Archive for the Blogging Category

Getting the Cling of Word Press

By on June 29, 2012

I’m thrilled that I switched to Word Press (installed on the server I use) to run my web page. It’s truly remarkable software. I would recommend it, and nothing else, to those starting a new blog. It is such a different online world from when I started “blogging” in 1998! (It wasn’t actually “blogging” back then, because the term hadn’t yet been invented, assuming Wikipedia correctly reviews the matter.)

Soon after switching to Word Press, I got deluged with spam comments. So I turned on moderation. (Others I know installed Disqus to handle comments, but I dislike adding anything that requires users to set up yet another account.)

So now I get “only” a handful of spam comments each day. Still, it’s a little odd, given that I moderate all comments and don’t find it remarkably difficult to weed out the spam.

I must wonder who it is presenting these comments for my moderation. Consider the following:

You actually make it seem really easy along with your presentation however I in finding this matter to be really one thing that I feel I would by no means understand. It kind of feels too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m having a look ahead to your subsequent publish, I will attempt to get the cling of it!

I’m afraid I don’t quite get the cling of what these spammers hope to accomplish. But perhaps I need merely look ahead to the spammers’ subsequent comment. Will it be submitted to this very post?

This entry is filed under Blogging. | 2 Comments

New Blog Domain with WordPress Setup

By on March 4, 2012

I’m changing my blog again.

I’ve used Google’s Blogger for my blogging since 2008. In 2010, Blogger stopped posting content to independently hosted domains, which is why I switched my blog to blog.ariarmstrong.com (hosted by Google).

But I haven’t been terribly happy with that. Because Blogger generates sloppy code, it doesn’t play well with Facebook (specifically, FB doesn’t properly pull in the image or lead text), and that is increasingly a problem. Also, I just don’t like the “blog-dot” URL.

I’ve used WordPress over at The Objective Standard, and I’ve really liked it. And I very much like hosting my own material on a server that I pay independently.

For anybody getting going with a blog, I now strongly recommend using WordPress installed on your server. In my view, this is far better than going with Blogger or with WordPress’s own hosting service. And, if anything, using installed WP is the easiest option if your hosting service already provides an install option.

For now, I’m just going to leave all my older stuff up where it now resides. I might slowly integrate it into the new WP blog. For now, my archives exist in four places:

I thought about again splitting the blog into two locations (AriArmstrong.com and FreeColorado.com) but ultimately I decided that it’s much easier to have everything in one place, where I can control everything from a single interface.

I started my web page in late 1998, before the term “blog” had even been coined (if Wiki is to be believed on the matter). Back then, I hand-coded everything under the guidance of HTML for Dummies. I’ve struggled to figure out what to do with my blog, but now I think I finally have it where I want it. And with WordPress, I’m confident I’m using the best modern software to handle the job.

Did somebody call me an old dog?

October 5, 2012 Update: I have started the process of migrating all my archival material to this web page. I am dating that material according to its original publication date. Thus, everything dated prior to this post was migrated on or after October 4, 2012.

This entry is filed under Blogging.

Why Can’t Blogger and Facebook Play Nicely?

By on October 3, 2011

Blogger usually works great. Facebook usually works great. So why can’t Blogger and Facebook play together nicely?The problem is that, if inside Facebook I link to a post of mine managed by Blogger, Facebook does not pick up the lead paragraph of the post (which obviously is what I want). Instead, Facebook picks up my bio line, which is completely unrelated to the contents of the post.

Others have told me that the problem arises from Blogger’s non-standard formatting. Regardless, I imagine that the whiz kids either at Blogger or at Facebook easily could fix the problem, if they’d attempt to do so.

Alternately, perhaps there’s something simple that I could do to fix the problem — though I’ve tried a variety of strategies, all without success. If somebody has a suggestion, please leave it in the comments.

Otherwise, I may have to undergo the serious hassle of switching over to Word Press.

[January 24, 2013 update: Obviously this post now appears on a WordPress site; I moved it here from the old site.]

This entry is filed under Blogging. | 1 Comment

Making the Google Jump

By on February 8, 2010

[January 28, 2013, Update: Obviously the contents of this post are out of date. I include it here for archival purposes; it originally appeared at http://blog.ariarmstrong.com.]

My internet publishing is undergoing a major change. As should be obvious, my blog is now at http://blog.ariarmstrong.com/. (I am also posting quite a lot to Twitter @ariarmstrong, where I mention interesting links and offer brief commentary.)

Recently Google announced that its Blogger service will no longer support FTP publishing, meaning the service will no longer send material to a domain hosted elsewhere. Instead, to use Blogger, one must host the blog through Google. A Blogger user can use a “blogspot.com” blog, register a domain with Google and use it for a Google-hosted blog, or register a domain or subdomain elsewhere and set the DNS to Google (such that Google hosts the content). I’ve decided to go with the last option.

I also strongly considered abandoning Google altogether. Not only am I miffed that Google is shutting down its FTP service, but I’m still annoyed that Google shut down the blog of economist George Reisman. Nevertheless, as one of my friends pointed out, Blogger is a free service, so it’s a little hard to complain too stringently about it. If you really hate Blogger, don’t use it. That said, I do think it would be absolute foolishness to give Google control of one’s domain (if one cares about keeping content online). Because I own and control my subdomain, I can reclaim it and republish my content elsewhere if need be.

Blogger just works well. It’s extremely easy to use. I helped set up a friend with Word Press and quickly learned that that service, while okay, is a lot harder to operate. I seriously considered going back to hand coding my page (based on templates created in Dream Weaver). But then a single blog post would require updating at least four pages: the index, the individual post, the archives, and the feed. Major hassle. So I’ll stick with Blogger.

Here’s how I’m handling the change. I’m leaving all my existing content online at AriArmstrong.com and FreeColorado.com. I’m starting a new blog (this one) at http://blog.ariarmstrong.com/. Rather than run two different blogs, I will henceforth publish only this blog. (I’ll publish a few residual posts at FreeColorado.com and cross-post here.)

Thankfully, there’s an easy way to create a feed based on labels. My FreeColorado.com blog feeds into People’s Press Collective; now I will use the “PPC” label for all relevant content. The PPC-related political feed is this:
feed://blog.ariarmstrong.com/feeds/posts/default/-/PPC

(I may also use a generic “politics” label for national stuff.)

The general feed for all my content is this:
feed://blog.ariarmstrong.com/feeds/posts/default

Others might be confused as to how to direct a subdomain to Google. Here’s how I accomplished that. I checked in with my registrar and learned that I can create a subdomain there only if the DNS points to that registrar. Because I host my (other) content with Web Hosting Buzz (a great service, by the way), I had to submit a ticket to that company’s technical support team, asking to create the subdomain and direct its DNS settings to Google. Then I created a new blog at Google and switched its URL to the subdomain. It took me a while to figure out, but the process itself is very easy. (Things get more complicated if you want to move old content over to Google, which is one reason I didn’t go that route.)

I’ll slowly convert all my existing content at my two main pages to Dream Weaver files, such that I can easily edit the template and have it apply to all the files. (My wife tells me that all my old framed files are deprecated.) I’ll run the political feed from this blog (as well as my Twitter feed) on FreeColorado.com. I’ll turn AriArmstrong.com into my home page, with links to all the archival material as well as to my active projects. (I may run the blog feed there as well.)

This might be a good time to briefly summarize my history of web publishing. Back in late 1998 (before the term “blog” had been coined), I started publishing the “Colorado Freedom Report” at co-freedom.com. I quickly figured out that a hyphenated URL is a major pain, so within a few years I switched to FreeColorado.com. In late 2007, I started up AriArmstrong.com with the idea of making that my main blog, but then I realized that I didn’t want to let FreeColorado.com lapse, so I converted that to a blog to begin 2008. But now I’m finding that running two blogs is hard, given my activity on Twitter and my other projects.

So now this integrated blog in 2010 marks a new stage in my internet publishing. However, some things never change. What matters most is content, and, as always, my goal is to make the tech serve the ideas.

This entry is filed under Announcements, Blogging. | 1 Comment