Category: Blogging

When it’s this cold…

…it doesn’t matter where you set the thermostat. In the first photo below, you see the Old Main thermostat, with the target and actual temperature. The furnace just can’t keep up.

I tell people Minnesota weather isn’t that bad (which is better than “isn’t that good,” for those of you who don’t speak Minnesotan), and that we usually have 3 weeks a year in which the temperature stays below zero F.

This is one of those weeks.

I’m on the way to university of St.Thomas for a journalism seminar. The second photo is the traffic, which is making me late (but also enabling me to compose this post via WordPress for iPhone.)

No animals or humans were harmed or endangered in the writing of this post. Traffic was stop and go, with more stop than go.

Updated: When I got to St. Thomas (about 9:45), I added this video I shot during the stop and go traffic. It’s not my best work, because I was paying attention to the road (though I was only going about 3 mph), but I think the message is good for young people considering journalism or PR careers.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNW38ta84sI]

Blogging 352: Adding an Email Subscription Form to Your Blog

Here’s an RAQ from Katie M:

I am currently using wordpress.org for a few blogs. I am setting up for some doctors and another blog for another pilot program … so doctors can learn from each other…I am wanting to have the similar option that you have for subscribing, that is via e-mail. How do I go about doing this?

The answer is pretty straightforward.

I recommend that you use Feedburner to replace your blog’s RSS feed with one that gives you more features, particularly better tracking. Feedburner is free, and among its built-in benefits is the ability to let your readers subscribe by email.

Here’s how you can add a subscription form to a sidebar widget on your blog, assuming you have set up a Feedburner account and “burned” your feed.

Continue reading “Blogging 352: Adding an Email Subscription Form to Your Blog”

Self-Hosted WordPress Advantage: Part I

This evening as I left work I flipped the switch on my Domain Name Server to direct the SMUG domain to this self-hosted WordPress installation. Within about an hour it seems the traffic was being directed appropriately, as you see in the comments on the post below.

I had several reasons for making the change, and in addition to doing 300-level courses in the Blogging curriculum based on my experience in migrating to self-hosted WordPress, I’m going to plan to highlight some of those advantages I was pursuing.

One downside of WordPress.com is that it strips out all javascript, so I was limited in the kinds of widgets I could embed in the sidebar or within posts. So while I could include a single YouTube video (as in this Twitter 103 course), I couldn’t embed a playlist like the one below, which features several videos of Mayo Clinic patients and their families sharing their stories:

There’s no way to do that with WordPress.com! Pretty cool, huh?

Beginning Blog Migration to Self-Hosted WordPress!

As I tweeted just a few minutes ago, my static IP address from GoDaddy became active tonight (a little over 24 hours into the 1-72 hour window I had been promised.) So I think this is the last post I will be writing on WordPress.com before we move to our new servers. Hopefully within 24-48 hours you’ll be seeing a new look for SMUG.

I’ll be tweeting the progress on the @SMUG_U account and also some on @LeeAase. So if you follow those, or set search.twitter.com to follow the #smug or #blogmigration hashtags, you’ll be able to participate vicariously. I expect that I may have questions along the way and will be tweeting them, so if you have tips or answers to offer, I’d appreciate you chiming in.

My Last WordPress.com Post (I Hope)

As I mentioned in Blogging 310, I’m making the switch from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress platform. I appreciate all the suggestions and guidance I’ve received via Twitter and through the post comments. I particularly want to call out Bill Ferriss (@billfer), who also works in the health care Web world. He also runs a blog about the Detroit Tigers, which means I guess that he should be my sworn enemy, since I’m a Minnesota Twins fan. Just goes to show the powerful unifying force of Twitter. 😉

It seems there are a lot of good hosting options available, ranging from shared hosting, in which your space is among several others on the same server, to dedicated hosting, in which you are on your own real or virtual server. The former is generally a few dollars a month, while the latter typically starts at $50 a month and goes up from there. As I mentioned, I’m really cheap, and Bill says shared hosting is probably a good place to start (although he’s outgrown it.)

I had gone to check out options at these various sites, including GoDaddy.com, where I have registered the domain name for SMUG. I also got a good illustration of some smart techniques for upselling customers, when I received this email yesterday:

godaddyoffersmall

The folds at GoDaddy know I’m in the market for hosting services because I visited those portions of the site, and they’re giving me an incentive to choose them. Smart business.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Tonight, after I get back from my son’s basketball game against the nearby rival Albert Lea Tigers, I’m going to start the switch. I’ll be tweeting about the process on the @SMUG_U account (please follow if you haven’t already) using the hashtags #smug and #blogmigration, and giving a real-time account of the process. As you follow and get my Tweets (although I know most SMUGgles have better things to do on their Saturday nights) , please feel free to share any pointers.

I’ll also be capturing screenshots and videos for more 300-level Blogging courses. Through Twitter I’ll have time stamps that mark how long each step takes. Hopefully I will be resuming the Twitter curriculum (and the advanced Blogging courses) on Monday on my new GoDaddy server and with a new theme.

Updated 1/5/09: As of this morning, about 35 hours after I activated my GoDaddy hosting account, they still haven’t completed the account set-up. I understand that my purchase at 10 p.m. on Saturday is probably unusual, but GoDaddy advertises itself as a 24/7 provider. I guess setting up is more labor intensive, and I don’t mind them not working Sundays. In fact, I would support that. But when they say it should be done within 24 hours, they should indicate the weekend exception.