_author_url`='' WHERE `comment_author_url` like '%PUTWORDHERE%'

* If you’re using a different table prefix, make sure to change wp_comments to reflect it.

* Replace PUTWORDHERE with hotmail as an example.

Simple Post WordPress Plugin

Nick Momrik5 Comments

I’ve just released version 1.0 of my new Simple Post plugin for WordPress. The plugin allows you to create simpler post write screen. There are options to set the default category, ping status, and comment status, as well as autofill the title of the post with some text and date/time. You can also choose to display the tags and editor toolbar.

The options page for the plugin also gives some handy bookmarklets and a couple of AppleScripts that can be used with Quicksilver for quick posting on a Mac. I’ve been using the plugin for a few weeks now and it has become my replacement for Twitter. While out at MacWorld last week I was posting quick posts left and right all week.

For more information about the plugin and to see a few screenshots, visit the Simple Post plugin on WordPress.

My First WordPress Meetup

Nick Momrik4 Comments

On Wednesday, I attended the 2008 MacWorld WordPress Meetup at Chaat Cafe.

The first person I met was Andrew because I noticed a WordPress sticker on his laptop while we were in line ordering food. Shortly after we sat down, Matt walked in. I’ve been using WordPress since version 0.72 back in 2003, so it was nice to finally meet him. Marianne and Nicole were a couple of others I met and talked to for awhile. Everyone was great to meet and hang out with.

There were others I talked to and even more I didn’t get to meet. Since this was my first meetup I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was a lot of fun. I’m going to try and start a meetup back in Saginaw, MI when I get home.

I didn’t meet Lisa, but found her blog while doing a Google searches for other posts about the meetup. She has a few photos from the event posted. I’m in the blue shirt sitting down with my back to the camera in one of the photos.