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Archives for January 2006

Bloglines Screwing with Our Feed!

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Goddamit! Can anyone see any reason why Bloglines should be throwing a hissy fit over our feed? You can reach the raw, unfeedburnt feed at /?q=node/feed

Any help appreciated at this point, as it all looks just fine to me and Chris…

Get A Performancing Blog!

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With the advent of PFF, and after some thought, and talks, we’ve decided to do away with the present format of submitting stories for review by Performancing, and have opened up blogs for all members. You can now register or login with the form on the top right menu and post directly to your Performancing blog!

We’ve had the blogging forums for a while, and they remain the place to ask questions and seek help, but if you’d like to blog on the loose subject of professional blogging, then you can now go right ahead.

Using Performancing Firefox to Post

You can of course use Performancing Firefox to post. It’s pretty simple to do.

If you already have blogs in your blogs sidebar, then hit “add”, if not, launch the account wizard and fil in the details as follows:

  • Choose Movable Type Custom
  • The API url you need is http://performancing.com/xmlrpc.php
  • Enter your username and password (you’ll need to register of course)
  • Click categories, then check the box that fits your pro blogging topic
  • You’re all set, blog away!

Blog Directly from the Website

You can post to your blog from here also. Just hit the “create content” link on the right hand menu and choose “blog entry” or alternatively, hit the “my blog” link, then the “post new blog entry” link at the top of your blog.

Your Blog URL and Feed

Blog URL’s are permenant, as they work on your user id number, which is of course unique, and the same goes for your RSS, which you’ll find a nice familiar button for on your blog homepage.

Getting on the Home Page

Not all blog posts will make it to the homepage of course, but the best ones, those that are on topic and make good reading will go direct to the homepage.

A Couple of “donts”

Please don’t use your blog to promote, all entries fall under the normal guidelines and blatant self promo’s will be nuked, and the perpetrator whipped senseless with a knotted rope heh…

You May Need to Restart Firefox

If you’re already signed into your performancing blog (we’ve had the PFF blog available for a while) then restart firefox to see the new categories, and do tell me if I’ve missed any obvious ones.

User Pics

We’ve removed user photos from the posts themselves, though they remain in your profile, for the simple reason that it’s just to hard to enforce that the pics should be of the author, not the authors cat heh.. So though you’ll have to live without the dubious benefit of seeing my ugly mug on the homepage anymore, I should spend less time admin’ing and more time posting (er.. is that a good thing? hah.)

Enjoy!

Have fun, and if you have any questions, just post here.

Del.icio.us Lists are Soooo 2005!

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Reading Darren’s 7 ways to get to the top of del.icio.us post im compelled to tell you that I think the “10 ways to stuff a walrus” type posts are history this year. Im not sure why, but personally Im a little bored of them, and I think we’ll see some new trends emerge in the next few months and this little list craze die out.

Darren does cover the HOWTO though, and I think that’s an all rounder, those things will always be a good way to make the del/pop list. What delicious readers want is simple stuff, it’s easy to read, easy to see why it’s useful and people like to spread knowledge.

Being simple is what makes lists work, I just think we’ll see less of them this year, as the low hanging fruit has been done to death now. Really, if I see one more “10 tips for bloggers” post i’ll puke. Seriously.

He did miss out the #1 all time greatest way to get del/pop’d though: Write about del.icio.us! But then that idea is embedded in the title i guess 🙂

Suggestions Wanted: Making PFF More Viral

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I’ve been giving some thought this last couple of days to ways in which we can spread the word about Performancing Firefox. I have a few things in mind, but would really like to open this up and see what Performancing members, and users feel.

One thing that springs to mind is to run a “spread PFF” type campaign, and include an option in the settings to add “posted with PFF!” — it would probably need a better slogan huh? hah…. You see my point though im sure.

Would that work? Would you do it? Would it be a big pile of shit?

You tell me.

Any and all ideas for getting the word out, and making PFF more viral would not only be welcome, but fun aswell I hope. Let’s put our heads together and see what we can come up wth eh?

Want a Monetization Makeover?

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To anyone who is familiar with the Monetization Makeoever series and would like to see their own site get made over: today is your lucky day. I am accepting site submissions via PMs, and will choose one lucky winner for next week’s MM. Before submitting your site, be advised:

  • I reserve the right to be brutal in the review
  • Many will enter, few will be chosen
  • I will not reply to the PMs
  • Please do not reply to this post with site suggestions, PM me instead. (If you do submit via a reply here, Nick will nuke it, don’t test him!)

WordPress 2.0 Anticlimax

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As anyone who has seen my WordPress review will know, I think WordPress is pretty darned good. So I was really looking forward to upgrading WordPress 2, especially because of all the hype.

I am the sort of person who tries not to read reviews of things I really want. Like with big blockbuster movies I try to keep dumb to all the details so it is a big surprise when I finally get to see it. Things never live up to the hype. With WordPress I wish I hadn’t have listened to all the people who said it was going to be the best thing ever.

Don’t get me wrong, it is good, a great achievement and still the best. Just not worthy of all the hype. I am not entirely sure it is worth being called “2.0” as the improvements are good but not massive. Am I being grumpy just because I had my hopes up? Maybe, let’s take a look at the improvements.

  • Imports – supposedly improved but could do it before
  • Admin – improved interface but … meh.
  • WYSIWYG – could do it before with a plugin, PFF does it too
  • Image upload – some people might find it useful, I use flickr so don’t use these features much but the whole thing seems to work in a really odd way for my liking (am I just old fashioned?)
  • AJAX – yeah yeah, doesn’t actually make that big a difference though right?

Apparently there are a whole bunch of improvements under the hood. That’s great but it will take a while for these upgrades to filter into plugins and things that make the blogger more productive. One of the “improvements” seems to be with URL-rewriting and has caused a lot of people problems, particularly some plugin developers.

Maybe I was expecting too much. I was hoping for some new features that would take the blog software market by storm. Something new to take us to a new level. What I got could have been acheived already with the old version and one or two plugins. Come on Matt, you can do better I am sure! At least I would have liked full-on tagging capability and the multi-user features rolled in.

Am I being harsh? Somebody tell me something to make me fall in love with WordPress all over again because right now I don’t know why I bothered upgrading …