It’s that time again.
This is our weekly Q and A session with the 8BIT Team. You can ask us anything and one of us will hook you up with an answer in the coming week.
Simple, right? Oh, and did we answer your question from last week? Let us know.
About Us:
We've been insanely-interested in exploring how the Church, ministries, and non-profits use technology to effectively fulfill their mission to the world.
With a small blog that started in September of 2008 we grew faster than we had ever dared to dream expanding into a network of blogs that reached more than a quarter million people every single month.
In May of 2011 we re-focused our efforts bringing all of the content back into one solidified brand - a "digital magazine" of resources that still serve the same industries and that still has the same curious heartbeat that started this movement.
Join us - there is still much to be explored.
Powered By:
Copyright 2012 · 8BIT, LLC.
Just curious, but why is there an option to put your Twitter username in the comment box? I haven’t really seen it integrated much with anything. I’ve stopped filling out that part. Is there any reason why I should?
that’s a GREAT point. i killed it accidently… we need to put that back!
Sweetness! Looking forward to its return!
Knowing @dewde wins hands down for Best Hair at 8Bit, who would be second?
Kyle. Easy.
@dewde. It’s just that good.
peace | dewde
haha.
Do you guys actually use social news aggregators (digg, reddit, etc) or are you way too cool for that?
And if you do, network of choice?
The short answer: I’m not too cool for them, but I don’t use them like I used to do so.
I used to subscribe to Digg way back when it was targeted more towards development (both software and web). This is just my opinion, but the more they’ve opened up the site to other areas, the lesser the quality of the content. Somehow, the majority of the mainstream topics get pulled back to lolcats, politics, and trolls.
I still subscribe to the Programming Digg and I occasionally visit the Programming Reddit, but if you subscribe to the popular blogs that are already in those niches, you’re going to see the content before it hits those two sites.
What are those?
that’s a project for you.
SU is my fav.
I’ve never like SU.
peace | dewde
i never liked you.
Whenever I’m looking for a good tool or tech solution or resource in an area which I’m not too familiar yet, I check out SU and do a search or go to a site like makeuseof.com, etc. Thumbs up.
SU also provides some nice traffic spikes to get pages some exposure — depending on the content, it can jump start the blog commenting because the generally right audience hit your pages.
All my close friends use Google Reader. None of us use social news aggregators, but we do subscribe to different sites, blogs, etc. And we all are good about sharing in Reader when something strikes our fancy.
Reader has become a highly targeted social news aggregator for me. It leans heavier on my “tribe”, and less on a category. I don’t have to follow DIlbert daily cuz a friend of mine already does and shares the ones related to software development. I don’t have to follow Climate CHange blogs because I get a good sample of the top shelf stuff via another. Plus, when articles of a differing opinion come about, like say a friend of mine has a differing political stance than I do, or something like that, I end up “debating” in the comments with a trusted friend, and not some random stranger on the net.
I’m not opposed to the others, and I will Digg an article if it blows my socks off, but Gooreader is my tool of choice for many reasons.
peace | dewde
ah. this is true. blog post here on gooreader as aggregator. you?
What are the WordPress plugins that you’re using on the majority of your sites now? What are some plugins that you have stopped using?
we should create a list for you guys, huh? look for a blog post!
Are you counting that as an answer?
How many hours a week goes into content creation for the 8bit networks blogs? How do you fellas balance work and blog writing?
It typically takes at least 20 hours a week to create content across the entire network. it can scale at times much larger.
balancing is all about scheduling, a robust editorial calendar, and years of hard work and experience.
How do you manage that much time with a 40 hr work week? Followup: do you have super human/blogger abilities?
i work 45 hours at northpoint and then i schedule my entire day around what is left to do. i sat down with my wife and mapped out literally every hour.
..yes. Stuff outside of work is just as much a commitment for my wife as it is me.
John is a machine of a blogger. I feel like the 50 year old guy trying to play basketball with the youngens when I am around John and his work ability. Simply amazing
Admittedly, I don’t blog like John. Few people do.
Managing 8BIT work, personal blogging, and 40-hour-work comes down to two things – time management and a serious love for what I’m doing. And, sometimes, late nights.
late nights. yes.
I look at it as early mornings with a nap.
Okay, I’m late in, but I can present a sick note if that’s needed…
Working on a blog that uses “WP to Twitter” plugin to automatically tweet new blog posts. The problem is that when the tweets go out with this plugin, they never make it to Facebook. The blog owner set up the twitter to facebook thing and has had no trouble tweeting to facebook until we added this plugin.
All the “regular” tweets (web & phone) go through, just none of the ones sent from this wp plugin.
Which plugins do you guys use/recommend?
He wants to:
–schedule tweets in advance
–automatically tweet new blog posts
–schedule repeating tweets: same prayer goes out every day at 12 noon.
–have all tweets post to his facebook page
I need some help.
why not just integrate his feed directly into facebook via “notes”? that’s more permanent and you get higher engagement.
in terms of auto-tweeting, why bloat the system with an auto-tweet? why not just use feedburner’s built in system to tweet out using google’s shortener?
scheduling tweets in advance you could use socialtoo.com or owly. socialtoo can do the repeating tweets.
I used to have facebook import my blog into fb notes, but I turned that off for now. The main reason I disabled it was it reduced traffic to my site. I know, selfish, but it’s true. Less click-through to the site affects stats.
For a while I thought that content is content and I didn’t really care if people commented on my posts on facebook or my blog, but I’m trying it this way for now. I might go back to the old way after I experiment for a while.
Thanks, John! I appreciate the late-night help!
Perhaps I’m late but I didn’t know you could import your blog into FB notes. Now I do. So I did it and I think my posts will foster much more dialogue from my FB friends. Yay!
Nice!
I second everything John said. Another scheduler that may work well is Twuffer – we covered it on Drop last week.
Check it out!
I just registered an account here. Why is that option available?
so you can get comment credit on the sidebar on top commenters! also, we have some more plans as well.
That sounds fantastic. Thanks
oh, and it also makes commenting easier since you don’t have to plug in all your info all the time.
Once I saw this comment I logged in so I wouldn’t have to fill out all that stuff. I was hoping that registering would include a free bag of cookies but you do what you can do. No hard feelings
Speaking of something like this. I’ve been experiencing what appears to be caching issues with network sites. I go to the page and there isn’t anything new (when I know there is something new because my Google reader says so). So then I log in or out and click home on the respective site and everything shows up as it should- fresh and new.
Any ideas? I’m using Chrome. And like I said this across all Church______ sites.
Nick, same here. I use Chrome and when I pull up any 8bit site, it’s a cached page from weeks ago. This sounds lame, but I’ve been using FF exclusively for 8bit. haha Glad you brought this up.
I”m going to do that. What’s your OS? Windows or OS X?
Windows, but I’m going to be doing Tom’s quick fix.
@8Bit – Would this have anything to do with the Amazon cache plugin?
Quick fix for this: Hold CTRL and press “F5.” You’ll do what’s called a “hard refresh” which will empty the cache and pull the latest data from the site.
This works across all major browsers.
Thanks Tom! You just made my 8bit experience that much better!
That’s the only reason I’m here. For you and your experience.
Surely I hope it’s more than that. Thanks for the tip man!
Is this a Windows fix? Doesn’t seem to be working for me- I’m running OS X.
I don’t have a Mac, so I could be off on suggesting this but try pressing the Command-key or the Apple-key in addition to F5.
If that doesn’t work, maybe some Mac fans will step up..;)
Hope so Tom. No love so far. I can scoot around the issue on all the 8BIT sites- except ChurchIT. No love there. Doesn’t take my comments (maybe it knows about my plan to rule the world….).
Chrome, Safari, Firefox- issues everywhere. I even did the terminal thing and cleared the cache there.
And in Firefox now- I can’t do anything by one big paragraph in the comments on ALL the sites (no enter/retrun love).
ARRRRRRGH!
Maybe it’s time to call Apple…. (and yes- I loathe the fodder this provides the Windows fanboi’s.)
I don’t think there are any Windows fan boys here. But wait, I thought everything about your machine “just works?”
Kidding.
I’m blaming Chrome at this point.
But yeah- Apple’s aren’t perfect- just “bullet proof”.
mucho love-o Tom!