WPMu Development for Education

New version of Forum Attachments for BuddyPress

Boone Gorges — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:25:55 +0000

The plugin Forum Attachments for BuddyPress has been the bane of my existence for some time. I have focused my awesomeness on taming the beast for BP 1.2. Still beta-ish – please test and report bugs, if you find any.

Drupal 7 promises big UX improvements

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:01:40 +0000

The deeper I dig into Drupal as a content management system the more impressed I am. Especially for creating community sites it has powerful core-based features for things like relationship behaviors, forums, and individual user blogs. The coming release of Drupal 7 promises a much improved user interface, addressing the many legitimate user complaints. If you have been disappointed by Drupal in the past I encourage you to take another look.

Drupal 7 User Experience Project » Blog Archive » Why is this on Wordpress?

We know Drupal is amazing and we love it (well, more to the point, we love the people all around Drupal), but unfortunately, for the time being, it is too broken for us to be able to do the work we need to do on this project at the pace that we need to do it.

Making Drupal 7 Simple to Use for Everyone | Acquia

Over the past year, the Drupal community has focused on improving the Drupal user experience, making Drupal more friendly to a less technical user-base and rolling those improvements into Drupal 7.

Open Source Way in creating community

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:40:37 +0000

RedHat has started an on-line book on creating open source communities. Much of the focus so far seems directed towards open source software projects, but there is plenty of relevance to a broader notion of open communities. I like the description of communities of practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” This is exactly the type of energy I’m hoping we can harness in our workplace.

1.4. Essential terminology or ‘Read this even if you think you know what it means’

When we talk about community in the The Open Source Way, we mean the community of contributors who are a superset to all other communities…This is the group of people who form intentionally and spontaneously around something important to them. It includes the people who use or benefit from the project, those who participate and share the project to wider audiences, and the contributors who are essential to growth and survival.

The Open Source Way | php|architect

The scope of the handbook is not just limited to open source software development: the hope is to expand the understanding of the open source model in other domains. The interaction between people in a project is often a key variable that influences success or failure, and the public collaboration model may be valuable in different industries.

On Twitter 2010-03-17 :

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

But Feb is 9% shorter than Jan!-@davewiner Twitter Traffic Down -9.63% For February http://bit.ly/bCWcon #
Using this method in a community site planning workshop later today-wish me luck! Better + faster ux solutions http://bit.ly/97QkbU #

On Twitter 2010-03-17 :

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

But Feb is 9% shorter than Jan!-@davewiner Twitter Traffic Down -9.63% For February http://bit.ly/bCWcon #
Using this method in a community site planning workshop later today-wish me luck! Better + faster ux solutions http://bit.ly/97QkbU #

On Twitter 2010-03-17 :

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

But Feb is 9% shorter than Jan!-@davewiner Twitter Traffic Down -9.63% For February http://bit.ly/bCWcon #
Using this method in a community site planning workshop later today-wish me luck! Better + faster ux solutions http://bit.ly/97QkbU #

On Twitter 2010-03-17 :

Randy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

But Feb is 9% shorter than Jan!-@davewiner Twitter Traffic Down -9.63% For February http://bit.ly/bCWcon #
Using this method in a community site planning workshop later today-wish me luck! Better + faster ux solutions http://bit.ly/97QkbU #

On Twitter 2010-03-16 :

Randy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Experimenting with hootsuite.com as a way to tame my social networking maintenance. #

Harnessing Social Media for campus communication

Randy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:05:02 +0000

I am working on a project to create a networked information and resource tool for web developers on our campus. This is a real grassroots, distributed effort that aims to create a community owned and operated system. Think self-organizing, organic, leaderless, spontaneous, emergent. There is a general plan, an intended direction and we’re working to develop a shared vision. I’ve made a couple of presentations to various groups, done a couple of small brainstorming sessions, and have a big presentation/workshop planned with the web developers roundtable next Tuesday, who make up our core group. Here is a basic, rough-draft overview:

Who: Initially targeted at the needs campus people interested/involved with web information/application projects that utilize Drupal. Eventual expansion beyond this group is an expectation.

Concept: The Campus Developers Network is a web-based information tool that allows individuals to store and access elements of their own work, find similar examples from other members, and engage in discussion and communication with the member community.

Goals:

Encourage small, frequent contributions through multiple channels

Easy to search/find my stuff and other people’s stuff

Allow individuals to self-organize informal groups/ private conversations, but default behavior is to share community-wide

Through this process I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, research, and looking at other social/professional networks evolving at other campuses. I’ve been looking at these as falling into two basic models — a top-down, help site type model, such as help.yahoo.com and a bottom-up, community type model such as developer.yahoo.com . A more member-focused example in higher-ed can be seen in the faculty/grad student network at commons.gc.cuny.edu/ . At MIT the new Hermes site is a help desk resource, making it feel more top-down, but it also allows end-user contributions which adds a community aspect. Which makes me realize that this simple black-white, top down/bottom up view might be too simple.

A recent post on the PR-squared blog discussed three models — distributed, centralized and coordinated. It is a useful way to think about the issue, but I don’t find it entirely satisfying. The Coordinated still feels a little too centralized to me, but the Distributed is too chaotic. So I propose a fourth model, Structured:

This model strives to harness the spontaneous energy of the distributed model, and provide a level of coordination while still retaining a de-centralized structure. The elements of the model (in case you can’t read it) are de-centralized, connected, organic and emergent. And that is the model we’re using as we move our professional network plans forward.

Social Media in Corporations: Pros & Cons of Organizational Models

Clearly the coordinated model in Jeremiah’s slide is the one to espouse. It’s beauty is that it is simple, reasonable and effective. Guidelines are set (simple). Monitoring and reporting mechanisms are deployed (reasonable). Everyone gets to play, but knows the rules-of-the-road (which will evolve as new lessons are learned), and also knows that there are consequences for derailing the company’s brand online (effective).

InYourClass.com – CUNY student network -

We wanted to do something different, something that isn’t the norm for online communities. Our mission is simple, create social value by simplifying the way information is processed.

Nercomp 2010 – Presentation Focusing on Hermes Knowledge Base (Hermes)

IT support providers and end users both want similar things: fast and easy access to up-to-date IT information and solutions. Why not contribute to and share the same IT knowledge resource? At MIT, we did just that. In 2008 a project was launched to broaden an existing Help Desk internal knowledge base to an Institute-wide IT help system

Open Source Way in creating community

Easy path to installing a local copy of Drupal

Randy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:58:41 +0000

When learning and developing web sites with a content management system like Drupal or WordPress it is generally recommended that you install a test version on your personal computer. This releases you from the complexities of connecting to a remote web server and allows you to focus on learning and/or developing. The only trick is the process generally requires finding, installing and configuring the web server, using My SQL to set up a database and a database user, download the CMS software, then install and configure it — with plenty of opportunities to go wrong. Now the stack installer from Acquia gives you basically a quick, scripted install to get you up and running quickly with Drupal.

Downloads | Acquia

Acquia Drupal is a free, packaged Drupal distribution that provides a quick on-ramp to begin building Drupal websites

Installing Drupal 7 with the Acquia Stack Installer | Acquia

Step by step instructions on how to install Drupal 7 with the Acquia Stack Installer.

Learning Drupal

Randy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:30:45 +0000

For a good introduction to the community-building power of Drupal this book from Packt Publishing is terrific.

Drupal 6 Social Networking

Build a social or community web site, with friends lists, groups, custom user profiles, and much more

WordPress University

Reverend — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:51:19 +0000

The NorthEast Regional Computing Program (NERCOMP) is hosting an all day conference on April 6th that is entirely dedicated to WordPress in Higher Ed brilliantly titled “WordPress University.” The conference features a range of speakers dealing with everything from WordPress for libraries, college web sites, academic networks, and teaching and learning spaces. It’s a pretty comprehensive program and covers a lot of ground, and I’m definitely interested in Jay Collier’s work with Bates College, their main site is run on WordPress, and given UMW is currently thinking about a new CMS for their website, Jerry Slezak and I are going to make the pitch for WPMu being the hub for the umw.edu site. And I have some interesting ideas for the architecture, syndication, and deep integration with UMW Blogs, so Jay’s session is of particular interest to me right now.

What’s more, Matt Gold and Boone Gorges will be featuring their awesome work with the CUNY Academic Commons and the cutting edge work they are doing with Buddypress. Their approach to the social network for faculty and graduate students at CUNY should be of pressing interest to just about every college and university out there right now—they are making a social network that respects people’s pre-existing spaces online while simultaneously providing an essential network for the folks of CUNY.

And while unlike the WordCampEd events this one isn’t free, I hope they figure out a way to stream and/or capture these sessions because I for one am dying to see them.

And on a broader note, it is fascinating to see a professional organization like NERCOMP devote an entire conference to WordPress, I think it is more than warranted and a sign of things to come. More campuses exploring and hacking on open source applications like WordPress to start re-imagining the social implications of web-based communities for publishing, research, teaching, and learning. It points to one possible future of how colleges and universities can start re-imagining their web presence as more than a brochure, but an open, dynamic space that exposes and shares the thinking happening at these institutions, and the next logical step is for us to start making more meaningful connections between individuals at the distributed learning institutions. Something as simple as a new platform, provides something as beautifully powerful and complex as a rich network of teaching, learning, and scholarship. We need to explore these possibilities together. NERCOMP’s “WordPress University” seems like an excellent step in that direction.

Image credit: Bionic Teaching’s “WordPress Revolution”

WordPress roundtable

Randy — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:11:13 +0000

Bad photo — great crowd of WordPress-in-higher-ed-users at a lunchtime roundtable as the annual Nercomp conference. Don’t forget to join us for the upcoming day-long WordPress University workshop on April 8. Details at nercomp.org/events/event_single.aspx?id=5938

On Twitter 2010-03-11 :

Randy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

User feedback at Yale to inform library catalog redesign http://bit.ly/bBh8Ws #nc 2010 #
Web log data is most useful when you approach with specific questions – i.e. are users accessing a specific web page feature? #nc 2010 #
Yale Library uses User Testing and Market Research Software Morae http://bit.ly/8Xtznm #nc 2010 #
NJVid – New Jersey Digital Video Repository Partnership for educational institutions – http://bit.ly/cjYyrr #nc 2010 #
NJVid – consortium model to host owned and license commercial video – reduce costs, improve service http://bit.ly/aGsNoX #nc 2010 #
NJEDge.Net – runs njvid.net – Working Groups include video resource and video services – http://bit.ly/dg2EVK – #nc 2010 #
NJVid – users can segment videos into virtual clips that can be annotated and shared http://bit.ly/aIvtxl #nc 2010 #
NJVid-Digital Video Repository-success due to strong initial involvement of users in working groups – http://bit.ly/9gPplE #nc 2010 #
NJVid.net utilizes open source incl. Fedora Repository http://bit.ly/aTSfjm – video stored raw and delivered to user in Flash video #nc 2010 #
VUE http://bit.ly/b5w3h5 works with NJVID.net meta data (via Fedora) allowing visual mapping of video details and relationships #nc 2010 #
Is Shibbolize a verb?It is for educational institutions in NJ as they build common user identity verification http://bit.ly/c7iIBf nc-2010 #
I find on-line writing, aka 'blogs' still useful-RT @egarofoli: @wedaman blogs strike me as being very old tech. #nc 2010 #

On Twitter 2010-03-10 :

Randy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Planning day at #nc 2010-Collab. Framework to share IT knowledge looks good-institute-wide help system at MIT at 8:30 #
Everyone be sure to stop by the WordPress roundtable at lunch today — I'm the host! #nc 2010 #
#nc 2010 web page should list sessions organized by speaker as well as the regular time-based schedule #
#nc 2010 Share IT knowledge framework session just getting underway #
#nc 2010 For IT shared knowledgebase which behavior is preferred – browsing or searching? MIT favors searching. #
Barriers to collab./self-imposed (not good enough)/unease with public info/ if I write about it I might have to support it /time #nc 2010 #
In workplace knowledge base less-than-perfect contributions need to be encouraged-they are good enough #nc 2010 #
Collab. knowledgebase presentation here: http://bit.ly/cMil4A #nc 2010 #
Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) methodology informed MIT's shared knowledgebase system – http://bit.ly/9J9BpX – #nc 2010 #
New usability book from guru Steve Krug — Rocket Surgery Made Easy – http://www.sensible.com/rocketsurgery – #nc 2010 #
U of Virginia working on Sakai function to pull in content from external web 2.0 like WordPress #yam #nc-2010 #
Vue is also open source vue.tufts.edu – and a flexible way to pull in things like tweets and represent data graphically #nc 2010 #
Vue.tufts.edu also integrates semantic web analysis w/OpenCalais #nc 2010 #
All you WordPress folks at #nc 2010 – come join me at the lunch roundtable #
Fellow #nc 2010 twitter team – can we all meet for a photo? How about at the afternoon refreshment break — 4pm at the back of the hall? #
At Email in the cloud #nc 2010 – Boston C. contrasted with UMass Boston #
Group votes staff-fac email mission critical – student email mostly nice but not essential #nc 2010 #
UMass Boston migrated student email to MS Outlook Live #nc 2010 over xmas break #
#nc 2010 Twitterers – we will meet for a photo at the reception tonight at 6 – look for @wedaman – you can't miss him – pass the word #
Last session of the day – all good but I'm ready for a nap! #nc 2010 #

On Twitter 2010-03-09 :

Randy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Gotta get through a budget meeting this morning-boo-then its off to Providence for #NC2010 Yah! #
RT @DrupalEdu: http://bit.ly/aYXUBb has been launched! #yam #
Starting the travel east, towards sunny Providence and #nc 2010 #
Enjoying a fish dinner at the bar of Providence's historic Biltmore hotel. #
Restaurants should be required to feature local musicians in the background music-at least 1 in 4? Let's support local art-locamusicavore #
The blackberry browser sucks – but websites should still deliver mobile browser-specific versions-low on graphics high on readability. #

New BuddyPress plugin: BP Group Management

Boone Gorges — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:22:37 +0000

BuddyPress has great group administrator functions – the ability to invite members to groups, to promote them to different statuses, the ability to ban certain member, and so on. But unless the sitewide administrator is also the administrator of the group, the site admin does not have the same abilities. On some sites – like here on the Academic Commons, where it’s frequently desirable to add members manually to groups – this limitation for sitewide admins can be somewhat restricting.

This plugin, BP Group Management, creates a new administration panel to the Dashboard, accessible only by the sitewide administrator, which does the following:

provides a sortable list of all groups (public, private, and hidden) with their created-on dates and ID numbers
allows admins to delete groups easily
allows admins to view lists of current members, and to promote/demote/ban them
allows admins to add any member of the site directly to the group, skipping the need for invitations

Download the plugin here.

The version of the plugin in the repository only works for versions of BuddyPress 1.2 and greater. For a mostly functional version of the plugin that works with BP 1.1.3 (no guarantees on any other versions, but it should work down to BP 1.1 at least), click here.

Customize the Suspended blog page

andrea — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:57:07 +0000

A very little-know and hidden feature in WordPress MU is the ability to add a customize page that is displayed when a blog is suspended or archived. Only Site Admins can archive or suspend a blog, and you can do this in the Site Admin -> Blogs menu. Hover over the blog in question and see the extra links.

Deactivate, archive and spam are the ones you will use. Right now, there is no difference (code wise) in what happens. Each action here will result in the same page being displayed. It does, however, set a different flag in the database for each one. (I plan on filing a trac ticket for further enhancement.)

By default, when a blog is suspended or inactive, a very plain page is generated with a simple message.

This blog has been archived or suspended.

Let’s say you want to pretty this up. Maybe show it with the same look as the main blog on the site, or insert a contact form. Or even, as the first example I saw, slap Google ads on it in cases where you’re suspending spam blogs.

The way to do this is surprisingly simple. All you have to do is place a file with your customizations in the wp-content folder.

blog-deleted.php will show if a user has elected to delete their blog. Remember, if a user deletes their blog, it is only marked as deleted in the backend. If a site admin deletes a blog, it is really really gone. This gives the user a chance at recovery.
blog-suspended.php will show if a blog has been deactivated in any way (archived, deactivated, or spam).

I spent probably too much time trying to figure out how to pull in exisiting blog headers for page customization here. Just do a simple HTML page with whatever you want. I wanted mine to look like my main blog theme, so I just copied the HTML from the source of the front page, deleting items I didn’t want.

So, to recap: whip up a page called blog-suspended.php, toss in whatever you like and dump it in wp-content. Bob’s yer uncle. Here’s a live example of a deleted blog and also a deactivated one.

Many, many thanks to Andy Bailey from Comment Luv who did the hard work of actually figuring this out, and reminding me to whip up the tutorial.

Random Posts

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March 24, 2008 — Making a member list blog directory (26)
July 5, 2008 — How to hook into the footer (17)
May 17, 2009 — Rock stars (1)
June 3, 2009 — MU’ing WP (3)

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

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On Twitter 2010-03-07 :

Randy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

I won an Orchid from the CT Orchid Society booth at the Van Wilgrens Spring garden show. Nice too. Will post photos later. #
Here is the Odontoglossum that I won today — ain't it pretty! http://flic.kr/p/7HRRCL #

On Twitter 2010-03-05 :

Randy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Using storytelling to unify team web design approach: Telling Your Website’s Story with Sketchboarding http://bit.ly/9HCE6R /cc @feedly #
Worth a try: NetBeans IDE 6.9 Milestone 1 Available for Download http://bit.ly/duVGj0 /cc @feedly #
The Sun open source development tool NetBeans has plugin support for Drupal | drupal.org http://bit.ly/aNeVAx #

2.9.2 released

Ron — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:04:51 +0000

Yesterday, Donncha released WordPress MU version 2.9.2. 2.9.2 contains fixes for the major outstanding bugs in MU. Unless a security issue surfaces in either WordPress or WordPress MU, this is expected to be the last version of MU.

Thanks Donncha

January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
November 26, 2009 — Facebook Dashboard Widget Update (0)
September 29, 2009 — Option Arrays (5)
September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (5)
September 26, 2009 — Community Service (3)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: new release, wordpress mu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

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New BuddyPress plugin: BP Group Management

Boone Gorges — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:44:17 +0000

Another day, another plugin for BuddyPress. In BP < 1.2, it was impossible for site admins to manage group membership in groups where they weren't also the local admin. This is good in a lot of situations, but in some applications of BP it can be a pain - the system administrator needs more power in order to correct problem, wreak havoc, and so on. In BP 1.2+ the situation is better - admins can manage groups more - but it's still not all that easy to see everything in one place. This plugin rectifies the situation by allowing site admins to manage the members of groups across their BP installation from a single screen.

On Twitter 2010-03-04 :

Randy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Using HTTrack to archive a static version of a WordPress site: http://bit.ly/cgV3w2 #

A follow-up on use of WordPress Surveys plugin

Randy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:07:28 +0000

I wrote early last month on an employee workplace feedback tool we launched using our WordPress MU installation and the Survey plug-in. Overall the plugin worked well. Here is a screen shot of one of our forms:

The main issue was a problem in the table that holds the responses. The field that stores the user answer is limited to 255 characters, but no limit is enforced on the form. And when users are invited to submit free form comments they quickly exceed the 255 limit. The result is that a number of the responses were cut off in the database, and some of the user response was lost. Not the nicest thing to realize after the fact, but luckily the fix is easy.

To make the alteration change open the plugin’s surveys.php file and find the create table section. Right around line 101 you’ll see the code that creates the surveys_result_answer table. Alter the ‘user_answer’ column to use the blob data type — you’ll see it is set to a text(255) type, which is too short for many users.

CREATE TABLE {$wpdb->prefix}surveys_result_answer ((
`ID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`result_ID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
`answer_ID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
`question_ID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
`user_answer` blob NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`ID`),
KEY `question_ID` (`question_ID`),
KEY `answer_ID` (`answer_ID`),
KEY `result_ID` (`result_ID`)
) ;

This small change fixes that problem. The only other note is we used this tool on a members-only site. I’d want to give it a thorough security check before using this on a public site. I did note the user-text was escaped, so it looks like some protections are in place. But these days you can never be too security conscious.

Surveys < Plugins < WordPress < Tools < Bin-Co

Surveys WordPress plugin lets you add surveys to your blog. You can let the visitors take surveys and see the result from the admin side. The user who take the survey can enter their details at the end of the survey – or leave it as an anonymous result.

Desiging web app is different from designing websites

Randy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:49:14 +0000

There is an excellent article on the Smashing Magazine site titled Designing User Interfaces for Business Web Applications. The article give a good, quick. overview on how user interface design works, with excellent follow-up references (like a new book by Steve Krug, Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems that I need to pick up). If anything I think the article fails by limiting its focus to business web applications. It divides the web world between websites, where the primary purpose is to inform, and applications which are “dynamic, interactive systems” that perform critical business tasks.

With the rapid rise of social networking, is the web really this simple? If a web site incorporates aspects of social networks, that is a web application, right? Even a content management system, such as an informational Drupal-powered website, uses an application backend that users need to interact with. While in my experience the article’s observation that many business applications leave user interface design tasks to unprepared developers rings true, I think this is a wider issue. Design groups that traditionally handled informational-only websites are more and more being called on to implement features that get closer and closer to full-blown web applications. And need to start incorporating user interface design considerations into their design process to complement their more traditional visual and content design skills.

Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications – Smashing Magazine

Confusing Web applications and websites is easy, as is confusing user interface design and website design. But they are different both in essence and in so many other ways, which we’ll explore in this article

Personas are a powerful tool for helping you to better understand the needs of your users. In this comic, drawn exclusively for Think Vitamin, you’ll learn more about Personas and how they’ll revolutionize the way you design and build web sites.

Tools for Sketching User Experiences | UX Booth

12 standard screen patterns

5

On Twitter 2010-03-03 :

Randy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Social networking helps the creative process for knowledge workers-not a time waster after all http://bit.ly/cCk8cS #
Getting serious with Drupal – working through Drupal 6 Social Networking from Packt – going pretty well so far – powerful stuff! #

On Twitter 2010-03-02 :

Randy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:07:00 +0000

I just donated to Plugin Developer Bennett McElwee to say thanks for the Evermore plugin: http://bit.ly/bDuziP #wppd #
RT @boonebgorges: Warming up my Paypal finger for Donate to WordPress Plugin Dev Day http://bit.ly/9zWMdB #
Really looking forward to next week's #nc2010 conference. I'm hosting a lunch roundtable on WordPress – stop by! http://bit.ly/avQxUf #
I'm listening to "Rodeo, Selections From The Ballet by Copland, Aaron (http://bit.ly/aTyz9e) – Makes me want to eat beef. #
Get in on the pre-conference discussion at LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/cWfhO2 – even if you can't attend next weeks' #nc2010 #

Making smooth presentations

Randy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:46:51 +0000

An article on A List Apart on public speaking tips got me thinking on some of my hard-learned presentation lessons:

Don’t try to do live software/website/application demos — If you are interfacing with an audience you can’t also interface with software — at least I can’t. If you focus on the audience you mess up stuff in the application and vice-versa. It is never as interesting for the audience as it seemed in your mind pre-talk. Keep it simple: take screen shots and have a scripted walk-through of what you want to show.
Don’t start in Powerpoint when creating the presentation. Outline your main points first — what you want to communicate with the talk. I use a simple text editor — no formatting, no bullted, just thoughts. Then order/organize and think through how you build your points. Then think how best to visualize those points. Finally open Powerpoint, Keynote or, even better, the open-source OpenOffice Impress.
Avoid bullet pointed text-based lists. If your presentation is based on bullet points it will be no worse than average — which means boring. You are using a visual communication tool — don’t make people read. Use strong visuals. I like to search Flickr for creative commons licensed photos. A couple of slides with text/bullets is OK where appropriate. But make those the exception, not the rule.
Expect the technology to fail. Get to the room early, 30 minutes ahead if in unfamiliar territory. Have your presentation on a usb thumb drive in ppt, pptx, pdf versions AND on your own laptop (remember the vga connectors if it is a MAC) AND posted on a web site in PDF form AND a printed version — you get the idea.
Use a wireless clicker. This lets you get out from behind the laptop/podium, avoiding the distraction of the laptop keyboard (remember #1: minimize need to interface with software), and out in front, facing your audience. It is a small thing that has a big impact.

Most important remember you are there to communicate with the audience. Look at them, talk TO them (i.e. don’t read off your slides), kibbutz with them, entertain them, engage them. If you do this your message will come across. Don’t, and they’ll be asleep. Remember how it feels when you’re snoozing yourself at yet another bullet-filled, text heavy, typical presentation.

A List Apart: Articles: Training the Butterflies: Interview with Scott Berkun

I strongly recommend working on paper or a whiteboard, any non-digital media where you can work freely. Make a list of the points you want to make, or key ideas/feelings/questions you want your audience to leave with, and develop those first.

Speaker Confessions

Scott Berkun is the best selling author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School | Brain Rules |

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge?

Backup WordPress sites to Amazon S3

Randy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:43:56 +0000

A new plugin allows automatic backup of a WordPress site to an Amazon S3 store. This functionality seems most useful to me for a multi-user installation, where the amount of data AND the risk of loss is much greater. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be support for MU, but with the coming merger of the single and MU WordPress versions that exclusion should be short-lived.

Backing Up a Wordpress Blog to the Cloud Using Amazon S3 – ReadWriteCloud

The plugin makes it pretty simple to back up your blog. All you need to do is provide an Amazon S3 account key.

Automatic Wordpress Backup

Captures your ENTIRE site (Wordpress database, themes, plugins, uploaded files and settings files), which means minimal downtime if you need to restore.

WordPress MU compatible?

We haven’t tested it yet but the answer is probably “No” because of how MU stores files. Since Mu will be getting merged into regular Wordpress in the near future, we probably won’t be spending time on adding compatibility for mu. Sorry.

5

Feedly Mobile

Randy — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:34:22 +0000

My latest favorite tool for reading newsfeeds is feedly. And since FeedDemon dropped their mobile version I haven’t found anything I like in the mobile space — but now feedly is making a mobile move. The biggest mobile piece I miss is the save-for-later feature. I often use items from the newsfeeds as fodder for a blog post (kind of like this post!) The save-for-later functionality let me read on the mobile, save it, and then follow-up with it later on the desktop in writing a blog post. The feedly demo looks great, but with mentions of iPhone, Palm Pre and Android, I don’t see any BlackBerry mention. I might have to switch — and Verizon is now supporting Palm Pre….

Feedly iPhone – Prototype 7 – Quick Tour « Building Feedly

We have been working on feedly mobile for a few months now. After a few iterations, we have reached a design which we felt had an interesting mix of fun, simplicity and speed in it. It is now time to open the door and let the community in.

f | Cover

…letting us in on a few more details of what to expect, such as a “Save for Later” function, releases for both Android and Palm Pre, and transparent syncing with Feedly Desktop.

5

On Twitter 2010-02-28 :

Randy — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Snow is pretty-did a photo shoot down at Clinton Beach this morning-nice contrasts of textures-will post later #
Got the 2nd month of my 12 months at Clinton Beach 2010 – a set on Flickr http://bit.ly/bQxxmJ #
Morning snow lightly resting on the big bamboo http://bit.ly/a5d2eO #
Interesting look at Agile from a designers angle: Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment http://bit.ly/c1VgBd #

Snow is pretty-did a photo sho…

Randy — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:18:46 +0000

Snow is pretty-did a photo shoot down at Clinton Beach this morning-nice contrasts of textures-will post later

On Twitter 2010-02-27 :

Randy — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:07:00 +0000

How Millennial Are You? Results http://bit.ly/aS1Is5 – I scored 32- 3 times higher than the avg. for my age-not bad for an old guy! #
Getting Real was a must read — sure this will be too RT @patrlynch: REWORK, new book http://bit.ly/debOpL #
Enough of this messy, wintry, stuff — where is the sweet daughter of spring? http://bit.ly/cY9g0T #
homemade, homeground veggie curry-fenugreek seeds? Who knew? Using last of last seasons veggies-need spring soon! #
Had great planning session w/WordPress U. workshop speakers. April 8 is gonna be a great session. nercomp.org/events . #

Had great planning session w/W…

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:34:19 +0000

Had great planning session w/WordPress U. workshop speakers. April 8 is gonna be a great session. nercomp.org/events .

homemade, homeground veggie cu…

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:30:31 +0000

homemade, homeground veggie curry-fenugreek seeds? Who knew? Using last of last seasons veggies-need spring soon!

Enough of this messy, wintry, …

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:43:03 +0000

Enough of this messy, wintry, stuff — where is the sweet daughter of spring? http://bit.ly/cY9g0T

Getting Real was a must read -…

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:37:52 +0000

Getting Real was a must read — sure this will be too RT @patrlynch: REWORK, new book http://bit.ly/debOpL

A write-up on our E-Portfolios…

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:54:15 +0000

A write-up on our E-Portfolios talk — thanks Robin! http://bit.ly/9b6t19 /cc @feedly

The 10 Keys to a Successful We…

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:04:23 +0000

The 10 Keys to a Successful Web App-list incl. speed, less is more, programmable, personal | Javalobby http://bit.ly/9Q9bVV

Can Learning Drupal Get You a …

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:57:00 +0000

Can Learning Drupal Get You a Job? http://bit.ly/cIbW02 #yam

Twitter tools coming and going

Randy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:28:05 +0000

I have been using a basic Twitter plug-in to auto-tweet new blog posts to my twitter account. It was always a little fussy, and recently it seemed to stop working — maybe something related to the recent WordPress update? No matter, it seemed a good time to go looking to see what else was available. And so far Twitter Tools is looking very promising. It can be set to pull in Tweets that contain a specific hashtag — allowing selective tweet-posting of new entries. And, assuming this message makes it over to Twitter, you can set your posts to go go to Twitter as well. The big question is how it will work with posts originating from other external tools, like ScribeFire, or scheduled posts — both of which I do a lot. We’ll see…

WordPress › Twitter Tools « WordPress Plugins

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Working with TwitterTools for …

Randy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:12:04 +0000

Working with TwitterTools for WordPress — nice feature set to run 2-way updates #rr http://bit.ly/ck5CDh

Your WordPress blog as a FaceBook App

Randy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:50:56 +0000

I just set up my new blog, garden.rodeworks.com, as the growingthoughts app on Facebook. Making it an app allows some pretty cool features. For instance users can install the app on their Facebook profile pages, comment on posts directly there, and invite others to add the app to their pages. I don’t actually expect many people to do this with my little bit of content, but for a more commercial site what a great way to expand the draw of your content. Write once and distribute to multiple outlets!

Add it to your profile at http://apps.facebook.com/growingthoughts/

WPBook: WordPress Facebook Plugin | Open Parenthesis

WordPress rocks. Here’s a plugin for bringing your WordPress blog posts into Facebook, and enabling users to comment and share those posts.

How To Integrate Facebook With WordPress – Smashing Magazine

John Eckman developed the WordPress plug-in Wordbook in early 2009. This plug-in allows WordPress blog owners to integrate their blog in Facebook. This gives a blog two lives: one as an application on Facebook (such as, for example, my private FreigeistBlog) and one at the original URL (freigeist.devmag.net).

Yammer the gateway drug

Randy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:20:20 +0000

Yammer made a big splash in our workplace late last fall. But lately the number of user posts has dropped off pretty steeply. It is not clear quite why this is. For me I find my Twitter feed more useful. Workplace colleagues of interest are already there, plus I can follow external people as well. And in its free version Yammer doesn’t really offer much over what Twitter has to offer. According to a recent ReadWrite post Yammer seems to be doing well, at least in the VC marketplace.

I am part of a small group working on a community resource site for our distributed web development community. The models for the site include the Yahoo Developer network and Drupal developer. With something along the lines of BuddyPress activity streams thrown in. There is still a lot of work to do, but we’ll have something up and running by mid-spring. Look for more info coming soon.

Yammer: The Story Behind Their SaaS Traction – ReadWriteStart

Yammer is a replacement for email. That obviously does not mean people stop using email, they just stop using it for some messages.

5

Domain Mapping on Google Sites and UMW Blogs

Reverend — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:01:21 +0000

Yesterday morning I went to visit a faculty member—Andy Smith in Historic Preservation—who has been using Google sites for a project she is working on called Fred Buildings. It is actually one of the nicer sites I’ve seen built with Google Sites, and her question for me was about mapping a domain onto Google sites. Any long time reader of the bava knows I am obsessed with domain mapping so being given the opportunity to experiment with domain mapping on Google Sites was a total treat.

Let me start by saying that I didn’t know you could map a domain on a Google Site until yesterday, and they’ve had this service available for over a year and a half. While I tend to avoid Google Sites cause I find the service way too limited, realizing they have domain mapping available made me wish we were a Google School once again so I could experiment more with this across campus, particularly after realizing yesterday that you can map your root domain to one service, and various subdomains to other services without even having a webhosting account. This was a revelation to me, and something I figured out while experimenting with mapping a root domain to a Google Site and a subdomain to a blog on UMW Blogs (which could just as well be wordpress.com, blogger, typepad, etc.). If you think about it, this provides a way of having a namespace independent of a specific service while at the same time building a unique identity online that will allow you to move from service to service if necessary, yet keep a consistent presence. Something I wish Leigh Blackall had, because when I search his stuff I am spread across three different blogs, and while I like the fact that he moves services regularly (he is a badass in that regard—I could never leave the bava blog), I just wonder how he can stand all his awesome ideas remaining web service vagrants on the open web without a steady URL to call home.

OK, so, that said Leigh (or Big Papa), here’s the tutorial to get you started

First things first, mapping your main domain to Google Sites. One of the limitations of Google Sites is if you map your main domain it has to be www.yourdomain.com, it can’t be just yourdomain.com. So, in order to map you main domain you have to do the following (this assumes you already have a domain name purchased through a service like Godaddy and have created a Google site). First, you need to point your main domain to to Google Sites. You do this in the Total DNS control panel on the service where you registered the domain, in this example I use Godaddy because I have an extra domain there laying around collecting dust.

Click for larger image

As illustrated above, edit the CNAME field (or alias) for the www alias and point that to the host name ghs.google.com and save the changes.

Then I jump over to my Google sites account and go to Manage Site and then look for the Wed Address setting pictured below:

And add the main domain, in this case www.edupunk.net (keep in mind you need to add the www. prefix). After that click add web address, and your domain should map like mine did: http://www.edupunk.net

Now that in and of itself may not be so amazing, because I’ve been talking about domain mapping for a while with WPMu, and the idea that Google would have it makes sense. What is cool, and is a new discovery for me, is that while the m ain domain points to a Google site, I can have a subdomain like blog.edupunk.net point to another service like wordpress.com, blogger, or the ever great UMW Blogs without having a hosting account. It’s actually quite simple, all I did was add an A Record for the UMW Blogs IP address (174.37.153.244) in the Total DNS control panel at Godaddy:

And then, I created a CNAME (Alias) titled blog and pointed that to the umwblogs.org domain:

Click image for larger version

After that, I can go to a new blog I created on UMW Blogs (which has Domain mapping enabled for any blog on the system) such as edupunk.umwblogs.org and go to Tools—>Domain Mapping and simply add blog.edupunk.net.

And voila, main site on Google Sites here, blog on UMW Blogs here, and potentially several other subdomains mapped to several other services.

Now, to get back to my original example, Andy Smith now has her Fred Buildings project on Google sites here and a blog for announcements and the like here. More proof that no faculty member at UMW can meet with me without getting a UMW Blog, it is impossible, and that’s why I’m the rightest Reverend ever.

Forum cheat sheet

andrea — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:49:58 +0000

As the merge comes closer, the forums are winding down. Most of the time, I’m only answering threads that I can do immediately without digging up additional info. That means I also repeat myself quite a bit. In the interest of making sure all those answers are in one place, here’s my cheat sheet. It’s in a text file on my desktop and I leave it open whenever I jump in the forums.

More tips;
- a link to see all the latest posts to the forums
- the right search page
- in Firefox, use the Linky extension to open all unread threads on that page. Just select down the screen, right-click, open all in new tab. Wait until they load, then grab one & start reading/answering.

godaddy WPMU info

Stopping splogs
Cookies for comments yes it says comment but it does check for splogs too.
Hash cash Same deal. Don’t let the mention of comments fool you.
Stoping spam bogs in WPMU

Timthumb and WPMU

wordpress video plugin (probably not needed with 2.9.x)

Importing a single WordPress blog into WordPress MU the direct to database method, because nobody imports like the bava, NOBODY. Use this method for large sites where the usual export /Import is too big or when you want to also pull the users and options.

Handy MU plugins in the repo:
the wpmu tag results page There’s been some interesting ones show up lately. Subscribe to the feed tag to keep up.
Sitewide Tags
Unfiltered MU
Donncha’s Domain Mapping
Blog topics to categorize the blogs
New blog defaults

How to domain map blogs A writeup I did for WP webhost. This is cpanel-specific.

How to make a page template

Donncha’s blog the original (and only) dev of WPMU

Top pages from this here blog:
Installing in a subfolder mostly for previous version, as the 2.9.x branch fixes this
Make a listing of the blogs on your site
Free ebook on how to install WPMU

500 errors and 1and1 webhost If you’re having issues installing MU there.

installing on windows

Switch to blog and showing the main blog’s nav bar on other blogs. This code goes in the other theme’s header.php file.
just before the nav bar code put

right after the navbar code put

then it will always show the pages from Blog #1.
Yes it works for other code, but fair warning – switch to blog can get expensive. Think hard before using it on sites with lots of blogs.

When your permalinks don’t work, either mod_rewrite isn’t enabled, or isn’t explicitly enabled on your vhost in apache. You’ll need this line:
AllowOverride FileInfo Options

And the last one: Check your error logs!

Random Posts

August 19, 2007 — Adding new themes (1)
July 23, 2008 — Banning specific email registrations with wildcards (5)
November 19, 2008 — Twitaway: The Art & Science of CSS — FREE Download (4)
April 27, 2009 — Pardon the dust (6)
May 11, 2009 — BuddyPress Themes & skinning (14)

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

WordPress: Beyond Blogging!!

Joss Winn — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:40:28 +0000

These are slides to accompany an eight minute ‘Lightning Talk’ for the dev8D conference in London, 24-27th February 2010. Each slide is a link to a blog post I have written on ways to use WordPress and WordPress Multi User, that are not about blogging.

Brief notes are available from slide 12 onwards.

WordPress: Beyond Blogging!!

View more presentations from Joss Winn.

A Growing Blog presence

Randy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:06:47 +0000

I have started a new blog dedicated to gardening and food-related topics: Growing Thoughts . I’m not quite sure yet what I’ll use it for, but between my home gardening, explorations of local agriculture, and general interest in food policy, I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Check it out and let me know what you think — all ideas and suggestions welcome.

garden.rodeworks.com/

5

Cool WordPress breadcrumb trick

Randy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:27:40 +0000

A useful breadcrumb navigation function for WordPress sites that rely on page hierarchies for their content organization.

wordpress-breadcrumbs-without-a-plugin

I have seen a different ways of a breadcrumbs implementation on WordPress sites, but not one of them I does not like, because all of them does not display a full chain of links. So I have created my version of WordPress breadcrumbs without a plugin.

5

Layoffs are bad for business

Randy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:48:43 +0000

Turns out layoff are bad for workers, the company and the economy. Consider this: SouthWest Airlines has never had an involuntary layoff in their 40 year history — and they are now the largest domestic US airline. Layoffs kill worker morale, erode loyalty, often lead to the best workers leaving with a loss of corporate memory. These negative effects linger long after the layoff event, even into periods of economic recovery. Conventional wisdom that they save the company money are also normally misplaced once all expenses, from payouts to departing workers to losses in productivity, are calculated. All this is not to say that companies don’t need to restructure periodically — it is just that management should be looking far enough ahead and watching current trends closely enough to know when conditions change. Reactive business strategy– like layoffs or across the board percentage cuts – is always too little, too late. Bad times reveals weakness.

Closing minds: How layoffs can be bad for business :: Spring 2008 :: Washington State Magazine

Workers whose jobs are in danger are less healthy and happy. That’s been common knowledge for years, says Probst. Countless studies have looked at job insecurity and its negative effects on employee health and morale. But businesses focused on the bottom line don’t really care about those results, she says.

The Case Against Layoffs: They Often Backfire – Newsweek.com

Our overreliance on downsizing is killing workers, the economy—and even the bottom line…Today the one airline that didn’t cut staff, Southwest, still has never
had an involuntary layoff in its almost 40-year history. It’s now the
largest domestic U.S. airline and has a market capitalization bigger
than all its domestic competitors combined.

Evolving role for e-portfolios

Randy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:34:57 +0000

What is the continuing role of electronic portfolios? An article in Campus Technology reviews the issues related to ownership of the content, and what happens when the student graduates. A student-centered approach seems most logical to me — effective use comes when the student feels ownership of the content and sees a practical use for its existence (like getting a job). If they find the portfolio tool useful after graduation it seems short-sighted for the school to terminate the relationship. If the institution accepts that the student ‘owns’ the content, and that the school simply provides a service — just like facebook or any other such service — then this relationship, and any risks, should be clear. You have an acceptable use policy, and if users abuse the policy their accounts get shut off. But this also means accepting some institutionally uncomfortable, or at least potentially uncomfortable, situations. Welcome to the world of user-centric content!

LaaN vs. Social Constructivism ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes

According to Chatti, “learning as a Network (LaaN) differs from social constructivism in four different ways:
- In LaaN, knowledge is a personal network rather than an object that can be constructed.

Here, There, & Everywhere — Campus Technology

the current debate on the future of ePortfolios: How are they evolving with the growth of Web 2.0? What are the right tools to create them? And do they have a role beyond the academic setting as part of a person’s lifelong learning endeavors?

Speaking on e-portfolio use

Randy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:32:47 +0000

I co-presented on e-portfolio use at our school yesterday, joined by Sarah Stevens-Morling from the drama school and Monica Reed from the music school. Here is the official description:

What is an e-Portfolio? As with many evolving technologies the term can mean different things to different people. For students at the schools of Drama and Music, with a need to showcase their professional work on the internet, the meaning is clear. It is a platform that allows them to quickly and easily organize, publish and share content with fellow students, faculty and professionals outside of Yale. In Fall 2009 both schools launched an e-portfolio service to their students. In this talk we will describe how the service is delivered, review current use patterns, and reveal what has worked well, and not so well, in our first year.

Presenters:

Monica Ong Reed, Design Manager, School of Music
Sarah Stevens-Morling, Online Communications and Print Advertising Manager, School of Drama
Randall Rode, Information Technology Director, School of Drama

And our presentation slides — some of the transitions are a little garbled in the transition to SlideShare format, but most of it is readable.

e-Portfolios at YSD and YSM

View more presentations from Randall Rode.

Collaborative Learning Center » Blog Archive » TwTT E-Portfolios

TwTT E-Portfolios
February 16th, 2010
11:00 am
Bass Library, L01

Digication e-portfolio solutions

Hear from one of our users:
“Digication provided students an amazing opportunity to showcase and share their experience with the entire school community, as well as future classes. Many students immediately said, ‘I can do this’ or ‘I like this’ and were excited by the opportunity to incorporate their personality into their e-Portfolio.”

Innovation motivation

Randy — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:22:18 +0000

Innovation is hard. Sure it sounds like a good idea in the abstract — but when the everyday pressures of cost, time and keeping people happy come into play, the old familiar solutions normally win out. I fall into this trap myself more often than I care to admit. For instance lately I’ve been shopping around a really cool idea — a complete game changer for one of our key web sites. We’d replace a bunch of custom web programing with Drupal, integrated with our CRM system making content updates much easier, quicker, and distributed across more staff. We found two organizations doing something similar who would even share their custom modules.

But when it comes to applying this to an actual project we consider trying this potential new approach, but keep ending up sticking with the status quo. What we need is an opportunity to experiment with technology-driven solutions to problems outside the confines of project time lines — without the demands of a normal workday — in a forum where failure is an option. In short we need an technology innovation barn-raising/quilting bee/ideas forum. Modeled after the Hack Day concept, here is how it might work as a motivator for development of new, untried ideas across the entire company:

The convention itself would take place over two days in a meeting facility. Participants work in teams to crank out a technology-based application that creates value for the company and can be taken from idea to prototype in two days.
3 months before the event employees would be invited to propose ideas/problems/opportunities to be addressed. Any and all ideas from the community would be welcome. Maybe a series of idea workshops would be held — with the added goal to help publicize the idea and market participation.
People interested in participating in the event would troll the idea forum, find something of interest, and organize a team to come up with some solution. Cross-functional, cross-departmental groups encouraged. Teams cold advertise on the forum to recruit others with specific skills or experience. The team would put together a short proposal with a rough approach and what technologies would be used. The proposals would be reviewed by the innovation convention committee.
A proposed idea like ‘make event schedules more accessible’ might be answered by a group proposing to build a location-aware iPhone app that shows a map of all the day’s events on a map centered around the users current location.
Selection criteria for proposals could include elements such as relevance, maturity of the idea, quality of the approach, use of existing resources, low implementation cost and the likelihood of the team completing a prototype within the time frame. Technology support might include access to server resources or sample data sets — existing resources. Participants would bring their own laptops, software, etc.
On the day of the event teams would gather in a conference type facility. They’d be provided with technical support (server access, networking, etc.) based on their proposal requirements. Snacks, lunch and all that good type of stuff would also be provided. The days would run “officially” run from 9 – 5 but teams work as long and as late as they need.
On the 2nd day all activity would stop by 1pm. After lunch each team would hold a presentation of their work. Everyone attending would submit an evaluation of each of the presentation, with final selection of winners made by the innovation committee.
Prizes would be awarded for most innovative solution(s), maybe in a range of categories.

This innovation forum falls somewhere between something like New York City’s recent data apps contest, Yahoo Hack Days and Google’s 20% dedication to new ideas. The cost is low — two days with the participants released from normal work — a couple of meals — access to existing technical resources. And the potential benefits are pretty high — working prototypes of innovative solutions to common problems around the organization. Not bad from the cost/benefit ratio perspective, and a pretty good morale booster too. So what do you think? Would employees participate? Would the administration support it? Would it work?

WordPress U workshop coming April 8

Randy — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:21:44 +0000

Nercomp recently opened registration for the upcoming WordPress University workshop on April 8 in Norwood, MA. And people are already signing up (thanks Pat!) It is going to be a great day with fabulous speakers and lots of good networking opportunities. I’m also planning some type of WordPress meet-up at Nercomp’s annual conference coming to Providence, RI March 8-10. More on that coming soon.

NERCOMP – Northeast Regional Computing Program

Date/Time:
Thursday, April 08, 2010
9:00am – 3:00pm

Location:
Four Points Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center
1125 Boston Providence Turnpike
Norwood, MA

5

BuddyPress Groups as Courses at the College of Wooster

Reverend — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:13:49 +0000

I was looking at the posts on WPMu Development for Education earlier this morning, and I came across this post from The College of Wooster’s (or should I saw WOOT!ster’s) WPMu/BuddyPress install Voices. The post was about new themes added to their system, something I am always interested in, but it also gave me the opportunity to check out the hard work Jon Breitenbucher has been doing on Wooster’s blog-based publishing platform, and I am extremely impressed. What I am really blown away by is how he is using BuddyPress Groups as course instances, and the way they’ve set it up, courses are linked to groups, and through those groups course pages you get access to the latest blog posts, wire comment activity, group members, and a link to the course blog. Additionally, there’s also a fourm integrated through an integrated bbPress. The whole design gives the course a really nice landing page and overview for anyone coming in from the outside, I love this setup.

And what’s more, the group course blogs have the option of being public or private enables the option of privacy that so often gets misunderstood in this platform as non-existent. People do have the choice in such a environment to make a decision about open or closed, most LMSs do not give the average course instance. One of the public blogs, Geology 105 is an open course that is blogging about Natural Hazards. As it turns out, professor Gallagher’s Geography 240 course is also dealing with the topic Natural Hazards. And the fact that these two courses are following a similar topic openly might allow Jon and to actually put in place something we were talking about at WordCamp NYC, namely a sharing of ideas across our two campuses. The platform provides a means for us to do this easily, and if eaither of these courses were in an LMS, would we have the same options? Would I have been able to discover the work at Wooster so easily? And while some say we need to rethink the LMS and work within that space to make in do these things more readily, I for one feel none of that compulsion. Working in an open source platform that provides the means to share and converse so readily precludes the need for reinventing the wheel with proprietary software. Why waste our time, now let’s get his party started right, Jonny B:)

New themes added

Instructional Technology — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:52:22 +0000

We added a few new themes today and have many more in the wings. The themes added today are Black Canvas by StudioPress and Antisocial, Canvas, Geometric, Groovy Blog and Groovy Video by WooThemes (no affiliation with Wooster that we are aware of). All of these themes have extensive options, which allow you to customize the themes. In the case of Canvas you have over 90 options from which to choose in customizing the look of your site. Enjoy and contact us if you have questions.

Missing items in the Live Stream

Randy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:40:10 +0000

I get a fair amount of useful information off of my twitter feed — in fact it is often more informative than the RSS newsfeeds I follow. But Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and the rest of the live streaming applications share a common problem. If you want to refer back to something that floated by several days, weeks or months ago you are pretty much out of luck. The noise factor is not an issue when monitoring the stream live. I mean sure, there is plenty of noise, but it is easy enough to filter it out as the garbage floats by. But try to dig through items from the past and the noise quickly overwhelms. Anyone got an answer? Or is do we just need to accept that we must leave the past behind — even if it is digital?

Quality, a User Problem | Arc90 Blog

Facebook understands the noise problem, and that it has only been exacerbated with the prevalence of third-party application notifications. They’ve tried to solve it, but haven’t really nailed a way to determine the quality of a post.

10 Reasons Why Twitter Sucks | The Virtual Circle

After about 20 days Twitter deletes every tweet you’ve made unless you marked it as memorable. This is so sad. There are many interesting people on twitter saying, on occasion, quite memorable things. It is all being gradually lost unless there’s someone deliberately collecting it.

Ignite New Haven

Randy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:35:35 +0000

Gobal Ignite Week is coming March 1 – 5 — and it looks like there may be events here in New Haven. Could be fun — I’m following the twitter feed. Could be fun.

Speakers- Ignite New Haven

If you think you have what it takes to Ignite a crowd, here’s your chance – But remember, you only have 5 minutes! We’re not accepting proposals just yet, but we want you to start thinking about your topic – A topic that is entirely up to you.

Communicating the Real Value of IT

Randy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:30:22 +0000

How is the information technology department viewed in your organization? Too expensive, too slow, always say no, better to outsource? If any of these sound familiar then it might be time to take some lessons from The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value. Overall the book is excellent — clearly presented with plenty of real examples to illustrate the various points. I found it tough to keep my attention focused on the book, not because is was boring, but because the ideas rang so true I found myself thinking through how I might employ them in my own workplace.

I’ll only touch on a couple of ideas from the book. The first section touches on value traps — commonly held ideas that are not only wrong, but hold the It organization back from real effectiveness. For instance the notion that IT’s purpose is to deliver quality technology. Technology is not an end in itself, but rather a means to a more effective organization. IT needs to deliver solutions, not just a service. Another value trap goes along the lines of “follow our rules or we can’t guarantee it will work.” Engineers like certainty, but business leaders are often happy to settle for close enough if it gets the job done. And they will find ways to end-run IT regulations that are seen as obstructing progress and see IT as a barrier rather than enabler of progress. What IT does need to do is measure and benchmark its projects in terms of business effectiveness, and communicate that information throughout the business. The big trick is to stop thinking like a service unit and become integral the process of creating new value for the organization. Improving IT is not so much about making the IT department better, but utilizing IT to make the entire organization better. As the authors conclude:

” A small but growing group of CIOs has figured out how to show value and deliver increasing value in terms that are utterly convincing to their enterprises.”

And the lessons described in the book look to be a pretty effective place to start.

The Real Business of IT: a real value to IT executives book review

The Real Business of IT is a clear and focused look at the issue of IT value and the approaches to capture, communicate and increase that value. This book is unique in several respects. It is a book written for CIOs largely based on the experience of CIOs.

The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value – Harvard Business Review

In The Real Business of IT, Richard Hunter and George Westerman reveal that the cost mind-set stems from IT leaders’ inability to communicate about the business value they create-so CIOs get stuck discussing budgets rather than their contributions to the organization.

New BuddyPress plugin: BP MPO Activity Filter

Boone Gorges — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:23:15 +0000

In the past I and others have experienced some problems with the way that More Privacy Options for WPMu interacts with BuddyPress – or, to be more exact, with the way that the two don’t recognize each other. Blogs marked as private via MPO were getting plastered all over the public activity streams. In the past I have suggested some unpleasant but more or less functional core hacks, but now I’ve developed a plugin that does the job in the right way. It’s called … drumroll … BP MPO Activity Filter.

Check it out here.

Extending Google Wave with Gravity

Randy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:40:13 +0000

Confused by what Google Wave might be useful for? Here is a nicely demonstrated scenario going through a business process modeling project. I like the example of new members re-playing the Wave to catch up on the team’s progress — very efficient. It seems to me that a workplace effort to encourage this type of Google Wave use would need some type of kick-off/introduction workshop. Get a big group together, have some scripted collaborative tasks, and have them use wave to accomplish those tasks. You’d teach the tool and also work on the general topic of effective collaboration/team work.

Using Gravity to collaborate on processes

Google Wave has been around for a few months now and though the hype is fading away we are seeing more and more practical use-cases in the enterprise. One excellent example is SAP’s Business Process Modelling tool gone collaborative; Gravity. We have been fortunate to work with a prototype version of Gravity with access to the minds behind the concept. Gravity is a Business Process Modeling tool which can be accessed as a gadget in the Google Wave client. This integration in Google Wave allows for collaboration over time and / or near real time, on business processes. This model is exportable to Netweaver BPM via BPMN 2.0 XML, thus making it a fully integrable modelling tool for use in an SAP landscape. Still puzzled? check this video with an explanatory example:

WP – collecting user feedback

Randy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:42:07 +0000

Just yesterday I had a request to create a tool to collect some follow-up responses from our staff regarding a recent university-wide workplace survey. So we need something simple, easy to maintain, quick to launch AND that collects the responses in a format that permits easy and flexible reporting. As I recently demonstrated our WordPress MU installation makes it easy to launch a project-specific site which includes user-login tied to the school’s central user authentication system. So simple-easy-quick — doing this through WordPress gets me at least half-way there. And I remembered a recent suggestion in my Twitter feed to look at the WordPress Surveys plugin.

The plugin is pretty simple and written clearly enough to make adjustments easy. And most importantly it utilizes a table structure that is normalized, and well structured, which will work well for the eventual reporting needs. I did do some hacking around in the code to change some of the default behavior — mostly just commenting out features we didn’t want. These would lend themselves well to some additional options in the plug-in settings — maybe I’ll get around to adding those in at some point. When it comes to the reports I’ll also go into the background, using PHPMyAdmin to grab the tables directly — again it wouldn’t take much to add more flexibility into the WordPress admin panel options for the plug-in, but I’m still running in the quick/simple mode here. And with the help of the Plaintxt theme it is up and running.

The plugin could be quite useful for all sorts of user feedback on a site, not just surveys. The nicely structured data collected in plugin-specific tables would make reporting really flexible.

WordPress › Surveys « WordPress Plugins

The Surveys WordPress plugin lets you add surveys to you blog. You can let the vistors take surveys and see the result from the admin side.

New BuddyPress plugin: BP Include Non-Member Comments

Boone Gorges — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:47:17 +0000

By default, BuddyPress does not include comments from non-members (or non-logged-in users more generally) in the sitewide activity stream. For some communities, this default behavior is probably just fine. But in a community like the CUNY Academic Commons, which aims to attract readership and conversation from all sorts of folks, whether or not they’re signed in, the sitewide activity stream will be much more meaningful if it includes comments from everyone.

My new plugin, BP Include Non-Member Comments, was built with this purpose in mind. The plugin is activated here on the CUNY Academic Commons, so that all comments on your blog – whether from logged-in users or not – will show up on the news feed.

The plugin has been tested on version 1.1.3 of BP, as well as the 1.2 release candidate. If you want to use the plugin for 1.1.3 or lower, you will need to uncomment the first few add_action and add_filter lines in the plugin file.

Technical caveat: Non-logged-in commenters have BP user_id 0. When BP creates the activity stream, it decides whether or not to show the Delete button by checking to see whether the user_id for the currently logged in user is the same as the user_id of the person to whom the comment belongs. Presumably, though, you don’t want non-logged-in viewers of the activity stream to be able to delete items from the activity stream at all. BP’s core code is not currently set up to make it easy to remove these buttons, so I employed an ugly fix. If you have changed your theme significantly from the default, you might have to adjust the filter bp_nonmember_comment_content (near the end of the plugin) to remove the button properly.

Download the plugin here.

BuddyPress rc1

andrea — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:06:22 +0000

BuddyPress reached Release Candidate status this week. Get BP rc-1 over here (zip).

Also, the new 2010 default theme has just hit the repo. Scroll down on that page and you’ll get the zip of the theme.

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New BuddyPress plugin: BP Include Non-Member Comments

Boone Gorges — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:34:48 +0000

I wrote a plugin this afternoon that solves a small but potentially annoying limitation of BuddyPress: its inability to show comments from non-members in the sitewide activity stream. In a streak of extreme creativity, I dubbed the plugin “BP Include Non-Member Comments”. Read more about it, and download it for your own use, here.

A Useful Plugin: ShowID for Post/Page/Category/Tag/Comment plugin

Reverend — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:45:13 +0000

I find myself in every recent version of WP (and WPMu) searching for the ID numbers for various pages, posts, categories, and/or tags on a number of occasions. I’m not sure when this feature got dropped from the core, but I do remember it was at one time part of the edit post/edit page metadata. As of the latest versions the only way to find ID numbers is to actually edit the page (or post, tag, category, comment, etc.) and look for the ID value in the URL field (pictured below). Not very intuitive, in fact, ridiculous.

ShowID for Post/Page/Category/Tag/Comment plugin actually shows the ID value right from the edit section of any of these elements. Something like the following:

I am going to activate this plugin sitewide for UMW Blogs, because a number of the plugins/widgets we have actually ask for page/posts IDs to exclude pages/posts etc. from a widget, or include categories in a page. And explaining how to find this information without this plugin is just that much more difficult. I really don’t understand why this isn’t a core feature of WP given core widgets (such as the pages widgets) and a wide variety of plugins depend on ID values.

HipHop from FaceBook – potential game changer for PHP

Randy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:09:00 +0000

A new open source project from FaceBook, HipHop for PHP, could bring big improvements for PHP developers. From the description on Facebook’s Developers site HipHop for PHP will translate PHP code into C++, reducing cpu usage by as much at 50%. And for a big site like FaceBook, written in PHP, this is a pretty significant improvement. The ease of writing in PHP, with the performance benefits of C++ — sounds like a great combination. There is nothing except an announcement so far, but expect more very soon.

PHP Magazine, PHP Training, PHP Conferences, PHP Books, PHP Apparel — php|architect

“We think that HipHop has the potential to bring significant changes to the way we use and interact with PHP; … said Marco Tabini, CEO of Blue Parabola.

Facebook Developers | HipHop for PHP: Move Fast

One of the key values at Facebook is to move fast. For the past six years, we have been able to accomplish a lot thanks to rapid pace of development that PHP offers. As a programming language, PHP is simple. Simple to learn, simple to write, simple to read, and simple to debug. We are able to get new engineers ramped up at Facebook a lot faster with PHP than with other languages, which allows us to innovate faster.

Google tablet rumours?

Randy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:49:37 +0000

As much as I love Apple and freely admit they make great products, I also have concerns with Apple’s closed-system approach. While there are some valid points to Apple’s ‘let us do the driving’ philosophy, I think users are better served when technology platforms are open. So how cool would a Google tablet be? After all, if they want to beat Windows at its own game, what better strategy than ripping off an Apple idea?

Google’s Tablet versus Apple’s iPad: Open versus Closed?

More importantly, though, Google’s tablet will have one major advantage over Apple’s iPad: it will have an open application platform.

The book industry and old media models

Randy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:33:15 +0000

I have held my tongue as far as comments on Apple’s iPad — there is more than enough other chatter from other quarters. But a recent article in the New York Times, The Media Equation – To Deliver, iPad Needs Content Providers on Board – NYTimes.com caught my eye in a comment on book publisher’s response to the platform:

…the book industry seems ill-prepared to take advantage of many of the new worlds the iPad opens up…Readers on the iPad should certainly expect that when they buy a cookbook, building in cooking demos would be a no-brainer, but it may be a long while before the industry has the ability to produce books that incorporate multimedia.

Why is it even a question of who will produce these videos? Haven’t they been watching for the last 5 years? You know the answer, don’t you? The readers will do it! Take a page from the reader book reviews on Amazon — look at what this cookbook fan has to say:

I have to admit I’m a great fan of Michele Scicolone. I got one of her cookbooks long ago, baked the best cookie I’ve ever had, and have been addicted to her wonderful recipes, stories and style ever since. This book continues her tradition of crafting perfect cookbooks. Why do I say perfect? Well, I’m not a professional cook, yet I can follow her recipes and create fantastic meals…

Any doubt that a fan like this wouldn’t be happy to create a short how-to video as they cook one of the recipes? All they need is an easy way to submit them. The technology piece is easy, and there are certainly partners around who would be happy to help — in fact Amazon seems a little panicky over the threat of the iPad introduction. Call them — they understand how this whole internet-user-contributed-content thing works. E-books augmented with integrated reader content — I’d buy that.

Feeding WordPress with EPrints: A Social Repo?

Joss Winn — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:09:01 +0000

I’ve just knocked up a ‘Social Repo‘ site and would be keen to get some feedback on the general idea.

It’s a WordPress site in microblog mode driven by feeds from our repo via the FeedWordPress plugin. Just an experiment in automating something similar to our Post2Blog plugin.

As a way of making EPrints content more ’social’, I thought that specific subject feeds from different IRs could be aggregated into a single subject site where interested people could follow and comment on the research outputs.

I’m a fan of aaaargh.org which is a site where people share hard-to-obtain texts, mostly academic level material and largely related to critical, social theory. There’s a discussion board attached to it, too. No-one really controls it and it’s a great way of finding hard to obtain texts

Along loosely similar lines, I was thinking earlier that IRs could aggregate their feeds into a site, like my example, that provided a way to search, filter and discuss the source research outputs. If there was a site that aggregated feeds from IRs around the world, pulling in only content relating to critical, social theory, for example, had a twitter account attached, too, as well as useful RSS feeds of its own, I’d be keen to follow it and contribute to the discussion of work as it appeared and looked of interest.

I can imagine that some texts could spark quite detailed threaded discussions.

One way to improve my quick example would be to show the EPrints abstract in the post content below the citation. Alas, that’s not in the source EPrints feed right now. I would also make a few tweaks to the theme so that the permalinks didn’t all point to the source record, but that the source link was clearly provided.

The plugin that we created for the JISCPress project could provide a background service to create semantic tags and do term extraction on the abstract, to automate keywords for each item. Crikey! we could even use the other Linked Data plugin we developed and push the RDF to the Talis Platform, aggregating Linked Data around subject feeds from Institutional Repositories.

I’m sure I can think of more improvements, but as a 30 min exercise, I’ve found it interesting. I think that once a Repo record becomes joined to a WordPress record, it’s got a lot more going for it in terms of added levels of interaction and malleability. Any thoughts?

Screencasts with Screenr

Randy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:30:38 +0000

Screenr offers a new service to make screen recordings and share them via twitter and other web sites. It looks easy enough, so I decided to give it a spin with a quick WordPress MU demonstration. When you launch the recording tool, it lets you set which area of the screen to record. You push play and you’re off and running, up to 5 minutes in length. When done you can preview the video and then it gets automatically deployed in web and iPhone versions. No edits, fancy fade-ins or other effects — but in the video arena and enforced simplicity is probably best. Do it right the first time, post it and move on (spoken as someone who has spend hours perfecting a 4 minute video!)

When completed Screenr will automatically post your video announcement to Twitter. It takes 5 minutes or so to process the video — about as long as it took me to write this post. So here it is:

Screenr – Create screencasts and screen recordings the easy way

CommentPress vs Wiki for operations handbook

Randy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:00:25 +0000

A request came up to put one of the departmental student handbooks on-line. Requirements include ease of editing/updating, access control (only our students) and search. A wiki would be one way to go. But our WordPress MU installation makes deploying new sites a cinch, including the access control, making this my preferred place for this new application. And when I think of WordPress and book-type content, I think of CommentPress . CommentPress works with WPs page hierarcy, which I find users find more familiar than the more open wiki style of organization. And it uses WPs comment structure to allow readers to add their own notes to a page. Still allowing some interactivity, but also lets the author control the official language of the document.

One minor problem is we’d like to ditch the word ‘comment’ and replace it with ‘notes’. I find users/clients often pale at the thought of people commenting on something — the word implies criticism. This is sort of like not referring to WordPress as a blog program — it really is a web publishing platform. Same idea, but words can carry a lot of meanings, not all of them good. So I’ll be working to banish the word ‘comment’ from our application replacing it with ‘notes’, which implies something useful to the reader.

Commentpress » About Commentpress

In the course of our tinkering, we achieved one small but important innovation. Placing the comments next to rather than below the text turned out to be a powerful subversion of the discussion hierarchy of blogs, transforming the page into a visual representation of dialog, and re-imagining the book itself as a conversation.

Momentum for WP as LMS building

Reverend — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:32:12 +0000

Image credit: bionicteaching’s “Edupunking your CMS”

Maybe it’s just cause I live in a particular bubble on the internet, but over the past six months or a year there has been what seems to me like some serious momentum towards thinking through WordPress (and/or WPMu) as a serious alternative to Learning Management Systems. And posts like this interview with Kyle Jones as well as Joe Ugoretz’s tour-de-force two part series on how he is putting the idea of WordPress as a LMS into action are pretty badass. This is some amazing stuff, and I really think Kyle Jones nails what the appeal of WP as an LMS is for many with this quote from his interview at wpmu.org:

But [offering faculty and students a hands-on approach to designing their learning] is what makes using WordPress MU wonderful as a LMS: We’ve modified and tweaked it at the students’ request, making their learning space what they need it to be – not what some company says it should be.

And, on top of that, Kyle captures the engine that is driving this emerging cooperation amongst and between a distributed group of faculty, students, and technologist all over the world:

We learn from each other, we steal from each other, in the end we try to give back to those who have helped us.

That really sums up what this vision of openness is as we work through our issues, tinker with the tools, think through the implications, and share back what we’ve learned. I might be crazy, but I still have faith that through this kind of process we can take back the means of imagining our own spaces for teaching and learning from the expedients of institutional efficiency, cause it’s exactly the imagination of these spaces that is a necessary and integral part of the teaching and learning process as Joe Ugoretz’s posts make all too clear. I may be biased, but I can;t help but think what we are seeing in the educational community working with WordPress, is just one part of a larger momentum of people using a variety of tools to escape the prison house of learning that is the LMS. And that brings me to a bigger point, I really don’t think we are simply using WordPress to ape the LMS, but rather to re-imagine the ideas that under gird this design: give students ownership of their work, control over the design, and the ability to seamlessly integrate a wide variety of other tools they already use to network online. More than that, the bigger push is to put students in a pace they own and share back what they choose, an expectation that they take ownership of their work and identities online.

Paternity leave is over, and the bava is back!!!

Drupal vs. WordPress thoughts from Bates

Randy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:25:10 +0000

Jay Collier at Bates ponders the strengths of Drupal and WordPress MU. In my experience WordPress is quicker to get going with, and for most web sites it can rise to most any challenge. And it is the king of multi-site installations. Drupal has a steeper learning curve, but can better support needs such as a work flow-content approval path, or something less traditional, like a content repository system. In meeting a business need the technology is normally the least important element — what are your goals, who is the audience, what do they need, etc. — those are the important questions. Once you have those answers you go looking for a technology. My advice? Look at WordPress first — if it doesn’t do what you want, in a quick straightforward way, keep looking. But in my experience that won’t happen very often.

Evaluating Drupal and Wordpress MU | Bates Web Communications

As part of our new Web Hub program — and in previous discovery projects (2008 | 2007) — I’ve been evaluating open-source content management software. Our two finalists are Drupal and Wordpress MU.

Displaying enterprise data — such as course listings and directory information — has been the greatest challenge in site architecture prototyping. Both software packages provide support for collections of
custom fields, but what’s important is determining the best repository for each type of data and how to present it on public-facing Web sites.

Eye catching web sites: Harvard vs. Yale

Randy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:28:45 +0000

Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash in this month’s Website Magazine suggests that elements such as wild background colors, garish text, visual embellishments (eye candy) and animation/video distract website visitors from important content. In a case study of a redesign of the CREDO website they found an 84% improvement with a simplified design. The case study used a new service called AttentionWizard.com which uses computer algorithms to approximate eye tracking studies of a web site. The idea is these will reveal what point on the page the visitor’s eye should land on. If it is what you want them to see — like a buy now button — bingo, you are doing well. If their eyes don’t land anywhere, or on the wrong things it is time to make some adjustments. I thought it would be fun to compare the Yale and Harvard main websites using the service.

First up Yale. According to the article Yale’s website does earn extra points for its simple, white background, plain text and simple graphics. But don’t start celebrating so fast. The eye tracking study also doesn’t find anything that does grab attention. There is some focus on the graphic, but the links on the left side don’t register too high, except for the about Yale:

Yale's landing page

Yale Attention Heat Map

Now for Harvard – strong black background, white text — low marks. On the attention scale they do a little worse — again the image gets the most attention, but otherwise the eye wanders around the screen not really landing on any other focal point.

Harvard landing page

Harvard Attention HeatMap

It is not clear to me on either site what the key objective is. And in fairness these sites have multiple objectives, mostly trying to give people a lot of options. It might have been fairer to compare sites with clearer objectives, like a sales-orientated site. But then I wouldn’t have been able to tweak the classic Yale/Harvard rivalry. And I may be biased, but while neither site did great, I do think Yale finished with a slight lead. Go Bulldogs!

Two notes on the article: 1) it is written by the CEO of SiteTuners.com, creators of AttentionWizard. 2) in my experience it is the client who wants the flashy, distracting eye candy. Most graphic designers I’ve worked with have better taste than that (good article, bad title). You can use AttentionWizard in a trial version — 1 upload/analysis per day. Give it a spin on your favorite site!

AttentionWizard FAQ’s

The eye gazing path is represented by the numbered path shown on the AttentionWizard heatmap. The eye gazing path starts with the number 1 and follows in chronological order. The eye gazing path depicts the path that your users eyes will take when they first get to your page. Depending on the image submitted (full page or above-the-fold) the eye gazing path can differ significantly.

Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash – Website Magazine – Website Magazine

You were led down this path by your internal creative team or outside interactive agency. Because of the limitations of their unique perspective you have been forced to sacrifice conversions in the name of “coolness.” So, you have actually come to think that your baby is quite beautiful and have, in fact, grown very fond of it.

OPACPress: Our Talis Incubator proposal

Joss Winn — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:35:45 +0000

Yesterday, I submitted a proposal to Talis under their Incubator fund. If successful, I would have the pleasure of working with Paul Stainthorp, E-Resources Librarian at the University of Lincoln, and Casey Bisson, Information Architect at Plymouth State University. The bid is to develop an idea which I’ve posted about before, based on Casey’s work on Scriblio and our adventures with WordPress MU, in particular, JISCPress.

Anyway, rather than re-iterating the bid here. You can read it in full by clicking here.

Comments are very welcome. Thanks.

The Benevolence of the WP Community

andrea — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:26:09 +0000

Over the weekend, there was yet another awesome WordCamp over in Boston. I am still bummed we were unable to go. But! We followed along at home, and there was some great news.

WPcares was launched during the event to raise money for Haiti. The original goal was $1,000. Last I checked, it was over $3,000 and this will be matched in donations from

Wow. This is why I love the community SO FREAKING MUCH.

The WordPress Foundation was also launched.

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the WordPress Foundation will also pursue a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software.

Please visit their site for more information.

And, visitors to site may have noticed the clean design over there. It is the new 2010 theme, which will be the new default theme for this year.

Update: there will be some important terminology changes. Dougal gives a rundown over here between sites and networks.

I’ll go into this in depth at a later date, when trunk gets more finalized.

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Class blogrolls: No sweat

Boone Gorges — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:33:35 +0000

Last week, in the post where I announced my new WPMU plugin Shared Blogroll, I briefly mentioned the use case that I had in mind, which was of course education-focused. Yesterday and today I did some more work on the plugin itself (MORE AJAX 4EVA) and some of the supporting players. I thought I’d spell it out a little more so that others could implement what is probably the coolest system for shared blogrolls on earth, or at least on WPMU, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.

The plugins

Shared Blogroll. This creates a widget that allows bloggers to embed a link category from any other blog on the system on their own blog.
Add Users Sidebar Widget. This plugin is already pretty great, as well it should be seeing as it’s written by good-looking Canadians. I made some edits to the plugin to make it a bit more flexible.
1. First I removed the RSS box from the Add User widget. For most of my users, it’ll confuse; for all of them, it’ll be redundant, since they’ll all be using Wordpress blogs and thus will have feeds that are very auto-discoverable.
2. As the plugin stands in the repository, links are automatically put into the blog’s default link category (or, if they’re using FeedWordPress, the FWP link category). For most users, that’s something unhelpful like “Links” or “Uncategorized”. I altered the plugin so that the blog owner can choose which link category the added links will be put into. As I’ll discuss below, I think that this will add a lot of flexibility to the way that the plugins can be used together. You can download the text of my modified version of Add Users Sidebar Widget here: add-link-sidebar-widget.txt. Save as .php before uploading – and make sure that you uninstall previous versions of the plugin before uploading, or you might get whitescreened to death.
Optional step. The default WP Links widget is set up so that you can’t select to display an empty category of links. As you’ll see below, I want to have instructors create a new category for their blogrolls, and I figured it’d be pretty confusing if they couldn’t create a sidebar widget corresponding to a link category until at least one student had posted a link (thus populating the category). So I wrote a little plugin that replaces the default Links widget with one that allows you to pick an empty links category. Drop this into mu-plugins: link_widget_allow_empty_cat. Be warned, though, that this plugin deregisters the default Links widget, which might have the effect of removing every links widget on your installation of WPMU. (I haven’t tested it.) For me, it’s OK, because I don’t have any active users yet. As an alternative, you could edit the core of WP (making sure to back up, take note of where you made the edit for future upgrades, blah blah blah) in the following way. In wp-includes/default-widgets.php, line 139 reads
```
$link_cats = get_terms( 'link_category');
```
Replace it with
```
$link_cats = get_terms( 'link_category', 'hide_empty=0');
```
That should leave all of your pre-existing links widgets in place.

The process

The immediate goal of this setup is to allow a class blogroll to be shared effortlessly between members of a class. (Though I can imagine lots of other very cool uses.) Here are the directions I’m going to give to instructors and students on how to leverage these two plugins to make it happen.

Instructors

Create a new Link Category for your class blogroll – let’s say you call it “ENG 110 Blogroll”.
Add a Links widget to the sidebar, making sure to select “ENG 110 Blogroll” from the category dropdown.
Add an Add Links widget to the sidebar. Again, be sure to select “ENG 110″ blogroll as the target category for added links.
Give your blog’s ID number to your students and give them the following directions.

Students

After creating a blog, visit the professor’s blog and enter your site’s URL into the Add Link sidebar widget.
Add a Shared Blogroll widget to your own blog’s sidebar. Enter the professor’s blog ID number as the source blog, select “ENG 110 Blogroll” from the dropdown list, and Save.

I hope that the instructors and students get into this blogroll sharing thing. It distributes what would otherwise be a huge amount of work for the instructor, or *worse yet*, for me.

How not to run a technology department

Randy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:46:52 +0000

In a recent InfoWorld article Bob Lewis offers a strategy to “the promised land, where IT is a strategic partner to the rest of the business, not a subservient order taker content to process work requests while accepting the blame for everything that goes wrong.” Sound like a familiar problem? He maintains that the common practice of treating technology services as an internal business treating other departments as customers in a fee for service relationship is at the heart of the problem.

This relationship puts the information technology (IT) professionals in the role of reacting to customer requests and working selfishly to maximize the charging potential of every opportunity. Efficiencies that might reduce service requests across several customers also reduce charging potential for the IT units. IT responds to individual customer needs and priorities are set by those units most willing or able to pay. This all results to an us-vs-them mentality that rarely rewards the parties for considering wider, institutional opportunities and broader implications of technology decisions. For instance if one department contracts with the central IT programming unit to build a web-based student application, and pays dearly for it, they will be disinclined to ‘give’ it to another deparment (why shouldn’t they pay too?) — and the IT unit builds the application to so specifically meet one department’s needs that it probably can’t be used by others without a lot of rewriting anyhow. I speak from direct experience — this stuff really happens.

So what is the path to Mr. Lewis’ proposed promised land? When working with other departments IT directors “..say, ‘My job is to help you and the company succeed, ‘ followed by ‘Show me how you do things now.’ NOT ‘I know better than you’ but rather ‘let’s work together so I understand your needs and we can find a solution that works for everyone.’ The conversation starts by asking ‘how can we operate better” rather than a focus on simply delivering software and hardware infrastructure. Technology planning is aligned with the overall strategic objectives for the organization. Budgets priorities are set in the discussion over how the application of technology can help meet those objectives in an efficient, timely and cost effective way. Sounds good to me.

Run IT as a business — why that’s a train wreck waiting to happen | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld

..the familiar litany that says CIOs should run IT as a business, meeting the requirements of its internal customers. This refrain has been endorsed by our holy trinity, too: analyst firms, most consultancies, and ITIL… My advice? Don’t act like a separate business. Do the opposite — be the
most internal of internal departments. Become so integrated into the
enterprise that nobody would dream of working with anyone else.

Bike sharing through community, emergence, technology

Randy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:35:30 +0000

When we were in Paris last summer I was intrigued to see the fleets of Velib bikes. These are available for public use across the city on a pay-as-you-go model. You use a credit card at a central kiosk to check a bike out and then return it to the closest kiosk when you are finished with it. With my frequent daily walks around New Haven CT and the Yale campus it looked like a sure hit to me. I’d love to have this type of service available. But it turns out, similar to Amsterdam’s white bike experiment, the Velib program is having problems with theft and damage. Another problem with these types of systems is often one of distribution — problems arise with too many bikes at the wrong place, and too few at a hot spot. These patterns shift through the day. Maybe there are some lessons from ZipCar, and its successful strategies. They encourage community feedback, keep it simple, invest in technology, and brand with personality. To this I wonder if the bottom-up ideas of people like Mark Gorton might help point in the right direction. Here is my quick brain-dump/brainstorm of thoughts on the subject of a community bike sharing service:

Simple community – have a membership plan similar to ZipCar’s. Only members can use bikes. Make the check out kiosks much simpler, or even eliminate then all together with some type of on-bike locking mechanism. Lock/unlock would be via cell phone.
Reservation only — again like ZipCar any bike use requires an advance reservation, which could be made weeks in advance or on a recurring schedule (think commuters.) Of course reservations could be made on-the-spot if a bike was available, also like ZipCar.
Commuters — have a special membership plan for commuters where they take the bike home at the end of the day. This assumes the greatest need for bikes is downtown, during the day. This gets the bikes off the street at times when vandalism and theft are more likely to occur, and gets members more empowered to help the system. It also helps with distribution.
Personality – let members name a bike and then share that information with their friends. When a friend uses that bike they would be shown the friends name and the name of the bike.
Sponsors — let building owners, businesses, universities, and other downtown organizations sponsor bike racks. And if they had a pre-existing concentration of members in a locations these racks might even be allowed at internal, more private locations.
Friends — link accounts with Facebook. In addition to naming bikes also let friends share bike use information with other friends. For instance when I reserve a bike the system would tell me if any of my friends has used the same bike in the past.
Advocacy — maybe the bike company operates as a service, with local community bike advocacy non-profit organizations handling the physical maintenance chores on the ground. The local group manages local services and gets a fee for that. But they also advocate for things like bike lanes and communicate with a membership base, both of which are needed to make the service successful.

So what are we waiting for?

How Fast Can This Thing Go, Anyway?

… it’s hard to argue with results. Over the past five years, Griffith has transformed Zipcar from promising start-up into a real force. Revenue has soared from $2 million to $100 million. In November, the company acquired its largest rival, Flexcar. Zipcar has about 200 employees, it has raised $35 million in venture capital, and it has a growing international presence. How did he do it? Here is Griffith’s game plan–a seven-point strategy for turning a great idea into a thriving company

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality

“For a regular user like me, it generates a lot of frustration,” she said. “It’s a reflection of the violence of our society and it’s outrageous: the Vélib’ is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it.”

White bicycles and the politics of consumption

The news that the Paris city bike scheme Velib is having problems with theft, even if over-stated, marks a throwback to the first “free bicycle” scheme, introduced in the 1960s by the Amsterdam Provos …who donated 50 bikes to the city to start the scheme off. Their scheme caught the public imagination – even prompting a cult single – only for the bikes to be confiscated by the police because they constituted an invitation to theft. Embedded in their story is a story about the role of failure in social innovation – and another one, about a politics of consumption.

5

Deleting old MySQL tables across blogs and databases in WPMu

Reverend — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:45:23 +0000

OK, so this will probably be the final installment of my “pimp your WPMu databases” series Part one was moving from WPMuDEV’s Multi-DB package to SharDB; part two dealt with optimizing tables across a number of databases in MySQL, and the final installation will share some SQL code, once again thanks to Gowtham, for deleting specific tables across various blogs and databases.

Ok, so here is the setup, when we started UMW Blogs we used the spam filter Spam Karma 2. It was a personal favorite of mine, and while a lot more work than Akismet, it did a pretty good job of shutting out spam. Spam karma 2 has since died, and we moved to Akismet well over a year ago now. However, for at least the first 500 or 600 blogs (maybe more) we had Spam karma 2 installed, which inserted two tables into each blog kinda like this:
wp_21_sk2_logs
wp_21_sk2_spams

Where 21 was the blog ID, so across numerous blogs and databases there are a number of blogs with two fields like those above (just a different blog ID number, say wp_581_sk2_logs) filled with spam. It would make sense to drop these tables out as part of an optimization of our databases, but the only question I had was how?

Well I went to Gowtham, the oracle, once again (I hope this well of riches doesn’t go dry for overuse ) and he sent me the following script for deleting all tables with _sk2_ in the name. Now I imagine very few folks have this specific issue with Spam Karma 2, so the details of this script may seem irrelevant. But if you think about it, if there is a plugin that inserts tables on numerous blogs spread across various databases, and an uninstall of that plugin doesn’t delete the tables, then such a script would be quite useful to you. Just change the list of databases from my specific setup to yours and instead of the following bit of code:
$sql_q = "SHOW TABLES LIKE '%_sk2_%'";

Put a unique series of characters between the ‘%_uniquecharacters_%’ to delete a series of tables across blogs and databases.

How freaking cool is this? I tested the script on UMW Blogs, and it worked beautifully, UMW Blogs databases just lost another half a gig of spam fat, and I’m am happy to say it’s never been healthier. No heart disease in the future of this WPMu install—though we can never rule out plugin cancer

Here is a text version of the script.

And here it is sans the opening and closing PHP calls:
# PHP script to find all tables, whose name contains # the string '_sk2', in a given set of MySQL databases # and delete them. This is a 2-step process. # Run this script as # # php mysql_skarma.php > mysql_skarma.sql # # Then, run the following command in a terminal # # mysql -u USERNAME -p < mysql_skarma.sql # # and enter PASSWORD when prompted. # # First written: Gowtham, Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:01:48 -0500 # Last modified: Gowtham, Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:20:22 -0500


# Connect to the database

# It is expected that you will be able to connect

# to all your databases [listed below] with this

# set of credentials

$host     = 'localhost';

$dbuser   = 'username';

$dbpasswd = 'password';
# The act of connecting to the MySQL server

$connect  = mysql_connect($host, $dbuser, $dbpasswd) or

            die('MySQL Connection Error: ' .

            mysql_errno() . ': ' .

            mysql_error());
# List of databases

$databases = array(

  "umwblogs_wpmu_0",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_1",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_2",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_3",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_4",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_5",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_6",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_7",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_8",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_9",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_a",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_b",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_c",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_d",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_e",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_f",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_global",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_vip1"

 );
# FOREACH_LOOP_DATABASES BEGINS

# Loop through the array, 'databases'

# Each array element will be stored in the variable 'database'

foreach ($databases as $database) {
  # Connect to the database using details specified

  # above - it expects that there is one username-password

  # combination that can connect to all your databases

  mysql_select_db($database, $connect) or

               die('Database Connection Error: ' .

               mysql_errno() . ': ' .

               mysql_error());
  # Select all tables from 'database' that have '_sk2_'

  # in their name

  $sql_q  = "SHOW TABLES LIKE '%_sk2_%'";

  $result = mysql_query($sql_q) or

            die('Invalid Query: ' .

            mysql_errno() . ': ' .

            mysql_error());
  # WHILE_LOOP BEGINS

  # Loop through the list of tables from 'database'

  while ($table_details = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {

    $table_name = $table_details[0];
    # SQL query to DROP the table

    # This will be written out to a flat text [SQL] file

    # to be imported into MySQL. This is necessary because

    # tables with an underscore in their names cannot be

    # directly deleted from PHP [to my limited knowledge]

    print "DROP TABLE `$database`.`$table_name`; \n";

  }

  # WHILE_LOOP ENDS
}

# FOREACH_LOOP_DATABASES ENDS

# Close the connection mysql_close($connect);

Changing the Oil on a Multi-Database WPMu Install

Reverend — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:41:36 +0000

And to build on my last post about Moving from Multi-DB to SharDB on WPMu, here is a rundown on some of the work done to further optimize the multiple-databases for our WPMu at UMW Blogs.

First off, we have a plugin install called WordPress MU Sitewide Tag Pages that basically republishes every public post from around UMW Blogs into one blog, the tags blog, which is located at http://tags.umwblogs.org. This plugin has a ton of uses for us, not least of which is sitewide tags and categories, as well as feeds off those sitewide tags and categories for syndication and republishing into course sites. Another function of this blog could be a searchable archive of all the public work done. So, needless to say, this blog is important enough that we have let it run now for almost two years without pruning. And when I checked the wp_posts table of this blog in the database there was what seemed to be 99,066 posts.

And that one table was weighing in at a hefty 425 MBs, which mean it was out-of-control, and I imagine some of our recent performance and down time issues might be related, so I decided to cull this table. So after backing it up, I tweeted looking for advice on how I might delete all posts from the tags blog before a certain day, say August 15, 2009—the week before the Fall semester started this year.

And in no time at all, Michigan’s finest, Gowtham (and sgowtham on Twitter) sent me the following bit of code:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_date < "2009-08-15";

Along with the note, “please be sure to replace the right table name in place of wp_posts though.” Which would like like this for the tags blog with the ID 1291:

DELETE FROM wp_1291_posts WHERE post_date < "2009-08-15";

So I just copy that bit of SQL code into the PHPMyAdmin editor that lets you run SQL queries for a specific database like so…

And within a minute 66,000 posts were removed, and the table was now 142 MBs.

Now, let’s stop here for a second. How sick is that? Within minutes I got a solution to my issue and deleted 66,000 posts and potentially saved UMW Blogs a couple of more crashes this coming week, from a friend on twitter who just knew what to do. How much richer am I because of this relationship? How much richer is all of UMW? It’s kinda wild to think about that. And more than that, it doesn’t stop there….

When I removed those 66,000 posts the size of the table was still showing 425 MBs, but there was now a value in overhead column of the table that had a value of 140 MBs. I had o idea how to get rd of this, so asked again in Twitter, and D’Arcy Norman tweeted me back this:

He was right, optimizing the table brought the 425 Mbs down to a slender 140 MBs, and the overhead value was flushed clean. So this got me thinking, hmmmm, what if I could run a script and optimize every table in every database? I mean this site has been running non-stop for almost three years, and has been a work horse. How about giving UMW Blogs an “oil change”—to use Gowtham’s analogy which works beautifully. So, when I tweeted about that optimization question, Gowtham once again sent me a message, and after I gave him the naming conventions of my 18 databases on UWM Blogs, wham, I had a PHP script to optimize every table in UMW Blogs.

People, are you getting the point here? Gowtham is an Engineering Physics grad, a hell of a photographer too, but he knows his shit. And he was willing to share that will me in all of about a few minutes the first time. But for the optimization script, he actually wrote it up and sent it to me via email. I don;t know how long that took him, but it would have taken me hours and hours of research and learning to figure out I could do it. And hours more to beg someone who knew at UMW to write it for me (if that person existed). Well, this process was a matter of minutes.

And, Gowtham not only sent me the SQL Optimization script, but was more than cool with me sharing it, so here is the code to the script as a txt file.

And here it is copied below sans opening and closing PHP calls.

# PHP script to optimize each table in a given set # of MySQL databases and improve the overall performance. # First written: Gowtham, Mon Feb 27 09:33:01 EST 2006 # Last modified: Gowtham, Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:01:58 -0500


# Connect to the database

# It is expected that you will be able to connect

# to all your databases [listed below] with this

# set of credentials

$host     = 'localhost';

$dbuser   = 'USERNAME';

$dbpasswd = 'PASSWORD';
# The act of connecting to the MySQL server

$connect  = mysql_connect($host, $dbuser, $dbpasswd) or

            die('MySQL Connection Error: ' .

            mysql_errno() . ': ' .

            mysql_error());
# List of databases

$databases = array(

  "umwblogs_wpmu_0",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_1",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_2",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_3",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_4",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_5",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_6",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_7",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_8",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_9",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_a",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_b",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_c",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_d",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_e",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_f",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_global",

  "umwblogs_wpmu_vip1"

 );
# FOREACH_LOOP_DATABASES BEGINS

# Loop through the array, 'databases'

# Each array element will be stored in the variable 'database'

foreach ($databases as $database) {
  # Connect to the database using details specified

  # above - it expects that there is one username-password

  # combination that can connect to all your databases

  mysql_select_db($database, $connect) or

               die('Database Connection Error: ' .

               mysql_errno() . ': ' .

               mysql_error());
  # Select all tables from 'database'

  $sql_q  = "SHOW TABLES FROM $database";

  $result = mysql_query($sql_q) or

            die('Invalid Query: ' .

            mysql_errno() . ': ' .

            mysql_error());
  # WHILE_LOOP_OPTIMIZE BEGINS

  # Loop through the list of tables from 'database'

  while ($table_details = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {

    $table_name = $table_details[0];
    # Print a message to the screen - helps in debugging

    echo "$database :: $table_name \n";
    # SQL query to optimize the table

    $sql_o    = "OPTIMIZE TABLE `$database`.`$table_name`";

    $optimize = mysql_query($sql_o) or

                die('Invalid Query: ' .

                mysql_errno() . ': ' .

                mysql_error());

  }

  # WHILE_LOOP_OPTIMIZE ENDS
}

# FOREACH_LOOP_DATABASES BEGINS

# Close the connection mysql_close($connect);

I put in the drop database sign-in information, uploaded it to UMW Blogs via FTP, and went to the script at http://umwblogs.org/mysql_optimize.php, and a few minutes later all of the tables in all 18 of the databases were optimized.

Is this not awesome, UMW Blogs has gotten the oil change it has been in desparate need of—and I don’t recommend waiting every 4,000 users and blogs, every 2,000 may be wiser. So, thanks to Gowtham, UMW Blogs is purring like a cat, and I really hope it stays that way.

And just to show you I have no shame, something else I saw when the databases were optimizing is that random blogs still have the Spam Karma tables in them, I would think about 500 or 600 blog tables filled with old spam. The tables are labeled wp_blogid#_sk2_logs and wp_blogid#_sk2_spams. For example: wp_21_sk2_logs and wp_21_sk2_spams. So riddle be this Batman of Gowtham, how would you find and drop all tables with _sk2_ in them across 18 databases?

I love the internet, and I can’t thank you enough Gowtham for your selfless support, people like you make this space both fun and wonder-filled.

Moving from Multi-DB to SharDB on WPMu

Reverend — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:54:58 +0000

In the early morning hours yesterday we moved UMW Blogs from multi-db (which is a multi-database setup provided through WPMuDev Premium at a cost) to the ever so free SharDB multi-db setup, and I’m happy to say it worked. We’ve had some “unscheduled downtime” recently at UMW Blogs, and between the ever-growing traffic and a syndication/tags blog that’s all too full with 99,000 posts—it was high time to start cleaning database house. This post will take you through the switch from multi-db to SharDB, which is surprisingly simple. And the following post will be about optimizing a multiple database setup that depends heavily on syndication like UMW Blogs does.

Multi-DB –> SharDB
So, our first step was to move to Ron Rennick’s (of wpmututotials and @wpmuguru fame) SharDB setup because UMW is no longer a subscriber of WPMuDEV Premium, and given upgrades to multi-db are no longer available to us—-we were eager to be rid of it. What’s more, I’m hoping this move to SharDB (accompanied by the database optimization and tags blog clean up) will bring UMW Blogs back to a snappiness we haven’t known for a couple of months now. So here’s to hoping….

When I downloaded SharDB I expected a lot more work than there actually was. The move is rather simple, and save a hiccup or two on my end, it went smooth as silk. The first thing to do is configure the db-settings.php file. UMW Blogs is running on 16 databases (well actually 18, but that is besides the point) on one dedicated server, we don’t have several servers or multiple data centers so I think our setup was rather simple. And while we probably should consider getting another server or two some time soon, as Joss Winn suggested, for right now we’re easy.

[What follows is pretty ugly ]

The UMW Blogs db-settings.php configs look like this:
// If you have multiple datacenters you can come up with your own datacenter // detection logic (php_uname?). This helps ensure the web servers try to // connect to the nearest database servers first, then distant ones. define( 'DATACENTER', '' );


function add_slave($read, $host, $lhost = '', $user = DB_USER, $password = DB_PASSWORD) {

	global $slaves;

	$slaves[] = compact('read', 'host', 'lhost', 'name', 'user', 'password');

}
/* Add your configuration here */
//Use this configuration for a hexidecimal based hash 
//Ex. you have 256 databases that follow the naming convention acct_wpmuXX

//where XX is the hexidecimal hash for the blog DB
// how many characters of hexidecimal hash

$shardb_hash_length = 1;

// what is the prefix of your blog database shards (everything before the hexidecimal hash)

$shardb_prefix = 'umwblogs_wpmu_';

// set a string to be used as an internal identifier for the dataset

$shardb_dataset = 'umwblogs';

// do you want to put your primary blog (blog_id 1) in its own 'home' database?

//$enable_home_db = true;

// how many, if any, VIP databases do you have?

$num_vipdbs = 1;

// add this to set the write master read priority (default 1)

//$shardb_master_read = 99;

// add this if all of your databases are on a local server

$shardb_local_db = true;

// use this function to add a read slave host

//add_slave($read_priority, $hostname, $local_hostname, $user, $password); 
// instructions for adding vip blogs at the bottom of this confg filei

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

I wasn’t entirely certain about all the details in the config file, so before I did the upgrade I posted a few questions on the WPMu Forums here, and Ron himself bailed me (thanks Ron!). Once I had the db-settings file squared away I uploaded it to the main directory of UMW Blogs. After that, I added two lines to the wp-config.php file:

//SharDB Settings
define(‘WPMU’, ‘1′);
require_once(‘db-settings.php’);

And finally, I uploaded the dp.php file to the wp-content directory, and the shardb-admin.php file to the mu-plugins directory. (Keep in mind I had already deleted the db-config.php and db.php files that were running multi-db setup.)

Once I had everything up, I went to the homepage of UMW Blogs and got this error:

Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_domain_mapping’ (global_r)Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_site’ (global_r)Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_site’ (global_r)Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_site’ (global_r)Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_site’ (global_r)Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_umwblogs’ while querying table ‘wp_site’ (global_r)No WPMU site defined on this host. If you are the owner of this site, please check Debugging WPMU for further assistance.

Turns out, multi-db does not require you to change the database name in the wp-config for the mutliple databases. so our database settings were still set to the original single database we started UMW Blogs on: umwblogs_umwblogs. Once I figure this out, I changed the db_name setting to point to our global database:
define('DB_NAME', 'umwblogs_wpmu_global');

Now this aneming convention is particualr to our setup, we have our tables named umwblogs_wpmu_global, umwblogs_wpmu_0, umwblogs_wpmu_1, umwblogs_wpmu_2, etc., up through 9, and then a through f. So our database names look like this:

umwblogs_wpmu_global
umwblogs_wpmu_0
umwblogs_wpmu_1
umwblogs_wpmu_2
umwblogs_wpmu_3
umwblogs_wpmu_4
umwblogs_wpmu_5
umwblogs_wpmu_6
umwblogs_wpmu_7
umwblogs_wpmu_8
umwblogs_wpmu_9
umwblogs_wpmu_a
umwblogs_wpmu_b
umwblogs_wpmu_c
umwblogs_wpmu_d
umwblogs_wpmu_e
umwblogs_wpmu_f
umwblogs_wpmu_vip1

Once I changed the db_name setting in wp-config, SharDB seemed to work fine on every other blog but the main blog: umwblogs.org. After a second of panic, I realized that SharDB was looking for the home blog (or Blog ID 1) in the database _wpmu_c, but I had it in the wpmu_vip1 database. Once I exported the tables from the wpmu_vip1 database into the wpmu_c database, everything worked perfectly. Put the question for me remains, why didn’t SharDB pick up the vip1 database? I had it noted in my db-settings file as follows:

// VIP DB's if ($enable_home_db === true) { add_vip_blog(1,'vip1'); // home blog }

Additionally, when I was doing something in the backend, I came across this error:

Connected to localhost:3306 but unable to select database ‘umwblogs_wpmu_global’ while querying table ‘wp_sitemeta’ (global_w)

I can’t for the life of me remember where I was precisely now, but I’m sure I’ll find it again soon. I was wondering if this might have something to do with a number of global tables we added to the db-config.php file for getting BuddyPress to work with multi-db? Not sure here, kind of fishing for some help, but I know with multi-db we had issues adding global tables for BuddyPress to the global database (same goes for the domain mapping plugin table), and one way to ensure those tables were created in the global database was through the following list of code I stole from D’Arcy, and he breaks the whole thing down better than I ever could here. Now I imagine SharDB doesn;t have this issue, but just wanted to get a sense if anyone else playing with the move from MultiDb to SharDB had any ideas.

// Usage: add_global_table(TABLE_NAME)
// EX: add_global_table(’something’);
add_global_table(‘umwblogs_wpmu_global’);
// BuddyPress
add_global_table(‘bp_activity_sitewide’);
add_global_table(‘bp_activity_user_activity’);
add_global_table(‘bp_activity_user_activity_cached’);
add_global_table(‘bp_friends’);
add_global_table(‘bp_groups’);
add_global_table(‘bp_groups_groupmeta’);
add_global_table(‘bp_groups_members’);
add_global_table(‘bp_groups_wire’);
add_global_table(‘bp_messages_messages’);
add_global_table(‘bp_messages_notices’);
add_global_table(‘bp_messages_recipients’);
add_global_table(‘bp_messages_threads’);
add_global_table(‘bp_notifications’);
add_global_table(‘bp_user_blogs’);
add_global_table(‘bp_user_blogs_blogmeta’);
add_global_table(‘bp_user_blogs_comments’);
add_global_table(‘bp_user_blogs_posts’);
add_global_table(‘bp_xprofile_data’);
add_global_table(‘bp_xprofile_fields’);
add_global_table(‘bp_xprofile_groups’);
add_global_table(‘bp_xprofile_wire’);
add_global_table(‘wp_domain_mapping’);

Other than that SharDB is up and running on UMW Blogs, an given it may be one of the most unstable WPMu sites in the world give we have over 100 plugins and 130 themes, it has been solid as a rock thus far, so fine work Ron.. But to make sure we don’t push our luck too much, now it’s time for the database optimization drill, post forthcoming.

SharDB update

Ron — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:07:51 +0000

I updated SharDB (Download) for WordPress MU 2.9.1.1 and added support for the comment meta table.

December 29, 2009 — Scaling WordPress MU with multiple databases (29)
September 24, 2009 — Changing the domain (16)
January 21, 2010 — Testers, start your engines (6)
January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: database, multiple, shard, wordpressmu, wpmu

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Testers, start your engines

andrea — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:51:19 +0000

The bulk of the merge has been done in WordPress core. At least with regards to moving over the files. Now the fun part begins: bug gardening, testing and tweaking.

Here’s what you can do to help not only the dev team and others, but also yourself:

- set up a local install of WPMU
- import some data, plugins & themes from your current setup
(in other words, create a working copy somewhere)

Now, upgrade it to the latest WordPress trunk. The zip is located at the bottom of this page. To manually upgrade, just overwrite the MU files with the files located in the zip.

When you find bugs, please file them over at the WordPress trac, and pick the term multisite in the component field dropdown, so the other devs know is it MU related. Some terminology is changing, so this refers to the multiple blog capabilities. Your login to file a ticket is the same as your forum username and password.

Did you get the part where I said to do this on a dev version and not a live site? Good.

January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)
January 5, 2010 — The merge begins (21)
December 27, 2009 — Merge news and Buddypress awesomeness (7)
December 9, 2009 — Twitter Digest (4)

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Post tags: development, merge, trac, trunk, wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu

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Important Links Widget plugin for WordPress

dnorman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:38:39 +0000

In setting up WPMU sites for classes, I often wind up using the Text widget to add a bunch of important links – login, Dashboard, Add Post, Add Page, etc… to each site. Manually. I finally decided to save some time and just write a plugin that provides a generic widget to give the links on any site that uses it.

If you’re not logged in, it provides a link to login:

If you are logged in, it gives you some handy links:

I’ll eventually add a way to customize the widget (display Add Page? display Add Post? something else?) but for now, it’s an easy fire-and-forget widget for the most common links used by people in a course blogging site.

Get your copy over at the WordPress plugin repository: Important Links Widget

Teambox — Yammer or Google Wave alternative?

Randy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:08:02 +0000

Yammer use took off in our workplace late last year, but since everyone has returned from the Christmas break interest seems to have dropped off somewhat. Maybe something like TeamBox, with its richer toolset, might be more attractive. Teambox organizes communication around projects. Users are members of projects, and a project has communication divided into conversations, task lists, pages and files. The concept seems to have similarities with Google Wave, but at first glance the user interface seems a lot more familiar. And TeamBox is open source allowing installation on your own server — so you can own the data. And can customize the app (built with Ruby on Rails). Now I just need a project to test it with…

Community: Teambox is a public open-source project.
Installing:If you want to run your own server with Teambox, some knowledge of Ruby on Rails and UNIX is very recommended.

Blog Archive » The quiet majority in collaborative communities

Message traffic on our company Yammer network is following the classic 80-20 principle, although in our case it is closer to 85-15.

Twitter for Teams: Teambox Launches Web-Based Collaboration Tool

The Twitter-like UX is familiar and fast, and the interface seems simultaneously lightweight and robust. For project management and team collaboration – including distributed teams – we can see this application going over very well.

Beauty in design

Randy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:06:00 +0000

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. Fuller, R. Buckminster (from QuotationsBook)

I came across this quotation in a lovely little gardening book (Eat More Dirt…) and it just rings so true.

End of free for NYT?

Randy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:44:16 +0000

Starting sometime early next year the New York Times will start charging for content on its web site. Is this the start of a new internet business model, or the last gasp of a dying industry? Times will tell (pun intended). But it seems to me that they are on the right track. The charge will only affect more active site visitors, who presumably see value in the content and would be willing to pay for that. Occasional site visitors won’t need to pay. Makes sense, but how do you track this? Will those casual visitors still need to log-in somehow? Enter your email here? Or maybe limit how many articles can be viewed from an IP address in a day? It will be interesting to see how they pull this off without scaring users away.

New York Times to Charge Frequent Readers of Web Site – NYTimes.com

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

New WPMU plugin: Shared Blogroll

Boone Gorges — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:26:06 +0000

I just wrote a widget that lets a blog admin pull a link category from any blog on the same WPMU installation. It is pretty much the bomb, and you are going to love using it so much that you may have to take downers in order to get yourself under control.

Check it out.

Side note: I’m going to start creating separate pages (as opposed to posts) for each of my software releases. That way all comments/support regarding a given plugin will be in the same place, with a pretty URL. That’s why I’m turning off comments on this post.

Blog-specific email plugin for WPMU users

Boone Gorges — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:45:20 +0000

A quick WPMU hack that I think will help a lot of people using an installation of WPMU for multiple classes.

The plugin Email Users by Vincent Prat allows blog authors/admins to email users in two different ways: 1) by emailing a group of users (such as those corresponding a particular role on your blog), or 2) by emailing individual users. The problem, though, is that this second option brings up a list of every single user on the installation of WPMU. This can be a bit of a pain for the normal blog user, as teachers or students in a class would probably only want to see a list of those people who are in the class, or on the blog.

Here’s a hack that will make the Email Users plugin show list only the members of the current blog for everyone except for the site admin:

In the main plugin file (email-users.php), find the function mailusers_get_users. It should start around line 404.

Look for the lines of code (414-417 in my version) that define the variable $users in the first conditional clause:

$users = $wpdb->get_results(
			  "SELECT id, user_email, display_name "
			. "FROM $wpdb->users "
			. $additional_sql_filter );

Replace that line with the following code:

if ( is_site_admin() ) {
			$users = $wpdb->get_results(
			  "SELECT id, user_email, display_name "
			. "FROM $wpdb->users "
			. $additional_sql_filter );
		} else {
			$wp_user_search = new WP_User_Search('', '', '');
			$user_list = $wp_user_search->get_results();
			$user_array = join(',', $user_list);
			$users = $wpdb->get_results(
			  "SELECT id, user_email, display_name "
			. "FROM $wpdb->users "
			. "WHERE id IN ( $user_array ) " );
		}

Here’s the use case I envision. The instructor for a class places the Add User Sidebar Widget (by my boys at UBC’s OLT!) in the sidebar of his or her blog. As part of the first assignment of the semester, the instructor asks each student to register for an account, and click the “Add Me” button on the instructor’s blog. That will automatically populate the email list above.

File this tip under “who needs Blackboard?”.

Did the internet take a wrong turn?

Randy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:13:41 +0000

I recently read Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. It was a gift, and while I hadn’t heard anything about the book, it looked promising. Lanier is an early internet pioneer counting early work with virtual reality (and coining the term itself) among his accomplishments. And the basic premise of the book — essentially a contrarian view of the current state of internet culture — is interesting. A regular practice of challenging common assumptions and examining choices made along the way is healthy. Unfortunately Mr. Lanier’s arguments are poorly supported, and often based on inconsequential or incorrect assumptions. I’m not going to recap his whole argument here — check out the linked articles instead. But here are a couple of points inspired by ideas exposed in the book:

The hive mind/crowdsourcing vs. the individual: Does aggregation of content occur to the detriment of individual effort? Are we starting to fall victim to group think passed on through the Twitters and YouTubes? That’s one way of looking at it. However my experience is that the Internet today offers more opportunities for individual content to find an audience than ever before — you’re reading this, right?
Is the free economy hurting indvidual artists, killing the profession of content creation, and lowering our culture to its lowest common denominator? If you’re in the newspaper, colllege textbook, sheet music or music distribution businesses you’re sure feeling a big pinch. Yes there is a shift going on, there have been casualties, and it is not clear where this is going. But there is no returning to the pre-internet golden days. And new business models will evolve — people are still willing to pay money for content and services that they value — the trick is to figure out what those are.

Perhaps the bigger question is whether there is anything to really worry about. In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, How America Can Rise Again raises the point the our country through its history regularly sees doom and gloom just around the next corner in the midst of abundance. Thomas Jefferson was as sure the country was headed to hell as today’s Fox news pundits. With the abundant flows of information, outlets for individual expression and rising opportunities for social interaction is there any fundamental problem with the Internet? Sure there is room for improvement and contrarian views are useful in exploring how these further.

Book Review: The Computer That Ate the World – Newsweek.com

Today, the futurist Jaron Lanier warns in his persuasive new manifesto, You Are Not a Gadget, the danger is less that our network of machine intelligence will fail than that it will endure—that Web culture, and its chiliastic faith in the superior wisdom of computers, will triumph.

Findings – Jaron Lanier Is Rethinking the Open Nature of the Internet – NYTimes.com

He argues that old — and bad — digital systems tend to get locked in place because it’s too difficult and expensive for everyone to switch to a new one. ..It can sound plausible enough in theory — particularly if your Windows computer has just crashed. In practice, though, better products win out, according to the economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis.

Open Learning vs. the CMS

Randy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:50:04 +0000

Jon Mott and David Wiley have posted their paper on Open learning. Well done, nicely argued, with good supporting references. Bravo! Their basic point is traditional Content Management Systems — i.e. Sakai, Blackboard — reinforce the the management side of teaching to the detriment to the innovative, student-centered, learning side of the equation. And while I agree with much of their argument, I’ve come to realize that this approach also misses some important points:

First there is a crucial different between informal learning — like watching openMIT course — and actually paying for classes at MIT. The crucial difference is MIT teaches their students but also certifies that they’ve met certain educational standards. And this certification requires meeting standards defined by accreditation bodies. In order to meet these requirements defined standards must be measured. These measures happen at a per-class, per-semester basis. Ideal? No. But convenient and efficient from the accreditation measurement requirement? Yes.
Second. OK, so course management systems are mostly used by faculty to facilitate classroom management — distributing course materials, grading, announcements, emails. But maybe the use of technology to handle these frees up the faculty member to be more creative in class. Let’s remember that innovative teaching doesn’t NEED to utilize technology — there is still room for creativity with person-to-person, faculty-to-student transmission.
Third, many faculty are already utilizing new technologies outside of the CMS. Facebook, twitter, blogging — all have found places inside better classrooms as a faculty member finds meet their educational objectives. Why not let faculty members take advantage of whatever extra-university technologies best meet their needs. If we formalize those resources, do we risk taking out the spontaneity? And why assume just because the CMS doesn’t look innovative, that the classroom experience isn’t?
There is also a bit of a conflict between a current student’s learning experiences, and the learning for those who come after them. For instance last spring I attended a systems thinking workshop where the class did the beer game. If before the class we’d read a former student’s experiences, and learned the tricks of the game, the experience of participating in it would have been ruined. Working in education is both fun and frustrating because we watch each new group of students make the same mistakes and discoveries over and over again. The fact that current CMS’ lock out and even delete past learning experiences might actually be a good thing. And this activity doesn’t negate the learning that has occurred, it just removed the digital record that it occurred.

Mott and Wiley make many excellent points, and the paper is well worth reading. But the reality of the complex environment that education inhabits is that there are no easy answers. Conflicting forces pull in many directions. But regular discussion and the questioning of current, accepted practices is one of the best ways to advance our profession.

Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network | in education

The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process.

MTA comes to its senses and releases schedule data to developers

Randy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:22:40 +0000

Some public agencies understand that their data is our data — some public, or quasi-public agencies has taken a different tack. The New York Mass Transit Authority at one point maintained that transit schedules were copyrighted — nice to see they’ve come to a more reasonable attitude. Whatever their misgivings, this will make their service, and customer relations/communication better.

MTA Will Allow App Developers To Access Transit Data – Gothamist

It’s not all doom-and-gloom for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA has released its route and schedule information, potentially allowing developers to create apps with accurate subway, commuter train, and bus timetables without facing as much of a risk of legal action from the agency.

WPMU trac now read-only

andrea — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:57:29 +0000

The trac for MU is now closed and all remaining tickets will be moved over to WP trac. source

I know there’s a couple bugs in the latest release: people are working on it.

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August 19, 2007 — Choosing a host (4)

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

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Proposed timeline

andrea — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:37:27 +0000

Jane have given a summary over on the Wordress Dev blog for the general timeline of the next release. Which is, as you know, 3.0.

And though it looks pretty straightforward, there’s tons of lines of code to sift through and a whole pile of trac tickets. You guys know the drill.

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2.9.1 released, last before merge

andrea — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:42:21 +0000

It’s officially out: WPMU 2.9.1. As Donncha says, this will likely be the last release before 3.0 and the merge.

PLEASE see the info about adding the new commentsmeta table.

(Wow, what a crazy ride. )

January 21, 2010 — Testers, start your engines (6)
January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)
January 5, 2010 — The merge begins (21)
December 27, 2009 — Merge news and Buddypress awesomeness (7)
December 9, 2009 — Twitter Digest (4)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2.9.1, merge, new release, wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu

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The invisible hand in community formation

Randy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:09:13 +0000

If you have to join, it’s not a community, it’s a group – or so says Stephen Downes. This rings so true. The frustration in a business setting is people need to plan, need to have defined outcomes, and the process of an evolving, emergent, organic community is completely foreign. It is so unplanned, indeterminate — who is in charge? So we create groups, make people join, and call them communities. How business 2.0 of us. Unfortunately the real growth of community is a lot messier — and ultimately more powerful and self-sustaining than our carefully planned groups.

Invisible hand – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In economics, the invisible hand, also known as the invisible hand of the market, the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace,[1] is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For Smith, the invisible hand was created by the conjunction of the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand, which he noted as being capable of allocating resources in society.[2] This is the founding justification for the laissez-faire economic philosophy.[3]

Co-authors in a WordPress post

Randy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:51:39 +0000

Client asks “can I list multiple authors on an article in our CMS?” After a quick search and a little playing around I could give my standard WordPress answer “it turns out there is a plug-in for that!” The Co-Authors Plus plug-in nicely met our needs. We list both the author’s display name and the Biographical Description in the author tag line with the meta information at the head of the post. And based on the suggestions in the plug-in’s readme.txt file I created the following function to generate the display:

The function checks to make sure the plug-in exists, and if not reverts to the standard WordPress author functions. You can see what it looks like here. Nice when things work! Thanks to Mohammad Jangda for a great plug-in.

WordPress › Co-Authors Plus « WordPress Plugins

Allows multiple authors to be assigned to a Post or Page via the search-as-you-type inputs. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s posts page and feed. New template tags allow listing of co-authors. Editors and Administrators may assign co-authors to a post. Additionally, co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is usual).

A matter of perspective: company and client views of a service

Randy — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:01:48 +0000

So you decide to take a train into the city from your local commuter station. You consult the schedule and see a 7:30am train listed. You arrive at the station at 7:25 where a crowd of some 30 people wait on the platform. A few minutes later, as the train pulls into the station and stops, you glance at your watch again — it reads 7:28. You think to yourself “Huh, that’s funny the:

train is a two minutes early
train is a minute late
guy in front of me has toilet paper stuck to his shoe

Which is correct? As this exact situation unfolded last week one of a group of commuters huddled together for warmth commented “see I told you the trains were running early” to which another replied “yes I noticed it to.” I pointed out that in fact the train was supposed to leave the station at 7:30 and so was actually running late, but I don’t think they believed me ( “see I told you that guy was creepy”). I did double check with someone in the transportation department and confirmed that the station times are for train departures except for the last stop, which is an arrival time. But my point here is not to inform the world on how to read a train schedule, but rather to ponder who is actually correct? Is the rider’s reading of the time as an arrival at the platform valid — or is the train operator correct to expect everyone to view these as departure times — and why does this disconnect exist?

To the train operator my 7:30 am train is train #1641. To me and the rest of my fellow commuters it is the 7:30am train. To the riders boarding at the Madison station it is the 7:35 train, at Guilford the 7:41, etc. We define the train from our personal perspectives — few people actually think of it as, or even know that it really is #1641. Different terminology gives rise to variations in meaning and expectation. How does each party measure success? The train operator needs to arrive at the last station on time (I wish!) making the interim station departures the most critical , and this is what they measure. Riders need to be on the platform before the train arrives and so this is the event they measure (as described in the story above.) We each approach the event — boarding the train — from different perspectives, use different terms (7:30 train vs. #1641), and place value on different aspects of the service (arrival vs. departure.) We both read the same schedule, but gather different interpretations (the train is early or the train is late) from it based on our different approaches.

How often in our own businesses do we mis-serve and mis-communicate with our customers from exactly this type of disconnect? We think all constituents see the service the way we do, and that our intentions for that service, and delivery of that service are clear. Are we correct? I think not. Maybe a good new year’s resolution is to spend some time walking in the customer/client shoes, and look at things from a fresh perspective. In my train example customers were dissatisfied with the service because their expectations (a 7:30 arrival) were not met. Technically they were wrong, but does that really matter if the goal is to meet, or even exceed customer expectations? Isn’t the customer always right?

Shore Line East Eastbound Weekday Schedule

Shore Line East operates seven days a week, running a weekend & holiday schedule on:
Saturdays & Sundays, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

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