Archive for Wrong So Write

After my last Bulletin Board update, I think my Bulletin Board is going a bit… overboard.

I initially created the Bulletin Board post to serve as… well… a bulletin board for people to catch up on the most recent administrative updates without having to dig through my blog.

I still like the idea, but…

Look at how long the Bulletin Board post is getting!

I don’t want it to take up a third of my blog page, but that’s exactly what it is doing. On the other hand, I also still want to serve up my most recent administrative updates all in one post block area.

Ideas?

One of the more feasible/do-able ideas I was considering is to code a WordPress-specific PHP loop that would list posts from my Administration category and then display the list in the block that I currently label as Bulletin Board.

This would offer visitors to my site a listing of all the most current administrative posts while also cleaning up some textual clutter.

The downside would be the necessity to alter a theme file in order to insert such a post as the Sticky Post I am using now would be replaced with a permanent ‘post’ that posts according to a PHP loop.

Hmmm…

~ EMG

… is it…?

Over here it sure isn’t!

So after a few long months of having very empty Rabbit Hole and Giving Props widgets staring at me in the face asking me, “Why haven’t you worked on your links yet?”, I finally sat myself down to wrangle around with them and only them.

Three hours later (actually five, but the first two hours were kinda scattered around)…

Behold – my Giving Props list! *points to the sidebar Giving Props widget block*

What do you think?

The list isn’t fully finished yet as there are a few people and things that I need to add on, but you get the general idea, right?

Maaan, but the list ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be and it also ended up taking up more of my time and concentration than I thought it might!

Initially, the list was going to be a simple list of text-only links like the list of links in a typical Blogroll widget block (to maintain cohesion with the rest of my site which is very minimalistic in terms of graphics), but after thinking about ‘giving back to the community’…

I decided that maybe I could turn my simple Giving Props link block into a personal project to ‘give back’ to the people, services, and places who/that have helped me along my journey as a WordPress junkie, front-end web developer and designer, and blogger.

And that’s where all those icons/buttons come in.

To show my appreciation for these people, services, and places, I ended up creating sixteen – 16 so far! – unique slimline buttons for each and every one of these people, services, and places and boy oh boy, but did I have one heck of a blast doing so or what!

There are still more to come – there are still a few people yet whom I want to put in the list, but haven’t decided on the graphic for – but I think I’m doing good so far.

After I get the others done, I will officially send them off to their ‘owners’ and hopefully, I will hear back from some of the people and get some feedback on what they like or what they don’t like.

*crosses fingers*

… I hope nobody takes offense to what I’ve done.

~ EMG

So I’m using AddThis to Print that one blog post right there between that one post and that other post and… WHOOPS!

You know what happened?

I ended up Printing the entire blog – ACK!

Thankfully, I was only printing to PDF and the blog in question was my own and I have my blog settings set so that one page can only display a certain number of posts at any given time.

But… still.

The whole blog!

Man oh man.

I sent a support ticket to the AddThis team; hopefully I’ll get some sort of answer or workaround for this issue.

I can’t imagine that I might be the only person to have this issue unless… I’m the only person who tacks on the AddThis feature to every blog post on a page of posts?

We’ll see.

I’ll post again with more news when I find out what’s going on, but I figured I should let everyone know what’s going on in case someone else wants to try and Print a single post.

~ EMG

You would think that most of the possibilities are more than obvious and a matter of common sense…

But apparently not.

Apparently, despite how obvious the hatred for spam is all over the world wide web (except amongst spammers, of course!), the best way to get yourself noticed and your actually legitimate website/blog/whatever linked is to spam the hell out of it in all sorts of irrelevant places!

Geeebuz, people.

You know, compared to a lot of my peers in the community, I’m a bit more tolerant of ‘maybe related’ spam commentary. I mean, at least the spam that falls into the ‘maybe related’ category means that the spamming is actually a bit ’smarter’ than the average spam.

So if someone actually took the time to craft a semi decent spam commentary (but I guess then it wouldn’t be spam anymore now would it?), I might very well just let it through with a, “Oh what the hell?” as long as the person weren’t linking to some Viagra or porno or ‘make money now’ site or something.

Legitimate site, slightly spammy but still relevant commentary, okay. Fine.

But a legitimate site combined with irrelevant spammy commentary which I find out has been spammed to hell on however many other sites is a no-can-do.

I don’t want to be associated with a spammer, thanks!

I also don’t want to be giving the spammer a free link to their site, either!

Links are earned in my book, not spammed.

With that said, regardless if anyone cares or not, I will just say upfront that in spamming me with your actually very legitimate website link, you give me a poor impression of both yourself and your site and you have just about guaranteed that any future comments from you will be thrown out with the spam.

If you have a legitimate website, then spend some time building legitimate links!

Please, thank you, and NO thank you to more spam!

~ EMG

Yes, for SHARED HOSTING!

A hosting plan that first started out at $20 a month suddenly jumped to over $1000 for the month due to some majorly insane and nonsensical (read the rest of this post and go read the original article yourself!) overages!

Before any conclusions are jumped, let me clarify a few things upfront first:

1a. As of March 08, a different resolution was offered by the hosting company in question. Please read THIS POST for the most current updates on the situation. For my own response to the ‘resolution’, please read THIS POST.

With that said:

1b. The person who had the webhosting gone wrong incident is not me.

The person in question is Kyle Matthews who owns and runs the ModMy network. The site in question for this particular situation is a client’s site: NegriElectronics.com.

Edit – 03.08.10: In an earlier version of the post, I forgot to mention which site it was that was specifically involved which could lead to a person thinking that it was the ModMy sites involved (since I credited Kyle with the ModMy network and didn’t mention the proper website involved). Not true! Sorry about the confusion and I made the proper edits accordingly! Thanks Kyle for the correction!

and

2. I don’t know the person whom this incident happened to. I came across this story via a link someone posted in my Twitter stream.

The original story is posted on Kyle Matthews’ own blog, which can be accessed HERE.

and last of all…

3. I try to be as objective about things as possible when I write and I really try to not let the opinions and even experiences of others color my own perception.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, right?

BUT.

4. Sometimes, the experiences of others have a great enough impact that it clearly affects my judgment.

Why? Because some experiences are so AWFUL that you really DON’T want to and CAN’T afford to risk experiencing something similar.

Therefore…

5. This is one of those times.

With that out of my system, here’s my reaction:

HOLY %$#@ING YIKES!!!

and

What the HELL is going on at Media Temple?!

Read the rest of this page »

… to the WordPress community.

So I was reading Andy Peatling’s post on giving back to the community in regards to open source projects (like WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress, etc) and it got me thinking.

How have I given back to the WordPress (and other similar) communities?

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