Posts with tag "blogs"

Lessons learned … the hard way

Category: Opinion
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Posted 725 days ago

I have been using WordPress for a long time and over a number of different blogs, some still running and others that have fallen by the wayside, and in the process I have installed a great number of themes and never had much of a problem.

Until last night.

On one of my other blogs I wanted to find a more suitable theme and found one through the theme repository on WordPress that looked to hold a lot of promise. So I used the theme page section of the blog’s admin section to grab a copy and install it.

Once installed, and without much further thought I activated the theme and headed to the option page for the theme to see what tweaking I could do to it that would bring it more in line with what I wanted.

I will admit that the theme has a nice setup when it comes to the option and after I changed a couple of options in one section I hit the save changes buttons and that is when everything fell apart.

The moment I hit the save button I was displayed the 404 page instead of the theme option page and nothing I did would return me to the Admin section of the blog. It was like the Admin part of the blog had totally disappeared but I could see after FTPing into the site that the wp-admin folder and files were all there. I couldn’t even get to any of the Admin pages by using a direct URL – I was screwed.

My next option was to try the supposedly reliable fallback of renaming the theme folder that was causing the problem but that didn’t work. My next step was to get my hands dirty and get into the database settings for the blog and change the various theme settings however once again it didn’t help.

As a last resort I was left with having to email my host and good friend and see if he could get his data center people to restore the site from backup and thanks to quick work from him and the data center the blog was back to normal, minus one post, in under an hour.

So what are the lessons learned you ask?

Well first off regardless of where you get your WordPress themes don’t trust them. Sure, I have never had a problem before this with themes I have installed from reputable sites; but never assume that that you will not have problems, even though my experience last night might have been one of the worst you could experience.

We have gotten so use to the themes we download, install, tweak, and use being reliable and well designed; and as a result we get lazy which leads into the second lesson.

Backups!

Not just once in a while but have a set backup plan for your blog(s) and live by it faithfully.

I was lucky in that my host does daily backups and was available immediately even though it was late at night. In very short order he was able to get the site restore queued up and finished in under an hour; but you can’t always rely on your host being more than an automated reply to a support ticket that is probably mixed in with hundreds of other support tickets.

Of course how often you do these backups depends on how busy your blog is but at a very minimum you should be doing a weekly backup of both the database and the blog files. You might lose a few posts but at least you won’t lose everything and should anything go really wrong as it did with me you can be back up and running in very short order.

Like I said – lessons learned.

This reminds me of Michael Arrington

Category: Technology
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Posted 884 days ago

I don’t know why but every time I have looked at this image by Steffen Winkler I am for some reason reminded of Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.

via Cuzine

6 Keys to being a blogging failure

Category: Technology
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5 comments
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Posted 1171 days ago

Isn’t blogging great?

You get to write whatever you feel like and publish it to the web where everyone can come rushing to read all your greatest and latest thoughts. You relish in the fact that your words spread far beyond your own little corner because people think what you have to say is so mind-boggling great that they just have to share them with everyone. You pinch yourself constantly thinking that your popularity must be a dream.

Well pinch a little harder because chances are it is a dream. A nice comfortable delusional dream that keeps you hoping that one day you will break through the closed circle that the blogging world has become.

Now you will find all kinds of suggestions out there about how you can connive, trick or otherwise SEO your way into that inner circle but for the most part they are a bunch of crap that gets constantly regurgitated by blogs more popular than you in order to keep their pageviews pulling in the bucks.

This post isn’t one of those. In fact it is a post about the things that you can do that will forever keep you in the minor leagues of blogging. Hopefully these points will help you achieve your dreams of blogging mediocrity – you can thank me later.

Margaret Wente needs to get off her high horse – or is that too much of a guy thing to say?

Category: Technology
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2 comments
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Posted 1188 days ago

Earlier today Mark Dykeman DM’ed a link to his posted reply to a post at the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente titled Why are bloggers male?

I have to give Mark a tip of the hat because he managed to pull off a great even-handed response to what has to be one of the most moronic and arsine fourteen paragraphs of ill-informed opinion of the blogosphere that I have ever read. I’d suggest that even Andrew Keen and Nick Carr at the most cynical have a better understanding of the blogosphere except they are men so they probably wouldn’t count as valid references in Wente’s world.

She points to how tilted the blogosphere is towards the male gender and not just your gym change room type of males but rather 12-year-olds having pissing contests in the snow. She doesn’t deny that woman don’t have a place because after all they can do a better job of opinionizing than their male counterparts – they just don’t have any interest in doing so.

Excuse me?

I think Steven Rubel’s mind has become waterlogged from Lifestreaming too much

Category: Uncategorized
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Single comment
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Posted 1212 days ago

I see a lot of really off the wall ideas and conversations during a day to the point I often wonder if anything will make me shake my head it total and utter bewilderment anymore.

Then along comes Steve Rubel with a statement that stops me dead in my tracks and raise my head to the sky all the while muttering “Oh Lord….”. After all what more can you do when someone said that the future of the web is one without sites.

Sure on the surface that hits all the wet and warm spots of the social media mavens but when you look at the reasoning that both Rubel and Paul Gillin give for this so-called inevitable future of the web – well – let the head shaking commence.

This of course comes hot on the heels of a post by MG Siegler at TechCrunch about the Associated Press directing all their traffic to their Facebook page.

Steve thinks this is a news game changer

The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation on Facebook and – above all – build relationships.

Paul Gillin says this about the site-less web

These are the first ripples in a wave of new technology that will make the Internet effectively site-less. By that I mean that the metaphor of the Web as we’ve known it for the last 15 years is breaking down. The Internet is increasingly not about sites but about content and people

So let me get this straight. The future of the web, and all its incredible richness, is going to be places like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Foursquare.

If this is what the future of the web is going to be like then we will lose more than we gain.Contrary to what Steve Rubel thinks the AP isn’t a visionary in the least. They have just found a new way to concentrate and control their product.

There’s nothing visionary about that.

There is no such thing as permanence on the web

Category: Uncategorized
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Posted 1241 days ago

Library_of_Alexandria Will all the web services we use today be around in 10, 20, or 50 years from now?

Some might be around in ten, a few might last twenty but very few will last beyond that.

For those who do it will be because they continue to provide a needed service that has grown with our technology. For the most part though all those words and ideas will fade away.

We like to believe that all our contributions around the web and on our blogs will last forever. Unfortunately this is nothing but a dream that we will take to our graves.

Take a look around.

Twitter: even now everything you post is gone after two weeks after you wrote it.

Forums: totally at the discretion of the forum owner. Once they decide to shut it down your contributions are gone.

Blogs: our blog content only lasts as long as our domains do. Stop paying those fees either because of financial problems or death and at some point all that content is gone.

I have talked about this before and more recently Dave Winer brought up the subject

Fact is, most of the writing we’re doing now, no matter what tools we use, will disappear, probably a lot sooner than you think.

Will all these treasures be missed?

No.

For all that we like to believe that our words and thoughts will live beyond us the reality is that they will be replaced many times over.

As much as we might want to build an electronic Library of Alexandria the reality is that digital memories are a lot more fragile than we like to think they are.

CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast: The Pollyanna landscape of blogs and brand protection

Category: Podcasts
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Posted 1294 days ago

cbn1-podpost In tonight’s show Sean and I take a bit of a look back on the world of blogging and how, regardless of what some might think, that the growth of blogging may not be the good thing some would like to believe, nor has it grown in the way others would like it to have.

From webtribution, the Web 2.0 version of the age old act of retribution, to the stiflingly of voices of truth blogging has changed. Changed enough that it has good bloggers like Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, or third host here, looking back and wonder where it all changed. For Sean and myself it seems to have become more a matter of protecting one’s brand rather than speaking from the heart.

Posts referred to in the show

The Dark Side of ‘Webtribution’ – The Wall Street Journal
What Caused the Blogosphere to Grow Up? – SiliconANGLE
Are People Just Fatigued of Your Brand? – Michelle’s Blog

Enjoy the show

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“Self-publishing rips off the author” – Not so says one publisher

Category: Uncategorized
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Posted 1306 days ago

addict I remember a time, and it wasn’t that long ago either, when people would snicker under their breath if you said your had self-published a book and then had the nerve to call yourself an author.

That was before things like blogs, PDF, e-books, Lulu, and FastPencil turned that whole world upside down. No longer is calling oneself an author a title that you only get to use if you have been lucky enough to win a publisher lottery and they deigned to publish your latest tome.

Now you can create your great American novel and within very little time and the with the help of a growing number of publishers who are offering a self-publishing service you can be on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Not to mention any number of services that specialize in selling e-books.