i am shep

this is me

Tag: websites

We'll Do It Live

You might have noticed that I had several test posts today. Normally, I do testing on a local server, but the issue I was trying to track down was a problem with my webhost. I had no other option so I said, F it. We'll do it live.

All humor aside, the problem I was having was that YOURLS, my URL shortener that posts new blog posts automatically to twitter with my novelty shep.in urls, was not working properly. It was not able to actually write the URL to the YOURLS database. Basically, this is because Host Gator has mod_security enabled. In the past this hasn't really been an issue because they would just whitelist the applicable rules. Unfortunately, the rules they had whitelisted were no longer working and YOURLS was failing.

After several trouble tickets back and forth, I finally decided it wasn't worth it to host my URL shortening domains (shep.in and tvtalk.it for Let's Talk About TV) with Hostgator. It was becoming too much of a hassle to ensure that everything was working properly. Even though I usually love Host Gator, I decided to move these domains to A Small Orange. Their Tiny Plan, which is all I need for URLs that redirect, costs only $25 a year. Well worth not having the headaches of making sure the mod_security rules continue to work.

The only thing left to do is wait for GoDaddy to change the nameservers on tvtalk.it (it has to be accepted by an Italian registrar before the changes can be made, which takes up to 5 business days). Actually, I will have to wait longer. Because I was not aware there was this waiting period, I changed the nameservers to A Small Orange's. I've since decided to sign up at Zone Edit and use their nameservers, that way if something like this ever happens again I can just change the A record for the domain. So that can be up to an additional 5 business days.

So, sorry for the tests. I believe I have everything figured out fine now and you should not see anymore test posts in your feeds and/or twitter.

a-small-orange, host-gator, hosting, websites, yourls

Replacing Politics with TV

Two of the biggest things I blog about are politics and TV. I blog about those subjects so much I started sites on the topics (the long abandoned Political Jackass, Grand Old Parody, and Let's Talk About TV. For those who know me, I'm very passionate (and opinionated) about politics. So passionate, that I would let politics affect me in ways that, in my opinion, shouldn't. I would read political articles and news and could feel my blood pressure rise at the content. I would have endless debates with friends and family, and that is rarely a good thing. I never understood how people could be so apathetic to politics. How can you not care about the country and the people that run it. I maybe cared a bit too much and that wasn't healthy, so I decided to start a new hobby. That's when I started Let's Talk About TV.

A lot of my previous posts here have been about TV, but this wasn't really a TV blog. In fact, there were a lot more posts I wanted to write but didn't because it would be a non-stop TV stream. That's why I decided to start a dedicated blog for TV-related posts. A few days after deciding on the domain name I had the site up and running. It has gone through a design change already, but I'm proud of how it turned out. Best of all, it has replaced the timesuck that politics used to take up. TV blogging has become my new hobby. Instead of reading political article after political article and posting them on my political sites, I now look for TV news. This has definitely been a good thing for my blood pressure. Don't get me wrong though, I'm still heavily opinionated, I still make an occasional post, and I still read political news everyday, but it is not as important to me as it used to me. It is no longer a hobby of mine. Let's Talk About TV is.

Let's Talk About TV has been a fun project for me. I don't really care if it ever gets big because it's just a hobby. I get a respectable amount of traffic for a site that's only a few months old, and RSS subscriptions seem to increase by a few each week. There are some things I would really like to do with it, it's just a matter of getting access to the people I need. I also hope to do some more reviews when I have more time. The problem is, I hate doing individual TV show reviews. Who really cares about a review for a single episode? I plan on doing reviews for TV show premieres, TV technology, and perhaps even DVD boxed set releases. I would also like to do a monthly contest for my readers. We shall see how this all plays out, but the site has definitely become something I'm glad I did. If you haven't checked out Let's Talk About TV, please do.

grand-old-parody, lets-talk-about-tv, political-jackass, politics, tv, websites

Let's Talk About TV

You all know that I love TV. In fact, I love it so much I created a new site dedicated to all things TV. I present to you Let's Talk About TV. There are still things I am tweaking, but I decided to make it public yesterday. Many of the posts were imported from here but expect a lot more frequent posting. I have a few good ideas on what I want to do with the site, I just hope I can pull it off. I'm hoping if I'm able to do a few of them out of the gates I will have a bit of momentum and the rest will come a bit easier (being vague on purpose).

So, why am I starting this site? Well, as I said, I love TV. I'm tired of posting about TV here and there always seems to be a lot more about TV that I want to post. Also, I need to take my mind of politics. You might know I run Grand Old Parody and I need to have something else to occupy my time. Politics is too stressful. I need something fun!

Anyway, go visit the site, look around, and if you'd like, subscribe. I hope you enjoy it!

lets-talk-about-tv, tv, websites

How I use Twitter

After reading Owen's post about Twitter Influence there was a brief discussion in the Habari IRC channel about who people follow and why. One part of the conversation was about celebrities. One person in the convo didn't follow any celebrities. Owen follows just one. I, however, follow 50+. That got me thinking about why I follow these people and how I'm actually using Twitter.

First off, I want to point out that I am not a TMZ, Perez Hilton, US Weekly, People celebrity stalker. In fact, if you look at the celebrities I follow you would find a bunch of names that rarely, if ever, appear in that type of celebrity drivel. The celebrities I follow are people from TV show, music, and movies that I really enjoy. Their updates are usually really good and provide me with entertainment. Denis Leary always has great one-liners. Rob Lowe embraces his fans and frequently talks about his role on The West Wing. Nathan Fillion and Colin Ferguson are just regular guys that tweet just like anyone else. Roger Ebert provides thoughtful political and film essays. Louis CK posts clips from his very funny show and tour dates for his stand up.

The thing is, I get quality tweets from most of these people. If I didn't, I wouldn't follow them. Sure there might be a few on there that don't update, but for the most part they all do and I enjoy most of their tweets. It's gotten to a point where I enjoy their tweets more than most of the other non St. Louis people I follow. Twitter has evolved from a place where I can see what other people are currently doing to a place where I can get info on my favorite TV shows, movies, musicians, and actors. I still enjoy seeing what my fellow St. Louisans are doing, but that's about it. I used to enjoy reading what other people were up to or things they found interesting, but that has definitely changed, and I can probably pinpoint two reasons why that has changed.

The first reason is I started following too many people. I follow a lot of people but the people I follow, I follow for a reason. This has disadvantages though. The people I tend to follow update more frequently. Follow a lot of heavy users and statuses begin to fly by one right after another. Even though I find what they have to say interesting, I can only read so many tweets before they are lost forever in a never-ending stream of unreadable text. After a while of not being able to catch up, these updates become noise and provide nothing meaningful. The second thing is what I'm going to refer to as static. These are tweets that interfere with an otherwise good signal and will often contribute to the first issue. These tweets can be anything from a Four Square check in or a re-tweet to get into a contest for an Apple product (which I swear no one ever wins). Then you have paid tweets. That one bugs me the most. With celebrities and other high profile users, it's easier to get high quality content without a lot of noise. You know if there is an update it's not going to be a Four Square check in, a RT for a contest, or what song they are currently listening to. It's going to be something that I find meaningful.

So, have you changed the way you use Twitter over the years? Do you still find it as valuable as before? Do you use it to make personal connections or more broad connections for your interests?

celebrities, movies, music, technology, tv, twitter, websites

Website Backups are Essential

Everyone who has ever had a website disappear on them knows that having a current backup is essential. I have seen the poor soul who has had his server crash and lost years worth of blogging way too many times. It is essential that you have a plan in place for your backups. Let me tell you what I do for my backups. Note that I'm not saying you should do the same, this is just what I find easiest and it works for me.

Every Wednesday databases from several WordPress sites are emailed to me. I use the WordPress Database Backup Plugin to automatically email me the database backups each Wednesday at a time I set in the configuration. I then have filters set up in a Gmail account so that labels are applied automatically. When the Piece of Shep database comes in it goes directly to the Piece of Shep label and gets marked as read. If I want I can also have an on-demand backup emailed to me or download it directly from the WordPress interface.

Now that my database is safe, on the web and available to download anytime I want, how do I backup my files? The actual website files I download less frequently. I host several sites on my hosting account so a full backup is actually quite large, several gigabytes. Because of this, I only backup the actual files once every month. Using my host's control panel I generate a full backup then download it to my iMac and then it is backed up to an external hard drive using Time Machine. I also have the full backups backed up over the net using Mozy. Because they are quite large in size, I only keep an archive of two or three of the latest snapshots. Since databases are typically small, (200-600 KB) I keep a much larger archive of those. So that's how I backup my sites. What about you? Have you ever lost an entire site and years worth of work? Do you have a backup plan in place? If so, how often do you backup? My motto with web hosting is always plan for the worst because when you don't, that's when the worst happens.

backups, websites

Clicky - Great Looking Real-Time Stats

clickyI recently signed up for Clicky Web Statistics, a great looking real time stats package. I'm nuts about statistics on my website but found Google Analytics to be lacking. I want data in real time, not a day later. I also use Mint but decided to start looking for something not self-hosted. I used the free trial of Clicky for a few days before I was sold and purchased a plan.

The stats that are provided are the type of stats you'd find in most statistics software. Clicky presents it in a very appealing way. No more getting lost in the different menus and submenus of Google Analytics. Clicky is simple and intuitive, providing numerical and graphical stats. It displays everything I want it to. It tells me what search engines visitors are using, the terms they are searching for, their entry and exit pages, the time they are on the site, the browser, OS, and screen resolution. If I want to see where they are going once on my site, I can see all the pages they go to. I can even see a Google map of where they are located in the world.

The best thing about the stats package is that it's all real time. I'm not running a mission-critical business that needs stats right away. I just enjoy seeing what is going on at my site(s) and any given moment. Clicky makes it easy to do that and presents it in a way that is superior to other stats packages that I've tried. If you're looking for a great affordable real-time stats package, I suggest signing up and giving Clicky a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed. There are a lot more features not posted in these screenshots. These are just the ones I like/use the most.

[gallery link="file"]

clicky, stats, websites

Please Stop Using Internet Explorer

Dear Internet Users Across the World,

Please stop using the horrible piece of software that came pre-installed on your PC known as Internet Explorer. Not only do you make the job of web designers a lot harder each and every day you use it, but you also leave yourself more open to attacks from malicious websites. I recently spent several hours over a few nights fixing a computer for my sister and brother-in-law because they were infected with a nasty bug that they got while using Internet Explorer. If they were using Firefox they would not have installed the ActiveX and gotten the bug, but they weren't so they did. IE fails at security and fails at complying with web standards.

My beef used to be with the people who still use Internet Explorer 6, even though 7 has been out for well over a year now. Now my beef is with anyone who continues to use IE at all. I'll tell you why. Microsoft had the chance to make IE7 standards compliant. What that means is it would properly render pages that were coded to the standards and rules set forth by the web development community to make the best looking and most usable websites possible. They didn't. While it was better than 6, it was far from the other web browsers, such as Firefox or Safari. The first release candidate of IE8 recently came out. Again, they had the chance to make it standards compliant. They failed again. That makes the job of web developers harder. Now they have to support 3 versions of IE, each one supporting different standards that Microsoft decided it wanted to follow, and not true web standards. Please do yourself a favor and see the web the way it was meant to be seen. Use Firefox (or Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, etc). Thanks.

Your friendly neighborhood Web Developer and Family Computer Help Desk, Mike Schepker

firefox, internet-explorer, microsoft, technology, websites

Feed Migration

Feeburner is being moved to Google and as a result at the end of February all Feedburner feeds will be migrated to feedburner.google.com. Yesterday, I migrated all my feeds. Everything should be working fine, but if you aren't getting the feed, let me know and I will try to figure out what is wrong.

feedburner, google, websites

Domain Change

In case you haven't noticed, I've changed the address of my blog from mikeschepker.com/blog to pieceofshep.com. I figured the title of the blog is piece of shep so I should use that domain name. I'll be doing something with mikeschepker.com shortly, just need to find time to do it. All the old links from mikeschepker.com/blog/ are being redirected to the appropriate places here, so you shouldn't run into any errors. If you do, let me know. Even the feed address should redirect properly. (I've changed Feedburner to reflect the domain change as well, so if you were subscribed to that address, everything should be fine).

One thing I noticed after I changed domains was that WordPress uses absolute image paths instead of relative. That sucks if you change domains, as all my images were still pointing to mikeschepker.com. Luckily, I found this plugin that allowed me to search the posts table in the database and replace the upload paths on all the posts with images to the new domain. Worked like a charm. It's a must-have tool for anyone thinking of moving their WordPress installations to a new domain. Also, thanks to Chris Meller, Caius, and BigJibby for their crazy .htaccess ninja skills which allowed me to redirect all the posts on the old domain to the new perfectly. They rock.

domain-names, websites

Why Habari isn't Ready for Me

I'm writing this post so I don't have to constantly explain my reasoning to everyone in #habari. This is not a post describing how bad Habari is, it is a fine product. It's just not ready for me and I'll explain why.

Everyone who visits my site knows that I like to change themes. The lack of quality themes on Habari is one thing that is keeping me from changing. Themes aren't a make or break deal, but I do like to change things up and not having the ability to do so with a variety of different themes is something that will weigh heavily on my decision. If there was nothing else that made me hesitant about switching, I'd do it. But there are other things.

Lack of widgets or modules built in are something I really want. Because I like to change themes often, not having a widget system for sidebars and whatnot makes things difficult. I like to rearrange the contents of sidebars, footers, etc. without having to edit code. It's not that I don't know how to edit the code, it's just that, these days, I shouldn't have to.

Lack of documentation makes it hard to do the things I want to do. Back in the pre-widgets WP days this page was my Bible. When editing themes, I still use this page quite often. Habari's documentation is seriously lacking and it's difficult to find what it is I need to accomplish certain things. WordPress's codex spells it out in a great way. This isn't Habari's fault, they are young. It took a long time for WordPress's Codex to get to where it is now. Even a lot of the plugins that are released for Habari have come without clear documentation.

There are also other things that aren't as big, but I wonder why they aren't included. For example, Habari uses tags instead of categories. So why isn't there a template tag to display a tag cloud? You have to use a plugin in order to display it if you want one. I'm sure there are other things like that but I've not dealt with it enough to see what they might be. Also, since the codebase is ever changing at this early stage, it takes a lot to keep up with themes and plugins as they are changed quite often and, well, WordPress is much easier to do with the introduction of the automatic plugin upgrading. I can't tell you when the last time I had to edit a theme because of a WordPress upgrade.

So, there are a few of my reasons why I'm not switching to Habari.... yet. Hopefully, once they mature a little, these things will be introduced and worked on and it will make the transition from WordPress to Habari easier.

habari, websites, wordpress

Our Social World

I was thinking about how connected the world has become with the social aspect of various websites. It really is amazing how connected we've become with other people. I think that in the future we'll be even more connected. For instance, right now if we want to become friends with someone we have to add them to each social network we use. This becomes tedious when we use a lot of different websites. In one scenario I might make a new friend. I'll add them to IM to keep in touch. Of course, I'll want to know what the person is up to so I'll ad them to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe I want to know what their interests are and what websites they find interesting, so I'll add them to Delicious and Digg. Oh, and when we get together and have a blast and take pictures I'll want to see them, so I'll add them to Flickr as well. I'm sure in the future in the natural development of the web, adding a person to all these will be much simpler (for instance, check out HelloMyNameisE.com for how they are doing it with mobile phones). Since this isn't widely adopted yet, you still have to go and add one by one. That brings me to another problem. Deleting people.

When you finally want to break ties with someone, you have to go and delete them from every service and website. This is a giant pain. It's amazing how much of our lives we share with others and even more amazing how much it takes to get them out of your life completely. Of course, even if you do remove them from the services, that doesn't mean they are completely out of your life. They have the potential to keep tabs on you via your personal website, checking status updates on Twitter, checking images on Flickr, etc. It's amazing how open we are with our data these days and how truly hard it is to break ties with someone. I wonder if services like HelloMyNameisE will allow you to remove the users just as easily as you add them. I think it is definitely something to look into. I wonder if, say in 10 or so years, we'll see our openness backfire on us, or will we become even more social?

observations, social-media, websites

Lifestreaming with Sweetcron

Yesterday I found some really cool software called Sweetcron. What it does is gathers all the feeds you add and displays it in a variety of ways. It's a self-hosted lifestream. There are a few themes out there already, helping you display it in a variety of ways. Creating themes isn't the easiest, especially if you don't know code, but hopefully as the software catches on more themes and better documentation will become available. Right now I'm displaying my major feeds in one of the default templates. I still need to figure out how to style various blog posts and delicious links to my liking, but it's on it's way. I don't think I'll abandon WordPress for my main blog (Sweetcron has a built in blogging system) but I will import the feeds. Check out the piece of shep lifestream.

lifestream, software, websites

Too Many Sites, Too Little Time

I've not been updating this site much lately, besides the two posts over the weekend. Things have just been really busy for me. Busy at work and busy at home. With last week being the RNC, Political Jackass was taking most of my time from me. This also means that The Costanza Experiment has suffered in updates (the experiment is ongoing, I assure you) and The Technology Classroom. I'm trying to get some help on Political Jackass to take some of the pressure off me to update. I've got one person signed up and I'm hoping for more. If you are interested, drop me a line.

Hopefully this week I'll be able to work on The Technology Classroom some more. I really like the idea of this site and am looking forward to what comes of it. I plan on updating the site with several new articles and even install some forum software on the site.

I know I shouldn't stretch myself so thin with all the website, but I'm very passionate about technology and with this being an election year, I think it's important to update Political Jackass as much as possible.

general, websites

New Domain Names

Vanity domain names seem to be the current fad. Apparently .coms are no longer cool in the web world. I've been debating a move from mikeschepker.com for a long time. Since the title of the blog is piece of shep it would make sense to move it to pieceofshep.com. Now I'm thinking of something entirely different. To go with the trend, maybe I should change the title of my blog and go with the domain I just purchased, shepis.me. The title of the new blog would obviously be shep is me. I don't know yet. I also purchased imshep.com. Right now all these domains point to mikeschepker.com. Any thoughts? Should I move to pieceofshep.com or shepis.me or keep the site at mikeschepker.com?

domain-names, websites

Last.fm Makeover

In case you haven't noticed, Last.fm has received a makeover. The new site looks fantastic compared to the old one. It probably has to be one of the best site redesigns by a popular website that I've ever seen. The best part about the redesign is the user profile page. If you look at mine, you can see how clean the new design looks. I love how it has thumbnails of the artists (or album covers) next to the recently played songs. The images for the artists in the user's library are excellent as well.

[caption id="attachment_731" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Last.fm displaying artists I\'ve played (click to enlarge)"]Last.fm displaying artists I\'ve played (click to enlarge)[/caption]

Notice how nice and clean they look. They charts are now ajax-ified and are quite nice. The color scheme of the site is much easier on the eyes. They managed to create a new site that totally changes the look but still feels familiar. It goes to show you can have a complete redesign without losing your identity. Overall, it is a really successful redesign. Maybe MySpace and Facebook should take note. Much props to the design team at Last.fm.

music, websites

TBS: Very Annoying

There are a few shows I watch on TBS. I missed an episode of one of them. Luckily, at TBS.com you can watch episodes for free. Or not. I go there to catch up on a missed episode and guess what. We're sorry, you must have Microsoft Windows to watch this video. Wtf? Seriously. Aren't we at a point where specific operating systems shouldn't be a requirement to watch a video on the internet? It's not like my MacBook is a new invention and Macs haven't been around for a while. They have. And their market share is growing. Rapidly. Support other operating systems so you don't alienate users. I know I'll never be going back to their website again. That's a shame, because I could have generated them revenue by visiting to watch videos. Now if I miss episodes, I'll have to find some other way to watch them.

Now if I could just get Adobe to allow for the most recent flash to be on the Wii so I can watch Hulu, I'd be happy. Not the Wii's fault. Not Hulu's fault. It's all on Adobe.

rants, tv, websites

Goodbye msnbot

User-agent: msnbot Disallow: /

Yes, I've blocked you msnbot. I'm tired of finding you in my stats coming from random searches that don't even show my site in the search results, such as "keeping," "album," "comments," or any of the other thousand or so one word searches you come to my site for. I don't show up in your search results (at least not high enough for me to care) nor do I really want to show up in the top 100 pages in search results for the word "keeping." So, you are no longer welcome here. I don't want to see you on my property anymore. I don't really care that this may drop me out of live.com's search altogether. It's a crappy search engine and anyone who uses it is an idiot and shouldn't come to my site anyway. So, in conclusion, stop visiting my site msnbot. You're not welcome here.

websites

My Life has Disappeared

I use a service called Lifestream.fm to aggregate my online life. It gathers my tweets from twitter, pictures from Flickr, my Diggs, recently played songs, my Del.icio.us feed, and blog posts from this blog. It's a great service. It's very easy to use, includes more social services than Socialthing, and looks great. There's just one problem. The site has disappeared. When you go to Lifestream.fm, there's just a GoDaddy parked page. Very odd. Anyone know what's happened to it?
EDIT: It seems to be back up now. Weird.

features, websites

Searchme

For the past several months I've noticed I've had a regular visitor to my site that would hit random pages multiple times throughout the day. Yes, it was a bot. The bot was indexing my site. The IP resolved to a company called Searchme. I went to their site but it was just a plain page that gave a little information about the company. I naturally wondered what they had in store and if I should be worried. There was no search field on their site so I wondered if they were just harvesting my content and republishing it somewhere or if they were actually going to launch a search engine. That question was answered this morning thanks to h0bbel.

What Searchme has done is take results of your search term and present the webpage results in an Apple-like coverflow format. Not only that, but it highlights where on the page your search term comes up. It's pretty nifty. I don't know if I'll continue to use it, it all depends on how relevant the results are to what I'm looking for, though I'd imagine being able to see the site before I go to it might help me determine the relevance before even clicking it. Check out my results here.

websites

What Will Happen to Flickr?

Ever since Microsoft began its attempt to takeover Yahoo I started thinking about the future of Flickr. That's really the only Yahoo service I use (and I pay for). Microsoft does not have a good history with web services. Yeah, at the beginning of the web everyone had a Hotmail account, but they quickly fell behind in the times with that. They couldn't keep up with the features and storage of other competitors, like Yahoo and Google. It seems that every attempt they've made has failed. Does anyone actually use Microsoft's Spaces? Can anyone actually find anything via their Live Search? Personally, I think Microsoft's Live search has to be the worst search engine out there.

I know thinking that Microsoft going in and breaking a winning formula (winning in the user's views, not necessarily in the business sense) probably isn't going to happen, but it is Microsoft. I don't have much faith in them. No, they won't rewrite Flickr to use ASP.NET or something crazy like that, but I do worry about what they can do to mess up Flickr. I also think that a lot of the passionate Flickr users, especially the ones that were there pre-Yahoo, will definitely not like the change of hands and move to a new photo service. I really wish Google would spend some time developing their Picasa and Picasa Web services, up the storage allotment, and make it a real competitor in the online photo storage market. It has great potential, and with Microsoft trying to take over Yahoo, now would be the perfect time for them to woo users. Of course, I may just be paranoid about what will happen to Flickr, but it's a service I pay for and a place where I store my photos, so I do wonder about the future. Do I really want to feed my money and data to Microsoft? Not likely. If Microsoft buys Yahoo, will you stay with Flickr? Will you move somewhere else? If so, where?

flickr, google, microsoft, websites, yahoo