Richard Tape of the University of British Columbia runs a massive multi-site WordPress installation infrastructure with tens of thousands of individual websites. A change to the WordPress shortcodes API broke hundreds of them, and Richard had to get creative to fix it. The incident would keep him busy with hundreds of urgent support requests for days, and it shook his faith in the WordPress project.
About Our Guests:
Richard Tape is a WordPress core contributor originally from Manchester, England and now living and loving life in Vancouver, Canada. Checkout his “rant” he published days after his difficult WordPress update. Follow him on Twitter @RichAsInRichard.
John James Jacoby is another WordPress core contributor who gave us an inside perspective on the WordPress core update that changed the shortcodes API. He is the founder of BuddyPress, loves puppies and currently resides in Wisconsin. Follow him on Twitter @jjj.
The Hard Refresh theme is by The Brow, the latest in a long line of beat projects from genre-bending producer Marcus Williams. His ability to blend the visceral headnod qualities of golden era hip hop with dream pop and indie rock has captured fans across the world. He has been a steady fixture in the Portland scene through the years and continues to remain versatile – these tracks can be uptempo and playful one minute, then gritty and determined the next, but always confidently crafted with a unique penchant for sonic detail.
Interstitial music was composed by Douglas Detrick and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and performed by Casey Bozell. The episode was recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Douglas Detrick, and produced by Douglas Detrick and Catherine Bridge. Thanks to Richard for sharing his story, and to John James Jacoby for lending us his perspective.
Transcript:
Intro:
[Catherine] More and more, our lives and businesses depend on internet technology. These are stories about the people who pick up the pieces when it all falls apart. Welcome to Hard Refresh.[Rich] My team and I checked it all through. Everything looked fine, so we put it into production. It took maybe seven minutes for the first ticket to come through! …my whole site’s broken, nothing works…Theme music drops[Catherine] Richard Tape of the University of British Columbia runs a massive WordPress installation with tens of thousands of individual websites. A change to the WordPress shortcodes API broke hundreds of them, and Richard had to get creative to make things right again. The incident would keep him busy with hundreds of urgent support requests for days, and challenged his faith in the WordPress project.[Douglas] Hard Refresh is a production of Rocket Lift, a web development company based in Portland, Oregon. I’m your host, Douglas Detrick, and I’m glad you’re with me.[music]Meet Richard Tape: What does he do?
[Doug] Here’s Rich.[Rich] My name is Richard Tape and I am a WordPress developer for the University of British Columbia.[Doug] …which I’ll refer to as UBC. UBC’s website is filled with the usual information for prospective students and anyone else who wants to know more about the school. He also runs several separate platforms dedicated to teaching and learning with many websites for faculty and students.[Rich] The biggest one we have unimaginatively titled “Blogs” which is blogs.ubc.ca and it has at the momen
