Cole W. Camplese

Switching

So I am going to try and pull the trigger on (what I consider) a huge blog move this Holiday weekend.  I have decided to bail on my self hosted WordPress space to move to TypePad.  I have no idea how to really do this for several reasons ... the first is that I would like to point my domain at TypePad.  This isn't the bad part, its that I have at least 6 years of digital media sitting on my existing host that will somehow need to just work when I get the whole import and domain stuff worked out -- no idea how to do the redirects or updates to where it will live post move.  Then there are all the internal links that aren't relative ... jeez, the notion of a simple export/import doesn't look so realistic.  I would be more than happy to take any help offered and would be willing to pay someone for a little assistance.  Any advice for me?

This Blogging Stuff is Slow

I am really starting to wonder what I am doing hosting my own WordPress install ... I used to absolutely love tweaking things, trying out new plugins, remixing themes, and all the other things that go along with running your own install. But times have changed and I find myself more times that not fighting against my own installation. On top of that, I am really struggling with the lackluster performance and limited feature set. I know some of it is my dirt cheap shared hosting service, but even this process, you know writing in this editor just seems so outmoded to me.

The rise of one button publishing and drop dead simple services is taking its toll on my patience for the WordPress model. Every time I play with new services like Tumblr and Posterous I notice just how lame my own environment is for quickly posting and capturing thoughts, links, pictures, and just about everything else. I hate to say it, but I don't like having to log into my dashboard and write -- it feels like using a course management system. What I hate is that I come across something as I am in my normal workflow that inspires me to collect and share it. With my WP environment that means opening a new tab, going to my blog, logging in, copying/pasting a URL, grabbing a quote from the original article, writing, and then publishing. That is a lot of stuff to do and it reminds me of the world we put students in with our learning spaces -- read content, log into CMS, find you course, switch to a discussion forum, write your thoughts, save, then go back to your work. That is all a bit insane and it kills flow.

I have the quickpost bookmarklet for WP in my browser bar, but it takes so long to load up and just lacks the functionality that I've come to expect by using Blogs at PSU, TypePad, Tumblr, or Posterous. Those are all infinitely smarter and faster. I now more than ever need an environment that works the way I do and I have to say I am feeling like WP has fallen behind my needs. I'm sure it works perfectly for others so I'm looking for a blogging platform holy war, I'm just saying its model is dead to me.

Now, what to do? I have years worth of data here and it is really cheap -- and I know I am getting what I pay for. I'd like to keep my domain, but I am done with managing my own environment. I'm contemplating a major switch to a new service. Right now, TypePad is the leading choice ... it is a killer hosted solution that is fast, reliable, can publish to my own space, and has all the major features of the new kids on the block (killer email posting, one button publishing, and a community). The thing I want to say is that I am concerned with switching is that these new environments are coming to market so quickly and they can come and go. I need to be able to get my data in and out quickly and easily. Even if the platform space itself becomes commoditized, my content and publishing habits are not.

Getting from here to there is daunting, but I think I need to jump. Advice?

Looking for Some WP Help

So after a couple of years of not being happy on my host and wanting to shut down the current domain I blog from (http://camplesegroup.com), I am working to make the leap. The plan is to move this blog to another domain I have on a different host, colecamplese.com. I toyed with switching platforms to MT, but at the end of the day I think WP is the better choice for my personal needs. I am however having a hell of a time making progress on moving forward.

Here are the dilemmas ... any help/advice/guidance would be greatly appreciated:

• My database is huge! Doing a raw SQL dump works every now and then, but the new host will not allow the DB that size ... and to tell you the truth, I'd like to start over. When I go through the tables there is so much stuff in there that I am guessing causes some of my site's performance issues. I'd prefer not to do the standard database export and inset on the other end.


• The way I'd really like to do this is via the built in XML export. I like the idea of only dealing with the posts, comments, and assets in that way. I am able to sort of make that work, but not quite. When I do an export, I do not get all of my posts. It stops giving them to me from sometime back in August. It is driving me crazy -- I have posted a couple of times to the WP forums at wordpress.org, but I haven't gotten any help there. Does anyone know what the story is with the XML export and why it might be doing this? Anyone at all have any advice for me?

The Intranet -- Gee, That ' s Exciting

That seems to be the general reaction I get from people when I start talking Intranets. Back in the day we didn't really think about how we worked to use the web to influence what was going on inside an organization -- we were so damn busy just trying to build and launch some sort of externally facing site. I recall our first Intranet at Cogence Media back in 1996 ... it was an old Apple FileServer that we discovered we could deep link into via a browser. The funny thing was that we didn't do this deep linking via web pages, we did it from a bunch of individual Word documents that we kept on the shared space of the file server. I embarrassed to say that I was part of the web team and it just didn't dawn on us to use real web pages to manage the knowledge of the organization. But when I really step back and think about it, we were doing the best we could with the tools of the day -- sort of.

The last couple of years that has all changed though -- especially for me. I have become just as interested in the conversations that go on inside an organization as the ones that are directed at customers, readers, audiences, or whatever else you want to call the people you are speaking to on the outside. The emergence of web 2.0, especially in the last year or so has given rise to many new ideas I am banging around in my head related to increasing opportunities for internal dialog. I have started reading more and more about the notion of Enterprise 2.0 (mainly from Andrea McAfee from Harvard) and I have to say it seems to be a perfect blend of my interests in communication technologies, organizations, and people. One of Dr. MacAffe's posts that I have gotten a ton of mileage out of is a simple profile of one organization's use of MediaWiki as a very powerful Intranet tools et. In it, he profiles this organization and the way they are using this site as a hub to both changing internal and external communication. To me it is a fascinating, yet simple study in how to get organizations to pay attention to important internal conversations.

One of the things I discovered when coming to ETS 21 months ago is the importance of an online place for sharing organizational information. This stuff takes the form of posts, stories, wiki pages, travel reports, and all the things that make a medium to large sized work-group go. What I found is that without some sort of hub at the center, keeping up on it all is just too difficult. Once we jumped the hurdle of simply providing a platform and the encouragement for people to participate as a part of the organizational story, we have started to think about how to better organize it all.

I have been working with one of my colleague here at ETS to rethink our Intranet space ... let me say that I feel our local Intranet (it supports about 100 people within Teaching and Learning with Technology) is successful at helping us all share information in a somewhat organized way. We still struggle with architecture, but we are getting better at it. We are also getting better at bringing content from outside sources in ... currently there are dozens of staff who are blogging, tagging links in del.icio.us, and photos in Flickr that are relevant to what we do and we are working on. The goal is to make all that "meta-content" seamlessly integrate with our internal content. It has been fun and an interesting little project. Just today I did a wire frame to share my thoughts on how we could mix the internal with the external to provide access to dynamic and organizationally important content in one location. As it comes to life, I'll share more of it. Now that people are writing as much as they are around here I am struck with the need to have greater access to it all.

At any rate, the real reason I am posting is a cry for help ... I have recently been asked to help with creating a new Intranet strategy for my parent organization here at PSU -- Information Technology Services (ITS). ITS at Penn State is a very large and diverse organization that takes residence in no less than a dozen buildings on campus. This creates all sorts of challenges as it relates to sharing information in an efficient and effect manner. We do a good job, but it is high-touch and requires a ton of work. With that said, we are just too big to get together as much as we should and now that many of us are blogging the discoverablility of content is very low. One thing I would love to learn more about from all of you is what type of Intranets are you using within your organizations? How are you leveraging your understanding of information technology, people, communities, and web 2.0 to create new opportunities for computer mediated communication? I'd like to know more and I'd like to find ways to talk with you and explore what you are thinking and how you feel it is impacting the organization. Any takers?

A WordPress/Host Plea for Help

I keep coming to my blog seeing the following error (I changed the username myself):

WordPress database error: [User 'username' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 50000)]

I know my host, StartLogic restricts the number of MySQL calls in an hour to 50,000 ... can I actually be hitting that limit or are there other causes? The other blogs and tools I have installed here at the camplesegroup.com domain continue to run even when this blog goes down. My host tells me I need to go to a dedicated server package, but I really don't get that much traffic -- during the last 8 months, according google analytics, my highest traffic month was November with around 5,000 unique visits ... that is when this problem started BTW. Can anyone help me with decoding this? If I do need to change plans/hosts does anyone have a recommendation? If it doesn't seem like I should need to, does anyone have any advice for me?

I Thought There Would Be More ...

Hmm ... maybe it is true. Maybe only 2-3 people actually show up here. Maybe it is a tired question ... I don't know. I thought I'd get more response to the question about blogging at a big University. I thought more edu-bloggers would have something novel to say to help move the thinking forward. Chris dropped the social notion on me, but I am looking for more insight before the next big PSU Blogger meeting. Any help?