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Typepad Export Options: Congenial Lies from SixApart’s Anil Dash

Last Friday, Anil Dash and I had a delightful conversation. I mean that delightful. Anil and I share many of the same passions: the web, media, user interface, weblogs.

Anil is a very congenial sort and was a prominent early weblog writer. He is now both a Vice President at SixApart and head evangelist for Typepad.

I have a deep and intimate acquaintance with SixApart's Typepad service, as a founding user in 2003 and now as the founder of the premier Typepad to WordPress rescue service.

The starting point of our call was clear. Anil is annoyed about my regular unfavourable postings about Typepad. I don't know if SixApart is annoyed about our rescue service itself - we've moved some pretty high profile sites in the last few months, some of which I am not even at liberty to disclose their names.

Keep reading Typepad Export Options: Congenial Lies from SixApart's Anil Dash

How to get HTTPD and FTP to play well together or SEO image management nirvana

While developing the Foliopress WYSIWYG we decided to create the images management on the basis of Kae Veren's excellent KFM file manager. While we are totally happy with how KFM handles the images itself, we were unable to work with images uploaded via ftp.

Uploading images one by one through an image editor is fine, uploading twenty that way is annoying. One of the reasons to prefer WordPress over Typepad is that you do have direct access to the server via ftp. So this was clearly not acceptable. It wasn't even possible to change the file ownership of httpd via SSH (without root permissions).

Keep reading How to get HTTPD and FTP to play well together or SEO image management nirvana

Facebook in Financial Trouble

Facebook desperately need $100 million. Just the kind of company I’d like to give access all the contact information for my family and friends.

Microsoft AdCenter Setup for Mac Users

Microsoft adCenter is Microsoft's answer to Google's AdWords. It's the main search engine business for Microsoft.

Imagine you are a simple businessman, who has his own website and you want to bring more traffic on your site. As you are familiar with Microsoft software for decades now, naturally you'll want to check out their online advertising system.

Here are some basic guidelines to make the experience less painful:

First pitfall - Don't even consider using Safari or any other browser except IE and Mozilla, adCenter website does not support other browsers. Their help center states that also Mac and Virtual machines are not supported.

Before he found out that all Mac browsers are banned, Alec, our creative director, spent several hours trying to get Microsoft adCenter to work with all of the browsers under Mac OS, including spoofing the user-agent. Futile, he assures me. You can't even view the System requirements page!

Keep reading Microsoft AdCenter Setup for Mac Users

Backup on Mac OS X: Testing MimMac with Backup Bouncer

I just found a great little utility to test backup systems.

It’s called

Keep reading Backup Bouncer and like the bouncer in a bar Backup Bouncer is there to keep the patrons honest. It will let you know ahead of time if your backup system is letting you down in complex ways, like not copying metadata or is blowing out resource forks or resetting creation dates.

These are the sorts of things you won’t notice until you’ve lost your original and for some reason your Aperture or iPhoto library won’t run properly anymore.

Of course, even a defective backup is better than none.

Backup on Mac OS X: Testing MimMac with Backup Bouncer

Using the Search Regex plugin for WordPress successfully

If you need to search and replace some text throughout your weblog, you should definitely be using Urban Giraffe's Search Regex. With Search Regex you can search and replace text in all the fields shown in the picture below:

If you are replacing some text, first enter the Search pattern and press the Search button. This will show you the results, so you can fine tune the pattern to get only the results you want. You also get a set of links to view and edit the post. Very handy.

Keep reading Using the Search Regex plugin for WordPress successfully

Foliopress SSL

SSL plugin that suites your needs. You can setup URIs that must be handled by WordPress only through https.

Features three Es:

  • Easy to install
  • Easy configuration
  • Easy to use

Installation:

  1. Get (download) the plugin
  2. Unzip the contents
  3. Copy the whole directory into your WordPress plugin directory (usually located in /wp-content/plugins/)
  4. Go into Plugins management in WordPress back-end and activate plugin
  5. Go into Options -> SSL in your WordPress back-end and setup the plugin

Make sure that you have HTTPS available on your server with correct certificate, else you can disable your whole website. If this happens to you you’ll need to disable this plugin directly through database.

Usage:

Check "Secure URLs with SSL" and type-in URIs you whish to be accessed only through HTTPS.

foliopress ssl options
foliopress ssl options

You can use "*" as wildcard for some URI, if you type it after "/" it means that all URIs under this URI will be accessed only via https, if there is no / it takes all URIs under this URI, this URI including.

Moving from Typepad to WordPress Definitive Guide

Typepad to WordPress service from Foliovision. Move your Typepad weblog to WordPress without worry.

We recently rescued a complex and older weblog Uncoy.com from Typepad and moved it to WordPress with absolutely zero broken links or posts.

Why do we write rescue? First of all Typepad is a truly awful platform for anything but the most basic weblog.

  • images look terrible
  • CSS is difficult to alter
  • stats are a joke
  • tech support is a close tie for the worst on the web

Secondly, it wasn't easy. SixApart make it really difficult in fact. It's only easy if you are ready to accept:

  • broken permalinks
  • missing comments
  • disappearing images

Making the move work involved:

  • special plugins on export and import
  • collecting all the images via a special script
  • adding a special plugin to prevent WordPress from breaking comments in your post
  • installing a plugin to allow you to keep categories at root level (not easy in WordPress, perhaps the only plus of the Typepad system is that categories default to the root directory)
  • adding a special plugin to allow you to update your permalinks easily (the Typepad permalinks are terrible)
  • creating archive templates which match the Typepad setup
  • adapting a theme to suit the setup of your Typepad weblog (if you have a relatively complex layout)

The detailed steps are below - the list above is just the executive highlights.

Was it worth it:

The day my weblog was finally out of the hands of Typepad and safely into WordPress was one of the happiest days of my online life.

I wish you the same success. But buckle up - the going gets rough:

Keep reading Moving from Typepad to WordPress Definitive Guide

WordPress Ping Lists

The question is if we need to tell WordPress not to ping again on update? Also, is this WordPress ping listaccurate?

The ideal WordPress comment code

When an article is written, various comments from other people may hold great deal of information regarding the topic. That's why it's very important to open discussion on web pages. In our company we mainly use WordPress, so I'll explain how to properly set up comments on WordPress. Our publishing platform Foliopress is based on WordPress version 2.2.3, so screenshots and settings will apply mainly to these versions, but other versions are surely, not so different.

First order of business is allowing discussion in wordpress. Settings for this are in Administration back-end in Options->Discussion. For our company these settings are preferred:

Information on these settings (from WordPress developers) are here.

Keep reading The ideal WordPress comment code

New York Times Online: Ad Revenue Mismanagement = Unemployed Journalists

Over the last month, the internet has been awash with stories of the fabled New York Times slow demise, as indicated by huge losses and impending layoffs. As the new Wall Street Journal hires, the New York Times fires.

The decline in New York Times revenue and readership surprised me somewhat, but I accepted the decline at face value. Given the New York Times atrocious editorial standards throughout the Bush regime, including aiming and abetting war crimes (Judith Miller), the loss in circulation seemed like just desserts.

But today, Comcast's list of the top 50 websites for March came across my desk. Based on unique visitors, guess who's at number 12 with 47 million unique visitors for the month? For refernce, that's just behind Wikipedia, Amazon and ahead of Facebook, CNET, Adobe, CBS and Craigslist: The New York Times Digital.

Which set me to thinking what kind of second rate media (advertising sales) strategy would it take to lose money with the number 12 website.

Keep reading New York Times Online: Ad Revenue Mismanagement = Unemployed Journalists

SBI (Site Build It) versus WordPress: How to Structure a Website

For years, I’ve been on the Site Build It list. SBI is the creation of the rather annoyingly gushy Ken Evoy who never stops his carnival barker cries about his one-stop-site-creation tool. 

Evoy’s been at it since the bad old days when the internet was a mess and Site Built It! did have the advantage of actually getting a website up in some form – easier than coding html from scratch for the neophyte.

Throughout SBI’s history, Evoy has shrieked about his process and his proprietary tools. On the surface, a clear process and proprietary tools are a good idea. Probably worth the price of admission (or so I thought at the time). The issue with the proprietary tools (which otherwise might be a good deal) is that you can only use them a little bit. Come and play for one hour per week, see you next week. Not exactly inviting brainstorming or creativity.

In contrast, the indepdendent expensive (many of which are free) tools Evoy condemns let you use them as much as you like once you find them.

Keep reading SBI (Site Build It) versus WordPress: How to Structure a Website

Keeping WordPress Overhead Down: How to Catch and Disable Greedy Plugins

I've been wondering about WordPress plugin overhead for some time. How does one keep track of how much processor time and overhead any given plugin requires?

We run fairly streamlined WordPress installs at Foliovision with about 30 active plugins per site. A lot of them are one-trick ponies developed in-house so we know the code isn't creating a huge load.

But anyone who has been working on Macintosh computers from the old days (System 7, 8 & 9) knows very well that every extensions (and some people were running 50 of them) slows down your compuer and increases the chances of a system conflict. There were whole expensive utilities devoted to keeping extensions and control panels under control. Any one else remember long hours spent with Conflict Catcher?

Here's what WPdesigner.com has to say on his own plugin issues:

With the WP Download Monitor plugin, the front page of my blog had to operate with 136 queries on every page load. After uninstalling that plugin, the front page needed only 10 queries to work. 136 versus 10 and all I have to do is give up tracking the downloads, hmmm.. oh what, oh what should I do? I deactivated / uninstalled it, of course.

Keep reading Keeping WordPress Overhead Down: How to Catch and Disable Greedy Plugins

Photoshop CS3 Droplet: Save as GIF

Update 8 November 2010: Unfortunately neither Adobe PS4 nor PS5 include useful save for web droplets. With the disappearance of ImageReady, these droplets are gone, gone, gone. You can set up actions, but the actions won't use Save for Web but Save As. With Save As your outputted image has a preview as well as metadata baked in taking it from 50KB to 118 KB for instance. Lesson: don't uninstall ImageReady PS3 if you'd like to quickly and easily create really high quality web images. Nothing beats Photoshop as our GD and ImageMagick tests recently proved (ImageMagick came closer). Here's an Adobe forums post with some really tedious workarounds for web image droplets with CS4 and CS5.
 

If you use Photoshop CS3 and post screenshots to the web, this little droplet will save you a lot of trouble. For some reason it is impossible to convert ImageReady or previous Photoshop versions Droplets to Photoshop CS3.

Installation and Usage Instructions:

  1. download the zip
  2. decompress
  3. move to the folder of your choice (I have a special folder for Photoshop and Image Ready droplets)
  4. title your images for upload (spaces are okay - PS3 will convert them to hyphens)
  5. drop your images on the droplet
  6. your web ready GIF's will appear in your desktop folder

For equally unknown reasons is also extremely difficult to create a droplet which will actually open your image and resave it as you would like right in the folder where it lies.

Even my version here will save the GIF file to your desktop, rather than the folder where the original lies (my preference). Desktop isn't bad, as you can then upload the image and archive the extra desktop files every couple of days in a date named folder in a desktop archive folder.

Keep reading Photoshop CS3 Droplet: Save as GIF

Why WordPress? – the Tumblr Question

I just read the strangest apologia for a new service: Uh, why’s the official Tumblr blog on WordPress? (broken link - http://blog.davidville.com/2007/02/23/why-wordpress/#comments)

Simply - all the CMSy stuff it comes with. Blogs are an awesome platform. WordPress lets our entire staff contribute to the same blog, maintain tags and slugs, save and give feedback on drafts, upload and store media, back and forward publish posts, group our archive by month, lets our audience comment, lists trackbacks, et cetera, et cetera. It’s awesome! Blogs rock! But we knew this. WordPress is the perfect way for a business like ours to communicate with our audience.

Sounds good to me. David Karp goes on to write about the advantages of Tumblr: "posting with zero obligations, little or no comment". Great for wisecracking, difficult for communicating.

Keep reading Why WordPress? - the Tumblr Question

Current WordPress 2.4 Admin Theme a Disappointment

WordPress are finally getting around to updating the Admin theme.

This is a great idea. From the beginning WordPress has generally looked great when going out with visitors but she dresses awfully sloppily around the house.

The front end just keeps getting better as the backend stagnates.

Unfortunately, current previews of the updated WordPress 2.4 Admin interface show a getup which looks worse if anything, than what's there now.

I'm having visions of Mambo circa 2004. What's with the dreadful new brown and orange? The blue on blue colour scheme is about all the WordPress Admin Panel has going for it aesthetically.

The only good looking Admin interface for WordPress has been Steve Smith's  WordPress Tiger Administration, which first saw the light of day in June 2005. 

Keep reading Current WordPress 2.4 Admin Theme a Disappointment

Why Foliopress WYSIWYG will be PHP5 Only

One of the beta testers for Foliopress WYSIWYG has just complained that Foliopress WYSIWYG is not compatible with PHP4. Apparently PHP5 is still only 6% of the installed PHP base across all webhosts.

That figure should be enough to strike terror into any developer. But that number will change very soon as PHP4 has hit the end of the line.

PHP4 incompatibility started off not as a deliberate decision. Generally I like wider compatibility.

But on serious consideration, I’m not worried about Foliopress WYSIWYG being PHP5 only.

Why not?

Keep reading Why Foliopress WYSIWYG will be PHP5 Only

Trouble with DD Add Signature Plugin

Just when you think you've got technology under control, some small gnat comes along to bit you. I had just added and styled the nice registration form for people interested in Foliopress WYSIWYG and SEO Images to the previous post :

For immediate notification of the release of Foliopress WYSIWYG and Foliopress SEO Images, just fill in the form below and I will send you an email as soon as it is available for download.

and then I began seeing double. That is to say two me:


dd add signature plugin error

That nice headshot with the articles is created by Alastair Dagon Design's Add Signature Plugin. What's seems to be causing the doublevision is the inclusion of a form inside a post. I tried moving the form into a Sniplet (where it should have been in the first place, quite frankly and reuseable). I've cured a few WordPress malfunctions by pulling code outside a post and into a Sniplet - but that was pre-Foliopress WYSIWYG. Most of the WordPress Editors damage or modify code so a Sniplet can stop them from getting a chance to break code. But this time the Sniplet trick didn't work.

I couldn't find the issue in the plugin itself:

wp-content/plugins/dd-add-sig.php

Nor does the issue seem to be in our template index.php file, although there seems to be room for such an issue there.

Keep reading Trouble with DD Add Signature Plugin

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