The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Trying out a new theme on the ol’ blog, as I get ready to do some writing this weekend.
The theme is called Chunk, which now makes me think of The Goonies.
It doesn’t really matter how regularly I write for this blog, other than my own stupid pride. It’s a competition with myself. So whenever I lapse in my blogging routine, I feel guilty that I’m not holding up my end of the bargain.
The bargain with myself.
I know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
One day skipping the routine, and it becomes harder to go back to it the next day. Then another day passes. Next thing I know, it’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve written anything.
It’s not like I’ve been super-busy, out late every night. Sure, there have been days in the last couple of weeks where I’d work late, or April and I had somewhere to be in the evening, or family was visiting. Let’s face it, though, there’s time in the day. There are moments to steal to jot down a few thoughts, something reasonably coherent. It’s not like I’m on a deadline with an editor, and I have to fill a certain word count or column length. This ain’t the New York Times.
July has 31 days, and I posted 30 times. That’s pretty good. I can certainly live with that. But here we are, August 13th, and this is only the 2nd post of the month for me. That needs to change. There’s still time left in August to approach 31 posts for the month, which keeps me on track (for the month) with the Post A Day challenge.
I’m back on it now.
Six months ago, on January 1st, I started the “Post A Day” challenge on WordPress. For the month of January, I was in good shape, going 31 for 31. Unfortunately, it only took a couple of days into February for my streak to be snapped. By mid-February, the ol’ blog was pretty much gathering dust and cobwebs.
Today, I kick off another attempt at “Post A Day”. Wish me luck! I’ve been wanting to come back and start writing again, and there’s a nice symmetry about starting again six months to the day of the last attempt. Coincidentally, I was in Houston on January 1st and now here I am in Houston again for July 1st.
April and I are visiting her parents for the holiday weekend, and not coincidentally, my Boston Red Sox are in town to play her Houston Astros in an interleague series. We’ll be catching the first two games of the series (tonight and tomorrow) at Minute Maid Park, my first chance to see the 2011 edition of the Sox in person.
The roof had better be closed tonight!
Blogging while on vacation is harder than you would think. Remembering to take a few minutes to jot down something and post it. My usual blogging time is around 8pm or 9pm, after I’ve gotten home from work, had dinner, talked to April, started laundry, etc. But while I’m in Lake Tahoe for a long weekend with the guys, my timing is off.
If you missed it, I blogged something very short around 11:30pm last night. Apparently, if I post it from the WordPress iPhone app, it doesn’t automatically publish to Facebook and Twitter like WordPress.com’s full admin panel does.
Anyway…
A couple of days ago, after I finished reading a book, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to read next. I turned to my social network to see what suggestions would come through:
Recommend one book that you think I would like to read. Ready, set, go!
Here’s the results, with a little bit of commentary from me:
Since I’ve already read Blink, and also had another Malcolm Gladwell suggestion, I decided to go with “The Tipping Point” next, instead of any of the recommendations.
There are a few others on the list that I have a copy of already, planning to read someday, like “Replay” and “A Confederacy Of Dunces”. Some are ones I’d never heard of, but look pretty interesting to me, like “Let the Great World Spin” and “Tattoos on the Heart”.
I’m keeping all of them on an Amazon list to reference later, if I’m looking for ideas from my friends.
I have discovered the secret to getting the most page views in one day for your personal WordPress site.
The recipe is actually pretty simple:
All it takes to boost the page views is Olivia Wilde
If your recipe calls for even more hits to the site than the above can give you, add in a picture of Olivia Wilde, and I’m sure it’ll be a huge hit.
I’m reading the news about Automattic acquiring Plinky, and it has me wondering if it’s something that I would need. From the WordPress.com blog:
Each weekday, Plinky provides a prompt — like a question or a challenge — and you type in an answer. To keep it interesting, prompts are a mixed bag of fun commands (“Write a haiku about the last meal you ate”) to more thoughtful questions (“What is your favorite summer memory?”)
It’s an interesting concept, helping people in conquering writer’s block by getting them to write about something, ANYTHING, every weekday. Seeing as how I’m trying to get back into a more consistent blogging rhythm myself, on the surface, Plinky sounds like something I’d find useful.
Never mind that there is a distinct gap in the Plinky prompts, from April 6th until today. I assume that can be chalked up to Things Labs focusing on other things, like Brizzly, and letting Plinky go stale until Automattic came into the picture.
My issue with Plinky is not the concept, but the prompts themselves. I would need something a little meatier to write about, especially if I was stuck for content. I really can’t see myself writing anything more than a couple of lines on any of these topics. I know that a service like Plinky is looking to appeal to a mass audience, and with over 11 million blogs on WordPress.com alone, that certainly qualifies as a mass audience. There’ll be SOME pickup of these Plinky prompts, but not enough to make me think the prompts will become compelling to me. I can’t imagine writing 500 words on “What’s a good place to get fresh produce?”, unless I gave you turn-by-turn navigation from my house to a farmer’s market several towns away. And, really, who wants to read that? I know I sure as hell don’t want to write it.
Similarly, Formspring prompts you for questions that I really don’t find particularly interesting — not that anyone bothers to ask me questions on Formspring, mind you. Hint, hint.
Although, for today, it’s kind of fun to throw a bunch of them into one blog post…
Don't you just love Cape Cod? It's sooooooo relaxing.
What’s your favorite summer memory?
Driving over the Bourne Bridge with my father, for Cape Cod summers, with Dad waxing, “Don’t you just love Cape Cod? It’s sooooooooo relaxing.”
Share a time when the end of one thing meant the beginning of another.
You’re in charge today. You make the rules.
Chocolate pudding for everyone!
What landmark did you find disappointing when you saw it in person?
Plymouth Rock. It’s just a rock. No, really, it’s a frigging rock.
Could you live without a car for a year?
I’m pretty sure I’d survive. I require oxygen, food, and water. Everything else is bonus.
It’s the last day of middle school… will you sign my yearbook?
No, but I’ll write on your Facebook wall.
Which animal makes the best pet?
Turtles. I can outrun them if they escape. Usually.
You only get three crayons to make your picture. Which do you choose?
Red, Yellow, Blue.
Write a haiku about the last meal you ate.
Lunch today was yum,
I had a slice of pizza,
Just cheese, no toppings.
When I launched this new blog site the other day, one of the topics that I had in mind to write more extensively about was why I chose to switch from personal WordPress.org installation to a WordPress.com hosted account. Little did I realize that a great launching-point post would be available today that hit close to home.
I made the decision to switch to a WordPress.com account less than 24 hours after WordPress.com took it right on the chin with a very public outage. I knew about the downtime through a variety of sources coming through my Twitter stream, and made the switch anyway. Bob Warfield’s post on Enterprise Irregulars crossed my plate repeatedly as well.
Then the real kicker came through over the weekend, from my own boss, Clint Oram, on the CRM Outsiders blog.
Full disclosure here… I work for SugarCRM, I report directly to Clint, and I’ve worked with him closely for most of the past five years. I respect the hell out of Clint, and I firmly believe in the Sugar Open Cloud model that we’ve built up at SugarCRM. I’m not going to argue multi-tenant versus multi-instance — Clint already covered that in great detail.
I will, though, talk about some of the similarities between WordPress and SugarCRM, in their various forms. OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: The content of the rest of this article represent my personal views, and are not necessarily the views of my employer. I’m writing on behalf of myself, not my employer.
I’m not going to bore you with the history of WordPress or the background of Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com), or with the SugarCRM story. You’re on the Internet… look it up yourself.
I first crossed paths with the WordPress open source software project prior to my knowledge of SugarCRM (the company or the open source software project). Installing and messing around with WordPress was what gave my first in-depth introduction to a PHP application, in fact. Learning how to run the software effectively, how to modify it for my needs, and how to extend it with plug-ins and my own customizations was a key factor in my joining SugarCRM in the first place.
I loved the idea of a piece of software that I could run on my own, peel back the covers and bend explicitly to my wishes, rather than me having to conform to what the software developers who created the product forced me to do. Even back then, WordPress had a large community of people who were designing new themes and building plug-ins, not to mention providing some fantastic support to other users.
By the time Automattic started up and launched WordPress.com, I was working for SugarCRM and was now quite familiar with the concept of:
A) A commercial entity that is providing much of the development work on an open source project;
and,
B) A hosted version of an open source project.
SugarCRM’s model is not exactly the same as the WordPress model, but there are so many similarities that it’s hard for me to not think of the two applications as distant cousins. Unlike most other commercial open source or SaaS companies that I interact with on a professional level, WordPress as an application is one that I’ve used for my own personal use for years. There’s more emotional investment there for me. I’m rooting for Automattic and for the WordPress open source project.
Back to my original topic, though… if I like WordPress’s open source version, and I’m aware of the recent WordPress.com downtime, and I believe in SugarCRM’s Open Cloud strategy, why in the world would I make the jump to WordPress.com less than 24 hours after an outage that affected 11.2 million blogs?
It’s simple, really. WordPress.com has had their major disaster, and you can bet the farm that they won’t let something like this happen again. For a free service that’s been around for years and handles the traffic that they do, to only have one other significant outage prior to this is pretty remarkable. I’m looking squarely at you and your Fail Whale, Twitter.
WordPress is still a terrific blogging application, easy to use, easy to set up, with millions of blogs hosted and who knows how many more out in the world running locally. I can run this blog on their service with the confidence that I can always go back to running the open source version if I ever lose my faith in Automattic. If they screw me up, then I have a backup strategy that I’m 100% comfortable falling back to. I have less confidence in my ability to run their software, which is why I’m entrusting my blog to the experts as the first option.
There may come a day when I want to move my blog back to a self-hosted WordPress installation. Maybe I’ll be concerned about my data. Maybe I’ll want more freedom in how I tweak the platform. Maybe I’ll just get the jones to do some hacky customizations. In any event, while some will question the multi-tenant strategy of WordPress.com, I’ll instead point to their version of the Open Cloud strategy as a core reason I’m using their service.
“If I ever lose my faith in you, there’d be nothing left for me to do…” — Sting
