Archive for the ‘News & Views’ Category
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
I just spent five hours trying to save WordPress Garage and another site of mine, but some of the damage is irrevocable. Here’s the story of this nightmare, and what I’ve learned:
I have a site that was running on WordPress version 2.2. I hadn’t bothered to upgrade since we had stopped publishing on it in November for various reasons, but a recent link to one of the posts on that site from TechCrunch inspired me to get that site going again.
The site was running really slowly, which was another reason to try to fix it up. So the upgrade began.
Once the upgrade was finished and all plugins were reactivated, all the posts disappeared. I could see that they were there somewhere, since we have a section in the sidebar where random post titles show up, and titles were displaying there, but the home page was blank, and if I went to Manage > Posts, nothing showed up there.
So I backed up everything (or so I thought), uninstalled and reinstalled the whole site. Still no luck, plus I realized that I hadn’t backed up all of the site’s images in the Uploads folder - they were now gone for good. Horror number 1.
I hacked around for a few hours, and then I got into even more trouble: by mistake I imported the other site’s database into WordPress Garage via PHPmyAdmin (don’t ask). Horror number 2. That’s not great, I thought, but I’ll just restore the WordPress Garage database backup that I get emailed to me automatically with the WP-DB-Backup plugin. Or so I thought.
For some reason I has set the plugin to send backups only once a week, and the backup files were not being attached and were coming out as a big jumble within the body of the email. Horror number 3.
In short: I had no backup of WordPressGarage. I thought all was lost, and was planning my final post for this site telling people that the whole site was gone and I was giving up.
How I mostly got out of this ridiculous mess
Then I remembered that I had upgraded WordPressGarage recently, and like a good girl I had backed it up before upgrading. I found the backup file in my Recycle Bin, and imported it into the database. That fixed everything, but I was still missing a few posts. I found them via Google’s Cache, and re-entered them one by one.
So the only information missing here are a few comments. I apologize to the commenters - if you want to resubmit, please do.
The situation on the other site
It turns out that a plugin was causing the posts to disappear. I use the Sideblog plugin there (as I do here for the Shorties category that appears in the sidebar), and the older version that I was using for WordPress 2.2 was making the posts disappear for some reason. Once I upgraded the plugin, the posts reappeared.
As a result of this whole balagan (a very useful Hebrew word that means chaos and mess, and is one of the two Hebrew words that Lorelle knows, as she told us at WordCamp Israel), I was left with the following collateral damage: I lost all of the other site’s images, which is pretty blatant since every post there has a thumbnail image. In additional, all the tags have disappeared, and I can’t get them back. Plus I lost a few comments here on WordPress Garage.
Lessons learned
This whole experience aged me a few years, but I’d like to help you live a bit longer, so here’s some advice when it comes to messing around with WordPress upgrades and databases:
- Don’t get complacent about upgrades. We do it so often, and most of the time it works, that we can get lazy. It’s understandable, especially for people running multiple WordPress blogs, since backing everything up every time and going through the whole process for every site can be really time consuming. But if you value the content you’ve produced, it’s worth taking the time to protect yourself against any possible mishaps.
- If you are using the WP-DB Backup plugin, check to make sure you’re getting the backups often enough, and that they actually work.
- Do yourself a favor and set your WordPress blog to save all images in your theme folder. You can do this by going to Options > Miscellaneous, and changing the file path to wp-content/themes/yourtheme/blogimages. That way you have everything together in one place. One of my mistakes here was that I backed up the theme files, but not the images. Or at least just remember to back up your images, wherever they are.
- Be very very careful when messing around in PHPmyAdmin. There is no undo button or option. If you make a mistake, you have to live with it.
- If you upgrade and then find that something is wrong, deactivate all your plugins and then reactivate them one by one to see if any of them are the cause of the problem. Also, make sure you’re running the latest versions of the plugins. If I had known this, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
- Don’t do sensitive work like this in the middle of the night. You’re brain just isn’t as clear as it is in daylight. Get a good night’s sleep, and then upgrade. This could save you from making some really stupid mistakes.
Here’s to more infrequent WordPress upgrades!
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Posted in News & Views | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
Michael over at WPCandy brought up the question recently of whether it’s ok to use the word “WordPress” in the domain name of sites about WordPress that are not affiliated with Automattic. I came across this issue about a month ago thanks to Lorelle, who actually mentions this repeatedly in her WordPress Wednesday posts on the Blog Herald. Lorelle states that you need to get permission to use the word WordPress in your blog’s name and domain, so I immediately contacted someone over at Automattic to see what they had to say on the matter. He pointed me to this page: http://wordpress.org/about/domains/.
Of course, if I had known about this policy before I started WordPress Garage, I would never have used the current domain name. But here we are, almost a year later, and the question remains: do I need to change my domain name? And do all blogs that use the word WordPress in their names need to change that too?
I think there are two issues at hand here:
- Trademark dilution
- Consumer evangelism
Trademark Dilution, i.e. “I WordPressed so much today on my WordPress”
Based on my modest understanding of trademarks (I worked a bit in the field), the reason Automattic doesn’t want anyone using WordPress in their domain name is because they (or their lawyers) are concerned about “trademark dilution.” Trademark dilution is when a brand name becomes so tied to the product that it becomes the general name of the product, and even a verb. Some good examples of this are the use of the word “Xerox” instead of “photocopy,” “Kleenex” instead of “tissue,” and “Saran Wrap” instead of “plastic wrap.” While this may seem like great success since the brand name became so widely known that people just call the product by the brand name, it is problematic for companies because it makes it more difficult for them to protect their trademarks against infringements.
So, in the case of WordPress, their trademark would become diluted if people started to call blogs “WordPresses,” or would use the word “WordPress” as a verb, i.e. “I have to take a break from WordPressing while I go on vacation.”
I’m no intellectual property expert, but this seems unlikely to happen. Blogs will be blogs.
Consumer Evangelism, i.e. “I love WordPress so much that I’m actually going to write hordes of posts about it and create themes and plugins - all for free”
Which company is the king of consumer evangelism? I’ll give you a hint: their name rhymes with Snapple. Yes, Steve Jobs and the folks at Apple have succeeded in creating products that people LOVE. Their customers love their products so much that they talk about them, write about them, tell their friends to buy them, etc. They have armies of consumer evangelists all over the globe hugging their iPods, and coveting the iPhone (the iPhone still hasn’t come to many countries).
Now, Apple is a pretty big company, so you’d think their lawyers would be freaking out over trademark dilution issues. Well, here are a few examples of blogs and sites that are not affiliated with Apple that write about Apple products and use the word Apple or iPhone in their domain and blog name:
The Apple Blog
Apple iPhone
Apple Fun
Apple Are
Apple iPhone Blog
Apple Matters
I don’t know if Apple encourages this, but as far as I know they aren’t publicizing any policies related to the use of their trademarks in domain and blog names. Maybe they understand that this type of marketing is gold - people who aren’t on the company payroll, and are therefore “objective,” who are willing to dedicate time and money to promoting their products for them. Now THAT is a marketers dream!
Let’s do a quick comparison with the overweight, slightly-balding company to see how they’re managing with consumer evangelists. Here are the Microsoft fan sites that I found:
http://scoble.weblogs.com/ - doesn’t use Microsoft in the domain, but is now dead.
Microsoft’s not exactly about to go under, but I would say that Apple’s position is pretty envious.
Back to WordPress
WordPress has consumer evangelists (me!). Dozens of bloggers are posting about WordPress every day in order to share their knowledge with the WordPress community. And thousands of readers read these blogs every day to quench their thirst for more knowledge about the WordPress platform. In my opinion, this is all part of the Open Source spirit, where people learn from the community, and then want to give back to the community in whatever way they can.
Here are some examples of blogs totally or almost totally dedicated to WordPress (I apologize if I’ve left you out - feel free to leave URLs in the comments):
WPCandy
Hack WordPress
Darren Hoyt
Weblog Tools Collection
Solostream
Lorelle on WordPress
Check out WP Themes Gallery’s list of the top 40 WordPress blogs to get an idea of how many there are out there.
Now let’s take a look at what I would say is a major WordPress competitor: Movable Type. I did a quick search, and while I found a lot of individual posts about using Movable Type, I didn’t find many blogs dedicated to the topic. I actually only found one, and while it is really good, it is written by Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type.
So who’s in better shape: the company with the dozens of bloggers who blog about them daily but use their trademark in their domain and blog name; or the company that doesn’t have anyone blogging about them and also don’t have anyone using their trademark anywhere?
The lawyers say company #2. The figures say company #1.
Conclusion
In my very humble and not-worth-much opinion, WordPress should be careful about taking action that may appear as an attack on their community. Their domain policy is understandable, but it may cause more harm than good. They should remember that a consumer evangelist is worth a lot more than the best marketing or ad campaign.
A good compromise could be for bloggers to add a disclaimer on their site that says that they are not affiliated with WordPress or Automattic. WordPress Training’s About page has a really good example which says the following:
WordPressTraining.com is not affiliated with or sponsored by Automattic, Inc. or the WordPress ® Open Source project.
WordPress ® is a trademark of Automattic, Inc.
And that, my friends, is all I have to say about that.
Posted in News & Views | 22 Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008
The folks at Automattic have launched their WordPress Publisher Blog, which will:
“cover features that are often overlooked, we’ll highlight plugins that extend WordPress functionality, and we’ll showcase interesting sites being built with WordPress.”
So far the blog has three posts (one of which is sticky - which plugin are you using Raanan?). It’s hard to tell from three posts, but it seems like this blog aims to achieve what a lot of us WordPress bloggers are already doing.
So, are we going to become redundant, or will the WordPress Publisher Blog just join the club? It seems that this is another move by Automattic to take control of the WordPress user community, similar to their creation of the WordPress plugin directory. With the plugin directory, WordPress became the hub for the plugin community, and now they want news and reports on WordPress to come from them too. Makes sense, and I guess they could catch up pretty quickly since they are WordPress.
Anyways, it will be interesting to see how their blog pans out. If they do a good job, I think there might not be much of a point in continuing to invest time and energy in this kind of blog.
WordPress Publisher Blog
Posted in News & Views | 10 Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008
As many of you may know, writing a blog on a regular basis can be challenging. On the one hand, the stats and feed statistics tell you that people are reading, but on the other hand, you can sometimes feel like you’re shouting out into the darkness, and you’re not sure that anyone is really listening.
Commenters and people who write to say thank you help me know that you are indeed out there reading. So first of all, thank you to my commenters, and a special thanks to Ryan Hellyer, who is by far the most prolific commenter on this site. Getting feedback on posts helps me keep going, because I know that someone is paying attention, and that it’s helping them.
Also, every once in a while I get a letter via the site’s contact form thanking me for the blog. I just got a great letter from a guy who told me he spent two hours (!) scrolling through and reading each of my posts! He says he found the site via StumbleUpon, so thank you to those of you who felt posts here were Stumble-worthy, and are helping others find this blog. Thanks Mike!
Why I write WordPressGarage.com
I write this blog for two reasons: 1. To help me and my company keep track of the many WordPress developments so that we can hopefully build the best WordPress sites and blogs possible for our clients; 2. To give back to the WordPress community. I still haven’t written any plugins, but I hope that this blog can be my contribution to the vibrant WordPress Open Source community.
The content on this site is free, as it should be. But if you want to compensate me in some way, just leave a comment, or write to me to tell me what you think. Getting concrete feedback is the best way to help me keep going. Basically what I’m saying is: a simple thank you is worth a million!
So thank you all for reading, and I hope that this blog will continue to grow and help WordPress users around the world!
Miriam
Posted in News & Views | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Yedda is an Israeli start up with a web-based questions and answer service that is generally agreed to rival that of Yahoo Answers. Yedda’s technology powers many independent Q&A services as well, including ePals and TheJobNetwork (via TechCrunch). In early November, Yedda was acquired by AOL for an undisclosed amount, making it the second Israeli company to be acquired by AOL in a matter of weeks (the first one was Quigo.)
I first met Lior Haner, the head of Yedda’s Community Marketing, at WordCamp Israel in October. He contacted me recently to tell me about Yedda’s new Feedflare modules that allow bloggers to add a specific Yedda FeedFlare to their feeds that allow readers to ask questions about specific blog posts.
(Image from the Yedda blog)
The idea sounded interesting, but I had some reservations about something that would move discussion about a blog post to another site, since bloggers are notoriously protective of any activity or traffic taking place around their blog’s content.
So I asked Lior if I could interview him about the FeedFlare modules to try to get a better picture, and to give you, my readers, a chance to respond and tell us what you think. He kindly agreed, so here it is:
WPG: Hi Lior! Thanks for agreeing to do an email interview about Yedda’s new Feedflare modules.
Lior: It’s a pleasure, I really believe that blogging is the best way to get information out and create a useful discussion.
WPG: First, can you tell our readers a little bit about Yedda?
Lior: Yedda is a place for people to find answers to their questions. Before the internet age, people with questions first tried to seek out the most qualified person in the question’s topic in order to get an answer. On Yedda, anyone can post a question and tell the story behind it and include any relevant links, images or videos. Then, we match that question with people who have the relevant knowledge out of the Yedda community and invite them to answer that question. This basically creates people-powered search that helps you get better results that aren’t available or difficult to achieve on search engines.
In contrast to most other Q&A sites, Yedda is a platform that can be accessed from Yedda.com, from blogs using Yedda blog widgets, FeedFlare or from Yedda partner sites.
WPG: Can you tell us about the FeedFlare modules, what they do and how they can benefit bloggers?
Lior: FeedFlare is a product by Feedburner, who many bloggers use to keep track of their blog’s stats. FeedFlares are little links at the end of your posts that are visible in your RSS feed and can also be added to your blog’s template. In your feed you have FeedFlare elements that let your readers E-mail, save to Delicious, etc. Yedda has created a custom FeedFlare element that lets readers ask a question on Yedda about your post. The question includes a prominent link to your blog and can attract new readers from the Yedda community. Here is some more information on Yedda’s blog: http://blog.yedda.com/?p=130
WPG: How does it solve the problem of bloggers wanting conversations to take place on their blog?
Lior: Although the questions are asked on Yedda, they include a prominent link back to your blog that both attracts new readers and is good for SEO. If you interact with your readers on Yedda and add your blog’s URL to your Yedda profile, you can create your own knowledge community and promote yourself on Yedda’s network. Using Yedda’s widgets you can create more interaction between Yedda and your blog and span the conversation over both venues.
WPG: Is Yedda widely used, i.e. is there a benefit to bloggers to gain exposure on the Yedda site? Can you give us some statistics?
Lior: Yedda has a growing community of askers and answerers and is currently one of the world’s leading Q&A sites. At the end of 2007 AOL announced it had acquired Yedda and that Yedda’s offering will be gradually added to many AOL sites. Yedda’s approach is that you can ask or answer from anywhere and you will be visible from anywhere. This means that links to your blog on Yedda have a potential of reaching millions of AOL users in your topics of interest.
WPG: Have people started to use the FeedFlares, and if so, how is the response? Do people actually click on them?
Lior: Yedda FeedFlares are a new offering but we have received some great feedback. People use both the FeedFlares and the widgets, and blog owners have reported an increase in the exposure they get from Yedda.
WPG: Can you tell me about some of the other widgets you offer to bloggers?
Lior: Here is an introduction to Yedda widgets: http://yedda.com/blogger. Yedda widgets let your readers ask questions, view relevant Q&A about the topics of your blogs and see what answers you gave in your topics of knowledge.
WPG: As you mentioned, Yedda was recently acquired by AOL. Is this going to affect the blogger services you provide, and if so, how?
Lior: The most dramatic effect will be that Yedda will continue growing quickly. The fact that many new people will join Yedda or be exposed to Yedda’s Q&A in AOL and other sites means more exposure for blogs or people promoting knowledge topics on Yedda. We also plan to continue developing our blogger offering and launching great new products.
WPG: Anything else you would like to mention?
Lior: I also wanted to mention that Yedda supplies content sites and publishers with a full-fledged customizable Q&A platform. The Yedda platform is currently integrated into AOL sites and is already up and running in many partner sites (Here are some examples: http://www.epals.com, http://articlesbase.com, http://www.filesrating.com). Here is some more information about Yedda’s partner program: http://yedda.com/partners.
If you want to inquire about Yedda’s offering, I’ll be happy to help: .
WPG: Thanks Lior!
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So what do you think? Do you think that Yedda’s FeedFlares will catch on?
More on Yedda:
Posted in News & Views | 2 Comments »
