Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and web

What would I do without you guys, really?

Bageena — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:31:30 -0800

My friends and I are starting an artist collective in Phoenix, Arizona and we desperately need help thinking of a name. Can you help? Short explanation; I myself am an artist with, you know, the paper and the pencil and occasionally, some ink or acrylic or something. I have three friends that are photographers, another friend who's a painter, two friends who are musicians, and a few others who might also join. What we've decided we'd like to do is start a community blog where we all write individually what we're doing to try and break into the mainstream or just get our work seen. The main site will show all of our posts, broken down by individual members, along with a sort of swarm cloud that shows how often each artist works with the others.
Anyways, we've got a ton of great ideas already and we're excited to get a move on it, but we're stuck at what seems to be the first effing step! We need a name for our little community. We don't have a lot in common except that we all work normal 9-5 jobs outside of our passions for our individual work, we are all artists of one sort or another, and we all live in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm trying to think of names that are reminiscent of the desert or of Phoenix. I sort of like the idea of something ancient and awesome sounding. Really though, we're open to anything. I'd list the links to our websites so you could actually see our styles and who we 'are', so to speak, but I think that'd be a little too self-linky for me. So yeah - if your really that curious, you can look in my bio and I think there's a link there to my personal work.
So yes, I leave it once again to the most clever people I know to help me hop a hurdle in my life. Thanks Mefites!

Is there a Wordpress widget that will automatically sort the links in my sidebar by date?

jeremias — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:46:27 -0800

Is there a Wordpress widget that will automatically sort the links in my sidebar by date? If not, how would I code one? Basically, I'm looking to duplicate the Waxy Links sidebar in a Wordpress theme. I'm currently building a theme in Wordpress 2.8, and the Links widget does about 80% of what I want. (Yes, I have asked this on the Wordpress forum, but the question was competing with the other 8 million questions and have recieved no feedback.)

However, what I'd really like is the following workflow:

I add a new link with the links widget (or alternative) and publish.

The link shows up in the sidebar under a header with the date. Any additional links posted that day would also show up here.

For bonus points, it would be nice if there were some auto-cutoff, so after 25 posted links or so, the oldest links would disappear as the new ones were added

I'm reasonably code savvy, so no fear of php, css, etc. I'm just hoping there's a canned solution that's easy to implement.

Print This Site

ageispolis — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:58:52 -0800

Can I force a "print view" on sites that do not have such a feature? I want to print some blog posts and was wondering if there is a script or something for my browser that would allow me to get a "Print View" of the post, even if that feature is not built into the blog itself. News sites allow you to do this through an actual URL that takes you to a printable version of the article (like this), but most other websites do not provide this feature. It would be much easier to just hit a button on my browser than copy/paste into a word processor. Any suggestions?

Help me get the Wordpress audio player plugin to work? Please?

hifiparasol — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:19:35 -0800

I'm having trouble implementing the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website. Please help a baffled man. I've installed the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong -- it's not showing up on the page.

I'm writing the page using the "html" setting on the wordpress control panel, and I'm following the instructions listed under "usage" in the 1pixelout link above. The file I'm trying to play is definitely in the folder I'm directing the player to (I'm hosted, it's not just a WP blog); I can link to it conventionally (as in, without the player).

The only change I made was to change the audio files directory path from "/audio" to "/uploads." I've even tried checking the box (in the audio player controls on my WP control panel) that replaces all links to mp3 files with a player instance. Didn't work.

Can someone help me out here? I have a feeling there's some extremely minor thing I'm doing wrong, so don't think I'm too foolish. Thanks.

What's the right software to maintain and display a calendar of relatively infrequent future events?

gleuschk — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:49:49 -0800

What's the right software to maintain and display a calendar of relatively infrequent future events, as well as blog-like news postings? I maintain a website for specialists in my field of mathematics, and one section consists of announcements for upcoming and recent conferences. Another is for news announcements: a basic blog-style list of entries. Both are currently run by our 7-year-old Movable Type installation, in combination with a good bit of chewing gum and baling twine. I'd like to redesign the whole schmear, including the back end. Is wordpress (plus more gum and twine) the right solution? Is there some other system that makes more sense? Link.

Here's the current setup, which hasn't changed since launch in 2002: Movable Type runs two blogs: "News" and "Conferences". The former is your basic blog, except that we only show one entry on the front page, and generally have only an entry a month or so.

Each entry in "Conferences" is added when we learn about it, and post-dated to the first day of the conference. This system works ok, since most conferences are just a day or two, but there are some that are a week, month, or even a semester long, and this causes problems. When first posted, they're in an "upcoming" category that displays in one place, then changed by hand to a "past" category that shows up in another place when they're past. Drawback: I often forget to change the category, which makes me look stupid. We average about 3 conferences a month, though they tend to cluster in March, June, and October. Lead time is up to a year.

I'd like to redesign and bring it up to web-2.whateverwe'reuptonow snuff, both in front and behind. Wordpress seems to be the default these days. I could do the same acrobatics to get the conferences into wordpress, I guess, but it sure seems like there should be a better way. Do you know of one?

I run this out of my pocket and in my free time, so free and drop-in solutions are best, but if you've got good ideas, lay 'em on me.

How can I get Google Analytics to provide a by-visitor report like Sitemeter does?

TochterAusElysium — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:17:30 -0800

How can I get Google Analytics to act like Sitemeter? Specifically, Sitemeter does a nice roundup of information under "Recent Visitors - By Details." It shows a chronological list of recent visitors to my blog, with domain name, visit time and page views. Clicking on the number in front of each listing takes you to a page about that visit which shows their ISP, referring URL, keywords they searched for, outclick page and more.

I really like this view of the data and I can't figure out how to get Google Analytics (which I must use for my portfolio site) to show me the same data. I can see the "All Traffic Sources" info which does show the number of visits from specific sources, and I see the "Keywords" area which shows what people searched for, but I don't see how to get the same list Sitemeter shows: who was there, when, from where, looking for what, and for how long.

Google Analytics is so crazy complex that I'm sure there must be a way, though, and I'm sure there are several people here on AskMeFi who can tell me how. And for that, I thank you in advance.

Where to find a custom Wordpress theme designer?

Elminster24 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:09:33 -0800

Help me find a professional and inexpensive Wordpress theme designer for my small law firm client's redesigned website. I can't seem to find one anywhere! I have a small law firm client that is looking to redesign their website. I'd like to have it created on the Wordpress platform to make it easy for them to update and add content on their own.

I've been checking on WarriorForum for freelance designers but so far no luck. Where can I go to find a good freelance Wordpress theme designer who has a strong understanding of what is needed to make a nice law firm site (and not some crappy theme I could buy for $5 off any old theme site)?

Of course there's a catch...I need this done cheap ($100-200 max) as I am eating the costs of this (long story, don't ask).

I would be providing the designer with a full strategic creative brief, architecture and direction throughout the project but want someone who can do a competent job on the coding and making it optimized for search.

Where can I send out requests? Also, if you fit the needs here, post a link to your portfolio and I'll be sure to take a look.

I'm not opposed to outsourcing this to India via Rentacoder or eLance or something like that, but I've never used them and have no idea how to tell if a company is reputable or not or whether they'll be able to do a good job and have a good understanding of english.

Ideally I'd like to find someone locally in Chicago but they'll probably charge a lot more.

Looking for .NET based server software for video blogging

Riemann — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:33:30 -0800

Looking for .NET based server software for video blogging I am looking for recommendations for server software (.NET, version 2.0 or newer + SQL server) that can be used as the base for a video blog site. I have resources (developers etc...) and budget to do a fair bit of customization so a package that has a strong blogging core but no inherent video blogging features is fine.

Commercial or enterprise software is fine. Doesn't need to be free though Telligent Community Server Enterprise is at the extreme high end of the budget I have at $25,000.

Packages I am already looking at include:

Oxite
Blog Engine
Telligent Community Server

Software based on license that requires the open-sourcing of my code is not an option. Also, LAMP, Ruby on Rails or other non-.NET platforms are absolutely out of the question.

Any suggestions or experiences with the above software would be much appreciated.

Wordpress themes for legal websites

Elminster24 — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:05:40 -0800

Where can I find a free Wordpress theme to use on a lawyer's website? My father is a lawyer and I'm helping him redo his website. There isn't a ton of content on it, mostly just a couple pages of text and then some news items and some images.

Based on that, I figured it would be good for me to set him up with a Wordpress-based site to help make it easy for him to add/edit new pages and news items without me needing to update actual HTML files for him every time.

That said, can anybody recommend good places to look for FREE or INEXPENSIVE (that being ~$50) Wordpress themes that do not have animation/Flash components that would be good for a lawyer's website? I'm thinking simple and elegant.

He's an environmental/OSHA lawyer as well if that helps narrow things down.

I am able to modify the code to incorporate his images and make basic changes but I don't want to be redoing the entire layout. I need an easy way to add a Contact Us form on the homepage as well if anybody knows of any good Wordpress widgets for that.

Thanks for your help guys--I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have as well.

1) web-site idea, 2) ??? 3) The Awesome

indiebass — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52:23 -0800

Can the hive help me get a web site started? I have very specific ideas, but I'm a dinosaur when it comes to everything about the insides of websites. Back in the day when I set up a website, it was the late 90's and everything had to be coded by hand and ftp'ed to someplace. I realise we are in the 21st century and there are much easier ways to go about things.

I already have a domain purchased. What I want to make is a site that is very similar to the old Pajiba setup: graphic banner across the top, assorted goodies in one or two side columns (probably just links in one, at this point) and a main area in between. The idea behind the site is that I'll be reviewing things, but they won't necessarily be new things. That is, whatever my netflix might be, an album I listened to... things like that. So in the middle I'd like to have a photo, a title and one sentence, where you can click on the title and it takes you to a separate page that is cataloged as http:www.mydomain.com/review_title.html (or whatever) and looks like the front page, except the middle bit is just the extended article.

Further complicating things, is that I wanted to set up the website with free hosting, if possible, and if I actually start generating traffic outside my immediate circle of friends then I'd think about buying some space/bandwidth.

So how do I even start? I know you can use a unique domain name with, like, blogger - which is free - but do they let you structure the workings of it like I want to? (the title-link deal to pages behind the page) I feel confident that I would be able to make the page look like I want it to, it's more the workings and the hostings that I am unsure about.

I've put off asking this question out of embarrassment for a couple weeks, because of the n00b-ishness, and I've really tried to navigate it on my own, but put in "free web hosting" into the google and it's like the internet punches you in the face. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

How do I change the name and URL of my website without losing visitors and Google search placement?

rintako — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 07:39:15 -0800

How do I change the name and URL of my website without losing visitors and Google search placement? I want to change the name and URL of my website. It currently receives 3000 uniques a day. About 90% of my traffic is from outside sources such as Google, or others that have linked to my content. How do I change the name and URL so that my visitors can continue to come find my site, and so I don't lose my top 1-3 positions on the Google search pages for my terms?

What is an editorial plan?

divabat — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:35:38 -0800

What's an editorial plan? Do topic-focused weblogs (like the Gawker Media ones) have one? How do they work out what sort of content goes on their blog? I revisited my past question on magazines because I've got the beginnings of a web magazine but need some help on focusing my content. The comments there mention editorial plans, but I can't seem to find concrete examples of such.

I have a stronger idea of whom my webzine is targeted towards, and some ideas of what content I want in there. However, my idea can easily devolve into tangents, and I'm looking for ways to better structure the content of my webzine. (What categories? What can go in and what can't? Who contributes? What are the guiding principles?)

I tend to work best by example, so any examples or suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated. I'm also working on the more business-y side of things, but I feel I need to get this aspect down pat before I work on the rest. Or should I just start up the site, do a few entries, and run with it?

Why aren't my images showing up on my (drupal powered) RSS feed?

serial_consign — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:38:23 -0800

Why aren't images showing up in my blog RSS feed? (Drupal CMS question) I'm using the Drupal image module for a blog project. No images are showing up in my RSS feed. I know this module creates a separate node for each image and "attaches" it to the related post.. is there a drupal (6.x compatible) image module that will allow users to upload images AND have them included in the post/node proper (and in turn, my RSS feed)?

How to get my posts from Wordpress.com to Blogger?

reenum — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:07:18 -0800

I want to migrate entries from Wordpress.com to Blogger. Is there any easy way to do this? I made the Blogger to Wordpress.com switch a few years ago, but love the new Blogger interface. I find that being able to label posts is a lot less restrictive than Wordpress's categories.

Migrating to Wordpress was a flash. But, going the other way seems to be a problem.

I've tried to Google this, and most of the info out there seems to say that at the moment, this is impossible to do. I've found a couple of tools like blog2blog, but none have worked this far.

Oh technically inclined MeFites, please help.

P.S. I'm not technically inclined, so I really don't have a way to write a program or anything to do this.

What do you wish you had known when you started direct advertising on your blog?

kmel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:00:17 -0800

What do you wish you had known when you started direct advertising on your blog/website? I'm using OpenX to serve my Google and affiliate ads, and I think I'm ready to start direct advertising. What do I need to know? I have a pretty good idea what to charge, but I'm wondering about other policies regarding ad hosting, changes/corrections to ads, whether to allow animated .gifs, contract renewal, cancellation policies. What else do I need to consider?

Also, is it a good idea to have your rate sheet available to download, or should I require people to email me first?

Two Blogs, One Site

Bageena — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:59:06 -0800

My wife and I want to start a blog. Amazing new idea, right?! Anyways, we're bored and we have too much free time, so we want a place to write down or show things we think are funny. I used to keep a blog on typepad, so I'm familiar with using a service like that, but how possible would it be to setup a website where there are two blogs on it, running side by side? I hope you can kind of imagine what I'm saying; a header at the top, some gradient and grungy background or something, but split down the middle with two areas to write on - one for her and one for me. Would this take some kind of insane code that would be impossible for a complete novice like myself to write? Please help. Or hey, if you're a web designer and want to help me, I'll draw you some artwork. I'm half decent. I mostly just want to know if it's possible and any links to websites demonstrating it, anyways. Thanks!

Turn of dates in iWeb 08

wavejumper — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:54:44 -0800

How do I get rid of the date showing up in iWeb 08 blogs? In iWeb 06 you could easily turn them off, I remember, allowing you to use the "blog" template for all sorts of other kinds of non-dated subdirectory webpages. What I'm talking about just to clarify is that under the title of each blog entry on your main blog page in the '08 version will show up the date or time in some form. You can choose different versions of it (i.e. March 4th, 2008 as opposed to 3/4/08) but I can't seem to turn it off! Any hints or hacks?

I'm having issues with my AddThis button on my blog.

bamassippi — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:13:49 -0800

I'm having issues with my AddThis button on my blog. So I'm trying to add the AddThis button to the front page of my blog so that readers can email/save/send individual blog posts, though it continues to save my homepage and the AddThis.com website is very unclear as to how to adjust the code.

I know that other readers may have experienced the same issues... how did you solve it? How should I adjust my code? (I'm using WordPress by the way.)

CMS for a resource website

divabat — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:59:19 -0800

What would be the best CMS solution for a blog that I'm trying to expand as a resource/community site? I'm expanding one of my blogs (link in profile) into being more of a resource and community site (since most of my visitors show up Googling for information on certain things).

I'm looking for a CMS that would allow for the following:

* A blog with content contributed by the visitors. Anyone can make a post, which is then held in moderation. The moderators look through it, edit for spelling/clarity, delete spam entries, and post. So similar to the Communities on LJ, except moderators can't edit posts on LJ.

* A directory, with the following subsections:
- Programs
- Organizations
- Grants/Funding
- Volunteering
- People
(this list can grow)
Each sub-section would have different form fields - for example, the Grants would have a close date, while the People listings would have a phone number. There should be an ability to add tags that can be searched across the listings (so any searches for "travel", for example, brings up all the organizations and people and grants related to travel).
The directory should also have a rating system, where people can leave comments.

* A reviews section, for books/websites/other media. A lot of my entries right now are reviews, so I would like my review to be the core information in the entry, followed by people's ratings. I realize I could do a blog entry like this, but I would like a way to integrate title/ISBN/author/purchase link/etc easily.

* Forums

* An events listing, which links back to related blog entries (I was thinking that any entry tagged as "event" would allow for me to enter certain dates and then they'll show up on the events listing by date).

* A file uploads/downloads section.

* Great search capabilities across the site.

* Allowances for monetization (ad space, ecommerce, etc)

There are further ideas, but these are the basics for now.

I've looked at a few CMSes and Joomla seems to be the best bet since it's easier to understand (Drupal's terminology is a bit confusing). I do NOT want to use Wordpress as I am frustrated with their "support". I love Textpattern, but I don't think they allow for this level of flexibility. I'm fine with addons, but would rather not have to code anything myself.

Is this doable? Which CMS would allow me to painlessly do this? Would it be better off for me to hire a web developer to do this? I'm just a sole young person so I don't have the $5000 that's usually the price for these things, and I would rather hire a young person anyway (but I don't know where to find good help.)

Also, because my boyfriend is being a pain about this and insisting that me asking for "CMSes" is somehow limiting my options - what other integrated solutions can I look at? :P

Tonight I'm gonna blog like it's 1993

Kadin2048 — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:26:02 -0800

What blog/CMS software would you recommend that doesn't rely on MySQL or another database backend? So, I finally broke down and bought a vanity domain for myself, and I want to set up a small site there, just to provide occasional updates to my friends and family, and maybe host some other content that I want to share. It's nothing big, I don't expect much/any traffic, and I'm not looking to make money off of it.

I decided to go with Nearly Free Speech for hosting, because they offer a nice metered plan that only charges me for the bandwidth that I actually use, which is cool. But they (quite reasonably) charge extra for SQL processes. So I'd like to find some sort of simple CMS that doesn't require a database to run. PHP4 and CGI (all major languages incl. Perl, Python, Ruby) are both OK.

The only things that have turned up so far are FlatPress, which is a sort of WordPress clone that uses flat files, and Simple PHP Blog. Are there other packages that I'm missing? Has anyone ever used either one? How bad are they to set up? FlatPress seems a little light on documentation...at least compared to regular WordPress, which has a lot of 'Howto'-style documentation because everyone and their cousin seems to use it.

This question last August was about alternatives to popular blog packages that don't require complex coding, but I'm less concerned with that than I am in just avoiding SQL completely.

I don't care about anything very fancy, like the ability to use plugins or customize the style very much. I just want a way of throwing content up onto the site, without having to maintain, organize, and edit a lot of static HTML files. I don't really even care about comments, although they're a plus.

Maybe what I'm looking for really isn't "blog" software. Really, I just want some sort of management system, that avoids the static-HTML morass that I dread from my early-90s experiments with personal web sites. (I used to manage things by keeping a local mirror of the site, adding my content by hand, and then using an FTP client to sync the server's copy. It worked OK, but I want to be able to update from the road, without being tied to the machine with the local mirror.)

Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions, experiences, or anecdotes that folks would like to give.

Help me enable advertising on my website/blog

acoutu — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:08:38 -0800

What's the best way to implement non-Adsense advertising on my website? I run a marginally successful website and blog. I'm doing well with Adsense. Recently, some companies have approached me about advertising on my website. I haven't gone anywhere with this, because I don't know what to do.

I've looked in the archives in AskMe. I've checked out Text Link Ads and some other services, but I have no idea what to pick. I've cruised Digital Point Forums and other sites, but those sites are full of hucksters. I've Googled, but I mostly pull up services and affiliates and the like.

I do have the capacity to build something custom (husband is software engineer), but I'd be okay if there's something already out there. I'm willing to consider text links and banner ads -- and, yes, I'd be willing to scale back a bit on the Adsense ads. If I'm not using a service that explains pricing, I could probably use some information on pricing.

Thanks!

Temporary free server space?

croutonsupafreak — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:57:50 -0800

How can I get free web hosting for a few days or a week, just so I can post a message explaining why my web site is gone until I can work out a new permanent server situation? My brother has been allowing me to mooch of the server he uses for his business. After a dispute with the company hosting his web presence, he's been booted from the server and my page has gone off line. My brother promises I can mooch off him again once he gets new server space set up, but it could be a few days or a week. In the meantime my URL won't load.

I have a few hundred weekly readers, a few dozen daily readers, and I'd like to pull together a temporary web site just explaining what's going on until I can re-establish the full journal on its new server. Is there any way to do this for free or ultra-cheap?

We used to host my web site from home, but after getting hacked rather maliciously I'd rather leave this stuff to professionals.

There are a lot of google hits for this kind of stuff, but I don't know how to evaluate whether any are reputable.

What's the best method for adding a staff blog to my college paper's existing web site?

dustinAFN — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:18:40 -0800

I am the editor of my college student newspaper. What is the best way to implement a staff blog on our paper's web site, which uses a proprietary publishing package called College Publisher? I'd like to implement a staff blog aimed at my writers, photographers and other newspaper staff to communicate various staff information and highlight links to things which they might find interesting or inspiring. In other words, the blog is only for my staff members, and it would not be accessible via our site's front page.

Furthermore, I would like to integrate it seamlessly with my paper's existing College Publisher web site and domain (i.e., www.theaccent.org/staffblog). In addition to being the publishing platform, College Publisher also hosts our site. And although they allow the creation of custom HTML pages (via their web interface), there is no FTP access and they do not (as far as I know) allow any sort of third-party programs/scripts to be installed (i.e., wordpress or movable type).

Therefore, I'm wondering if there's a good way to use a service like blogger.com or wordpress.com to seamlessly integrate a new third-party blog within our existing site, short of just loading a blogger.com page with a frame, for example. Or is there a better strategy I'm overlooking?

Any suggestions?

PHP class for externally posting to blogs?

frenetic — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:38:48 -0800

Anyone know of a decent PHP class or function library out there for externally posting to various weblog packages (Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type) via XML-RPC? I want to add "post to your blog" functionality to a website but I haven't had much success tracking something like this down. Pointers to anything helpful would be appreciated.

How to get individual (permalinks) to work in Wordpress?

TrueVox — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 12:02:40 -0800

WordPress Filter: I've set up my wordpress site in a hosted enviroment (SSH access, FTP OK, etc). I had it running as truevox.nfshost.com/blog while the domain was resolving, then recently I switched it over to just truevox.net. Now, the main blog comes up, but no indiviual pages. As usual, there is I've checked my .httaccess and as near as I can tell it's ok (I can include it if it would help anyone, it's pretty basic). For some reason, no matter what I set permisions to, Wordpress can't write to the .httaccess (even with 777, let alone 666, or better, 664!). I don't know if that would matter, because I think I just put what it tells me to into the .httaccess manualy.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what could be wrong. Is there anyone who can tell me?

Thanks! If need be, I may be able to give out temp. FTP access. Oh, and the host is Nearlyfreespeech.net, if'n it matters.