For me, all these social networking platforms are a bit redundant, but I know everyone has their favorite way to stay in contact, so I’m trying to just do what works for everyone. Regardless, if you’re reading right this, I certainly appreciate it, however you find and follow me.

Also, if we haven’t connected yet, drop me a comment and I’ll be sure to read your blog or follow your Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Should you combine your Twitter and Facebook updates?
2. Improve slow WordPress page load times
3. And that is the power of Twitter!

First of all, for anyone new to WordPress, you need to be aware that your entire site is pretty much database driven. In simple terms this means that there is no “physical page”, instead the data is all stored in the database and each time a “page” is requested, the server dynamically generates it and then returns it as the response. This is in contrast to Blogger (self published via FTP) which creates static html pages during publishing. This means that when using Blogger (I am still referring to self published Blogger) it is horribly slow to publish, because it needs to build the files, and also update any files that are also affected, such as your labels or tags pages. Of course the flip side to this publishing inefficiency is that page loading with static html is very quick, since server resource use is minimal. (Blogger self publishing is being discontinued and is precisely why I switched to WP, not to mention that now with WP I can add custom PHP scripts which I could never do with Blogger). Being that WordPress is data driven, it builds and renders the pages on the fly, allowing for lickety split publishing and allowing you to easily change your template without needing to republish, but results in more server resource usage and slower page load times.

So having explained that, let’s look at how to address some of these performance issues on a WordPress blog. Before beginning, you should be aware that WordPress has two functions which make performance tracking very easy. They are get_num_queries and timer_stop, and tell you the number of data queries performed and how long the page took to load, from the start of the wordpress code to the end.

• The first thing that most people recommend is checking your plugins since those can add a lot of data queries and resource overhead. As an example, I love Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP), but be careful with it. I manually inserted it into the main index page as well as single pages, but have since removed it from the main page since it was causing a big performance hit.
• Which brings us to the next point. Anything you put in the loop on the main index page will execute multiple times, so don’t go crazy customizing like I did at first. Keep big data queries and custom logic out of the loop unless you know what you are doing. By adding YARPP to the main loop, it was executing for each of the 6 to 10 posts that the main page shows, resulting in that many extra database queries.
• Some people will tell you to take out any extra “fluff” PHP code, substituting in static code if at all possible, though I personally don’t think this is an issue because all my non-WP pages are PHP also and they load very fast. But it’s worth being aware of, and while you’re looking, try to minimize any unnecessary data queries. Putting in static code instead of an unnecessary data query might help. Probably not just one, but if you find a lot it wouldn’t hurt.
• Regarding plugins and other third party tools, be careful of any that connect back to their own domain. This is probably ok if it happens on a user action like a click, but you certainly don’t want this on your page load. I had the Share This widget, and it really slowed things down since I think it was connecting back to its own servers. But the Add This widget seems ok as it is just an embedded Javascript with action that only occurs on click. At least I’m pretty sure. Either way, the Add This script works for me, but Share This just wasn’t worth the performance hit I was seeing.
• Watch out if you use a Twitter widget, depending how it’s coded, sometimes it will hold up the loading of your page while it tries to retrieve your latest tweets to display
• One thing that surprised me was the built in WordPress widgets. Even though the Popular Tags widget only did one query, for some reason it seemed like it took longer than it should. The Topic widget seemed a little better though. And the other surprising one was the Links widget, that seemed to be a little slower as well. I’ve got them all on the site now, and they seem to be ok, but just test it on your own site. If you have a lot of tags or links this would probably slow it down compared to only having a few
• A less likely culprit, consider your web host. Do you have a dedicated server, are you sharing resources, is your MySql install configured properly? I was able to tell that it wasn’t an issue with my host, since I’ve got other PHP pages that load fine, and also run another site that uses MySql with no performance implications.
• Using a caching plugin will help for sure, though I don’t recommend installing one until you have addressed any glaring performance issues. Since the cache is on a page basis, it means that the first person to attempt to load a page will have to suffer through a slow load time if the performance is bad. But of course once you’ve got it figured out, a caching plugin will make it even faster. I have WP Super Cache installed, but have it disabled so I can track the true performance of my server.

What it comes down to is finding what works for your own install. What may be killing one person’s site may be fine on yours. It could be any or all of the following: your server (host) resources, your PHP/MySql versions, database size and table row counts, what widgets you use, third party plugins, and custom code in your template.

The bottom line is that your performance will be unique to your system and your site, so run some tests to see where your bottleneck is. And remember, it may take patience and time.

Related posts:

1. Blogger to WordPress conversion complete
2. Goodbye Blogger, it’s been nice knowing you.
3. New Facebook Page

But notice that I say it works for some, not all. For me personally, I have to say, I don’t think it’s a great idea. And here’s why. My Facebook account is about me, it’s personal and it’s been a way to keep up with old friends, some of whom are old high school and college friends and some of whom are current “real life” friends. For keeping contact with these friends, it serves its purpose. But just because I have 100 or so “friends” on here, it doesn’t make them my target audience for my website.

Twitter on the other hand, is more about my internet based connections and to an extent for networking. Sure, some tweets are personal, but most of it is geared to the internet based group and my website audience, not the “real world” Facebook group. Now remember, this is for my situation. If your Facebook and Twitter represent the same thing, whether it’s your company, your brand, or yourself, then by all means, sync updates to both and save yourself time. But if you do, do it right. Sync from Twitter to Facebook, since you don’t want those long-winded Facebook updates to get cut of by the 140 character Tweet limit.

But back to my rationalization for not syncing my updates. For me, it’s not a two way street. One is personal and has a real life lean to it, geared towards “real life” friends, and the other is me representing my website, albeit as a real person. Now I suppose that Facebook updates could go to my Twitter, since they are brief and are sometimes worth Tweeting. But going from Twitter to FB just seems like overkill, and here are 2 good reasons why:

1. If your Facebook is more personal and Twitter is more about networking, be honest, do your FB friends care about a business promotion you might be tweeting about? Most likely not. Remember who your audience is for each site and don’t annoy them.
2. Most people Tweet throughout the day. If you are sending out 10 Tweets a day, do you really want to clutter up your Facebook (and everyone elses?). Do your Facebook friends need hourly updates about your life? Likely not. There is a reason why FB implemented the news feed instead of the live feed. And my guess is this is exactly why.

Don’t get me wrong, if done properly it can work fine. But do you want to be “that guy” who is constantly bombarding your FB friends with information about your website or your business? If you want your Facebook to be about business, make it about business (or create a Fan page), but don’t try to promote to your old highschool and college buddies if they don’t care.

This is my take. Feel free to share yours.

Update: I have actually changed my stance a little bit, I now do sync my Twitter to Facebook. However, to do this I created a fan page which will have content similiar to that of my blog and Twitter, and I selectively sync my updates using Selective Twitter. This is the perfect solution for me since I can control my updates, simply by adding the #fb hash tag to the end of my tweets.

Related posts:

1. New Facebook Page
2. And that is the power of Twitter!
3. Social media makes us approachable

Obviously this post should be ignored by readers, but if you have any experience or input about the usefulness of Technorati, feel free to comment.

Related posts:

1. New Facebook Page
2. Interesting – Most Expensive Keywords

I’ve heard a lot of grumbling about importing old blogs, and initially was planning to just start a new blog and leave the old one. Until I found this handy tool. Blogger2Wordpress conversion tool. What it does it take the XML export from Blogger, and convert it to WordPress format, so then the import works perfect on WordPress. It’s an extra step, but for those who were using FTP publishing with Blogger, the import directly to WordPress isn’t supported.

So that tool took care of that. All that was left to do was figure out WordPress templates, and start hacking away. It took a while, but I was finally able to get my WordPress template to just about exactly match what I had before. And the plugins and widgets I can now use make life so much easier!

I have not put the time into redirecting the feed, but I may look into that later on. Which leave any old indexed pages that have incoming traffic as the only outstanding issue. This I can probably resolve using my .htaccess file and url rewrites, though I doubt I’ll do that. Because I’ve change the permalink format from YYYY/MM/DD to friendly urls that include category and topic, mapping the over using a generic rule is virtually impossible.

But anyway, there it is. Conversion from Blogger to WordPress is pretty easy. Feel free to leave a comment if you have anything to add or questions about your own conversion.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Blogger, it’s been nice knowing you.
2. Improve slow WordPress page load times
3. Technorati

But anyway, today I get an email from Blogger saying that as of March 26 they will no longer support FTP publishing, claiming that the resources to maintain that are too high. Their claim is that “only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP.” I find that statistic rather surprising. That would mean that only 1 out of 200 bloggers using the Blogger service actually post files to their own host?

They say that the two alternatives are a Blogspot URL or a “Custom Domain”, neither of which I would consider viable alternatives. Suggesting use of a Blogspot URL is just ridiculous, as there is no way you can run a company or a reputable blog (with some exception) without your own domain. So I guess their alternative for those who want their own domain name is what they call Custom Domains, which is basically taking your custom domain name and pointing the DNS to their servers. I suppose this is a workable alternative, but if you have your own hosting plan already and your site is more than just a blog (which mine is), that doesn’t really work without creating a subdomain or moving all my non-blog files to their own separate domain.

It seems like their target audience is people who are new to blogging and don’t have a host yet, or those that have no interest in creating any sort of brand name and are ok with a blogspot sub-domain name. Perfectly fine, but it’s just rather strange since when I signed up years ago, the Custom Domain solution didn’t exist so I was forced to use FTP publishing to my own domain. And now it seems like they are abandoning those like me…

My one remaining option though, (and certainly not one they are promoting), is to make the jump to WordPress, and in doing so gaining PHP support for my blog files, and continuing to publish files to my own servers. For all the trouble I’ve been having with Blogger with their code limitations over the past few years, I’m happy to move to WordPress. I’ll probably just keep my old files as they are, and move forward with WordPress as if it were a new blog.

I guess this is goodbye Blogger.

FYI, when I do this, I’ll make sure to let you all know so you can update your feeds if it’s necessary.

Related posts:

1. Blogger to WordPress conversion complete
2. Improve slow WordPress page load times
3. Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009

So all excited I follow the link to buy the tickets, and it turns out that to get the promo on Ticketmaster you need to enter a promo code… Uh oh, no code was in the Travelzoo email or the linked page on their site. So I look all over their site for a way to ask questions. Can’t find one. The contact page is just a generic “comments” form. Bummer. Replying to the email probably won’t get a reply. So I try Google. Nothing.

Oh wait, Twitter! I find them on Twitter, said an @Travelzoo tweet, and there you go, less than 2 hours later I get the promo code!

And that, people, is the power of Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Should you combine your Twitter and Facebook updates?
2. New Facebook Page
3. Social media makes us approachable

Photo credit Matt Hamm

I have been thinking a lot lately about how social media has changed how we communicate. But not in the way you might think. It is obvious that sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have changed the game, but not only have these platforms made everyone connected in simple, straight forward and immediate way, I think they have also made the majority of people more accessible and approachable. Of course this has some obvious downsides like spam and stalkers, but now our worlds are much smaller and people who would have otherwise been unable to be contacted can now be located and contacted in less than a minute. Obviously, this has downsides too, but I’m focusing on the positive aspects. In a way, it has leveled the playing field for everyone since there are all sorts of people from all walks of life and of varying degrees of success all using these same platforms of communication.

Every day I take in quite a bit of media, including blogs, Twitter feeds, news, and also good old fashioned books and magazines. In the past (before online social media), there were distinct lines of separation between people and all the different medias of the time. There were publishers and consumers, writers and readers, and most everyone belonged to some group or category, whether it was based on their career, what they read, or what they did for work. But now, no matter how we fit into the picture, most anyone who does anything online is just a tiny piece of this great social media puzzle. From CEOs to cubicle drones, Hollywood stars to high school geeks, once we starting tweeting or reconnecting with friends on Facebook, we’re all in the same game.

I’ve had this thought several times before, but it all came together for me today. What prompted it is this book I’m currently reading, Born to Run. In brief, the book is about running, the Tarahumara people of Mexico, ultra marathoners, and the art of running. So as I’m reading, I note the different people the author mentions, then it hits me… This is a non fiction book, I wonder if I can get some background on these people online? Next think you know I find the Facebook page of one person in the book, the Twitter feed of another, and the blog of another! I mean, ten years ago could you read about someone in a book, and then go find their personal ramblings online? Of course not! There was barely even an internet then.

Another book I’ve recently read is Scott Stoll’s Falling Uphill. In the past I would have never thought twice about how to even contact someone who had written a book that I’ve quite enjoyed reading, but after a blog post I wrote about the book several weeks ago, he’s now following me on Twitter!

Chris Guillebeau, internet rock star and non conformist, found a post of mine where I linked to him, and he sent me a direct email message thanking me. (Side note, he replies to everyone who messages him, whether on his site or on Twitter.)

I mean seriously, when I was a kid it would take some time to work up the courage to send a letter to my favorite basketball players to ask for autographs (not to mention the time it took to find the contact info and write the letter by hand), and if I received a response within a month or two I was ecstatic. Now, I could send Shaquille O’Neal a tweet and he’d probably reply to me in less than 24 hours.

Even something as simple as a comment thread on a blog can bring together different people who have never met for random dialogue. This simple interaction is something that would have been virtually impossible years ago. There are blogs that I follow and comment on where this happens regularly, and there are people online who I’ve never met or even spoken to who I would consider friends.

There are a million examples to illustrate these points, and most certainly there are downsides too. I’m sure that some of this online interaction has become a substitute for just walking outside and chatting with people the old fashioned way. Hell, I’m guilty of this too. Have we lost some of our innocence in this? Is it a good thing to be a little nervous to contact someone who is very successful, or to approach one of our idols? Or is it good that the playing field is now even, and that even if it’s a perverse sort of approachability, we’re all equals if we want to be? There are plenty of people who don’t get this online interaction and are leery of it. My girlfriend doesn’t quite buy into it yet. And I know there are plenty of others out there who don’t as well. To many people, there is something about being “friends” with someone you’ve never met, or acting like you know someone based on their daily ramblings, that can certainly be a little weird.

The internet, and especially social media, is a weird beast. It takes normal everyday people, brings some of them extraordinary success, rockets others to superstar status overnight, while allowing them to still be your neighbor in relative anonymity, and without the paparazzi. Hell, Dooce was just named number 26 on the list of most influential women of all time.

Related posts:

1. New Facebook Page
2. Should you combine your Twitter and Facebook updates?
3. Being too busy and how to unwind in 24 hours

It all began when I finally decided to sign up for twitter. There are a select few bloggers who I follow regularly, so I decided I may as well follow their twitter too. I think they all use it properly and will not overwhelm me… So anyway, I’m reading Timothy Ferriss‘ latest Tweets and see one where he posted a list of the most expensive keywords. I have to say, while on the one hand I am quite surprised, on the other I am not shocked at all. I had figured the most expensive would be travel related or vacation related. But as it turns out some of the most expensive keywords are related to law, lawyers, and dui.

At upwards of $50 per click were the keywords settlements, loans, mesothelioma (who would think of that? not me!), and dui. Of course there are a bunch of variations, but even funnier is the one for mesothelioma lawyers san diego. Do that many people need this sort of help??

Interesting information there…

No related posts.