Pages Tagged “Blogging”
Reviews
- ClassicPress ★★★★☆ More than just WordPress Minus Gutenberg! Familiar, super-easy to migrate, and can work with most of the WP plugin/theme ecosystem.
Tech Tips
- About This Collection I wanted to make an idea-based collection instead of a time-based collection, and make it as light as possible.
- Combining RSS and Atom Feeds with Python How to build a combined feed from multiple sources that you can publish for followers to subscribe.
- Database Upgrade Problems! MySQL 5 → 8 with WordPress My webhost upgraded their database server from MySQL 5 to 8. The upgrade itself went smoothly, but I did find some after-effects on my WordPress sites
- Finish Those Blog Drafts! If you’re not quite satisfied with your draft, schedule it for a few days out instead of just saving the draft. If you really think of a way to make it better, you still have time.
- Getting Logged Out of ClassicPress ClassicPress uses a strict mode for admin cookies, so following a link to your dashboard from another site requires you to log in again.
- Make Feedly Notice an Updated WordPress Post by Changing the GUID Changing the GUID of an updated post in your RSS/Atom feed will tell feed readers that it’s a new post. Here’s some WordPress code that will let you do that with a custom field.
- WordPress 5.7 Upgrade Breaks Posts with Emoji in the Title? Posts with emoji in the title mysteriously stopped displaying anywhere on the blog except the edit form, possibly due to mismatched character sets.
- WordPress Complexity vs. Eleventy WordPress has gotten complicated to run, complicated to use, complicated to render… Eleventy is complicated too, but only to set up.
Blog Posts
- The Firehose and the Jetpack
I’ve been meaning to disconnect from Jetpack for a while now. This seems like a good time to do it, and to finally clear out the older Tumblr and WordPress.com blogs I don’t use anymore. Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Usersâ Data to Train AI Tools — 404 Media It’s the kind of thing that […]
- Guest Posts Not Accepted
This is a personal blog for a handful of people, and we don’t accept sponsored posts or guest posts or anything like that.
- Subdomains vs Subdirectories, IndieWeb and Identity
In response to girrodocus’s question: #PersonalWebsite creators⦠whatâs your rationale for deciding when to use a subdomain or a subdirectory? I usually prefer to put sections in subdirectories. That makes it possible to make the entire site portable (depending on authoring tools, anyway). Ideally, I want something that could be zipped up and moved. Or […]
- Overstuffed Websites
I’m not ready to give up on the flexibility of WordPress for my main blog yet, but holy crap are these pages heavy. Even with compression. There’s no reason it should take 450K (before compression) and 20 requests to display a 500-word post. And I don’t even do ads, popups, social sharing buttons or anything […]
- Shouting Into the Less Exploitative Void
Sometimes you choose which social app to open based on who you want to talk to who you want to hear what you want to talk about Sometimes youâre just shouting into the void. At those times, I figure Iâll choose the void that feels less exploitative. Thatâs part of why I still have a […]
- Minimum Viable Blog?
Whatâs the minimum viable blog feature set these days? Rich text posts (output; the source can be anything) Titles Permalinks Tags/categories Navigation RSS feed Images hosted locally Media embed (remote or local?) Author info for multi-author blogs I won’t back down on RSS/Atom, because there’s SO MUCH you and subscribers can do with it. I […]
- The Google+ Rescue Mission
In advance of Google shuttering their third(?) attempt at a social network, Google+, I’ve retrieved a full archive, and I’ve trawled through it looking for anything that I want to keep online after the shutdown. Most of them were cross-posts of one sort or another, or (early on, especially) the kind of random social media […]
- Why I have more confidence in Flickr/SmugMug than Tumblr/Verizon
Last month, Tumblr and Flickr both announced policy changes that will impact a lot of users, and upset even more. Flickr announced that they’d be shrinking the storage offered to free accounts while adding features to paid accounts. Tumblr announced that all adult content was going to be banned, and immediately set about flagging posts […]
- Possibly Out-There Federation Idea
Now that Pixelfed federation and Pterotype are taking shape, I can hook up my photos and blogging directly into Mastodon and the Fediverse, but you know what would be even cooler? Connecting them to each other. A lot of my blog ideas grow out of photos or statuses that I’ve posted previously, as I find […]
- Who am I blogging for?
Why am I blogging these days? Who is my target audience?
- Considering a month of daily blogging
I don’t have the time or ideas for Nanowrimo this year. It’s actually been a decade since I last did it, now that I think about it. But I’ve done NaBloPoMo a few times, and I think I can manage a month of posting one blog entry a day. Plus it’ll be a good way […]
- Long-Form Twitter: WHY OH WHY?
Twitter is suited for short statements and back-and-forth conversation. It’s terrible for anything long-form. Long Twitter threads* and images filled with text remind me of the old tech support days when users would paste screen shots of error messages into Microsoft Word documents and email me the document. It was a terrible tool for the […]
- On Backdating Blog Posts
Most social networks don’t give you the ability to backdate your posts. That’s good, because it provides a trail that you can point to, saying “Yes, I did in fact post this before it became common knowledge/was plagiarized/etc.” But other publishing platforms do. It’s helpful for things like transferring an archive from another site — […]
- Link Sharing and Source Trails
I read a lot of articles in one of two ways: Open a bunch of tabs and then read them one at a time Save a bunch of interesting-looking stories to Pocket and then read them one at a time So by the time I’ve decided to share a link to the story on Facebook […]
- Deciding Where to Post Online
Things I think about when choosing where to post something original, once I’ve decided to post it. Audience. Who’s going to be interested in this? Family? Friends? Fans or hobbyists or people in my industry or some other shared-interest group? People looking for troubleshooting help? Do I just want to say something for the record? […]
- Why am I still blogging? (And why about this stuff?)
This blog has been around 15 years. Social media has mostly moved on, to silos like Facebook and Twitter. People don’t follow random personal blogs. Topic-focused sites are what people actually read, and even that mainly following links from silos. Meanwhile there are so many major things going on that make the things I post […]
- What makes online posts feel “permanent?”
Facebook is testing a feature to make their posts less permanent, but they already feel ephemeral (even though they aren’t). My thoughts on why that is.
- Remember Netbooks?
A few years back, I debated getting a netbook for trips. Improvements in mobile phones and tablets have resolved all the reasons I wanted a mini laptop.
- Adding the S in HTTPS
I finally moved the public side of this blog over to HTTPS last weekend. Traditionally I’ve preferred to put public info on HTTP and save HTTPS for things that need it – passwords, payment info, login tokens, anything that should be kept private — but between the movement to protect more and more of the […]
- Copy-Paste Comment Spam Returns
I woke up to ten or so first-time comments* in the moderation queue at Speed Force this morning. As I started reading them I was briefly confused: they were well-written, specific comments about comic books….that had nothing to do with the posts they were attached to. Complaining about Bendis’ writing on an interview with Paul […]
- 20 Days of NaBloPoMo 2015
Things I learned by trying (and failing) to write a blog article every day for a month.
- Tablet Blogging is Actually Convenient!
For short posts, I’m actually more comfortable sitting on the couch and writing on my tablet than firing up my computer and sitting at my desk. This is something I discovered during NaBloPoMo. My workflow typically went like this: Write the post in the WordPress App. Set categories/tags and upload as a draft. Switch over […]
- 2014: Still Plugging Along
I’ve been making more of an effort to post here this year, though it’s been a long time since the site had many regular readers. I’d like to do more long-form writing, but that’s just not in the cards these days. Some highlights: Los Angeles/California: I’ve been following the demolition of a bridge near LAX to make way […]
- This Fan Used To Post Tons Of Comic-Con Coverage, Then Stopped. Can You Guess Why?
Social media has enabled fans to follow SDCC without setting foot in San Diego, but being part of the conversation has a cost for those at the con.
- Saving Ideas from the Contracting Blogosphere
Special-purpose online communities have given way to spots on major hubs like Facebook. I’ve moved a lot of old content from those networks to this site.
- A Month of Daily Blogging: NaBloPoMo 2013 Round-Up
For November 2013, I decided to try NaBloPoMo and post every day this month. I’d been getting all the NaNoWriMo emails, and while I didn’t have the time or story ideas (and Katieâs covering the âwriting a novelâ thing), I was a little nostalgic for a writing challenge. Today wraps up my participation in the event. I […]
- Top Posts of 2012
Troubleshooting, tablet devices, comic cons and a solar eclipse were the subjects of the top five most-read posts of the year.
- Who Owns Your Online Profile? Thoughts on Instagram, Facebook, and Blogging
When you live your online life through a social network, you give up control. If Facebook is no longer around 10 years from now, what happens to all your photos?
- End of the Blogroll
With blogrolls dropped from new installations of WordPress, it’s time to rethink the idea of global link lists on a modern blog.
- The Culture of *Now*
Are you sharing something about a current event online? It had better be really current, because the internet has a very short attention span.
- 10-Year Blogaversary
When I set up a B2 site just for kicks in 2002, I didn’t really expect to still be posting to it ten years later.
- Google+, Blogging and the 90-9-1 Rule
Activity on Google+ depends on where you’re looking, and participation rates follow the same patterns you’ll find elsewhere on the internet: many lurkers, fewer posters.
- Delicious, Twitter, and Linkblogging
Link-sharing site Delicious has a feature to auto-bookmark everything you post publicly on Twitter. Convenient, especially if you use Twitter for link sharing.
- A Decade of Dead Links
It’s been a while since I cleaned out – or even looked at – the dead links on this site. Wow, are there a lot of them! But do they really matter?
- Smartphone: Blogging Irony
Years ago, I wanted a smartphone so I could write down all the blog posts I compose in my head when Iâm away from a computer. Now that I have one, I end up reading Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus instead, and I compose blog posts in my head when Iâm away from both my […]
- Is *Now* Better?
We can instantly post photos, video or words for the world to see, from anywhere, anytime. But should we? Immediacy can be useful, but is it always better?
- Hey, Look! Comics!
Cool! I’ve been named in The Comics Reporter’s reader poll on Name Five Writers About Comics You Like That Aren’t On CR’s Home Team Of Tom Spurgeon And Bart Beaty. It’s an impressive list, and with some of the big names on it, almost intimidating to be included. If you’re visiting here for the first […]
- Promoting Old Posts
There’s a plugin to automatically tweet links to old posts – but is it an effective way to promote forgotten gems?
- Death Knell for BlogExplosion? – UPDATED
BlogExplosion is in disarray again. No admin, a backlog of approvals, spammers on the forums, MIA owners…and now it’s breaking down with no one to fix it.
- A Lot of Effort to Disguise Some Spam
Someone copied a comment on a site with a similar topic to one of my blogs, but somehow managed not to match it to an appropriate post.
- Tweet Cleanup Complete
I’ve deleted redundant or trivial items, split some digests by topic, tagged, categorized and titled the rest, fixed typos and expanded abbreviations, reformatted quotes, links and lists, imported photos, and more…all in an attempt to make the archive a little more useful. After trying to unify some of the more eclectic mixes of unrelated one-line […]
- Best Way to Label Dead Links
Strikethrough implies that text has been changed, and arbitrary formatting provides no clues. Using a low-contrast color might be the solution.
- Flash 500
500th post and a Flash drink over at Speed Force.
- Thoughts on #AmazonFail (or is that #SorryAmazon?)
Even if it was unintentional, Amazon screwed up responding to the PR disaster.
- BlogExplosion Starting to Recover
It looks like the campaign to reclaim BlogExplosion is working! The efforts to bury the forum spam have brought new members into the site, and earlier this week a new administrator appeared on the forums, banning over 55 accounts used by spammers and deleting 13,000 spam posts. This morning, the banner approval I’ve been waiting […]
- Reclaiming BlogExplosion
Its owners seem to have abandoned the site to let it run on autopilot. Most of it is automated, but there are features that require administration.
- Tracing the Premio Dardo
I did some research on the blogging award Premio Dardo (Dart Award), seeking its origins and the ways the meme mutated as it was passed along.
- LJ Shakeup
Oh, fun. Time to look up a LiveJournal archiver, just in case… Gawker: The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network Not Dead Yet: LiveJournal will be run by the US arm with software development in Russia. Hmm… LJ archive tools CNET: LJ Deletes “about a dozen” jobs LJ Press release
- 5 Things I’ve Learned About Twitter
For the longest time, I figured Twitter was little more than a social toy. But after signing up two months ago, I’ve completely changed my view. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up. 1. There are many ways to use it. Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” Some people answer that, and post […]
- Personality “Type”
I tried out the Typealizer, which purports to analyze the text of a blog and determine the author’s personality type. Interestingly enough, it came up with different results depending on which of my blogs I pointed it to. LiveJournal: ESTP – The Doers K-Squared Ramblings: ESTJ – The Guardians (technically this one’s a group blog, […]
- Twittering
I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of weeks as an additional update channel and sort of an adjunct to my blog, Speed Force (you can follow it at @SpeedForceOrg), and I’ve actually realized that yes, there is a point to it. It’s good for the random thought that only takes a sentence or two, […]
- Six Years
I was just commenting on The Comic Treadmill’s 5-year anniversary, and I realized: K-Squared Ramblings turned six last month. (September 14, to be exact.) I’ve been so busy with Speed Force that I haven’t posted much here, and didn’t even notice the milestone. Let’s run the numbers: 6 years and not-quite 1 month 1708 posts […]
- Photo: Old Balcony
06-16-07_1338.jpg, originally uploaded by Kelson. This is a picture I took last summer of the balcony on our old apartment. I used it to test using Flickr’s email upload and blog-posting features to upload a picture straight from my phone. Unfortunately, it needed cleanup. The title (and post slug) end up being the filename, which […]
- Announcing SpeedForce.org!
I’ve just launched SpeedForce.org, a companion blog to the website, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning. Since I started adding news items to the front page of Ride the Lightning, it’s started to get a bit crowded. I thought about converting it to a Delicious feed, but then I realized it really ought to be […]
- Avatars!
Since Gravatar was bought by Automattic, the service has been a lot more stable. I had already re-enabled them on this blog before WordPress 2.5 came out with built-in Gravatar* support. Not everyone has a Gravatar, though, so many comment threads just show the default icon, over and over. Not only does this look boring, […]
- Link Laundering
With bloggers squashing obviously-spammy links* as fast as they can, comment spammers have evolved. (I think they’ve reached the level of slime mold now, rather than amoebas.) They’re trying to make their sites look like blogs. And I’m seeing two main techniques, one involving Trackbacks/Pingbacks, the other involving manual person-at-a-keyboard commenting. Misusing Pingbacks and Trackbacks […]
- K2R is 5 Years Old
I just realized that as of last week, this blog has been online for 5 years. Crazy, huh? This is the 1,398th post. We’ve got 2,307 comments at the moment, including pingbacks. Typical traffic these days seems to run around 650-700 views on weekdays, 550-600 on weekends. Most of it seems to be people searching […]
- Sneaky Spammer
Judging by a quartet of comments posted this evening, 3 of which slipped past Spam Karma, someone’s started outsourcing comment spam to India. (I’m serious, the IP addresses were assigned to Bharti Airtel and BSNL Internet, both ISPs based in New Delhi.) They were posted quickly, as if they’d been composed in another editor and […]
- Joined ComicSpace
Figured what the heck. I’m now on ComicSpace. Because I need yet another site to suck up all my time. It’s being described as MySpace for comics people—creators, fans, reviewers, etc.—though the feature set is pretty sparse right now. I’ve resisted MySpace itself partly because of a somewhat adversarial relationship with the site*, partly because […]
- Offline in Crotheny
Sorry I haven’t posted much here lately. The main reason is that I’ve been re-reading Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series before picking up The Blood Knight. (I’ve also been spending time at the Comic Bloc Forums discussing the Flash relaunch.) Re-reading The Briar King and The Charnel Prince both followed the same […]
- Blue vs. 6A
Remember how LiveJournal, TypePad, and related sites were down the other day? The official line was that “Six Apart has been the victim of a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack.” It turns out that the DDOS wasn’t aimed at 6A, LJ, or any other part of their network. It was aimed at Blue Security, […]
- Blogging to the top
Molly Holzschlag writes about the Accidental Blogger Effect—what happens when you post something offhand that somehow ends up as a prime search result, leading to that offhand remark taking on a life of its own. I made a comment about how Another One Bites the Dust turned into a 3-year-long thread about Frosty, Heidi and […]
- Three Years of Blogging
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been three years since the first post on this blog. I still think of myself as being kind of new at this, but at this rate, we’ll be in the old guard. Or at least the new old guard. ð Topics have shifted around. It started out as a […]
- Follow that link!
Making the rounds this week: IO Error’s critique of “nofollow”, the link add-on that was supposed to stop comment spam, but hasn’t even slowed it down. He suggests that it was never intended to: it was simply a sneaky way to lower blogs’ rankings in search engines. Now, I don’t have a problem with the […]
- Time Slots on BlogExplosion
The only people who see this site through BlogExplosion are the people who are logged in at the same time I am.
- Welcome, BlogExplosion Visitors
In hopes of bringing in some more readers, I signed up with BlogExplosion yesterday. I’ve spent some time last night and tonight surfing through their system, and I’ve seen some interesting blogs, some boring blogs, and some infuriating blogs. (Politics… why did it have to be politics…) If you’re coming here through BlogExplosion, feel free […]
- New Blog Software
The B2 /Cafelog project is evolving into WordPress. I finally got around to updating the software, and I’ve run into a few problems with some of my customizations. Mainly there’s no “On This Page” list on the sidebar, but if you notice anything else odd or broken-looking, comment on it here!
- New journal
For a while now I’ve been thinking of setting up something where I can just post random thoughts or opinion pieces without taking the time to write an HTML page and update bunches of links. Some sort of blogging software seemed ideal, so I looked at a few, noticed they all seemed to use MySQL, […]