I moved the project details to this page: QuickPost Wordpress Plugin.I added two new features that were being requested by the users.
Let me know if you find any issues.
On the 18th, I released my first Wordpress plugin. I basically copied the idea of the Tumblr bookmarklet and implemented it as a Wordpress plugin. I love the ease of use of Tumblr but wanted the flexibility of Wordpress. Tumblr doesn’t have very nice permalink urls nor does it allow comments.
This plugin also gave me the opportunity to mess around with jquery. jquery is an awesome JavaScript library that makes JavaScript, DHTML, and AJAX so easy, it’s fun to write. I used it for the tabs along the top of the bookmarklet popup and for the image preview. It added a few extra files to my plugin but the file size is still very very small.
BTW, today, I’ve fixed my first Wordpress plugin bug - 7 days after posting it.
I have seen a number of blog posts discussing the different types of blogs. There are link blogs, information blogs, discussion blogs, and many, many more. However, I also run into countless statistics that explain how many blogs are abandoned after a few posts or a short time. This post is to explain why.
It doesn’t take an expert to know that blogs are created and posted to by bloggers. But that point can’t be overstated. A blogger is a person who follows the same behavior rules that govern the human species. Understanding what is motivating the behavior of the blogger will explain how likely they are to keep blogging. I have listed below what I feel is the first stab at categorizing blogger motivation. These four motivations are listed in order with #1 being the most likely to be sustained and #4 being the least likely. Of course there are exceptions to these, but for the most part you can lump motivation into one of these four.
One major exception to these motivations is the family blog. I’ve chosen to exclude those because those are updated less consistently than the types above and they have a family/friend motivation that is very different than these.
That’s a pretty strong title for this post, but let me explain why I feel this way. Back in mid-December of 2006, I was shopping for a hosting provider for my blog, http://www.disneyfrontier.com. The site was hosted at godaddy.com on their very economical $3.99 a month plan. It had achieved some small success in terms of traffic and I was ready to upgrade to the next level of hosting (usually costing between $6 and $10 per month). Rather then stick with GoDaddy, who I use for this site and many others, I thought I would use this opportunity to explore other hosting providers.
Since the site is run on WordPress, I started at http://wordpress.org/hosting/. After reviewing and comparing the providers on this page, I decided on AN Hosting. For the price ($6.95) per month, it seemed like a good deal. Transferring and setup were flawless. I worked with their technical support on a few trouble tickets to get everything setup quickly and easily. The only bummer was they charged for a full year up front. I did notice that AN Hosting is actually MidPhase Hosting and all billing and trouble tickets were handled in the MidPhase name.
So, while homeless during my move to Phoenix, I was shocked to received the following email:
Subject: We had to suspend your account
From: support@midphase.com
Body:
Hello,
We had to suspend the account with disneyfrontier.com due to high CPU and RAM usage.
Currently the web site is using about 25.41% of RAM.
Our limits are 10% of each resource.Unfortunately we can’t afford to host so large account on a shared server it affects other accounts.
I strongly recommend you to consider upgrade to a dedicated or VPS server or limit your downloads.More information for a VPS or dedicated servers you can find on the
following pages:
http://midphase.com/html_files/hosting_plan_vps.php
http://midphase.com/html_files/hosting_plan_dedicated.phpThank you
I’m having a wierd issue with TextMate’s blogging bundle. When I add categories by typing cat and hitting tab, I am prompted to select the blog. No matter which of the five I choose from, after I hit OK, I get prompted a second time. On the second time, after hitting OK, I get the list of categories. It works, it’s just annoying. Does anyone know how to fix this? It doesn’t happen when selecting which blog to post to, just when selecting which blog to pull categories from.
I had 6,160 visitors to my blog…yesterday! Most the traffic is to read the interview with Twitter developer Alex Payne. The second most popular is the post about experimenting with CakePHP.
Steve Rubel is a prolific blogger who explores how technology is revolutionizing PR and Marketing. Steve works for Edelman, the largest global independent public relations firm. Steve’s blog is always chalked full of great links, news on the latest web technologies and insights into how PR and marketing professionals can utilize the web to their advantage. Steve was gracious enough to answer my 5 question email interview.
Jason Calacanis never surprises me. He lives his own life and it works for him. Expect the unexpected with Jason.
I love Starbucks and bookstores for hanging out. I remember hanging with Dave Winer and Mike Kaltschnee at a Starbucks a few years ago and we had a hoot (Starbucks is an Edelman client)
Never be afraid to dabble in new technology. It’s our future. Some 80% may not pan out but the 20% that does could pay off immensely.
Widgets are part of a broader trend. We live in a media environment where people like to snack on content all day long and then eat more substantive meals when they have time. Everyone needs to think about taking their content and making it small so it fits where people want to snack it.
I work in a terrific firm with a lot of smart people. I help Edelman stay ahead, but my teammates help me stay in the here and now. It’s a balance, but I work on it every day.
I just pulled over 10 posts from my old http://thekenzers.com/joshkenzer/ blog. Since I stopped that blog well before I started this one, you will see a pretty significant gap in my archives, but I wanted to save these for posterity’s sake.
P.S. Just a tip. If you are using Twitter Tools to post to Twitter when you update your blog, you may want to turn that off before importing. Immediately after importing these posts, my blog sent 10 rapid fire twitters.
For those that don’t know, a well respected female blogger, Kathy Sierra, has received several threats including death threats. These are because, as a blogger, she has put herself and her opinions out there for those to review. Obviously, these threats are sick and wrong - there is no conversation to be had there. I wanted to blog about it to inform those that might read this who are not familiar with the story and to acknowledge the pain of the situation.
Sorry for the profanity