Tag: blog

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.

RAQ: Can I keep my username from showing on a WordPress.com blog post?

SMUGgle Pam Larson, who is starting a new blog as one of her projects for 2009 (and who also lives across the street from Old Main), sent me a text message this morning with the following question:

If I don’t want my user name to show up under each post, can I delete that line? I can’t find that option.

As I see it, there are three potential ways to accomplish this. The first is easy. The other two aren’t. And this points to a new phase of learning I’m beginning as your Chancellor.

Solution #1: Pick a different theme

I was surprised when I helped my parents start a blog with some of their locally politically active friends, that when they wrote some posts the usernames weren’t published. They had picked the “Cutline” theme by Chris Pearson from among the free choices on WordPress.com.

So switching themes would be the quickest and easiest way to accomplish this goal. But Pam likes her current theme, so it doesn’t solve her problem.

Solution #2: Edit CSS

This is a paid upgrade option on WordPress.com that lets you tailor the look of your blog. It costs $15 a year. The best part is you can experiment with CSS and learn how to use it, and preview the changes, before you have to pay. Then, when you pay for the upgrade, your changes become visible to the world.

You need to know about CSS to use this productively, but the good news is that WordPress.com has a CSS customization forum where you can learn. I think I’ll spend some time playing with this.

But because editing CSS doesn’t allow you to edit the underlying theme, I have a feeling this still won’t solve Pam’s problem, unless she were to switch to the Sandbox theme and try to rebuild her blog’s look from scratch. I won’t really know that until after I’ve played with CSS for a while.

Solution #3: Self-Hosted Blog

This is the most complicated option, but it gives you the most control over the final look and feel of your blog. It also requires that you rent server space and install the free WordPress software on it (from WordPress.org.) As the next step in my social media learning (and to help me write some 300-level courses), I’m planning to move SMUG a self-hosted platform in 2009. More on that in a future post.

Conclusion:

It doesn’t appear that there is an easy answer for Pam’s question, that would let her keep the look she likes. Option 1 gets rid of the username but by changing the theme, Option 2 probably doesn’t solve the problem (and requires substantial work) and Option 3 could definitely work, but would cost more and take more work.

If any other SMUGgles have a better solution, please chime in and let us all learn from you!

Twitter 111: Twitter Badge on WordPress.com – Showing Tweets

In response to this post about how you can put a “Follow Me” Twitter badge on your WordPress.com blog, budgallant says:

that’s interesting, but definitely not at alternative to actually displaying the twitter updates…. what is up with wordpress? do they have a bias against twitter?

It’s not an anti-Twitter thing; it’s about WordPress.com stripping any javascript that you attempt to paste into one of its widgets. They say it’s a security measure, and I’ll take them at their word. I suppose if you have several million blogs on one server domain, you don’t want one with malicious code to bring the whole platform down. So the easy way out is to not allow anything but straight HTML in sidebar widgets.

Thankfully, there is a way around the problem, that lets you both have a badge people can click to follow you, and also display your latest Tweets.

badgeandtweets

You do the first part by following the instructions I had in the previous post.

Putting the latest Tweets in is actually easier, because Twitter provides an RSS feed that you can pull into an RSS widget in WordPress.com.

Continue reading “Twitter 111: Twitter Badge on WordPress.com – Showing Tweets”

RAQ – Related Posts

In the comments about my post on Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Peggy Hoffman asks:

Question (and yes great book) can you share with us how-tos on the related post widget you are using here that produces automatically generated material.

It’s really easy. In your WordPress dashboard (and I’m glad I’ve waited until WordPress 2.7 was released before I did my overview of the dashboard for Blogging 111; that’s coming soon), you click on the Appearance link on the left side:

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And then choose Extras:

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At which point you will see a set of options like this:

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All you need to do is make sure the last option, “Hide related links on this blog, which means this blog won’t show up on other blogs or get traffic that way” is unchecked.

So, on WordPress.com, having the automatically related links is the default option, I believe. You can decide you don’t want to have it, but as Peggy points out, it can be really helpful to your readers.

They are automatically generated, so they aren’t guaranteed to be related, but on balance I think this is a good option. I’m sure some SMUGgles found their way to our University originally because of a possibly related link on someone else’s WordPress.com blog.

If that’s your story, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Please let us know if the automatically related links helped you discover SMUG. That will help our fellow SMUGgles see the value of this feature as well.

While I was doing this post I saw another feature that has no useful point, but I’m turning it on just for effect. Let me know what you think of the falling snow. Only available on WordPress.com, and only until 1/4/09.