Sharing

Posted on December 21, 2012 by bluedepth

I ran into an inconvenience with the current way I share socially
online. I have established a new workflow. Short messages still end up
going to Twitter, and if I feel like they are worth sending to Facebook
I use “Selective Tweets” to push that single tweet forward into
Facebook. For longer entires I write them up in Day One no matter if
they are public or private and then save them there and then share them
via email if they are public with my WordPress blog. If they are private
matters, they simply get shared with Facebook with a default stringent
security setting so only the right people can see those posts.

The email routine actually has been hit and miss to start but now it’s
working out quite nicely. First I migrated my blog from WordPress.com to
Wordpress.org. This is just me moving stuff from a companies site (.com)
to the domain that I own with Scott (windchilde.com) and I figure since
I’m paying for it anyways I might as well use it. Plus the switch over
to the windchilde.com domain also allows me unlimited storage and
unlimited bandwidth so I can share photos and videos without having to
worry about running into any storage caps or having to pay for extra
storage when I’m already paying for a pretty good deal with the host
that runs windchilde.com. I originally started with WordPress.org and
figured that Jetpack, which is a feature crosstalk package between
Wordpress.com and WordPress.org, extending some of the things that I
liked about WordPress.com around my installation of WordPress.org for
free. One of those options was “Post by Email” which gave me a
gobbledegook address at post.wordpress.com. That feature never worked
for me. It was supposed to be turn-key but it fell on it’s face. So I
turned to plugins, which are how you can extend WordPress.org sites, but
not WordPress.com sites. The company keeps a tight lid on things like
that where the “DIY” system is far more flexible and accommodating. I
downloaded the plugin called “Postie” and configured it to use a POP
account that I created on the windchilde.com domain and got that all set
up. There were a wee bit of growing pains regarding how to set
Categories and Tags in the email posts that I was making out of Day One.
What I had was a rather clunky Evernote note with the copied text from
my WordPress Category page so I could refer to that to pick and choose
which category I wanted the email post to go into. This was a mess. I
thought about it for a while and when I was done working out at Anytime
Fitness it struck me in a eureka moment; Why not just use TextExpander
to do the heavy lifting? So I started TextExpander on my MBP at home and
it came up, loaded the settings from my Dropbox (neat) and I created a
new snippet, called it “Categories” and set it’s trigger to be “;cat”.
Then I loaded all my categories from WordPress into a bracketed
pull-down list that TextExpander enables you to make on-the-fly so once
I’m done with Day One editing, I can save the entry (also is stored in
my Dropbox, yay!) and then click Share, Email, and then with the open
email I can just type in the trigger for each category I want to add and
I don’t need to remember to go to Evernote to get the list, or risk a
typo screwing everything up. Using Categories this way is really
convenient and tags are a snap to add as well.

Every once in a while I like to plug software that really works for me.
I plug the tarnations out of Mac, of course, as it’s the platform that I
can actually get my work done on. The apps that run on the Mac make the
rest of it work oh-so-well. Day One is a magnificent personal journaling
app. It’s private and password protected on all my devices and stored on
my Dropbox so I don’t have to screw around with backups or restores or
worrying that my entire Journal may just flit off into nothingness if my
MBP or a flash drive decides to play dumb on me. Plus Day One has
in-built sharing features, so I can share via Email, Twitter, or
Facebook if I want to. WordPress.org is not really software that runs on
my Mac, but instead runs on a host. The host I use is iPage.com and they
do a competent job. Setting up a WordPress.org site is embarrassingly
easy, mostly just a handful of clicks and you get a starter email with
the address you should use and your username and a temporary password. I
started to use WordPress because I left LiveJournal when the Russians
bought SixApart, the company that runs LiveJournal. Not that I have
anything against russians, but I’m not a huge fan of my words in that
place, it’s a personal thing. WordPress.org also enables commenting and
stats collection and automatically publicizes on it’s own to Twitter and
Facebook and Tumblr so I don’t have to futz around and create links to
my blog posts after the fact – WordPress does it for me.

Day One stores everything, WordPress stores my public lengthy stories,
Facebook stores my private lengthy stories and Twitter and Facebook
handle the rest – the tiny stuff. It’s all held together by Dropbox,
TextExpander, Day One app, my host, WordPress.org, Twitter, Facebook,
and Tumblr. It seems complicated and it is rather too-involved, but this
way I can write freely without having to concern myself with
self-censorship or exposing the wrong people to the wrong kind of
information. This way it’s all compact and interrelated and convenient.
So far, this is great for me and it’s how I am able to “have my cake and
eat it too”, which I’m a huge fan of in general.

All these products that I mentioned are either cheap or free. Nothing
cost me an arm or a leg, even the host, when you spread the cost over a
whole year is a pittance. I could even help friends and family set up
their own WordPress.org blogs on my host if they, and Scott, agreed. So,
if you think some of this would suit you and Scott’s good with it, just
let me know.

P2 or Not P2

Posted on March 10, 2011 by bluedepth

Today has been an odd silly day. It started out with an odd fanciful notion to investigate WordPress.org and possibly host it on a Mac Mini. My design was to create a workplace blog, theme it with P2 and whip it out on my coworkers and see how it worked for them. It’s not really a Wiki, we have that, and the Wiki software we use is Apple’s own that comes with their Server OSes, but the blogging component leaves something to be desired.

I saw WordPress.com pushing P2, a theme that fits into WordPress.com or WordPress.org and enables Automattic, the company behind WordPress to communicate more efficiently. My interest was piqued.

So I started with that original idea, then my assistant reminded me that I have a huge monster HP 1U server that I never use and it has Ubuntu on it. I had a little Eureka moment and decided I could work with that. I downloaded the WordPress.org software and went over the installation manual. I got everything edited and in-place and looking nice in the terminal window but couldn’t get the wp-admin/install.php screen to appear so I could finish the WordPress.org installation. I futzed and putzed and figured out I was missing some things, like a different kind of PHP, as well as PHPmyadmin. Once I added all of those various bits I tried it again. No dice. I finally figured out that when I created the “wordpress” MySQL database and user that I botched up the name and host information and didn’t see it until I blundered my way into PHPmyadmin. With that tool I fixed the problem and then everything was fine. I installed JetPack Plug-in, which promptly exploded in my face. JetPack needs to chat back and forth between WordPress.com and whatever machine you are installing WordPress.org on. This server here is firewalled on the wire and can’t be seen by any outside-to-WMU system, so that put the kibosh on JetPack. I still wanted to try P2, so I installed it and it worked like a charm. Then I ran into the same headache I always run into with these systems: SMTP. Here at WMU there is a huge barrier to access any network services, especially SMTP. So how could a WordPress.org P2 blog ever really work right if the server it’s running on can’t ever send out email properly? Oh, I tried to be clever and I failed. I tried to forge a CA, I tried lots of hints to try to masquerade into smtp.gmail.com using TLS, and I tried sendmail and postfix. Bloody hell. I would rather eat glass than have to see sendmail.cf again. I’d rather massage the tongue of a rabid wolverine than futz with postfixes main.cf file again! I mashed my head up against that brick wall until I took a step back and asked myself why the hell I was going to these lengths for something so tangential.

So then it struck me, if we’re using WordPress.com for the heavy lifting for most of our content management, why couldn’t I just create a new blog for our workgroup, slap P2 on it and carry on? That had its own problems. In the beginning I set everything up with Western Express and set my “Gravatar” to be associated with my work email address of andy.mchugh@wmich.edu. All fine and good until you try to use that address anywhere else! WordPress is picky. So I logged into WordPress.com thinking I could change my accounts email address in WordPress, as it turns out, you can’t. You have to go to Gravatar and change it there. It’s not so much change as put in a new address, switch it to primary, then rip out the old address. A lot of work for something that was supposed to be easy. Blargh!

So I got everything switched around and freed my work email address then re-approached WordPress as if I was a new user. I logged in using my work address (which is the most appropriate address for this pursuit) and created an account. I got the automated email verification message and clicked on it. WordPress refused with the error: “Could not create user” and so I emailed support at WordPress for help. Still waiting to get some TLC from the support people as of the writing of this blog-post.

Along with all of this I’m wondering if P2 will be well received? Will my coworkers see this as one more silly thing that I’m making them all use? I’ve pounded Wiki use into their heads, I’ve done a lot of things behind the scenes that none of them see now but will that will also radically change their working lives (for the better I assure you) and then I sit and wonder. I wonder if P2 is a solution that could work for us? If it works for Automattic, shouldn’t it work for us as well? I’m on the fence on this. I’ve whipped out so much new technology on these people, will they accept another massive change to how they communicate or will I be facing open revolt? I see this idea of mine shaped this way:

A private group blog that everyone can log into anywhere they are in the world, obviating the need to use any kind of VPN system as WordPress.com is available ubiquitously. It would enable people to hold online communications, post instantly like Twitter, post without limit to text (unlike Twitter), include rich content such as YouTube embeds and such all the while managing the conversations and using categories and tags to track different sections of our communication infrastructure. I imagine using P2 as I would have maybe used Google Wave if it was matured properly and supported by Google and not killed in its infancy. That we’d use several big tags such as “Donors” and “Help Desk” along with a constellation of other tags and not have to struggle with email distribution lists and missing information and delayed communications, all of that could be eliminated. On the flip side of that argument is “This is one more thing that you are forcing on us and making us learn.” I’m struggling with how P2 could fit in with our lives and whether this is a valid pursuit or just so much “chasing after the shiny”.

There are several of my coworkers that I’m nearly certain would go stark raving mad if I whipped just one more thing out on them. I just can’t deny the allure of all of these services, WordPress, DropBox, 1Password, Evernote… that their ubiquity online and their omnipresence in the mobile computing sphere is terribly attractive to me. That a workforce that I deeply suspect will be forced to become more mobile and nimble almost demands that I continue this breathless rush towards the bleeding edge.

So what I really would like is to find anyone other than Automattic who found P2 to be useful. It would gratify me immensely to know that P2 was a ‘game-changer’ and serve also as confirmation that I am on the right path and that this whole charge towards shiny actually serves a true and honest business purpose beyond my wanderlust for novelty.

As always, I would really love people to comment, I’m looking for evaluations, opinions, you name it, every bit helps. I thank you all in advance. 🙂

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Tag Archives: WordPress.com