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Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
I am Jim Groom
Find out more about me here.
Recent comments
- Eamon Costello on Conference, Camera, ILTA!
- Reverend on Punk’s Not Dead
- Reverend on Punk’s Not Dead
- Martin Weller on Punk’s Not Dead
- Maren Deepwell on Punk’s Not Dead
- Jim Groom on Punk’s Not Dead
- Jim Groom on Punk’s Not Dead
- Scott Leslie on Punk’s Not Dead
- Alan Levine on Punk’s Not Dead
- Jim Groom on You’re definitely Dr Detroit …
- Jim Groom on Atari 2600 Game Cartridge Display Stand
- Jim Groom on Conference, Camera, ILTA!
- Jim Groom on Conference, Camera, ILTA!
- Tom on Conference, Camera, ILTA!
- Zach Davis on Atari 2600 Game Cartridge Display Stand
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Recent Posts
- Punk’s Not Dead
- Unscripted Futures
- Conference, Camera, ILTA!
- You’re definitely Dr Detroit …
- The Reclaim Student Showcase Returns for 2026
- Domain of One’s Own Version 2
- Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It’s Off to ILTA’s EdTech 26 We Go
- Atari 2600 Game Cartridge Display Stand
- Building a Blog You Can Walk Into
- Deferred Maintenance: Upgrading Mastodon and PeerTube
browse the bavarchive
Contributors
some favorites
- Alan Levine
- Andy Rush
- Audrey Watters
- bava.social
- Bonnie Stewart
- Brian Lamb
- Bryan Alexander
- Chris Lott
- Clint LaLonde
- Cole Camplese
- Darcy Norman
- David Kernohan
- David Wiley
- Gardner Campbell
- GNA Garcia
- Grant Potter
- Jeffrey Keefer
- Jon Beasley-Murray
- Jon Udell
- Kate Bowles
- Kin Lane
- Laura Blankenship
- Leslie Madsen-Brooks
- Lisa M Lane
- Martha Burtis
- Martin Hawksey
- Martin Weller
- Mike Caulfield
- Mikhail Gershovich
- Mountebank
- Paul Bond
- Scott Leslie
- Serena Epstein
- Shannon Hauser
- Stephen Downes
- The OLDaily
- Tim Owens
- Tom Woodward
- Tony Hirst
Tag Archives: wpmu
A random bug and a memory error in WPMu 2.7.1
Update: The following error was caused by wp-cache.php. I disabled the file and WP-Super-Cache for the moment, and we’ll see if an upgrade of WP-Super-Cache doesn’t solve this error. Every user that is not an admin on UMW Blogs seemed … Continue reading
Secure Sign-in for WPMu
Image credit: Steve Rhodes’ “Bank of America security giving me the finger during the Iraq war protest” OK, I need some help here. I am trying to make sure everything we do on UMW Blogs is covered under SSL, and … Continue reading
My tractor for a wiki farm
Image credit: gem66’s “Farm Tractor and Family” The recent annoucnement and sharing of the various extensions and code that enables user integration between WPMu and MediaWiki, I have once again returned to the idea of make the UMW Blogs Wiki … Continue reading
UMW Blogs Upgraded to WPMu 2.7.1
“Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see. Move along now….move along.” We waited until the end of the semester for the UMW Blogs upgrade to 2.7.1 and I have to say going from version 2.6.5 to 2.7.1 was the … Continue reading
CUNY Academic Commons Announces WPMu-MediaWiki Single Sign-on
I missed this announcement last Thursday while traveling and getting ready for CUNY WordCampEd, but this is pretty exciting news from the CUNY Academic Commons, which promises to become a force in offering up much needed plugins and open source … Continue reading
Mapping a domain within a mapped domain
So, I was wondering whether or not it would be possible to actually map a domain within a mapped domain on UMW Blogs, and I finally got my answer at the Faculty Academy workshop I ran on domain mapping. What … Continue reading
Building the Syndication Bus: Plugin Ingredients
While at Duke, UVA, and more recently the University de Mayaguez—I’ll post about that event as soon as I finish traveling—the most common question people had for me was how can they design/build the “Syndication Bus” for WPMu. Well, this … Continue reading
University of Virginia and WPMu? Wahoo!
In September of 2007 Steve Stedman invited Patrick and I to UVA to talk about the work we were doing with WPMu and UMW Blogs. It was somewhat difficult to get folks to meet with us, and we really didn’t … Continue reading
UMW Blogs’ Support Stats
When people ask me how much time I spend supporting UMW Blogs, I say it’s about an hour of my week, which is true. Now, to be clear, I think of support along the lines of “I lost by password” … Continue reading

Achilles’ Heel of the Syndication Bus
In a recent post about the development towards a syndication bus using WordPress Multi-User, Steven Egan brought up an excellent issue that for me remains the Achilles’ Heel for this setup: how can we syndicate comments along with posts? Thing … Continue reading →