Fantastico 2.10.4 r18 Is Out
Fantastico De Luxe, the popular script installer has been upgraded to version 2.10.4. This means that you should keep an eye out on your cPanel to look for upgrade scripts if you are using any of the following:
Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.18 -> 1.4.19
dotProject: 2.1.1 -> 2.1.2
Drupal: 6.3 -> 6.4
Joomla 1.5: 1.5.4 -> 1.5.6
Open-Realty: 2.4.4 -> 2.5.2
TikiWiki: 1.9.11 -> 2.0
WordPress: 2.6 -> 2.6.1
First Episode Of Perfcast Now Available
The first episode of Perfcast went off without a hitch. While discussing WordPress, Lloyd Budd, (who is NOT a core developer) called in. Be sure to tune into next weeks episode and participate live.
STORIES THAT WERE DISCUSSED -
Are You Trustworthy – CopyBlogger
Stop Blaming The WordPress Team – WeblogToolsCollection.com
Monetization Of Twitter – Peformancing
Blogging Internships – TheBlogHerald
Liz Strauss Comment Counter Creates Controversy – TheBlogHerald
LISTENER FEEDBACK - None – We love hearing what you, our audience, thinks of the show, as well as the blogging industry. If you have something to say, please contact us at (perfcast at gmail dot com)
Each week, David and I like to look at the jobs available in blogging and related industries. We cover jobs that catch our eye, and hopefully don’t pay too poorly. We will feature one of these jobs on each episode of Perfcast.
BLOGGING JOB OF THE WEEK – Business/Tech Satire Writer
BLOGGING CHALLENGE – Thank your top five commenter’s.
The blogging challenge is provided as a means of challenging yourself with a specific duty each week. David and I will be participating in each challenge and will be highlighting various entries from the previous challenge. To have your entry viewed by David and I, leave a comment with a link to your entry on this blog post. You may be the entry we review on the next episode.
LENGTH OF EPISODE – 59 Minutes
NEXT EPISODE – Thursday September 4th, 2008 at 7 P.M. EST
MISC STUFF MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:
WTF Blog Design Clutter Series By Lorelle Van Fossen
WordPress Plugin Called Podcasting
Jeff Chandlers Stats Page
WP-Stats – The Plugin Which Generates The Stats Page
LISTEN TO THE SHOW:
How To Participate In Perfcast Live
Our first episode of Perfcast will be airing Live tonight at 7 P.M. EST. Here are a few ways in which you can participate in the show.
Chatting:
There are two different clients provided by Talkshoe, the web client and the Talkshoe Pro client. The web client is accessed via a browser window or a tab and acts like an IRC channel. The text scrolls from the bottom to the top and the users who are in the chat room appear in a column on the right hand side. The call in information is presented in the bottom part of the window.
You can also chat by using Talkeshoe Pro but before you can use their software, you’ll have to install it. This is the way I access Perfcast and any other show on Talkshoe that I participate in. The interface provides a means of color coding the chat so you can follow multiple conversations at once. The client can sometimes be a bit laggy when compared to the web client but I think the pro client has a much better interface. The pro client also gives you access to something called ShoePhone which is Talkshoes built in SIP client. I don’t recommend using it because it produces bad audio quality but if you can’t call in through a different method, this will work.
Calling In:
You can call into the show a few different ways. The first way is by using a cellphone, landline or SkypeOut and dialing (724)444-74444. The talkshoe prompt will welcome you to Talkshoe and asks you for the Talkcast ID number. The ID number for Perfcast is, 24073. After you type in the number, hit the # sign. For some of you, you’ll need to enter in your PIN. Your PIN number is usually your phone number or whatever number you assigned during the account creation process. If you don’t have a PIN Number, you can still dial in as an anonymous user.
When you call into the show, you will automatically be muted. If you are calling in to discuss a particular news topic or have something to say, please press *8as this will initiate the Request To Talk feature which the host of the show will see. When you hear Talkshoe tell you that you have been unmuted, that means you are on the air.
Be sure to head on over to the Perfcast Talkshoe Page at 6:45 P.M. EST as that is when you’ll be able to enter the room.
2 Possibly 4 Political WordPress Themes
The other day, I was asked if I could provide some insight into some WordPress themes that were politically based that didn’t end up looking like crap. The theme must also do a good job displaying photo/video type posts. Here is my SHORT list of political based WordPress themes.
1. Probama
Probama is an elegant two column theme that features a large right-hand sidebar. The sidebar comes with two configured blocks for a featured video as well as recent images uploaded to a specific Flickr account. The only downfall for this theme is that you won’t be able to easily remove Mr. Obama from the header. So, this one is for the Obama fans.
2. Political Blog Blue (scroll down the page to find the download link)
Political Blue is a free WordPress theme provided by iThemes. This theme has a nice blue and white feel to it, contains two columns, and has a featured video block built in. iThemes also has an orange flavor of this theme available.
The End:
Welcome to the end of the list. I’ve been doing my research for the past two days and this is what I came up with. Granted, there are a few free, political based themes out there but they go against the rule of looking like crap. These two themes are the only ones which fit the criteria out of the box.
Bonus Themes:
Two themes which I recommend checking out that are not labeled as political but provide the elements that would easily turn them into one are the Structure WordPress theme and the Options Light theme. Both of these themes would fit the bill nicely as they provide a nice framework from which to display your political views. Both themes provide a way for you to feature Flickr images along with videos. The only downside to both of these themes is that, they are difficult to use if you are not a seasoned WordPress user. However, Justin Tadlock has done a wonderful job providing documentation on each theme should you find yourself in trouble.
Other than the themes I’ve listed here, there is not much in the way of selection in the WordPress theme world for out of the box political based themes. If you are a theme author, you may want to take a look at this area of theme development as it wouldn’t be hard to be king of the mountain.
The Future of Content Management Is Collaboration
Content management is becoming an increasingly popular part of technological advancement for the internet and for the people who will create, manage, and consume that content. Developers have long been exceeding in this area, but the future demands new collaboration features that have only recently been increasing with popularity.
Who Uses This Stuff?
Bloggers, designers, content producers, web surfers, and pretty much anyone who uses the internet will be constantly interacting with content management software. As developing countries catch up (China, for example), the need for these technologies to handle an increasing number of users is drastic.
Just as the website owners and administrators need better ways to handle this data, the consumers of this data also demand new ways to view, interact, share, and remix this content.
It is easy to imagine that a majority of the people between 18 – 30 will have blogs in the coming years.
Why Collaborate?
However, one interesting feature of the future is the ability to collaborate. The demand for collaboration services and software is outrageous with enterprises nowadays, and with time, small to medium sized businesses will demand this same functionality.
The ability to collaborate on documents is crucial to the development of online businesses. For bloggers, this means that bloggers will be able to create, edit, and share information with their fellow bloggers. This is possible today with the likes of Microsoft SharePoint Server and Alfresco, but it would be nice to see this same functionality integrated into solutions like WordPress, Movable Type, and Drupal.
Perhaps we will have this functionality in the future, but it will likely be awhile before developers realize the usefulness of this functionality. Granted, it would not be nearly half as useful as a blog with several hundred bloggers working together, but it could still find its uses. This could also promote more bloggers to join existing blogs.
It would be nice to simply assign articles to people, or add edits to article live while other users are editing, and even a check in/check out system would be quite useful. Create an open API that can interact with many existing text editors, then the world of collaboration will have just expanded greatly.
In the end, the world could benefit with these collaboration tools. Many tools already exist, and many bloggers could perhaps take advantage of these tools and integrate them into their workflow:
If you utilize any of these content management tools or have ideas for tools you would like to see, let us know in the comments section.
How To Define Acronyms Within Your Content
As I was reading a post written by Lorelle over at the BlogHerald discussing how to help readers keep up with your blog, I came across a tip which I thought I would illustrate here as well. It has to do with defining acronyms within your post in case your readers don’t understand the lingo of your niche.
I’ve been wondering for quite awhile now if there was a way to illustrate what an acronym means without having to place the definition next to the word. I’ve seen many people comment that they become annoyed when an acronym is used and right next to it, is the full sized set of terms. Thanks to Lorelle’s post, I came across the <acronym> tag. When you use the acronym tag, the definition appears as a tooltip when a user hovers their mouse cursor over the word. Place your mouse cursor over the word HTML and see what happens.
The use of the tag is as follows:
<acronym title=”HyperText Markup Language”>HTML</acronym>
You can even add a CSS class to your themes Stylesheet so that each time you use the tag in your content, it has a unique look. To add the class to your stylesheet, copy and paste the following code into your CSS file and style it to your hearts content.
acronym { border-bottom: 1px dotted black; }
For more information and a bonus CSS class that spells out acronyms when users print your web pages from Opera or FireFox, read this article, Defining acronyms on DiveIntoAccessibility.
Weekly Link Dump Two
My FeedReader always provides me a wealth of content that I can’t consume on a daily basis but within that content lies a myriad of tips and tricks by many, many different blogs out on the net. Here are a few articles which I noticed in my travels.
Add Breadcrumbs to your WordPress Blog – BloggingTips reviews a plugin which adds breadcrumbs to your WordPress theme.
Podcasters Wanted: Will Work for Show Promotion? – Blogger And Podcaster magazine are offering up the opportunity for readers to help create the podcast edition of the site. Those who are selected will receive the chance to plug their own show or service and will obtain a 1/4 page ad in the magazine.
7 Certain Ways to Crucify Your Content – Shilpan Patel of Success Soul provides seven ways to help steer your content from an immediate negative vibe while also providing techniques from which to improve your writing.
Are You TrustWorthy – CopyBlogger goes over the importance of being trustworthy with your readers.
ProBlogger Headline Writing Contest – Darren Rowse is at it again and this time, his group writing project centers around creating a killer post title. Up for grabs is an identity logo created by David Airey. Sweet prize!
Proof positive that you should not post negative things about your coworkers on a blog.
5 Ways to Imitate the 10 Most Popular Blogs – Easton does a good job covering five things which the top 10 blogs all seem to have in common.
Writing With Emotion
During a bit of downtime this past weekend, I thought about the various articles I have written over the course of two years. Some have been total successes while others have been failures. However, when I began to piece together some of the best stuff I have ever written, I noticed a commonality between them all.
What each post I had written as a huge success had in common was the fact that it was written with emotion. Generally, these types of blog posts are those which sit inside of my head, tumbling around waiting for the right time to flow into the post editor. These posts will take days or even weeks before they reach the point where I can hit the publish button. Each time I have written a post based purely off of emotions, the words have flowed together as if it was meant to be. Sentence structure becomes a natural instinct, thoughts, opinions, everything seems to be in the right place at the right time.
However, using your emotions for a source of writing is not always a good thing. You must be able to control them and not allow them to control your ability of rational thinking. There are those times when we say or do things that we didn’t mean to but did so anyways because of the emotional state of mind. The best thing you can do after writing a post such as this is to take a step back, regroup your thoughts and then finish it off. The last thing you want to do is publish a post which showcases a loss of rational thinking due to emotions.
On every blog about blogging, or book about blogging, you’ll find a phrase which is the cornerstone of the practice. Blog about something you are passionate about. After realizing that the best blog posts I have ever published were those which dealt with something I was passionate about, I can whole heartedly say that this strategy works.
What has the performance been like for those articles in which you have poured your heart and soul into? Are they your best works or has another strategy worked out better?
Adjix Founder Responds To Criticism
After publishing my review of Adjix, the service which pays users to shorten URLs, I received a bit of a backlash from Performancing readers. According to a few commenter’s, by writing a review of Adjix, I was promoting spamming and scamming. Taking your feedback to heart, I took the criticisms of the service and emailed them to Joe Moreno, the Founder of Adjix hoping he would respond. He did, and this is what he had to say.
As you know, we just launched Adjix this past Tuesday and it’s received a ton of attention. We’re still adding features and I’m hoping that the blogging community will give us a chance to act on their feedback. We have alternative solutions in the works. The more choices our Adjix users have the happier they will be.
Claim number 1 – On every level this is wrong, wrong, wrong. The only people who will make any money at this are the scammers and spammers who don’t give a flying rats about losing credibility and readers. The rest will rightly avoid it like the plague.
First, let me say that we’ll shut down any spammer’s links. Everyone hates spam and we intend to freeze any spammer’s accounts. Our tag line is Short Links. Tiny Ads. Big Payoff. The payoff isn’t just monetary. Part of the payoff is the detailed click-thru information our users get.
We’ve seen comments like this:
http://twitter.com/bloodandmilk/statuses/894380293It could be just as hard to get rich off of Adjix as it is to get rich off of Adsense, etc. In this day and age, information is power. I use Adjix in e-mail and blogs so I know how many clicks my links have received. Maybe this type of information is what the blogging community has been waiting for and Adjix is in a position to deliver it.
Also, one thing people tend to overlook is the fact that, if a person finds an interesting article and posts it to Digg, both Digg and the author’s website generate revenue off of our “crowd sourcing”. There is nothing wrong with this since we all have bills to pay for bandwidth, hosting, developers, etc and Digg adds value (adding value is key). If an Adjix linked article was submitted to Digg, the Digg community would see the number of clicks on their link.
Claim number 2 – What Adjix are doing is not creating a redirect to the original page. They are creating a new page on their server. Watch the URL, it never changes. If you view the source, what you will see is a page that contains some basic html and a frame set containing a url the brings in the original site into the Adjix page.
Yes, this is true. We’d like to know if there’s an alternative way to do this???
Regarding TInyURL – my hat’s off to Gilby – he’s the inventor of shortening links.
If your user chooses to bookmark a page on the site, they are bookmarking the Adjix page, so if they bookmark anything other than the home page of the site they wanted to visit, what they will get when they click on that bookmark is the Adjix page displaying the home page of the original site. Which will firstly confuse them and then no doubt annoy them as they have to find that great article again they wanted to re-read.
This is a great point. Thanks to Kim A for pointing that out on your blog. We’d love to hear some suggestions from the developer community on alternatives. Additionally, we’re discussing some alternatives, too.
Claim number 3 – The Adjix faqs state that
/The key advantage of Adjix ads is that they are displayed, at the
top of each Web page, until the page is reloaded./. Absolute rubbish – click on an Adjix page and reload it – the ad stays where it is, because it is hard-coded into the page.
Not only are you destroying the usability of the bookmarks, because the page uses old fashioned frames you are making it impossible for those using assistive technologies to get any information from the page, apart from the ad that is.
Your claim is noted and we misspoke when we stated this on our website. I assure you that we had no intention to deceive.
We’ve clarified this point with the following:
The key advantage of Adjix ads is that they are displayed, at the top of each Web page, until a new URL is entered in your browser.In the end, the Adjix user community will drive us based on their feedback. Again, let me say that I’m amazed at the attention Adjix has received. We know we’ve fired a shot that’s gotten people’s attention and now we’re going to refine it. The more people we please the better Adjix will be.
So there you have it. Straight from the horses mouth. I really don’t believe that Adjix has ill intentions. However, now that the founder has cleared some of the confusion, I’ll allow you to make up your own mind.
