Well, it seems my being the co-host of the WordPress podcast is ruffling the feathers of some people. I have been getting my first hate mail basically saying “David SUCKS!”…

It kinda bummed me out, and while I try to take their criticism as a something to learn from I also take it a little personally.

Most of the criticism seems to deal with the fact that I brush LDAP aside as something that isn’t important. The point I was trying to make is that it is not important for home users, or even people that work in offices that don’t deal with managing such systems because they just care if things work or don’t work.

That is not to say that LDAP is not an important tool, nor am I saying it was a waste of time to get LDAP and WordPress to work with each other, but I am saying that most of the public don’t even know what it is, nor will they ever need to configure it.

From Wikipedia:

In computer networking, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP, is a networking protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP.

A directory is a set of information with similar attributes organized in a logical and hierarchical manner. The most common example is the telephone directory, which consists of a series of names (either of a person or organization) organized alphabetically, with an address and phone number attached.

An LDAP directory often reflects various political, geographic, and/or organizational boundaries, depending on the model chosen. LDAP deployments today tend to use Domain Name System (DNS) names for structuring the topmost levels of the hierarchy. Deeper inside the directory might appear entries representing people, organizational units, printers, documents, groups of people or anything else which represents a given tree entry (or multiple entries).

I really hope that some people will also take my addition to the WordPress podcast as a positive thing, and that some of them will like that I am opinionated and sincere.

Also, I’d like to say that I am a maddeningly obnoxious tech “support” guy, but I do try hard not to be. I know when its my fault, and I know that I don’t know everything, but honestly, I have been using WordPress since before its 1.0 release, I have been blogging professionally for over a year, and I have worked in the computer operations, network support, and web development environments early on in my career, but I do have half a clue about some things.

I really didn’t mean to offend anyone that thinks LDAP is great, and I also think in enterprise level environments it is great, but for the average person, like myself, I really don’t see it as something important, and again, that was the point I was trying to make.

Hopefully, those that like the addition of me to the show will take the time to give their thumbs up before Charles changes his mind and I disappear from the show…