Ryan's Journey » blogging

Automatic Saving and Post Titles

Ryan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:00:56 +0000

The importance of a title is everything these days. When writing posts, I sometimes write the body of the post, then the title. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to title it exactly, so I leave it blank. No biggie, right?

Well if you are using the WordPress.com Stats Plugin, there is a slight bug or an annoyance. If you don’t put the full title you want prior to the first time it auto saves, it will be the partial title, or the all lovely: ?p=123. I just started noticing this a few days ago, my last post, I didn’t know what to exactly say for a title, so now in WP.com Stats’ database, it shows up as “Kid Vote” or something along those lines.

Technorati Tags: stats, wordpress

Word to the Wise

Ryan — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:22:05 +0000

I just logged in here not too long ago, and saw that I had new spam comments. Usually I just hit delete all, and go on my way. But I decided to take a quick look to see what lovely things I got spammed with. I saw that the name was the same as mine so a thought that our friendly spammers were just getting smart. I looked again and saw that the comment was actually a comment which I had posted a while ago. I scrolled down some more, and found that a number of previously legit comments were marked as spam.

Yesterday I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1, as well as upgraded the Askimet plugin. So, just do a quick look before you hit delete all.

Technorati Tags: askimet, blog, blogging, ham, spam, wordpress

Jakob Nielsen on Blogging

Ryan — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:33:28 +0000

A former Distinguished Engineer, Jakob Nielsen gave a talk the other day at Sun. He says blogs are just a stream of consciousness and their authors just use them to pump out new content. While this is certainly true, I think that the lines certainly get blurred between me pumping out content, and as an article.

Say I am a well-known programmer in some language, let’s just say Eric Meyer, I may have a book or two under my belt, but I found a new trick to do. Where would I probably put my finding? My blog. Pushing out a new book for one or two things may not be worth it. But then again we have textbooks with new editions for subjects that always doesn’t have new material, rather new editions that have a few errors corrected, maybe a few new problems corrected.

This could be extrapolated to a larger audience. If you think about it everything that is ever communicated, initiated as an idea. Yes, most things have been based on something from the past.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, jakob nielsen

Stats

Ryan — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:21:59 +0000

We all want to hit success at some point, in some shape or form. With blogs, it could be number of hits you get as a whole, on a certain post, or the same thing with comments. Early on, in my last blog I had, I was only getting a few dozen hits a day, incidentally about as much as this blog is getting currently. Not really thinking, I copied and pasted one of those e-mails that get forwarded every now and then. After a few days, I noticed a slight jump in hits.

This was just under two years ago, and I still get hits daily for that post. I am shocked, a few days ago, I have gotten just under 950 hits for that post. I wish that all of my posts or just my blog in general got that many on a regular basis. But, I think I write half-decent things, although I don’t get much attention from it.

Top Blogs

Ryan — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:05:14 +0000

What somebody considers a top blog could be total crap to somebody else. What I find quite amusing is the blogs that have a lot of comments on every post are about blogging. I don’t quite understand why that is. Back when the idea of blogging came about, the purpose of it was to make it so easy to do, that nearly anybody could do it. You find a number of blogs telling you how you should blog.

Now I know I shouldn’t be talking since I don’t have a ton of posts or even a ton of comments on here. But then again, I am not really trying. Yeah, I hit a peak back in February ‘06 when I was blogging on a daily basis, and had a small group of followers. I killed that off because when I asked are you commenting to boost stats for a new comment service, they told me yes.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging

Reply to a Comment

Ryan — Wed, 09 May 2007 09:18:55 +0000

On Tuesday afternoon, I was greeted with a charming comment from somebody named Sharon. I wanted to just say thanks. What she did was went to a “random” post and told me how much my blog sucked. Well see her randomness isn’t too random. She picked the first post on page two to leave her note. In response to her, yes I blog, and will blog in the future about accessibility. Why? Cause I care about it, and oh yeah, I get paid to think about it. Also, not too many people know about it, so providing my insights will just help others learn.

Technorati Tags: accessibility, blog, blogging

Howard Kurtz – Online, Churls Gone Vile

Ryan — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:30:33 +0000

Howard Kurtz – Online, Churls Gone Vile – washingtonpost.com

Howard Kurtz talks about how blogs and such are posting various things about whats going on in the world. From the conservative Little Green Footballs blog getting comments about how they wish that the Guantanamo Bay prisioner would have been able to pull off his plan to kill ex-President Jimmy Carter, to comments on the liberal, Huffington Post, about regetting that the suicide bomber at a military base in Afghanistan failed to take out the visiting Dick Cheney.

What made me write this post isn’t that blogs are getting rude comments, it was what the author included a bit about the Washington Post. The Washington Post gets 2,000 comments a day roughly according to the article. What I am more concerned about is that the Washington Post implemented comments on their articles. When I started grabbing feeds a year or so ago, the Washington Post one of the sites I grabbed a high number of their feeds. I almost feel that by them allowing comments almost detracts from the articles of the newspaper. It isn’t like we can call up our local television station and comment on a news story.

Technorati Tags: blog, comment, comments, washington post, little green footballs, huffington post, news, articles

The Importance of Titles

Ryan — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:00:28 +0000

This post is a reach out to the readers that I hope I have for some help or advice. I just looked at all my blog titles and I always name them the same, I am not sure exactly why I do, but I just do. So I was hoping to get some suggestions on new titles.

I can’t name it like Ryan’s Tech Shop, because I don’t solely cover tech stuff, but I occasionally do. I can’t say like life of a college student, because for the same reason as I just said. Now if I had a different major which would be my passion, like my colleagues, that would be different. So any ideas?

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, titles, blog title

Posting via E-mail

Ryan — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:00:27 +0000

I have just tried getting the post by e-mail to work, but no luck. I really should have been studying but that’s how it goes. Now I am off to bed. Although now since I have my own domain, I am asking why did I do it… I do not have a big fan base that I once had, nor will I get the random people that I occasionally do. Like I said, maybe this will be a more private thing. Maybe even reaching out to specifically family and such.