Chawlk

1. Drawar
2. Fenxy
3. Decaflon
4. Two Credits
5. Wriging
6. Loose Suits
7. Chixe
8. Dud3s
9. Wing Colors

 

I'm an Amazon Associate, but I've not made more than $10 with it.

Advertising--and affiliate programs--are essentially a question of scale. If you have 100 visitors a month, it's probably not worth much effort to "monetize" a site. If you have 100 visitors a minute, even the most incompetent advertising/affiliate strategy is likely to make money.

I'd add, however, that both Amazon's program and Google's AdSense take most of the work out of doing it. So it's not as if you're wasting a great deal of time by signing up and making very little (or no) money.

I think RightOn makes the crucial distinction in my mind. I try hard not to blog my personal grievances. I do however sometimes "complain" about ugly design, muddled thinking, the state of the world, etc.

That said, if you consider your blog a more personal and intimate thing, I'm not sure it would be out of place. A personal blogger (dooce, for example) could complain without it feeling even remotely out of place.

I've been meaning to add more questions, finally remembered to do it:

• How big is the team currently working on WordPress? How is it structured? Who on that team is compensated? How?
• Who sets development priorities for present and future versions?
• Is there a central website that would answer this type (basics of the development process) of questions? Should there be?
• Has there been any (internal) discussion about a new default theme for WordPress?
• How is the WordPress code organized? Has there been much consideration of changing that underlying logic?
• What are some of the ways that people can contribute to Wordpress/the community?
• What features of the current build of WordPress do you like best? What forthcoming features are you most excited about?

Some things I'm curious about:

• How do Automattic's finances look?
• More specifically: what makes the most money? what makes the least (or loses the most)?
• How much bandwidth does Automattic use in a given day or year? How much does that cost?
• Have you ever considered self-hosting?
• What do you see as the largest area for future growth?
• Is there much interest in expanding, or is a small virtual team the long-term plan?
• Any forthcoming developments you wish to vaguely hint at?

Somehow I managed to miss this note. In any case, a few things I'm wondering:

• When, if ever, will the WordPress themes website start accepting new themes? (It must be getting near a year since anything gone on there.)
• Why doesn't a default install of WordPress have caching built-in? If not that, why not include the WP-Cache or WP-Super Cache plugins?

I'll probably have more later. For now I need to run.

I was going to throw in the zinger: "It's easy to be secure when you've not added features in years."

But Scrivs makes a good point. WordPress, like Windows, suffers from the fact that everyone uses it, and not everyone keeps it up-to-date. The developers actually do an admirable job patching stuff, but that's doesn't stop blogs running WordPress 2.2.1 from suffering from already-patched vulnerabilities.

I remember hearing about this in one or two places. It looks nice but I don't really understand the whole thinking behind it. As Scrivs says, they seem to have done their best to hide all the information.

I've also noticed that many pages still use the old design. Doing just about anything with your account--for example--take you back to the older design.

I never cease to be surprised to see Matt turn up on discussions like this. I feel I should say that the intent of the thread wasn't to discourage use of WordPress, but just to hear all it's perceived deficiencies in one place.

I'd certainly love to hear Matt (or any other WordPress developers) discuss some of the issues raised in this thread. Certainly some of the gripes here are more about personal preference, but the methodology of bug fixes, the way development choices are made, and the reason a default install lacks (meaningful) caching are all things I'd be interested to hear about.

(More personally, I'd also like to know when 2.5.2 will be released so I'll be rid of this bug.)

Like I (and others) have said in this note, WordPress--all software--has things people don't like about it. It's not meant as a slight to WordPress to note what people don't like about it. I still think it's a great piece of software that serves my needs as well as anything could.

On behalf of the information junkies: Thanks, Scrivs.

@shadowsun7
Yes, that's the big point I struggle with. Every CMS I've ever come across has its annoying problems. If it's not an ugly backend, it's ugly code, or a small (read absent) community of tinkerers, or that it hasn't been updated in years, or... you understand the point. Like Kami, I actually think WordPress is pretty great. I use it for all my stuff, and I don't see that changing soon. As they say, "better the devil you know..."

LOL @Gnorb.

One I hear a lot--but don't know that much about--is that WordPress calls the database too much. Because a default installation doesn't cache anything(?) a reasonably high level of traffic can easily slow it too a crawl or take the site down completely.

I guess I'll start.

• Why is there a capital P in the middle of a one word name? I mean... seriously?

I recently saw a great site that would give you every time zone from a single input. I don't remember what it was. But I think--using this--that the Superstream will be at 9:00AM on Friday in Malaysia.

As to the original question, I'm torn between offering cannon fodder or stuff I actually think is good. How about splitting that difference and discussing New York magazine's site. It's got a fair bit of the good and the bad.

I haven't said "I want that" when looking at computers for a few months, but, um, I want that.

Oli, that's interesting. I never thought Studio 60 was very funny. It had a little bit of that ever-present mild humor that Aaron Sorkin is known for, but it rarely made me laugh. That may be because, having seen almost everything Aaron Sorkin has ever written, I'd already heard all his jokes. That may also be why the preponderance of speedy dialog struck me more as "classic Sorkin" than anything terribly good or interesting.

30 Rock, on the other hand, is so completely absurd that I can't help laughing at it. The characters are so over the top that the jokes seem to write themselves. I suppose I could see why people would hold that against the show, but I certainly don't.

I'd note two more things.

• PBS's Cringley has been saying this since January. That doesn't make it right or wrong though.
• Apple denies they were shopping around their pro apps, which puts a big hole in Cringley's biggest point.

Because people who don't talk to each other don't get to know each other. And people who don't know each other find it easier to hate each other.

Sometimes I don't know how to finish my sentences.

@Ozone42
The fact that you're poor or starving is hardly a good reason that you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

To the question you asked in the title... It's the wrong question. Of course Americans ~15-45, who have enough time to visit 9rules/Chawlk will not be burdened by such a ruling. We, as you say, need them quite often and can easily afford the time/money to get them.

I'm very interested in your claim of having seen someone vote multiple times in an hour. At the same polling station? Without the volunteers noticing? Really?

In defense of the idea, if there was a high enough level of awareness that today was a day of silence it could be a very effective form of protest. The issue is that I--and suspect many others--didn't know about it until today. As such, not making a blog post today would be a meaningless gesture, because the audience hadn't been warned that there was a reason for the silence.

On a college campus, where awareness of such things is usually higher, it can have a very real impact. I'm imagining wearing tape on your mouth and perhaps having a flyer in explanation. That's a protest that could work because it's novel and different.

In my mind, anyone who calls themselves a designer is one. Anyone who calls themselves a writer is one. Heck, anyone who calls themselves an elephant is one.

I'm guessing that you're really asking is "Am I good enough to call myself a designer?" To that question, I'd probably say yes (even without the above point). What you've done looks pretty good, especially on Blogger, where few people use anything but the default templates. What you're doing is at least as good as what many people who call themselves "designers" have done.

If that's good enough for you to get paid as "a designer," I honestly have no idea.

I was curious to see if there was survey data about this topic, I couldn't find any worth noting (this is probably the best I found). But I did find this rather entertaining essay, "In Praise of Boxer Briefs" that may actually beat Gnorb in it's thorough exploration of the topic.

Boxer briefs have essentially rendered this question obsolete.

I'd guess that the reason is Text Link Ads. Google's been penalizing their publishers in a big way the last few months.

As Tyme suggested, I do seriously wonder what (if anything) PageRank actually means to anyone. I've never investigated very thoroughly, but it doesn't seem to be that big a driver of their search results.

When I saw this Note, I couldn't help thinking of something I tweeted yesterday.

Generally I agree with everything that's been said here. Twitter would never be the primary way that I would blog, but it's nice to have a place to share random tiny thoughts and see the same from others. I don't think that would ever become anything that I'd call "my blog" though.

Tumblr serve roughly the same purpose as Twitter, but because it's slightly longer and much less constrained it could certainly pass for "my blog."

There's a difference between longish writing and sharing little tidbits you think are interesting. Tumbler and Twitter are both ill-suited for the former but completely passable for the latter.

davidhayes. I'm original like that.

I seem to like this note a lot...

In any case: Marketplace (an NPR show) totally got me with this story.

This may fall under the category of "all Youtube," but Maholo Daily interviewed Steve Jobs.

Also, Andy Ihnatko is invading Apple HQ.

The Economist is offering some statistical nonsense. I thought it was funny.

First, auto upgrade works perfectly for me. I like that feature. No idea how to help other debug it though.

Second, has anyone else noticed odd and unnecessary drafts appearing? I'll write and publish a post, and then find an earlier version of that posts under drafts. It's very odd, and I have no idea why it's occurring.

Very interesting, Mike. I didn't bother to follow the links, but I assumed (it turns out incorrectly) that someone along the chain would have read it on the Daily Intelligencer yesterday. I guess none of them did (or said so).

I have to second most of what Kamigoroshi said:

I've always used Bloglines because it gives me everything I need and works pretty well. I have tried Google Reader, but for some reason it just doesn't work right for me.

For the past few days though, I've been trying out FeedDemon[...] But I don't see the point of having something installed when my Bloglines is tied straight into my Firefox.

My reason for not using FeedDemon after trying it was partly this, and partly that it looked like an ugly Outlook clone. If/When I get a Mac I'm going to have to play with NetNewsWire, but until then I'm guessing it'll just be Bloglines.