Maybe I am making this up, but I think it is only a matter of time before thoughts are appropriately republished.  It’s like fashion.  This year’s hip style was trendy in one form or another years ago.  The style was literally worn out, then put on a shelf until someone came along and decided to put a form of those super “new” pants back on.  Like the clothes we wear (the music we listen to, the TV we watch), thoughts become fresh and new if enough time passes. You may have noticed this phenomenon recently when blog and podcast conversations turned to topics like whether or not developers should learn C or whether or not developers should still be using stored procedures.  

There’s also plenty of really great content which didn’t get enough looks the first time around, didn’t rank high in Google and, as far as I am concerned, is basically lost for ever.  Earlier today, for example, I was trying to track down some information. I knew the blog and the general topic. Actually, I remembered specific text but I still couldn’t find the post in the sea of information.  Lost forever. One of the reasons good content gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that there is very literally too much information available to us. It is information overload thanks to all of the non-stop blogging/Twittering/video-making/podcasting/book-writing folks in the tech community.

Again, I believe every blogger aspires to publish original content.  I know I have always been concerned with writing about things which have already been said, but does this attitude make sense considering how much information deserves more attention or even a second chance?  Having only started to read/write blog posts about two years ago, I, for one, have missed a lot and I sure am thankful that good content tends to echoes since most of the online debates are news to me.  Everything is cyclical and the good topics are noteworthy each time around.  Do you think good information bears repeating? 

I’m going to wrap with three unoriginal thoughts:

1. A Suggestion: To all of the folks contributing to the information overload, get back to work! And by “work,” I mean your real jobs. I can’t keep up with you. Can anybody?
2. A Recommendation:  The stackoverflow podcast is excellent.  It is a great, hardly-ever-on-topic, unscripted, one-hour, weekly dialogue between two industry enthusiasts, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, about their new stackoverflow.com endeavor.  It’s truly enjoyable.  You will laugh.  You will cry.  You should listen in. 
3. A Quick Story: I listened to Stackoverflow podcast #7 last night.  This was a delinquent listen as it was recorded on 5/27.  Part of the discussion revolved around OpenID which prompted Joel to play the role of a future stackoverflow user and setup an account.  The registration process was easy although Joel struggled to interpret the characters displayed in the MyOpenID CAPTCHA. He went as far as to comment about the CAPTCHA audio display.  So, I reviewed my archived posts this morning and I wrote about that exact topic on 6/10.  Hearing the words coming out of Joel’s mouth last night made my stomach sink as I technically posted unoriginal content about two weeks after it was presented in the podcast.  By no means am I saying the CAPTCHA observations are really great topics, but I guess I am still concerned with writing about things which have already been said.  If this post speaks to anyone, I hope it is me.

Yesterday, I revisited the page and came up with the following examples. I don’t think these samples are THAT bad, but can you decipher any of characters strings with 100% confidence? I doubt anyone can and I think this feat is well-known to be impossible.

Have a look at all the help one gets. For one, the “8 character” hint helps a lot. And if you are still stumped, a new CAPTCHA can be requested until one becomes answerable. And if that fails, take a whack at the audio version in order to validate being human.

Coding Horror had a nice write up on CAPTCHA Effectiveness a while back. The claim was that even the most basic, most ineffective form of CAPTCHA, “naive CAPTCHA” where the CAPTCHA term is the same every single time, stops 99.9% of content span.

Granted, these statements were written before Coding Horror had 103K subscribers. I suspect this was well before Coding Horror needed to be overly concerned with telling computers and humans apart, but I think the sentiment that CAPTCHA doesn’t need to overly inconvenience the user to be highly effective still applies.

I am not opposed to extreme CAPTCHA — especially when hints are provided — but the extra clicks and guesses bugs me enough to go into a useless rant about Y’s, I’s and J’s…

Over the past few months, I shifted directions. I left a 60+ hour/week lead/management consulting gig and have since taken on a full-time developer position.  What does this mean?  Well, it means I now spend roughly 40 hours each week writing code rather than watching over folks who write code. In other words, now I’m sharing in the fun which is something I haven’t done in years.  With any luck, I’m still good at it.  Having fun, that is.

Now, I didn’t jump into the fun right away.  After leaving my last contract, I took a sabbatical of sorts.  I worked out, ate well, drank beer at lunch and more than occasionally sat by the pool and read lots and lots. I didn’t only read technical things though having not been on the interviewee-side of an interview in quite some time, I found myself shying away from fiction.

Since I am re-learning a bit, I suspect the posts to come won’t be today’s news.  In the not-too-distant past, I was overly concerned with posting something which was already said or (even worse) something which made me seem out of the loop. Well, I’ve since abandoned that idea — probably at the pool. With any luck, I will continue to write about things which make you feel smarter. 

Thanks for waiting…

Well, when it came right down to it, Jon provided a list of reasons why he wasn’t blogging as consistently as he would have liked.  Rather than offering only excuses, he offered solutions or a better way of viewing the situation.  Jon did a nice job with the post.  For those of you who have been wanting to write more but haven’t, this is a good read for you. 

On a similar note, I am a firm believer in being the dumbest person in the room.  When it comes to management/leadership, only good things come from surrounding yourself with exceptional people — especially people who are smarter and more talented than you.  This can sometimes feel uncomfortable, but there’s something inherently good and responsible about managing and leading this way.  I may have provided insight into my overall attitude a while back when I encouraged readers to subscribe to my blog in order to feel smarter.  Guaranteed. 

Best of luck to Jon on his three-posts-a-week resolution.

Since June of last year, I’ve helped setup four blogs for families with newborns.  My son’s blog, which is as old as he, has been online for 7 months.  You might say that I enjoy updating his blog more than Johnnycoder.com.  You might say it is because his blog gets a greater and more enthusiastic response.   OR it’s the best way a techie dad can show off his son to family and friends all over the country all of the time.  It’s the best.

To all the blogging dads and dads-to-be out there, do yourself and your kid a favor and give them something to fight with their friends about.  This is how I did it.

I came across several articles of interest, but I found one post particularly apropos.   It was about beating RIO (RSS Information Overload).  Here are the highlights:

1. Create an “Pending Review” folder and move all such feeds in that folder. Every weekend, clean the folder by deleting feeds that do not interest you anymore. The cycle continues every week.

2. Create a “Favorites” folder.  This folder will contain all feeds that you just can’t afford to miss.  Review this folder whenever you have a spare second.

3. Most aggregators sort feed by the feed title.  Use this to your advantage and rename your feed titles to include a numeric rank.  For example, 01 – My Favorite Feed, 02 – My Second Favorite Feed, …, 90 – JohnnyCoder. This ensures that your favorite feeds are featured on top of the list and well before JohnnyCoder.  [Example taken from the author's ranked list.]

My fingers are crossed that these techniques will help me keep up with my ever-growing feedlist.  What do you do to battle RIO?

Though I’m sure I would have had a lot of fun using the Google Sitemap Generator Python scripts recommended by Google Webmaster Tools, I opted to go with yet another WordPress Plugin instead. 

Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 was a single file download and a single click installation.  There’s a beta release of the next version available, but I stuck with version 2.

Though the plugin pings Google and let’s them know about the new sitemap.xml file, I still visited Google Webmaster Tools and set things up manually as well.

When it comes to excepts, there is some truth to the above statement.  If you want to drive traffic to your site for the sake of advertisement revenue then teasers do make sense.  To be perfectly honest, however, I’m not completely sure this strategy works since we’re talking about current subscribers (not individuals stumbling on across your site in search of something) so they aren’t likely to casually click on your ads.  Knowing this, if you are committed to providing good content (the key to maintaining subscriptions), I can’t find any fault in this excerpts-to-generate-revenue approach.  After all, I have ads on my site and I wouldn’t mind if they were clicked a little more often.  But money may not be the only motivator for using excerpts to get people to your site.  You may simply believe that your feed isn’t all that you have to offer your readers.  For example, related posts, related links, photos, and much, much more maybe be found on your site and only if readers visit will they benefit.  Or maybe you think that nice people use excerpts.  It is conceivable that some readers will skim through excerpts and only dig into posts which seem worth while.  Hence, teasers acts as time savers and a convenience to some.  Finally, there’s the idea that excerpts require shorter download times, but I doubt this is really a factor for most subscribers.  Of course, no matter what your motivation, there’s a danger to using excerpts.  Unless you can fully grasp the reader’s attention in just a few short sentences this strategy will fail you.  You need to provide meaningful summaries which give a good idea about the full post, otherwise people are less likely to subscribe.  And simply providing the first n words of the post probably isn’t going to cut it.

When it comes to full text, I believe the statement is entirely true.  The bottom line is that there isn’t much in it for the feed provider.  There may be a spirit of generosity that is created by using full feeds that is good for business, but otherwise full text is all about making a reader’s life easier (especially if they tend to read entries offline.)  One might assume that full text feeds, compared to excerpt feeds, are more likely to maintain a solid reader base and this, in turn, could potentially lead to increased readership due to a greater chance that satisfied readers would share articles with non-subscribers.  That’s great, but I’m not sure if there is any evidence in support of this.  Finally, in the process of being a nice person, I’ve also read that offering full text feeds leaves one much more open to full content theft since it is so easily parsed.  If this is the case, you are actually taking a risk publishing full text. 

I know that the majority of the feeds which I read provide full text and I appreciate it.  Though I’m more money-hungry than nice (joke), I’ve decided to go with full text because I’m guessing this is what most subscribers want.  As for the content theft, if you are stealing from me, I’m sorry to report you have probably fat-fingered the URL of a more notable feed.

If you have not installed the Blog This extension yet, follow these steps.

1. Download the Blog This installer using the link above.
2. Close Firefox.
3. Run the Blog This installer.
4. Without starting Firefox, open the following file in Notepad: C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\BlogThis\Mozilla Firefox\install.rdf
5. Change <em:maxVersion>2.0b2</em:maxVersion> to <em:maxVersion>2.0+</em:maxVersion>. ^[1]
6. Start Firefox.

If you have already installed the Blog This extension, follow these steps.

1. Uninstall the Blog This extension (you can only do this from Add/Remove Programs, not from within Firefox).
2. Close all Firefox windows, start Firefox again, close Firefox again. (Important!)
3. Reinstall the Blog This extension.
4. Follow the above instructions starting from Step 4.
5. Without starting Firefox, open the following file in Notepad: C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\BlogThis\Mozilla Firefox\install.rdf
6. Change <em:maxVersion>2.0b2</em:maxVersion> to <em:maxVersion>2.0+</em:maxVersion>.  ^[1]
7. Start Firefox.
8. If the toolbar does not display the Blog This button then right-click the toolbar, select “Customize…”, and drag the Blog This icon from the palette onto the toolbar.

I followed the steps and it worked without any problems. 

^[1] Note, set the maxVersion to 2.0+ no matter what.  It may read 2.0b2.* for you.  No problem.  Just update.

Source: Using WLW Blog This with Firefox 2.0 « whateverblog.

FeedBurner’s most attractive feature is it’s analytics.  The service keeps track of feed subscribers, applications used to access your feed, where your readers are located and a few other statistics. 

Not only does FeedBurner manage your analytics, it also helps build your user base by introducing easy ways for readers to subscribe to your feed (via RSS, HTML and/or email) and by submitting your posts to numerous search engines for easy indexing.  And, of course, there’s the attractive FeedBurner counter you see on everyone’s site these days.  I mean, who can resist clicking on that little baby?

FeedBurner presumably maintains your reader base as well.  This is done by ensuring your feed is compatible with all aggregators and by adding features to your post such as email options and links to social bookmarking services.  Additionally, FeedBurner lets you change your feed location.  If you happen to move your blog to another domain you are going to want to bring your readers with you, right?

Any of these features are good reason to sign up with the service, but why did I start using FeedBurner?  Mostly because everyone else is doing it.  That’s right.  I guess I submitted to the peer pressure.

If you are interested in setting up a FeedBurner account or if you want to know how to integrate FeedBurner into your site, keep reading.  I also go a little deeper into feature list mention above as well.

FeedBurner Account Setup

This part is easy and free. 

1. Figure out your blog’s feed URL.  (I don’t know what it looks like for all blog types, but for WordPress it is similar to http://www.sitename.com/feed.)
2. Visit FeedBurner and submit your feed URL.   
3. Provide very little account information (blog name, user name, password, etc)
4. Activate features.  I would suggest browsing through the options on the Optimize tab first.  I added some “FeedFlare” such as links on the footer of each post to comment counts, add to del.icio.us, add to digg and email.  I also modified my feed’s Title/Description.  Many of the “Optimize” features are free so go nuts.
5. Head over the “Publicize” tab.  You will probably want to select all of the options under “PingShot.” This automatically notifies services like Technorati and Ping-o-matic when you publish a post.  If you would like to display the FeedBurner counter (chicklet) on your site, check out “FeedCount.” I would also recommend looking into ”Email Subscriptions” even though I haven’t activated this feature myself yet.  
6. Wait about 24 hours and then have a look at the “Analyze” section.  Twenty four hours is the amount of time FeedBurner needs to start “building” your feed statistics.  If you need some instant gratification, “Live Hits” should be immediately available.
7. Have a look at the premium service.  They aren’t expensive and they may be worth it to you.

Site Integration

How do you integrate a new FeedBurner feed into your blog?  After all, you may have millions of readers already tied to your current feed URL. 

If you are running WordPress, you are in luck. Check out the FeedBurner Plugin v2.1 from OrderedList.com.  The plugin detects all of the ways one might be accessing your WP feed.  For example, both http://www.johnnycoder.com/blog/feed/ and http://www.johnnycoder.com/blog/wp-rss2.php are valid feed URLs for this site.  After detection, the plugin will automatically start redirecting callers your new FeedBurner feed.  The redirection will allow you to track all subscriber - existing and new.  The plugin handles forwarding for your main post feed and optionally your main comments feed.  It is quick and easy to install and, to some extent, it will even walk you through the FeedBurner account setup. I was personally up and running in minutes and I understand the plugin works for both WP 1.5 and 2.0.

If you aren’t using WordPress and you can’t leverage this plugin, you’re going to have to find all instances of the RSS feed in your blog template and modify them to point to your new FeedBurner URL.  It should not be too hard, but it may be cumbersome.  You will also want to inform your readers of the feed URL change since they will have to resubscribe to your RSS.

Alternatively, if you have the means, write your own redirection routine at each entry point.  This way, you too, can automatically keep your current reader base.

Currently tracking 58.5 million blogs.Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”But it all started with blogs. A blog, or weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.Technorati. Who’s saying what. Right now.

And with an account one can a good look into Technorati‘s analytics.  More specifically, one can review the rankings and link counts which Technorati has compiled on their endless sampling of blogs.  A search on JohnnyCoder.com provides the following summary:

      What does this mean? I had the same question.  Fortunately, the little question mark icon brought me to an explanation by Brian Pinkerton,  Director of Search, which helped some. Everything in the green box reflects activity within the last 180 days.  In this case, my current rank is 555,042.  (As mentioned earlier, Technorati is currently indexing 58.5 million blogs so I’m not feeling too bad yet.)  Next, you will see there are 12 links from 5 blogs.  This translates to 5 distinct blogs contain 12 link references to JohnnyCoder.  (I felt pretty good about this statistic until I found more.)  In actuality, only 4 distinct blogs, each with a single reference to JohnnyCoder, have been identified.  I came up with his number by removing JohnnyCoder from the blog count and removing self-references from the link count. (I appreciate Technorati‘s optimistic view, but 4 links from 4 blogs is nothing to write home about.  Just blog about, I guess.) Just below the green box, you will find another link count.  This is the total number of links to JohnnyCoder for as far back as Technorati has data.  This number is not confined to the last 180 days.  In my case, however, since I haven’t been blogging for very long, the all-time number and 180-days number are the same.Again, what do you get with a Technorati account?  For me, it was mostly humility……but there’s more as outlined in the Organize section of Technorati Tour.  They write about managing favorites and setting up watchlists, claiming your blogs and attaching a profile and appropriate tags, but I can’t get into all of this now.  The humiliation, I mean humility, is really setting in.

But wait.

Username. Email address. Password. Birthday. Human Verification. A favorite tune from Sesame Street comes to mind…

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn’t belong?
If you guessed this one is not like the others,
Then you’re absolutely…right!

That’s right. Digg is requiring, not just asking for, my birthdate. That’s unusual. Why do you suppose they request this info?

A few ideas came to mind:

1. Digg collects demographical information on their members. This seems reasonable.
2. Digg emails birthday cards to their members on their special day. This would be a very nice gesture but it’s unlikely.
3. Digg checks and double-checks that you really are, as you say, human. It’s a cleverly disguised trick question. It’s like the bouncer asking you for your zip code or your sign when they suspect you are trying to sneak into their club with a fake id. All humans have birthdays so don’t leave this question blank!

There is some indication that Digg anticipated their request would get some attention. To their credit, they proactively provided some explanation.

We’ve got to ask for legal reason.

Digg is being a little vague, don’t you think? A 4-year-old asking “Where do babies come from?” might receive an answer in a similar tone. You know, a casual, nonchalant, let’s-change-the-subject-and-talk-about-more-comfortable-things- which-you-can-understand kind of answer. It’s an answer seemly made up of 1 part parental “because I said so”, 1 part childish “just because” and 1 part political “trust me.”

Truly, I think Digg would have been better served to give no explanation rather than offering up the legal reasons, umm, reason. If no explanation was provided, I would have been inclined to assume that one of my original guesses was accurate and I would have slept well tonight thinking that I’m so darn smart. I mean really. So what if Digg wants to know the glorious date I first entered the world? Big deal. Doesn’t everybody? ( Fine. It’s February 29th, 1966. I was expected to arrive in early January and I was supposed to be a girl. In turn, you might say that my parents have raised me to be a little skeptical and ask a lot of questions. Go figure.)

But since Digg served up a teaser of an answer, I’d like to know the whole story. They have really got me thinking now. After all, doesn’t a statement like this deserve further explanation? Shouldn’t the words “legal reasons” at least link to a page which outlines the details? I’m talking about my rights and I’m talking about Digg’s rights too. I want to know what I can do and what I can’t do. Most importantly, what is the penalty when I (I mean, if I) break the rules?

Digg understands this concept. Accompanying the “I agree to the Terms and Conditions for using Digg” checkbox, there’s a link to a page that thoroughly explains (you guessed it) the Terms and Conditions for using Digg. Similarly, when I buy something online, there’s typically a link to a page which respectfully explains what a credit card verification code is and why it is needed. And when one buys discounted pharmaceuticals from Mexico, isn’t there always a link to a page which highlights the potential side-effects? The bottom line is that “legal reasons” should come along with more documentation. Sure, the majority of humans (assuming again that you are human) can’t interpret legal mumbo jumbo, but it’s always reassuring to know it’s available and it is nice to at least pretend we understand the content.

So throw us a bone, Digg. Tell us more and give us (notice I’m dragging everyone into this now) some piece of mind and the opportunity to act smarter than we most likely are.

Rest assured, I have looked into Digg’s Terms of Use. I have read through the FAQs and I’ve done a few Google searches on the subject, but I’m still in the dark. At the risk of sounding like a whiny two-year-old, I ask again, “Why does Digg require my birthdate?” More specifically, what are the “legal reasons?”

Help me out. Why do you think Digg needs to know my birthdate?

As you may have deduced, this article was written in jest. I truly would like to get my question answered, but I want to stress that Digg is clearly very well-respected and I am innocently having a little fun with them here. Digg has simply fallen victim to my lazy Saturday afternoon.

To join Digg, go here. Sorry. If you haven’t been born yet, you’re just going to have to wait. I’m sure it isn’t because Digg wishes to alienate. In the easiest to understand terms, it’s for “legal reasons.”

Here’s the top 3 things I love about WordPress (and how I incorporated them into my site.)

Number 1: Themes

There are literally hundreds of available WordPress themes. The trick was to sift through the clutter and find those which I liked. Just do a Google search for the top or the best WordPress themes and you will see what I’m taking about. You should find a number of sites featuring their own WordPress theme competitions with link list to preview all the submissions. You will also sites which simply list their favorite skins. AlexKing and WebLogToolsCollection are good example posts.

After lots of searching, I came across Fury at Alexallied.com. Since installing the theme I have modified it considerably but you can still see where JohnnyCoder’s foundation comes from.

Number 2: Plugins

I’ve downloaded and reviewed a number of plugins. Per an earlier post:

In nearly all cases a simple Google search, a two-second download, a two-minute installation in five minutes of play time is all that is required to get a plugin and running. On occasion, I will modify the codebase slightly, but the majority the time the plugins include ample configuration settings to provide the exact functionality I need. But when I do need to modify the code base, the code is clear and easy to navigate and tweaks to the code typically take only a few minutes.

Here’s the running list of plugins I’ve incorporated into this site (in no particular order). All of these plugins were freely available. All of these plugins came with source code, installed effortlessly and worked without any issues.

01. Akismet – This plugin checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. You will need an API key to use this service, but if you are running WordPress, this comes free with an account. In my opinion, this plugin is a must-have.

02. Brian’s Threaded Comments – This gives you threaded/nested comments and a “wandering” comment form. To be honest, I’m not sure what the “wandering” comment form is all about, the threaded comments worked nearly perfectly out-of-the-box. I have modified the plugin code slightly. For more, check out my previous post.

03. WP-Notable – Adds social bookmark links and icons to each blog entry. For more, check out my previous post.

04. Breadcrumb Navigation – Shows current viewing post or page, search results, category, and archives. This plugin was included with the original Fury theme.

05. Customizable Post Listings – Display Recent Posts, Recently Commented Posts, Recently Modified Posts, Random Posts, and other post listings using the post information of your choosing in an easily customizable manner. You can narrow post searches by specifying categories and/or authors, among other things.

06. WP-PostViews – Enables you to display how many times a post have been displayed.

07. Get Recent Comments – Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.

08. Live Comment Preview – Supplies users with a live comment preview. For more, check out my previous post.

09. Nice Categories – Displays the categories conversationally, like: Category1, Category2 and Category3.

10. XSD Snapr – Snapr simply integrates WebSnapr-Script in your WordPress blog. Adds preview bubble to all external links. For more, check out my previous post.

Number 3: Community

There are a number of blog engines to chose from these days. I was lucky enough to decide on WordPress primarily because of its extensive userbase. There are some many contributors, I have found endless freely available code (mostly themes and plugins) and support in the form of WordPress-related sites. Though I love figuring stuff out on my own, my research is typically limited to an online search when it comes to my WordPress blog thanks to the many helpful individuals who work with WordPress too.

So there you have it — the making of JohnnyCoder.com. Let’s consider this a living post as I’ll continue to update as I enhance the site.

If you are interested, you may find more about site registration and hosting on one of my early posts.

As you may already be aware, Google now let’s us build Custom Search Engines. The idea is you can create a search engine which reflects your knowledge and interests by specifying the websites that you want searched. ( For example, I’m aware of a couple .NET-related implementations already: Haack Attack the Web from Phil Haack and .NET Search Engine from Gavin Joyce. )

Anyway, I created my own search engine and included only johnnycoder.com as a searchable site. I figured (read: hoped) that Google would opt to index the included sites. I mean, this is the launch of a new product. It’s time to shine, right?

Wrong. Google does pull back a few johnnycoder-related results via my search engine, but they are only pages which have been indexed through other sources (Technorati, Jon Galloway, etc). Oh well.

Though my experiment failed, there is a silverlining. Custom Search Engine home pages display some (if not all) of the included sites. Find a custom search which reflects your interests (see Phil and Gavin above) and you will most likely find sites to include in your list of favorites.

If you haven’t played around with the custom search already, check it out. Also, here’s a good example on how to integrate your custom search engine with Firefox 2.0 or IE 7.

Tyme White, the 9Rules site selector and co-founder, believes that content is king and she needs to be able to easily identify what your site is all about.  She recommends tag clouds and she “dreads long archive lists” which tell her nothing.  Since she has communities to fill, if she can’t quickly determine site content, she’ll not going to stick around to find out.  Ms. White also mentioned she is looking for curb appeal.  This is the first impression someone has when they see your site (or a house from the street.) 

Paul “Scrivs” Scrivens, another co-founder, provided a list of what he was looking for in a site:

A passion for the subject that you are writing for. This is evident from the writing on your site.

Quality writing. If it’s supposed to be funny then make sure it is funny. If it is supposed to stimulate the mind, then make sure it is intelligent. Mistakes happen within entries, but too many mistakes on too many posts definitely raise a red flag.

Consistency in writing quantity. We don’t expect sites to have entries on them every single day, but if you have a site that posts one entry a month we expect there to be at least one entry a month. If you write every single day for 6 months and then disappear for 3 months then we begin to raise questions.

Topics. Obviously we offer a wide range of topics (as can be seen on the homepage) and we are always looking to expand. If you have another web design blog or another blog that has its niche filled (10 or more sites) within 9rules you should make sure that you are offering a really kickass site.

Design. We don’t base our decisions on the design of your site, but a clean design definitely makes us look more carefully over your site and a unique design often shows a passion for your site.

Blogger/Blogspot domains. In all honesty I don’t like adding sites that are hosted by blogger or blogspot since there are so many other parts of the design of those sites which don’t really distinguish them from the rest, but if your site is worth it we will add it.

Scrivs is consistent with Tyme as he appears to be mostly interested in content and writing style. 

Though I don’t plan to make a play for one of their coveted spots, I appreciated what the 9Rules team had to say.  It was reassuring and it did challenge me to take a look at my site:

1. First, I considered archives.  Now, why do I even include this list on my site? Talk about useless!  I currently have less than 40 posts — all of which we published within the last three months.  This is a waste of space and it provides zero benefit to my readers.  Even when I have hundreds of posts, I don’t figure there is a use case for the monthly archive links.  It’s not like a reader is going to say, “Let’s see what Ben was writing about back in October of 2006.  If I recall,  he posted a great article about archive links then.”  Nope, I would hope my reader would search the site instead. 

2. 9Rules also made a point to say that most blog owners make the mistake of not having their header link to the home page.  I had already nailed this. Wheww.  But it did bring my attention to the block of empty space in the top-right corner of my blog.  I’m going to use this real estate for something soon.  I think bringing “Search” to the top of the page is a decent idea.  Or maybe I will include an advertisement.

3. I’m starting to really dislike the blockquote style.  I’m going to make it simple like everyone else and either display indented text partnered by a left-justified vertical line or I’ll start using something like an open quote background image.

4.  I also don’t like seeing the number of views on top of each post.  For one, the numbers are depressing.  I can see “0 Views” only so many times without crying.  And 2, these stats don’t have to be there since I can collect them and review them through other means without distracting my few readers.

5. I think I might also include an “about” page.  I believe this would follow the 9Rules advice and give visitors more insight into what johnnycoder.com is all about.  These links might work in the top-right corner as well.

So these are my thoughts.  Please try to get yourself into a 9Rules community if you wish.  In the interim, I’m going to try to “clean up” my site.  Hopefully it will turn out better for you.

We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, and we invite you to submit your URL here. We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

As you can see, Google doesn’t make any promises.

So, what else can I do? Well, I’ve started sending influential thoughts Google‘s way. When I’m feeling particularly positive, I hold my breath and check if my site’s status has mysteriously improved. This is done by executing the following Google site search. Of course, the outcome is always the same:

Your search – site:www.johnnycoder.com – did not match any documents.
Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

And as you can see, along with promises, Google doesn’t make any suggestions. (No helpful ones at least.)

I haven’t given up on Google yet. I’m sure they will start indexing my site when they are good and ready. After all, they are the search kings and they must know what they are doing. In fact, I’m sure it’s not them. It must be me and what I’m not doing. But I really didn’t know what to do so I have started to do some research. I found that most sites provide teasers. It’s helpful information, but not too helpful — if you know what I mean. The sites may say to submit your URL to Google (as I have already done.) Otherwise, their advice is to leave search engine submission and optimization to the experts and purchase their service for only $99 annually.

At least Submitside.com collected search engine “Add URL” and put them all in one place. They also recommend submitting only to the following: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. And only if you are plenty of time should one submit to these smaller engines — Rex, Infotiger, Netsearch Voyager, ExactSeek, LinkCentre, HotRate, TrueSearch, WhatsNu, LookSeek Susy (South Africa), Walhello.com, Dirs.org and Wisenut. They also list a number of engines which one should NOT bother with since many providers actually “power” others and submissions would be redundant.

Most everyone is an agreement. Submitting your site is not enough. Indexing will take up to 8 weeks (if at all) and this alone is not enough to start getting visitors. Being in the top search results depends mostly (but not only) on popularity of your site and a new site is not popular at all. So you need a different strategy.

One approach is to increase the number of links to your site from more popular sites. I suppose this could be done through the use of Technorati or by simply adding comments which link back to your site on other peoples’ blogs. Or by simply begging a popular site owner to add a reference to your site.

Arguably, the best strategy is to “buy” traffic through paid listings. This unique form of search engine advertising means that you can be guaranteed to appear in the top results for the terms you are interested in within a day or less. If you wish to build visibility quickly it is agreed that this is the way to go.

SearchEngineWatch provided a really nice breakdown of this information. They suggest that any site owner established a search engine submission budget. This is true whether you’re running a commercial web site, a hobbyist site in your own time or a site for a nonprofit organization. They suggest you first submit to Yahoo’s human-compiled directory for one year. This is a flat rate of $300 annually. They believe this provides the most bang for your buck merely because this is potentially one of the best links you can gain to influence crawlers. If you need to be listed fast, however, they suggest one use paid placement programs as well. A $50 budget for Overture (which is now Yahoo! Search Marketing) and a $25 budget for Google will last about a month. SearchEngineWatch does claim you can get listed without spending a penny, but if you want to be seen in as many places as possible, as quickly as possible, you will want to use the combination of submissions which they outlined above.

So far only about half of the articles I’ve read are even interesting, but I have learned the difference between directories (like Yahoo!) and crawlers (like Google, Ask and MSN.) And I’ve learned about paid listings like Overture and Google AdWords and I have learned a bit about how search engines work when it comes to page rankings and who feeds who. I’m learning, but not even dangerous yet. Unless someone has an extra $375 to fund my search engine submission budget?

In nearly all cases a simple Google search, a two-second download, a two-minute installation in five minutes of play time is all that is required to get a plugin and running. On occasion, I will modify the codebase slightly, but the majority the time the plugins include ample configuration settings to provide the exact functionality I need. But when I do need to modify the code base, the code is clear and easy to navigate and tweaks to the code typically take only a few minutes.

With all this said, I really thought I was going to put them — the WordPress Community — to the test today. Today I was looking for a live comment preview plugin. My guess was that someone had already created such an extension. Now it was my job to find it. To my surprise, I found it with a single Google search. The installation instructions were ridiculously simple –download a single file, copy it to your site’s plugins folder and activate. The write-up stated that the extension would work with most themes with no needed changes.

I was so skeptical I did a few additional searches to see if I could dig up any dirt on this plugin. I found only documented praise. There were no complaints. There were no stories of this extension corrupting people’s blogs. There wasn’t even a single comment such as, “I activated the plugin, but it didn’t work. What’s up?” Still, I wasn’t willing to activate the plugin on JohnnyCoder.com just yet. I decided to activate the extension on one of my other blogs (a blog I could “sacrifice”) and I tested. The plugin delivered as promised. Wow.

So Live Comment Preview is now available on JohnnyCoder.com. It’s pretty slick (and it even helped uncover an existing stylesheet issue with the site which still isn’t fixed.) Who knows? Maybe I’ll be bombarded by comments soon. (I doubt it. The plugin is slick but not magical.)

Most of my time was spent working with the Insert Code Plugin. This extension will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL for inserting into one’s blog article.

Here’s the Plugin in action. You can turn this cheerless, black-on-white piece of code into the beauty below in no time flat. Note that the line numbers and alternating rows are optional.

   1:  public string ModelID

   2:  {

   3:      get { return this._ModelID; }

   4:      set { this._ModelID = value; }

   5:  }

First, I want to give a lot of credit to the author of the plugin. It’s really nice work and this is functionality for which I’ve been desperate. The plugin is really cool and intuitive and thank goodness it is around but I would like to see a few things included in the next version.

[ In advance, I know I'm asking a lot here. Freely scoff at my suggestions, but this plugin is a quality product already so I've opted to first ask for the moon and then I got a little nitpicky. ]

First, the description says the plugin will “format a snippet of text.” Well, it does and it doesn’t. It produces appropriate font types and colors, but it doesn’t take a mangled block of code and tidy it up for you. Assuming my request for a “tidy this” button can’t be accommodated in the next release, a workaround would be to allow the tab key to be recognized in the editor. This might speed up manual editing a bit. Of course, this is my ask-for-the-moon suggestion and why can’t I just clean up my crumby code in another editor like VS2005 before pasting into the plugin?

Second thing. The nitpicky thing. The preview window is excellent, but what I don’t like is the refresh rate and how it was implemented. Since I’m hearing the infamous “form submit click” every second, I’m guessing this is the current approach. This clearly works, but the “click” is like a countdown to me and it makes me unnecessarily anxious. After all, I have all the time in the world to work my code, right? One could argue that this is more my problem than the author’s problem. All the same, I had to mention it. And maybe I’ll just have a couple of drinks before formatting my code next time?

One final comment: Code formatting wasn’t applied to my published post with the first attempt. I assumed it wasn’t a short-coming of the plugin but it was probably tied to how I am handling CSS on my site. I played around with the embed stylesheet options, but it didn’t do the trick. How did I get it working? I ended up copying the styles, generated in the plugin output, into the main JohnnyCoder.com CSS and it worked like a charm.

In my previous review, I mentioned the following: When including a hyperlink, I tend to copy the URL to my clipboard, click on the standard “Insert link in web page” button and associate the URL to the linked text. My current tool recognizes the URL is stored on the clipboard and automagically pastes it into the URL textbox within the link dialog. Live Writer doesn’t do this. As far as I know, no one else does this but it is such a super-smart feature that I would hate to lose it.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. The Insert Links Smartly Plugin provides this functionality. Unfortunately, this implementation isn’t saving me any time (as advertised.) Now, I have to drill into the Insert menu to add a “Smart Link” whereas the built-in “Insert Link to Web Page” button is easily available on the exposed toolbar. It’s too bad the plugin couldn’t leverage the existing toolbar option.

My next minor issues are the available properties. The out-of-the-box functionality allows one to set four elements: Link Text, Link URL, Rel and the option to Open in a New Window. The “Smart” implementation one-ups the MS version because it lets you add a Title, but the “Open in New Window” option is lacking. To their credit, the author of the plugin did opt to open the link in a new window by default which is a correct assumption over 90% of the time, but what about the rest of the time?

So, I’m back where I started — hoping that Live Writer includes this feature with their next release. In the meantime, there is a “Submit Feedback” link on the “Smart Link” dialog. I think I will do so.

Last but not least is the Insert Spaces Emoticons Plugin. I’m a sucker for these silly icons. They actually move, you know! Well, this plugin allows you to select one of the many Live Spaces emoticons and put them onto your blog. The best thing about this plugin is it’s not limited to just Live Spaces. You can use this plugin for any type of blog and still have the Spaces’ emoticons on it.

To the left, I’ve included my favorite emoticon. Why it is my favorite? Well, it’s called “Speedy” and this is one of the few that isn’t animated. Dare to be different, Speedy.

Browse the gallery and you are sure to find other extensions of your liking. That being said, there aren’t too many plugins out there yet. If you want to contribute, download the Windows Live Writer SDK and submit your stuff. Enjoy.

The online introduction to Live Writer stated it was a “great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).” Since I’m using WordPress, that’s really all I needed to know prior to promptly downloading and installing the software and creating of my first post, this one, which took less than ten minutes get underway.

Live Writer auto-detected nearly everything (type of blog, upload locations, etc) from blog URL which I provided. It was a snap. Where I think the ball was dropped (and maybe I am just missing the feature) is the ability to download past posts. If one is going to convert to this tool, they are going to want a local copy some, if not all, of their archives. ^{[ 1 ]}

The editor is rich. The tool bar is complete with formatting options which include strikethrough and font color. I call these out because they should be considered standard but are not present with all tools. One option which was surprisingly missing was subscript. ^{[ 2 ]}

The editor has four layouts: Normal, Web Layout, Web Preview and HTML Code.

1. Normal is what you get with most blog editor. It is a simple representation of the post’s layout using HTML formatting tags and the tool’s standard style sheet.
2. Web Layout, on the other hand, uses the associated site’s style sheet. In this case, the “Weblog style” from JohnnyCoder.com was seamlessly downloaded and used for the editor.
3. Web Preview is a non-editable view of how the post will look once published. Whereas the Web Layout display only the “styled” content, this view shows the entire page layout.
4. Finally, the HTML Code is what it is. Very standard and from what I can tell provides no validation options or anything of the like.

Here’s my one disappointment which I can’t really can’t complain about too much. The blogging software I am currently using does something really slick. When including a hyperlink, I tend to copy the URL to my clipboard, click on the standard “Insert link in web page” button and associate the URL to the linked text. My current tool recognizes the URL is stored on the clipboard and automagically pastes it into the URL textbox within the link dialog. Live Writer doesn’t do this. As far as I know, no one else does this but it is such a super-smart feature that I would hate to lose it.

My favorite feature? The image properties. Heck. It might as well be an image editor since one can rotate the image and alter the brightness along with manage alignment, size, alternate text, etc. It’s a really nice interface. One I haven’t seen on other tools.

Along with pictures, one can insert maps. This is an interesting feature — at best. Sure, the process of adding the map is fun, but I’m not sure how often a blogger would need such a feature. Really. Other than this example, have you ever seen a map included in someone’s post? I highly doubt it…

The post properties were easily available. The datetime stamp can be modified which I like because I sometimes set posts to activate in the future. Post comments and trackbacks can be enabled/disabled. I haven’t seen this feature in an editor before — even though it is supported via the online WordPress tools. Keywords can be assigned to posts as well.

One of the key reasons I’m looking at Live Writer is the fact that I’m not satisfied with how any other editors handle trackbacks. I haven’t seen anything which leads me to believe that Live Writer is a superior product in this regard, but I’ll continue to dig — and test. I’ll provide an update on how well the trackback pings work after publishing.

Occasionally, I’ll post a draft of an article to JohnnyCoder.com. Not all editors provide this functionality, but Live Writer does. I’ve had issues with this functionality with other tools. Let’s cross our fingers. ^{[ 3 ]}

The final test is going to be the publishing of the article. If you are reading this, it worked.

Now that I’ve played with the product for nearly an hour, I give Windows Live Writer an A. Please know that this grade is padded a bit. I gave a lot of consideration to the fact that this is merely a Beta release. If this were an official release of the product, I’d would have given it a B. In my opinion, there’s room to polish the app up a bit — especially when handling previous posts. After all, If you want people to start using your tool, you need to provide an easy means to migrate.

Updates

[ 1 ] The tool does provide the ability to download the past 25 posts, however, you are unable to save a local copy. The posts are retrieved on demand per request.

[ 2 ] I was able to add the subscript tag via the HTML view. Whew.

[ 3 ] The test post of the draft worked.

First. What is a trackback?

Per Wikipedia: TrackBack is a mechanism for communication between blogs: if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a “TrackBack ping“; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

Fine. So I am ready to submit my post and I want to have the trackback listed in the comment section of the article to which I’m referencing. Simple, right? No. More like infuriating.

First. I go to the referenced post in order to get its Trackback URL. I’ve seen a lot of blogs provide Trackback URLs in plain text on the post or provide a link to get the URL. This site didn’t provide this, however, there were already a few trackbacks in the comments so I knew trackbacks had to be supported. I ended up viewing the source of the page to come up with the ping address. (At this point, I’m feeling like a detective. I’m not stupid yet.)

Next. My blogging software (I’m currently using Zoundry) accepts a comma separated list of trackback URLs for each post. It’s clear as day and nearly fool-proof. (note the word nearly)

I added the URL and published the post. Prior to posting, Zoundry presents a dialog which basically summarizes all actions which are going to take place. The dialog lists all of the sites to which the article will be submitted (i.e. Technorati), which images will be uploaded, etc. It also allows me to verify trackback information AND lets me modify the comments which would be submitted to the called page. By default, the first n words of my post were displayed, but I could simply have the comment read, “I like your post. Now check out mine.” Recently, I’ve seen some clever trackback comments so I was excited to see this feature. So, I update and publish and I’m told all actions were completed successfully, but the trackback comment never showed up on the called page. Bummer. I gave it a little time. It was a long shot, but perhaps the owner of the other blog approves comments/trackbacks before they are displayed. This wasn’t the case. It simply didn’t work.

I wasn’t able to find any documented issues of trackbacks not working through Zoundry, but I figured it would be best to try the trackback ping through another tool. I tried the online WordPress admin tool and the attempt was successful! But I was disappointed since I wasn’t able to send alternate text and the trackback comment includes the first n words of my post which looks and sounds (take a guess) stupid.

I’ll probably do a few more test which other blogging tools, but for now I’m going to rely on “poor man’s trackbacks.” (a.k.a. dumb man’s trackbacks) I’ll drop a “real” comment on a post I wish to blog about and in the comment provide a link back to my article. It should do the trick, no? It’s nearly fail-proof and I will never need to hunt down trackback URLs or hope trackback pings are enabled or wish I could alter trackback comments again. Stupid, meet Simple.

To be honest, I am very surprised that threaded (or nested) comments don’t come out-of-the-box with a fresh WordPress installation. It’s not that I’m knocking WordPress. It’s great, but if every blogger would want this feature shouldn’t it be rolled into the product? Okay. Free is free. I’m done looking a gift horse in the mouth…

Though I don’t know a lick of PHP, I have found the WordPress code base is easy to manipulate so I added threaded comment support to the site last night. The functionality is heavily-based on Brian Meidell’s Nested Comments Plugin. He did a really nice job, but I made a handful of tweaks to address a few site/browser style sheet issues and I modified the verbiage slightly.

I’m happy with the implementation. How about you?

WP-Notable is configurable to display any of the links below.

Each of the icons can be turned on or off and you can customize the character that go between the images. Additionally, the plugin generates a tooltip for each icon so you can prepend text to this tooltip to help your user identify exactly what clicking on the icon will do. The plugin is easy to install and the code which is generated validates with most common HTML validators.

This plugin saved me from writing a good amount of cumbersome code. Feel free to try it out.

1. You are a private blogger writing about sensitive topics which may cause problems in your professional and/or personal life. In this case, it would make sense to restrict access to family and friends or everyone all together.
2. You are a paid-content provider. I’m no businessman, but it’s fairly safe to say that you aren’t going to have a lot of paying customers if you give everyone access to your content.

In either case, if you don’t wish to share your content with the entire world, Angsuman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin may be just for you. It is super simple to install (copy a file and active the plugin). I’m using it on another site and it works like a charm. The plugin site also provides information on how to configure your blog for private blogging or paid-content blogging once the plugin is activated.

At first I focused on desktop blog editors only. This may have been foolish since WordPress provides it’s own online editor which is perhaps the most reliable online text/html editor I’ve ever used. Notwithstanding, I began my search with a bias against online editors and I’m sticking to it*.

1. On Day 1, I purchased WB Editor after performing very little research. I paid just under $20 and I’m still using this product today. It has it’s issues, but for all intents and purposes it gets the job done. I like how it handles/uploads images, the fact that I can post articles as drafts and save posts to local files. I am disappointed, however, that I am unable to create new categories within the tool or change the post dates and times. I’ve also found that downloaded posts lose their formatting (even if they were originally posted through WB Editor) which is a real drag.

2. I’ve dedicated very little time to Zoundry, but I think it is going to win me over. It’s a free download and it addresses 2 of the 3 issues I have with WB Editor. Zoundry lets me manage the date and time of posts and it handles formatting quite well. I haven’t figured out the creation of categories yet and I need to play with photos still, but this product is starting to grow on me.

3. I played with Qumana for about 30 minutes. If you want software which is easy to use, this product is for you. I downloaded, launched the application and was setup for blogging in less than 5 minutes. What I think is interesting (and smart) is the fact that this product really markets the money-making side of blogging. Just check out their home page where they feature Q Ads and a banner that reads, “Write something, stick an ad in it, and bank the money.” In spite of the potential millions it could bring me, I don’t believe I will be using this product going forward. But again, it is SUPER easy to use.

4. And then there was w.bloggar. I admit I was turned off by this product before I even started evaluating. Unfortunately for it’s creator and one-man development team, I opted to download the product when the official w.bloggar site was offline. Rather than seeing the very impressive official site, I saw the “temp” page which was ugly and shared apologies of being in a state of restoration. I was able to download the application and try it out and it worked just fine. I have few complaints except I found the interface to be a little busy and I didn’t care for the way past posts were managed. Otherwise, great product. It definitely got me up and running in no time.

5. I liked the overall “feel” of Ecto. It is was easy to use and a nice product, but after an hour of playing with the trial version I could not justify buying the product for $17.95. It simply wasn’t a superior product compared to what I could get for free (or had already paid for.)

* Okay. So I lied. Even though I shy away from online editors, I had to make an exception and evaluated Performancing for Firefox. This product is awesome considering the fact it isn’t a desktop app. You should try it out. I’m also going to check out a couple of WordPress editor plugins as well.

How about you? Which blog editor do you prefer?

UPDATE: I have now been using Windows Live Writer for quite a while.  You can find my write up here.