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All posts for “thissite”
Have I mentioned that this migration to a new platform and design has been a royal pain? I could never have imagined all the little things that crop up. Just today I noticed a bunch of pages that existed solely for my old site. I zapped 'em and rejoiced. The new design is up and mostly complete.
At the same time, looking at the oldest posts gave me a chance to reminisce. I looked back at some of the very first posts on Common Craft, many dating from the first half of 2003. Not that... Continue Reading
The last few days here at Common Craft headquarters have been a mix of elation and dismay. We've been working hard on the next version of our website. Now, this isn't just a design change - it involves a completely new platform, new host and new design. I had high hopes of a smooth transition, but those hopes were dashed in the last couple of days by DNS server geekery.
I spent most of yesterday not really knowing if the site was actually on the Internet or not. In fact, I went to bed last... Continue Reading
After 3+ years, Common Craft has a new design and a new platform (Drupal) - Yay! We hope you like it, we sure do.
Please kick the tires and give it a test drive while it's still got that showroom sheen. I'm sure there are some kinks to work out of the system and we'd really appreciate it if you'd let us know so we can fix 'em. Just leave a comment below. Any feedback is welcome.
Over the next little while we'll be tweaking things and posting some content that will represent where Common... Continue Reading
In preparing my last post on MyBlogLog giveaways, I came across a few "make money online" kinds of sites. Specifically, I ran across John Chow who has been quite successful in monetizing his blog - he made $7000 in February. John has become popular among beginning bloggers and SEO (search engine optimization) people.
In taking a closer look, I learned more about John's methods. He promotes the use of link-back blog "reviews". In this case, a blogger is supposed to write a review of John's... Continue Reading
Spam has been around for a lot longer than computers or email, but we’ve gotten used to it. Ever since I had a real world mailbox, it’s been filled with spam every day. A percentage of my phone calls are spam. Some might even say that billboards on the side of a highway are some sort of road spam, or maybe not.
Mailbox spam is expensive. It wastes resources to print all those brochures that I just recycle immediately (which takes time). Phone spam costs a little of my time and there... Continue Reading
It's a big day at Common Craft headquarters. Today this site received it's first wave of good ole trackback spam. I'm surprised it took so long and I seem to be very popular among the comment spammers.
Maybe I'll do some of the things in this article to prevent it. MT Close 2 has helped me immensely by allowing me to easily close comments (and trackbacks more recently) to older posts.
From the article linked above is an interview with a comment spammer, Sam. It provides an interesting look... Continue Reading
For those of you who may not know, Technorati is a web site that tracks links between web sites (among other things). Webloggers use it to find out who is linking to their blog by putting a URL into the box on this page. The site just passed the 3 million "weblogs watched" number.
Now, I admit that I'm a habitual Technorati user- multiple times a day sometimes. It's a feedback and discovery system for me- and I really dig it. And, I admit to having some selfish pride in the number of sites... Continue Reading
As you know, I've been been pretty fed up with the comment spammers. I have now chosen not to be a pawn in their silly game any longer.
I have now closed the comments on all but the most recent posts on this site. As it is now, any post that is over 15 days old has the comments "closed". So far, I haven't seen comment spam at all since closing these comments.
I'm betting that the lecherous spam-bots focus on archived posts more than current ones. Perhaps their system looks for posts that... Continue Reading
It's exciting to see some folks tracking-back and talking about the contest. I'm reminded of the movie "The Jerk", with Steve Martin as Navin R. Johnson. Particularly, I laugh about the part where he's trying to make it on his own by working at Hartounian's service station- and the new phone books are delivered. To quote Navin:
The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity,... Continue Reading
This may be old news, but I just realized a way to use Movable Type's Bookmarklet feature and NewsGator in Outlook to post weblog entries more quickly.
First, you need to know about bookmarklets. From the MT tool: "Setting up a bookmarklet to post to Movable Type allows you to perform one-click posting and publishing without ever entering through the main Movable Type interface."
Once you create a bookmarklet (from the main MT menu), you can go to any web site and click on your bookmarklet and... Continue Reading