WordPress | Breazeale Enterprises

From Wiki to Wordpress

by jbreazeale on February 15, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

Here’s some history and background before you get started.

I’m working with a non-profit to develop and implement a platform for their members that will make it easier for them to organize, coordinate, and communicate with each other. We’ve been testing a couple of wiki solutions, but have run into three basic scenarios:

Hosted + good support + high cost ($6-10/mo/user). Hmm, 500+ members * $10/mo…. Yeah, not sustainable.
Hosted + no support + no cost. Ok, it’s not really *no* support, it’s forum/community support which means that someone (typically me) has to dig around to find the answers. And, in this specific case, the company may be shutting down this product altogether to focus on their enterprise products (i.e., they want to get paid and make money. I understand.)
Not hosted + no support + no cost. I’m the most technical person in the organization and getting one of these setup (not to mention maintaining it) makes my head hurt.

So, if we need a hosted, web-based, editable platform to help us organize, coordinate, and communicate, where does that leave us?

WordpressMU

WordpressMU is the multi-user version of Wordpress.org. It’s what Wordpress.com runs on. It does everything Wordpress does, plus scales to millions of pageviews, allows unlimited users and blogs, and allows different permissions on different blogs. All for free.

_{Ok. Not really free. You do have to host it somewhere, but the software itself *is* free.}

Instead of wiki “pages”, we can have blog “posts” and web “pages”. The site remains editable, but with flexible permissioning and the ability to take the whole site private (by requiring visitors to be logged in). And, since a core function of blogging software is to publish/push content to its readers, we don’t have to find a kludge-y way (like we did with the wiki) to update the non-profit’s members. Once blogs and feeds are established, readers can subscribe to RSS or choose to receive email updates.

I’ve only been playing around with WPMU for a few days, but I love it already! Now if I can just get it working with BuddyPress (and possibly Thesis), I’ll be set…

What are your experiences with wikis? Have you considered (or ruled out) blogging software for your organization?

WordPress Lockdown! Part 1 – Renaming the admin account (mattstratton.com)
How to Install Wordpress For Your Niche Blog (internetmarketingformommies.com)
My Organization Doesn’t Need A Website (thenon-profittoolbox.com)

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Why I use Wordpress with Thesis

by jbreazeale on January 27, 2010

As I talk with more people about my approach to building with or migrating their sites to a Wordpress+Thesis platform, I’m also trying to come up with a clear and concise definition of why I’ve chosen these tools and why they’re a great options for so many individuals, businesses, and organizations.

Here’s where I am so far…

Wordpress is a great platform because…

Even persons with relatively little technical skill can understand, create, and publish pages and posts. No coding experience required (although a little HTML/CSS/PHP wouldn’t hurt.)

It’s amazingly extensible with multiple plugins for almost any task you can think of. Of course, it’s also annoying searching through all of those plugins to find one that does what you want it to do (only then to discover that the developer hasn’t worked on it for over a year…)

And, there’s a large, active, and growing population of users and developers who are willing to share their Wordpress knowledge and experience with the rest of us. (Thanks!)

Using Thesis is worth the premium because…

The code is clean, scalable, flexible, and SEO optimized. None of those characteristics are guaranteed if you’re using one of the many free themes out there. Sure, newbies may complain about the cost, and ninjas may want to roll their own for ultimate control, but for the rest of us, it’s a no-brainer. Just buy Thesis.

It’s easy to customize. Most of the common options are available right there on the Wordpress dashboard. Want to show a certain page on your menu? Check a box. Want to add header or footer scripts? Just paste them into the header or footer box and save. Want to change a color? Pick one from the color box. You’re not *required* to write code or FTP files.

Oh, and did I mention that all of those customization options are stored all in one place? As Joe Kraynak points out:

I soon discovered the idea behind Thesis. In most WordPress Themes, you have to edit multiple files to control the look and layout of your blog. These files are packed with codes and settings. If you make a bunch of changes, tracking down those changes later can be nearly impossible. With Thesis, the core theme files remain unchanged. You make all changes to two files: custom.css (for style changes) and custom_functions.php…

And again, there’s another large, active, and growing population of users and developers who are willing to share their Thesis + Wordpress knowledge and experience with the rest of us. (Thanks, again!)

What do you think? Are these characteristics relevant to you or your business? Too technical, not technical enough?

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The power of simple

by jbreazeale on October 7, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

I added a Contact page and form to my blog last night. (It’s a work in progress, but feel free to stop in and say Hi!)

I’ve been meaning to add one for awhile and had played around with a form or two, but nothing seemed to stick. So, what finally got me moving?

Four sentences from a blog post:

So, I went to Google Docs and started a new form. File>New>Form. I put in the categories that you see when you see my contact form. Then, I save the form with a template. Finally, I wrote a new WordPress page called “contact” and embedded the form into it (copy/paste level of difficulty).

In ~50 words, I know what steps to take, how many steps there are, an approximate level of difficulty, and therefore about how much time it would take.

The result? One hour later I had a live, working form on my site.

When faced with an unfamiliar task, we’re often presented with either an obsessively detailed checklist or a hopelessly vague idea – both of which inspire a distinct feeling of dread and almost always cause preventable delays.

What are you doing to find the middle ground?

More Email Management Tips (chrisbrogan.com)
Standing out from the crowd (chrisunitt.co.uk)
Mnmlist.com
Wikis in Plain English (commoncraft.com)

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Email versus bookmarklet blogging – a comparison of Tumblr and Posterous

by jbreazeale on July 8, 2009

sticky note mind map with questions on a blackboard Now that I’ve moved to grown-up blogging software (thank you, Wordpress!) I’ve been doing some tech-gardening to centralize my content, make sure all my URLs point to the right place and that my profiles are at least somewhat consistent (yeah, still working on this one.) And as part of this process, I’ve been reexamining some of the tools in my collection (arsenal?) to decide if I should use it or lose it.

Since blogging’s on my mind, I’m going to start with this question – if my blog platform of choice is Wordpress, then where does that leave Tumblr and Posterous?

What gets posted where?

Assuming that I do want to keep all three, how do I decide what gets posted where? For the Wordpress blog, this is a pretty easy decision – my long form content goes here – this includes articles on new technologies, case studies, event reviews, etc. If it takes me more than a click or is much longer than a tweet, then it’s probably going to be here.

As for everything else, for me it’s more a question of…

How does it get posted?

Let’s put it this way, I only have a Tumblr bookmarklet (not Posterous) on my browser. When I come across articles that I think would be interesting to the Tumblr community (more on that in a sec), it’s only one (ok, maybe two) clicks away from posting. And, wow, Tumblr has really added some neat stuff to their bookmarklet feature — I can select what kind of content I’m posting (text, photo, quote, etc.), add my notes or description, tell Tumblr which of my tumblogs to post to, schedule when it should be posted, date it, tag it, and customize the URL; and I know that when it’s posted, my content will be nicely formatted when it appears on my tumblog. (Well, unless I do something screwy, that is.)

I know Posterous has a bookmarklet, but to tell you the truth, I’ve never used it. Oh, I’ve put it on my bookmark toolbar before, but have always taken it off after a few weeks because it was just taking up space. (Actually, the same is true for Evernote, but that’s a discussion for another day.) I use Posterous when I need to post via email.¹ Specifically, I use Posterous as a mini-email archive for one of my community groups. When announcements or meeting minutes are emailed to the group, an email is also sent to Posterous and the content (again, including text, photo, video, etc.) is posted on the Posterous blog. These are records, they need to be kept, but they typically don’t provoke tons of discussion and therefore don’t require a highly interactive experience. Including them on the blog, however, gives our group a searchable and centralized archive of information that would otherwise reside in a handful of email boxes. So far, Posterous has been a great solution for this, but otherwise I’m not that inspired to use it.

Who’s looking at it?

As I mentioned above, I post stuff to Tumblr that I think the Tumblr community would be interested in and Tumblr is definitely a community (sometimes a juvenile and clique-y one, but still…) Folks post on Tumblr to generate a response from their audience – humor, inspiration, or disgust; Tumblr folks are an opinionated lot and if your content is stale and uninspired, don’t expect to get much love from this group.

Posterous doesn’t have the same community focus as has, but part of this has to be due to timing – Posterous turns 1 this month and is coming of age in the mass Facebook era, Tumblr is almost 2 1/2 and although Facebook was still popular way back then, it wasn’t the behemoth that it is now.² Posterous focuses on you and your interaction with its product and this user focus has included some really nifty privacy and group blogging features that Tumblr doesn’t have.

So, what makes the cut?

Well, I’m going to keep them both for now. I really like the folks on Tumblr, strange though they may be, and I love looking through their photographs, listening to their music, and reading their inappropriate comics. I’m probably not going to integrate that stream with this blog, though, at least for the time being. And, as for Posterous, I’m going to keep emailing in my announcements and building my archive. Once that time is over, I’ll take another look, but will probably shift my Posterous account to idle.

What do you think? How do you use either or both of these tools?

_{1. Tumblr allows this too, but I prefer Posterous in this case because their posting email address is easier to remember and, when combined with their privacy options, it just makes more sense for what I’m using it for.) I’m pretty sure Wordpress also has this capability, but again, it just doesn’t make sense for me.}

_{2. No opinion on Facebook in general, just saying that if you were creating a community now, you might be more likely to do so on Facebook then you would have previously because so much of your audience is already there.}