Tag Archive for: Websites

Domain Change

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve changed the address of my blog from mikeschepker.com/blog to pieceofshep.com. I figured the title of the blog is piece of shep so I should use that domain name. I’ll be doing something with mikeschepker.com shortly, just need to find time to do it. All the old links from mikeschepker.com/blog/ are being redirected to the appropriate places here, so you shouldn’t run into any errors. If you do, let me know. Even the feed address should redirect properly. (I’ve changed Feedburner to reflect the domain change as well, so if you were subscribed to that address, everything should be fine).

One thing I noticed after I changed domains was that WordPress uses absolute image paths instead of relative. That sucks if you change domains, as all my images were still pointing to mikeschepker.com. Luckily, I found this plugin that allowed me to search the posts table in the database and replace the upload paths on all the posts with images to the new domain. Worked like a charm. It’s a must-have tool for anyone thinking of moving their WordPress installations to a new domain. Also, thanks to Chris Meller, Caius, and BigJibby for their crazy .htaccess ninja skills which allowed me to redirect all the posts on the old domain to the new perfectly. They rock.

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Why Habari isn’t Ready for Me

I’m writing this post so I don’t have to constantly explain my reasoning to everyone in #habari. This is not a post describing how bad Habari is, it is a fine product. It’s just not ready for me and I’ll explain why.

Everyone who visits my site knows that I like to change themes. The lack of quality themes on Habari is one thing that is keeping me from changing. Themes aren’t a make or break deal, but I do like to change things up and not having the ability to do so with a variety of different themes is something that will weigh heavily on my decision. If there was nothing else that made me hesitant about switching, I’d do it. But there are other things.

Lack of widgets or modules built in are something I really want. Because I like to change themes often, not having a widget system for sidebars and whatnot makes things difficult. I like to rearrange the contents of sidebars, footers, etc. without having to edit code. It’s not that I don’t know how to edit the code, it’s just that, these days, I shouldn’t have to.

Lack of documentation makes it hard to do the things I want to do. Back in the pre-widgets WP days this page was my Bible. When editing themes, I still use this page quite often. Habari’s documentation is seriously lacking and it’s difficult to find what it is I need to accomplish certain things. WordPress’s codex spells it out in a great way. This isn’t Habari’s fault, they are young. It took a long time for WordPress’s Codex to get to where it is now. Even a lot of the plugins that are released for Habari have come without clear documentation.

There are also other things that aren’t as big, but I wonder why they aren’t included. For example, Habari uses tags instead of categories. So why isn’t there a template tag to display a tag cloud? You have to use a plugin in order to display it if you want one. I’m sure there are other things like that but I’ve not dealt with it enough to see what they might be. Also, since the codebase is ever changing at this early stage, it takes a lot to keep up with themes and plugins as they are changed quite often and, well, WordPress is much easier to do with the introduction of the automatic plugin upgrading. I can’t tell you when the last time I had to edit a theme because of a WordPress upgrade.

So, there are a few of my reasons why I’m not switching to Habari…. yet. Hopefully, once they mature a little, these things will be introduced and worked on and it will make the transition from WordPress to Habari easier.

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Our Social World

I was thinking about how connected the world has become with the social aspect of various websites. It really is amazing how connected we’ve become with other people. I think that in the future we’ll be even more connected. For instance, right now if we want to become friends with someone we have to add them to each social network we use. This becomes tedious when we use a lot of different websites. In one scenario I might make a new friend. I’ll add them to IM to keep in touch. Of course, I’ll want to know what the person is up to so I’ll ad them to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe I want to know what their interests are and what websites they find interesting, so I’ll add them to Delicious and Digg. Oh, and when we get together and have a blast and take pictures I’ll want to see them, so I’ll add them to Flickr as well. I’m sure in the future in the natural development of the web, adding a person to all these will be much simpler (for instance, check out HelloMyNameisE.com for how they are doing it with mobile phones). Since this isn’t widely adopted yet, you still have to go and add one by one. That brings me to another problem. Deleting people.

When you finally want to break ties with someone, you have to go and delete them from every service and website. This is a giant pain. It’s amazing how much of our lives we share with others and even more amazing how much it takes to get them out of your life completely. Of course, even if you do remove them from the services, that doesn’t mean they are completely out of your life. They have the potential to keep tabs on you via your personal website, checking status updates on Twitter, checking images on Flickr, etc. It’s amazing how open we are with our data these days and how truly hard it is to break ties with someone. I wonder if services like HelloMyNameisE will allow you to remove the users just as easily as you add them. I think it is definitely something to look into. I wonder if, say in 10 or so years, we’ll see our openness backfire on us, or will we become even more social?

Lifestreaming with Sweetcron

Yesterday I found some really cool software called Sweetcron. What it does is gathers all the feeds you add and displays it in a variety of ways. It’s a self-hosted lifestream. There are a few themes out there already, helping you display it in a variety of ways. Creating themes isn’t the easiest, especially if you don’t know code, but hopefully as the software catches on more themes and better documentation will become available. Right now I’m displaying my major feeds in one of the default templates. I still need to figure out how to style various blog posts and delicious links to my liking, but it’s on it’s way. I don’t think I’ll abandon WordPress for my main blog (Sweetcron has a built in blogging system) but I will import the feeds. Check out the piece of shep lifestream.

Too Many Sites, Too Little Time

I’ve not been updating this site much lately, besides the two posts over the weekend. Things have just been really busy for me. Busy at work and busy at home. With last week being the RNC, Political Jackass was taking most of my time from me. This also means that The Costanza Experiment has suffered in updates (the experiment is ongoing, I assure you) and The Technology Classroom. I’m trying to get some help on Political Jackass to take some of the pressure off me to update. I’ve got one person signed up and I’m hoping for more. If you are interested, drop me a line.

Hopefully this week I’ll be able to work on The Technology Classroom some more. I really like the idea of this site and am looking forward to what comes of it. I plan on updating the site with several new articles and even install some forum software on the site.

I know I shouldn’t stretch myself so thin with all the website, but I’m very passionate about technology and with this being an election year, I think it’s important to update Political Jackass as much as possible.