Category: Blogging

Feb 12

Is It Finally Time To Dump Feedburner? All Subscriptions Go To Zero…

Is it finally time to suck it up and dump Google's Feedburner for RSS feeds?

The writing has been on the wall for quite a long time that Google doesn't really care about Feedburner. There haven't been any substantive updates to the service in years and in fact they've removed services and integrations.

Tonight Dave Delaney posted an update to Facebook that let us know that Feedburner's stats were now showing 0 subscribers for all his feeds. I logged in and sure enough...

My Feeds

I can't find any mention of an outage or issue on Google's pages... and so we have no clue whether this is a temporary transient outage - or whether this is a sign of a further decline in Feedburner's service.

I'm one who has continued using Feedburner for most of my sites, in part just out of sheer inertia (i.e. having many other things I want to do that take higher priority to fixing things that aren't broken) but also because I've liked the service provided by Feedburner, particularly around statistics. I've tried other services (although not in the last year) and hadn't really found anything that gave as good a view into who is probably reading your feed.

Obviously I can just start promoting the raw RSS feeds that are the ones I added to Feedburner... but they don't give a sense of how many subscribers they may be.

But if the statistics are no longer working, then perhaps there is no longer a reason to stay at Feedburner... and so maybe I do have to actually make the time to make the move.

What do you all think? If you used to use Feedburner and don't, what are you using as a replacement?

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Dec 18

New WordPress 4.1 Provides Much Improved Distraction-Free Writing Experience

WordPress version 4.1 is out today and the greatest feature I like is a new and MUCH improved "distraction-free writing" experience.

Wordpress4 1 dfw

The beautiful part about this is that when you click in the window and start typing, all the sidebars and menus fade way so that you can just focus on writing...

BUT...

... the moment you move your mouse outside the writing window all the sidebars and menus come back!

This is a huge improvement over the previous experience with WordPress 4.0 where once you clicked the button you were in a white screen with no way out unless you scrolled up and clicked the link in the menu bar that appeared:

Wordpress4 0 dfw

I found the WordPress 4.0 way so annoying that I never used it. Inevitably after I entered the mode I needed to change categories or tags or something like that - and so it was simply easier to NOT use the distraction-free mode.

The WordPress development team produced a video that shows how well this new writing mode works.

I like it because it lets me write but also makes it super easy for me to get back to the menus and sidebars.

All you need to do to enable the "distraction-free writing" mode is to click on the box on the right top of the editing window:

Dfw

It acts as a toggle to turn the "DFW" mode on or off.

Very nicely done!

There were of course many other aspects of the WordPress 4.1 release. The release post and the field notes as well as the codex entry go into much more detail. The Twenty Fifteen theme is pretty cool... and some of the other features are also interesting. But for me... I just like this new writing environment!

What do you think? What do you like best about WordPress 4.1?

An audio commentary is available as TDYR 200:

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Dec 16

The WordPress Plugin I Want: Statistics About Content Creation – Number of Posts, Pages, etc.

Here's the one WordPress plugin I really want to have - something that tells me the number of blog posts, pages or other content types that have been created in my site over a certain period of time.

As every year draws to a close, I'd like to be able to generate a report that says something like:

In 2014, we created:
  • 210 blog posts
  • 43 pages
  • 25 events
  • 72 articles (or pick some other 'custom post type' that you create)

Now, for some sites, like the Deploy360 site at work, I'd like to be able to do this on a quarterly basis so that we can provide updates internally about how much content we've created. For this reason I'd love to be able to choose a date range for a report. I also want the plugin to be able to work with custom post types, as on a couple of sites I've used that feature to create new post types with certain formats so that they are easy to enter by authors.

That's the minimum of what I'd like - the number of posts, pages and other content types created within a given interval.

Beyond that, a few other features would be great:

  • the word count for each type of content and in total;
  • these kind of statistics based on categories and tags so that I could know how much writing is happening on different topics (kind of like the Story Board in the EditFlow plugin only with counts);
  • these kind of statistics for each author of content, so I could understand the output of the writers on a site.

All of which would be great... but the key is the early part about the counts of content type over a time interval.

Anyone using a WordPress plugin that does something like this?

If so, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! Either as a comment to this post or on social media... or via email.

I've spent time searching the WordPress Plugin Directory but so far I haven't found anything that fits what I need. A great number of the "statistics" plugins are related to visitor statistics, i.e. how many people visited your site - but I don't need that. I already have Google Analytics and the Jetpack plugin helping me there.

What I want are content statistics.

I want to be able to easily see how much content I and the others who write on a site are producing over a given interval.

I'd note that for some sites (such as my work) I'd be willing to pay for a plugin like this if it were from a commercial plugin developer.

Seen anything like this?

UPDATE: I should have noted that the closest plugin I've found so far is Word Stats, but the plugin hasn't been updated in almost 2 years and while it works fine on one of my sites, it has a problem creating reports on another of my sites and another site went unresponsive after I activated the plugin (and so I quickly ssh'd in and removed the word-stats plugin directory).

An audio commentary is available as TDYR 199:

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Dec 15

Two Weeks In… How Is A Blog Post A Day Doing? #Finish2014Strong

So, two weeks after saying I would write at least one blog post a day (and talking about that) for all of December 2014, how am I doing?

Well... so far so good.

  • I posted at least once on the Deploy360 site every work day.
  • I did put something up on my personal sites every day so far.
  • I recorded a new "The Dan York Report" podcast on 10 of the 14 days.

I've had a serious cold/cough that made for really poor audio... so on some of the worst days I skipped it. I didn't think it made sense to record a poor-quality audio podcast just for the sake of saying I did it.

In fact, I'm honestly surprised how much I did write, given how foggy my head has felt and how most days it has seemed like I'm moving through molasses.

Now... the question will be whether I can continue this through the remaining days that include holidays and vacation time!

Here's the list of the month so far:

Monday, December 1

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Other:

Tuesday, December 2

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Wednesday, December 3

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Thursday, December 4

Deploy360 Programme:

DNSSEC Deployment Initiative:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Friday, December 5

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

  • (no podcast - too sick)

Saturday, December 6

Deploy360 Programme:

  • (no post)

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Sunday, December 7

Deploy360 Programme:

  • (no post)

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

  • (no podcast - too sick)

Monday, December 8

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Other:

Tuesday, December 9

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Wednesday, December 10

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

  • (no podcast - too sick)

Thursday, December 11

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Friday, December 12

Deploy360 Programme:

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

  • (no podcast)

Saturday, December 13

Deploy360 Programme:

  • (no post)

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Sunday, December 14

Deploy360 Programme:

  • (no post)

Personal Sites:

The Dan York Report audio podcast:

Now we'll see what the rest of the month brings...

An audio version of this post is available:

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Dec 01

A Blog Post A Day For December 2014 – #Finish2014Strong

Over the weekend I decided that I'd set myself the personal challenge of "finishing strong" in 2014 with publishing at least one post across my various different sites for each day of December 2014.

Why?

Well... I started out strong at the beginning of 2014 publishing content very frequently. In fact, I published a post a day on the Deploy360 site for the entire first quarter, mostly just again as a personal challenge. But then as the year went on I haven't been been as consistent.

In running, we talk about "finishing strong"... about trying to keep a little bit of energy in reserve so that you can have a final boost of effort as you get close to the finish line.

With that idea, I'm setting my own personal goal to finish 2014 in a strong way from a content creation / publishing point of view.

My idea is that I'll publish at least one post every day of December, including weekends - and I'll also tag it at least on Twitter with the hashtag #Finish2014Strong. There are others using that hashtag, too, and for similar reasons and ideas, it seems.

I'm writing about this publicly, of course, because if I put it out there in front of all of you reading this... well... I kind of need to follow through on it, eh?

Any of you are welcome to join me! Let's finish 2014 strong from a writing point of view!

TWO Posts A Day, Really

In truth, my goal will really be TWO posts a day. One will be on the Internet Society Deploy360 blog where I am, in fact, employed to be writing every day:

The other post each day will be on at least one of my various different personal sites, including:

  • Disruptive Conversations - how the "social media" of blogs, podcasts, wikis, virtual worlds, etc. are changing the way we communicate
  • Disruptive Telephony - how Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is fundamentally changing the technology we use to communicate
  • CircleID - a site focused on Internet infrastructure where I occasionally contribute articles
  • Code.Danyork.com - a place where I write about programming/developer topics, typically outside the realm of communications/telephony.
  • Voice of VOIPSA - a group weblog from the Voice Over IP Security Alliance on voip security issues
  • Monadnock Curling Club - a site focused on bringing the sport of curling to southwestern New Hampshire
  • DanYork.com - my "personal" site where I write about topics that don't fit in my other sites.
  • Migrating Applications to IPv6, a book published by O'Reilly in June 2011
  • Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks, a book on VoIP security published by Syngress in April 2010

A large part of why I'm doing this is that I haven't been writing very consistently on my personal sites... and I'd like to change that. This is just a personal challenge to see if I can do this.

Quality versus Quantity

A reaction I've heard to this idea is that the quantity doesn't matter if what you do is simply push out a bunch of rather lame half-baked posts. You know the type... a post with one or two sentences that effectively says "Hey, look at this cool new thing..." and then points to another site or article. Or a post that effectively "excerpts" almost an entire other article.

That is very much a challenge with any of these kind of "blog post a day" kind of things... and my goal is definitely NOT to do that.

I want both quality AND quantity!

And the reality is that I have a looooonnnngggg queue of articles I'd like to write - and I need to clean out that queue! In particular, I have a number of more thoughtful/inspirational pieces I'd like to write, probably for my little-used danyork.com site.

The good news is that with the publishing systems I use I can schedule posts out in advance. I don't need to be writing posts each day. For example, there's Christmas in there... and some weekends where I've got some family activities planned. There may be a couple of nights where I spend a few hours getting a number of posts queued up.

The point of the "1 post a day" idea is not so much to guarantee quantity as to motivate myself to get out there and write!

When January 1, 2015, comes around you'll have to let me know how I do. :-)

Plus An Audio Podcast...

And just to keep life interesting, I'm also going to try to record one of my "The Dan York Report" (TDYR) audio podcasts up on SoundCloud each day. Again, I started the year doing one of these a day... and then slacked off a good bit over the past few months. It is so incredibly easy to record these audio segments... I just need to do it!

(And I recorded one for today already.)

DanYork.me - Tracking The Content I Create

I - and you all - will be able to see what content I create this month at my site where I aggregate all the content I write across various sites:

I use a WordPress plugin to pull in the RSS feeds of all the various places I write and display pointers to them on that site. It's a handy way for me to keep track of what I've written and where. A quick scan down can show what I've done.

Join Me?

Do you, too, want to "finish 2014 strong" from a writing point of view? Do you need some extra motivation to pick up the electronic pen and create some more content?

Please do!

This is just my own personal challenge to myself... written publicly... but I welcome any others who want to #Finish2014Strong - having others out there doing the same thing can be an added inspiration for those times when it would be so much easier to do something else rather than write! :-)

Let's see how this goes!

P.S. On day 1 I'm off to a great start with so far these 5 posts plus the audio podcast:

... let's see how the next 30 days go! :-)

An audio version of this post is available:

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Nov 07

FIR On Technology Episode 2 – Known and the Indie Web

Firontechnology 300What is “Known” and how does it relate to the IndieWeb? What is the difference between the Known software and the Withknown hosted platform? How do these compare to the new Ello social network? And what value are any of these to communicators?

Back on October 29, I released episode 2 of "FIR On Technology with Dan York" where I had a discussion with Shel Holtz about the new Known platform and what it can do. If you haven't taken a listen yet, I encourage you to do so!

I would also encourage you to read my article from September 26: "The Importance of The 'Known' Publishing Platform And The Rise Of The Indie Web", as that was the basis of what got me interested in Known.

Please do explore, too, the lengthy list of links in the show notes that connect you to many different aspects of the Known project as well as to the larger IndieWeb movement.

As I noted, I am experimenting a bit with the hosted version of Known at http://danyork.withknown.com/. I'll be quite honest and say that I'm not yet ready to replace one of my primary publishing platforms... but I'm intrigued by what they are doing with Known and have been watching the ongoing updates to the platform on Github.

I have some ideas for some future projects and might consider Known... although I must admit that most of my work these days is heavily invested in WordPress and I'm trying not to have too many more platforms. However, there are some projects that don't need the full power that WordPress provides - and they might be perfect for what Known is trying to do.

Regardless, I think it's great to have another potential publishing platform out there - and I very much like the ideals of the IndieWeb movement!

Anyway... please do enjoy episode #2 of FIR On Technology - and please do let me know that you think of the podcast!

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Sep 30

Watching ‘Known’ Grow… via Github

KnownIt's kind of fun "watching" the Known publishing platform grow - and growing it is... each and every day in terms of new features and functions. Known, as you may recall from my recent post, is a new publishing platform available in either a hosted platform (withknown.com) or as software you can install on your own server. Last week I wrote about why Known and the "Indie Web" are so incredibly important.

But the cool part about Known is that like most open source projects it has an open issue tracker... in this case Known uses Github. The overall Github account is https://github.com/idno ("idno" was the original name of the project before they changed it to "Known") and you can find repositories there for the main Known source code (/idno) as well as various plugins that work with Known, themes and other materials.

But it is the "issues" that I find most interesting. If you go to:

https://github.com/idno/idno/issues

You'll see all the currently open issues along with the ensuing discussion. Perhaps more interestingly you can see the closed issues at:

https://github.com/idno/idno/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed

to see all the great work the Known development team has been doing.

Being a Github user, I have "watched" the idno repository and chosen to receive email notifications when there are new issues or new posts about issues.

The result has been a fascinating glimpse into the development process of the team... and it's just been fun to watch how they continue to build more functionality into the platform. Great to see!

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Sep 26

The Importance of The ‘Known’ Publishing Platform And The Rise Of The Indie Web

Known logoHow do we retain control of our content? How can we make sure what we write and create online remains online? How do we make it so that we can post our content in one place and distribute it out to social networks? And the bring the conversations that happen out on social networks back into your own site?

In a time when Facebook, Google, Apple and others seem to be intent on owning and controlling all our data and content, how do we regain control over our presence online? How do we stop being the product?

These are questions of focus for the "IndieWeb" movement that are perhaps best stated by this text on the top of indiewebcamp.com:

Your content is yours
When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays yours and in your control.

You are better connected
Your articles and status messages can go to all services, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Even replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.

You are in control
You can post anything you want, in any format you want, with no one monitoring you. In addition, you share simple readable links such as example.com/ideas. These links are permanent and will always work.

As well as in greater detail on the IndieWeb principles page. A key point is what is called "POSSE":

POSSE = Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

The idea being, again, that you own your own content and then share it out to the other services where people can engage with that content.

Another way to think of this is that the IndieWeb is distributed and decentralized ... kind of like the "Web" used to be before people increasingly started using centralized platforms such as Facebook and Google's properties.

The "IndieWeb" has been around for several years now, but this month it gained some momentum with the launch of Known, a new blogging platform built on IndieWeb principles. Mathew Ingram introduced it on GigaOm with:

The Known software is available in two forms:

And yes, this is very similar to WordPress with the hosted version at WordPress.com and the standalone version at WordPress.org. (And in fact, WordPress can support many of the IndieWeb principles through various plugins.)

One of the interesting aspects is that your instance of Known can use some of the IndieWeb protocols such as Webmention to communicate with other instances of Known - as well as other sites that support the IndieWeb protocols.

The Known software is also "responsive" so that it works well on mobile devices - and the entire code base is open source so that anyone can see what it is all about and modify or extend it. On For Immediate Release (FIR) Podcast #773 I devoted most of my report to talking about Known and the Indie Web - and Shel Holtz spoke at some length about the platform, too. And both Shel and I referenced Leo Laporte's This Week in Google 266 where he had Known co-founders Ben Werdmûller and Erin Jo Richey on as guests, as well as Kevin Marks. I would encourage you to listen to them all if you are interested in further discussion.

To me this issue of owning your own content is critical. Perhaps THE most critical question in many ways to me personally.

It goes back to the question of what kind of Internet do we want?

Do we want one in which we are in control - and have control of our own data and content? Or do we want an Internet where the content we create is locked inside of corporate walled gardens? (Even if those gardens let us display it to the world... we still may not be able to easily get it out.)

I don't know if I'll honestly keep using danyork.withknown.com in the long term, or whether I'll install the Known software directly on one of my servers... or whether I'll just look at making my WordPress installations play as nicely as possible with the IndieWeb protocols.

I'm certainly going to continue to experiment for some time... I've been watching the Github repo and their issue tracker and have been quite impressed with the ongoing work of the Known team.

The key point is that wherever I post my intent is that I will not be locked in to closed proprietary systems. Known and the IndieWeb are more tools that we have in our toolbox that let us retain our freedom and control!

P.S. If you want to give Known a try, visit the withknown.com hosted platform to get started! It's free and easy to sign up.

NOTE: Given that Ello has been getting quite a buzz in the last few days (and I can also be found there: ello.co/danyork ), it is worth pointing out the difference:

  • Known is an open source, freely-available blogging/publishing platform that you can either use in a hosted version or on your own site. You can publish your own status updates, blog posts and audio content - and share those posts out to social networks. Think of it as similar to WordPress.
  • Ello is a closed source (proprietary), invite-only (right now) social network where you can follow friends and share status updates, photos, links, etc. It currently has no APIs or method to export your data. Think of it as similar to Facebook.

That's the key difference - Known is a blogging platform while Ello is a social network.

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Sep 04

WordPress 4.0 Provides A MUCH Better Editing Experience!

Wp 40 focus on your contentWordPress 4.0 is out today and I am VERY pleased with one small but incredibly important tweak - when you are editing a long blog post or article in the browser window the formatting menu bar no longer scrolls off the screen! This may seem like a trivial point... but every day when I am in the Deploy360 site editing some of our longer documents, I spend a good bit of time scrolling the browser window back up to be able to use the formatting menu. This will be a huge time saver for me!

The other features in WordPress 4.0 are also cool. Being able to more easily work with the media library will be nice. Having the embeds automagically appear in the post without needing to preview will also help save time and let you know how the post will look. Improving the plugin directory is nice, too, although right now I'm pretty set with the plugins I need on my various sites.

It's the improved editing experience that I'm really looking forward to using more. I've already upgraded several of my sites and I like the experience so far. Tomorrow I'll upgrade Deploy360 which is where I expect to reap the biggest benefit.

What about you? Have you upgraded yet? Do you like it? (Keeping in mind that there is nothing special about WordPress "4.0" other than that it is the release between "3.9" and "4.1"... i.e. it's not a "big" release but rather just another "regular" WordPress release.)

Here's the WordPress 4.0 release video showing some of the new features:

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Jul 11

WordPress.Com Restores Ability To Add Media When Using New Post Window

Last week people in one of the various web forums I'm in started complaining about the new "WordPress" user interface for posting and how they couldn't easily add images or access their Media Library. I and others were completely confused because nothing had changed in our WordPress installations.

It turned out to be that the people were using the WordPress.COM hosted service while we with no problem were using self-hosted WordPress on our own servers. (What Automattic folks call "WordPress.ORG" software.)

I still have a WordPress.Com account and so I logged in and hit the "New Post" button and... sure enough... there was a brand new user interface. Well... first there was a "Beep Beep Boop" :-) :

Wp com beep 500px

And THEN the editing window appeared:

WordPress com new post 500

And yes, indeed, there was no way to add an image! You could create a "gallery", but there was no way to add a single image. Nor could you get to your Media Library to add an existing image! There was also nothing on the WordPress.com main blog or in the support forums - although there were many threads asking about this.

You could still add media to a post by going into your Dashboard and then doing "Posts -> Add New" to get to the traditional editing window, but this "new" window was the default if you just clicked the link at the top of the admin window.

I found this quite bizarre and even talked about this in my report into last week's FIR podcast episode.

I went as far as opening a new topic in the WordPress.com support forums where it was confirmed on July 5th that there was no way to add media.

But two days later on July 7th a post to that topic alerted me to the fact that the "Add Media" button was back... and indeed it is:

Wordpress com add media 500

So all seems well and people can get back to adding media from the window.

I still haven't seen any explanation other than that the team is "working on some updates and changes". I would hope that in the future if they are going to remove something big like this they'd give people a bit more of a clue... but... by the same token I commend the WordPress.com team on all they regular work they keep doing to that site. While I use self-hosted WordPress software, I do recognize that many of the changes and improvements to that software first get tested out on the WordPress.COM hosted service.

Anyway, if you were frustrated about this last week... it's back! All is good now. :-)

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