Chris Guillebeau offers his e-book 279 Days to Overnight Success for free on his blog. This is a great piece of writing that debunks the popular myths about “making it” blogging.
See for yourself – download it today.
It seems like correcting Seth Godin is a favourite pastime enjoyed by folks online. Sorry to break from the group, but I happen to think he is a deep well of relevant information.
This week he brought up the idea of upsides versus downsides – how much effort do businesses put into minimizing their downside versus the time they put into offering the best user experience?
One of the primary examples from the post is that of a hospital spending a huge amount of time doing paperwork to prevent litigation and prevent people from getting worse when their primary goal (and reason for existing) should be improving the lives of the patients coming through their doors.
The hospital example was interesting and timely because in “real life” the Jewish General Hospital recently came out and said it has been able to improve patient care (upside) by reducing errors (downside) through its new(ish) full disclosure policy. This ties in nicely with Seth’s article because it proves that it is possible for even large organizations to let go of the status quo and achieve new levels of excellence.
In the case of the Jewish General Hospital, it seems paradoxical but by admitting and dealing with errors, the hospital is actually less likely to be sued and face costly litigation. In essence, they have found a way to improve patient care, cut costs, and foster an open corporate culture. Way to go!
One of the most common requirements for web developers is the ability to switch code from development servers to live production environments. This can be tricky if you’re working with Wordpress; moving the files is dead simple, but since Wordpress uses canonical URLs you have to be careful if you are trying to transfer any of your database content.
Canonical URLs force your site to use the same base path (www.yourdomain.com rather than yourdomain.com). But if you are working in a development environment – e.g. the development site’s address isn’t the same as your web site, but is rather something like 127.0.0.1 – you need to be able to make the switch to Wordpress without bringing your site down.
Since I end up having to look for this information so often, here are the steps I use to accomplish this amazing feat:
From the shell prompt of your server, dump Wordpress’ MySQL database into a backup file:
mysqldump –-add-drop-table -uusername -ppassword databasename > mysqlbackup.DATE.sql
Move it over to the new server and run this command to overwrite your target:
mysql -udb##### -p -hinternal-db.s#####.gridserver.com db#####_dbname < mysqlbackup.DATE.sql
Log into your MySQL database and issue this update command to ensure Wordpress redirects to the new server:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘http://www.old-domain.com’, ‘http://www.new-domain.com’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ’siteurl’;
Next update the post URLs:
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘http://www.old-domain.com’,'http://www.new-domain.com’);
Finally, update your posts’ content to fix any internal links:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘http://www.old-domain.com’, ‘http://www.new-domain.com’);
That’s all! Repeat these steps when moving from production to development and vise-versa.
As I said I typically search for this information whenever I need to move Wordpress sites. I find the SQL queries at: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/10/01/how-to-move-wordpress-blog-to-new-domain-or-location/
Good-bye 2008, you have been good to me. Over the course of the past 12 months I have learned a great deal about who I am and what I can accomplish, leaving me in fine form to hit the ground running in 2009.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my little piece of cyberspace and commenting on some of what I wrote. The discussions were always respectful and informative; there are a lot of smart people riding the intertubes.
I’d like to take a moment now to stop and reflect on the last 12 months before starting the New Year.
January
I started this blog early in January, and skipped all formalities by jumping into a discussion about difficulties I had been experiencing with Google. I still think that was a good choice – I want to avoid making a big deal about this blog (except for occasional posts like this one, obviously) and starting off with the solution to a problem I had been facing was the perfect way to start splashing in the blogosphere. For the remainder of the month I discussed solutions in ASP.NET and the joys of working from home, both subjects which I had a great deal of experience with being simultaneously a full-time student and a full-time programmer.
February
My studies shifted to bizarre Java tricks and database connection tips in February, yielding one of my more popular articles about correctly using the memory management capabilities in C# to properly control database connections in ASP.NET. I am particularly proud of that article because it represented a step forward for me in the way I am able to communicate my ideas, not to mention it solved some of the more frustrating programming problems I had been having at the time.
March
In March my writing took a bit of an ironic tone, starting with my discovery of Google’s “bad page” warning. My writing suffered as I was unfortunately busy with everything from moving into a new home, to end-of-year college projects, to a massive assignment at work, and launching a second blog. As a result Always Get Better stagnated slightly, however the traffic continued to grow.
April
April saw a return to writing about useful tech tips and obscure programming knowledge. I also wrote the blog’s most popular article to date about methods for closing forms in C#; it still generates confusion and misunderstanding so I may revisit the concept in a more detailed article in the New Year. SQL tricks and platform differences were a big deal as well and will continue to be moving forward since I absolutely love SQL.
May
I realized that perfection was not a destination but rather a road to be followed halfway through the year and as a consequence started to take myself less seriously. My biggest time waster in May was in finding solutions to simple ASP.NET problems so I made more effort to publish those as I went along.
June
June was another bad month for blog posts. I only ended up posting a single token snippet referencing parse optimization in SQL on the final day of the month. Lame.
July
July was an incredibly busy month at work but I managed to post while I went through the pain of switching to Vista.
August
The stress of July led me to reminisce about the time I once wasted playing MUDs. August was a month of ASP.NET issues, Internet Explorer oddities, and a positive change in my thinking about the future of this blog.
September
In September I had a paradigm shift in my perception of Flash as a programming platform with the discovery of Flex Builder 3. I have learned so much about this tool since those early days and am eager to share some of the knowledge I gained in a series of upcoming posts.
October
The lights went out on Always Get Better in October. This was a dark month for a number of reasons but I can’t make any excuses for not posting at all. One thing I did realize during this month was the need to back off some of my other projects and focus more energy on my writing online. By this time next year I hope to be earning enough from my blogs that I can afford to spend a greater portion of my time working with them.
November
November was a month of Flex, Adobe woes, a change in providers, Drupal databases, Drupal layout, and Drupal administration. I launched a second blog – this time politically-related – with help from my brother which has taken off at an alarming rate.
December
This month was the real eye-opener for me. With so many feeds and connections opened up to me, I feel as though I am watching the recession unfold in slow motion; but I don’t necessarily feel any more informed. Blogs often feel like the same news regurgitated and wrapped in commentary which is a great way to form opinions on issues but not necessarily a great way to understand the complexities of those issues. In my own work, I hope to teach as much as to give opinion – I leave the real journalism to the journalists and pillars of media like the New York Times. Although they claim to have a leaky boat I think they will weather these rocky waters just fine and be prouder for it.
2009 and Beyond
I am endlessly optimistic about the new year and experiences it will bring. I will do my best to make this blog better and will continue the network-building activities I have started this year. My greatest failure in 2008 was not promoting this site very much – in the New Year I will get the word out. Hopefully the items I write will be of use to someone out there. With any luck they might even pop a note in the comments to let me know I was able to do a decent job.
Thank you for sticking with me through this year, and I look forward to an interesting New Year!
Wordpress is a great tool; I am looking forward to version 2.7 although I find myself hard-pressed to try to imagine how the WP team is going to improve upon the existing platform. One of my favourite functions of the Wordpress software is the ability to post-date entries. Often I will get a burst of inspiration and write four or five articles. Rather than releasing them all at once I will set them to automatically publish into the future so there is a steady stream of content always appearing on my home page.
Most cream-of-the-crop blogs add 2-3 new entries daily. Always Get Better is certainly not in that category, however I try to post at least once per day. As I am busy with other work and blogs, I don’t necessarily have the time to write a decent article every day (although I do often make the time). Since the content here is not particularly topical, it doesn’t matter too much if it doesn’t go up hot off the press. In fact, by pre-publishing my articles I have a decent opportunity to go back and review what I’ve written which improves the overal quality of my writing.
Some blogs exclusively post content written long ago. I certainly don’t advocate going to that extreme though since a blog that is totally on autopilot risks losing some human connection. As long as the authors review, post and respond to comments in real time I suppose it wouldn’t matter in the long run.
Several months ago I wrote about the pros and cons of working from home. At the time I focused on the employee working from their home for an employer. Working from home for yourself is a totally different ball game; right now many people are experimenting with the idea of working from home by writing posts for online publishers, especially blogs.
The concept sounds great: write about content you are interested in, choose your own hours, make time for family, answer to nobody (except perhaps client deadlines). Make money continually for previous writing – financial freedom at last!
Is “professional blogger” the next logical career path? I don’t think so. The concept is simple enough: build a site, drive traffic, make money. I suspect most people can even accomplish step one very easily. The ever-changing methods for driving traffic and monetizing content require a significant investment in time that is beyond the reach of many people with full-time jobs and other obligations.
The common advice for aspiring bloggers is don’t quit your day job, ironically this goes against the fact that in order to generate a reasonable income from the medium one would need to devote the equivalent of full-time work hours to the process. The two worlds don’t fit together particularly well; like anything else with a low barrier to entry, many people will occupy the lower echelons of the blogosphere while only those with the talent (and/or luck, if you will) and time (endurance?) will rise to occupy the 1% top of the heap.
An interesting article at the Silicon Alley Insider today – recession winners are designers and SEO experts. Advertising is tricky for businesses because dollars spent can’t always be tracked to dollars earned. When it comes to designing a web site I like to go with the analogy of a salesperson. A web site is like an employee who works 24/7, can serve unlimited numbers of customers, and remembers everything they are told about every product. Every dollar spent on a corporate web site is returned to the company passively over time – and as the site ages and grows in traffic, its value continues to increase.
Those are interesting elements to keep in mind when making purchasing decisions. As we head into hard times it is more important than ever for businesses to connect to their customers in real and organic ways – social networking is the tool for the job.
For the best bang-for-the-buck, look for companies to increase efforts at creating and maintaining blogs either through the acquisition of in-house writers or by outsourcing to professional bloggers. Blogs are search-engine darlings, but their real power lies in the fact that people are not just visiting blogs – they are reading them and participating in discussion.
Any company that has not yet begun to consider the benefit of the blogging medium to increase their brand awareness is going to find themselves left behind like the dinosaurs of the industrial revolution.
