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.
John Saddington
I am the CEO of 8BIT and a Full Time Entrepreneur/a>. I like what I do.
What do you use to do the beautiful screen caps? I like the arrows 🙂
Holler!
We use a bunch of different apps… but Skitch is free! http://skitch.com/
Perfect. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
word.
I’ve used Jing in the past.. now i just use shift+command+4 for screenshots.. but Jing allows video as well.. and ftp uploads..
http://www.jingproject.com/
ever sent a file to trash, emptied it? Then had to restore it some how? How did you do it? Somehow did it today, trying to figure it out, hmmmm.
um. doh. if it wasn’t secure delete (on a mac) you can pay for restore services… or timemachine…?
doh!
My host often complains that using the Yet Another Related Post plugin (YARP) because of the queries. Here’s a quote from their twitter:
“yarp is a terrible wordpress plugin. Anyone running it should consider turning it off. It’s queries are absolutely terrible. Case in point one of our new machines a user has it running sucking up an entire cpu as it takes 10 seconds to insert a row…”
Is this your experience as well? Is there another plugin with similar function you might recommend? Or is it just a problem w/ my host?
http://churchm.ag/testing-related-links-by-google/
Yes. We’ve used it for a LONG time but it required WAY too many database requests which can seriously slow down a site.
Although that shouldn’t be a problem now since we cache our DB calls, we opted for Google’s algorithm instead.
Looks like I’ll have to wait til Related Links is open to the public, huh? Thanks for the heads up.
sure thing!
This may sound humorous, but I noticed your influence meter for ChurchCrunch is only showing your twitter follower numbers, feedburner API throwing fits?
Oops now it looks its working. The wonders of the 8Bit Team!
I also notice that when I use the php to access the awareness API of Google Feedburner. You almost have to store the last value for when Feedburner plays up and use that in the calculation.
patience fixes a lot!
yes. it was.
What are the chances of a W3 Total Cache Tut making it onto an 8BIT site soon? (Yeah- I(still)DK what I’m doing with that. 🙂
Join the Club
but you’re in the club!
But I still do not know what I am doing with that thing
yeah. perhaps… it typically requires a dedicated service where you can really manipulate the box.
Any suggestions for off-site hosted backup? We have an in-house backup that’s working nicely, but we’d like to get an off-site backup going for obvious reasons. After pricing various companies I’m tempted to make my own off-site backup using cloud file hosting. BTW, we need at least 250GB of space.
Are you looking for something for home backup of commercial backup?
For home, I’ve had good experience with Mozy. Another good solution is, Amazon S3.
If you opt to go with the latter, JungleDisk is a solid option.
We’re looking for commercial. I use Carbonite for home use, but when they say unlimited they mean 200GB.
I think JungleDisk may work. Costs a lot less than others I’ve looked at.
check out some posts from churchIT.com too.
How to determine constituent needs.
I see most ministries have four sets of constituents:
1) Clients/ministry-focus constituents
2) Staff
3) Supporters
4) Volunteers
Each set have their own needs and agendas.
I am the volunteer tech support a local ministry. They want to get a better grasp on how to use technology to reach their #1) Clients/ministry-focus constituents.
And, at the same time, they are willing to look at how they can use technology to meet the needs of the other three sets.
How would you begin to get a grasp on how technology can be used in each case? We have lots of e-mail addresses so we could ask them some questions but what do we ask?
ask questions. a good report will show a lot! then find apps and web-services that support and answer those problems / address those needs.
good start though!
The reason I like IntenseDebate is getting emails from comment responses. Is it possible to implement that feature here? (I could subscribe to comments, but I’m not *that* excited haha)
That is an excellent question, somehow I would think it would only be a matter of some additional coding to set some type of check box in our user profiles to automatically subscribe to a comment thread unless deliberately choosing to opt out. That said I have never seen a wordpress plugin with that option. We are in the company of WordPress greats however, maybe someone has some inspiration.
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/comment-reply-via-email-open-to-all/
they have it on wordpress.com
we’ve been looking into that… but we’ve been spending a lot of time on some “other” development… stay tuned. this is a definite need.
beautiful, that’s what I like to hear.
Is it possible merge a second theme into one your using?
I have a theme I like for my posts, but is it then possible to use Johns Digital Business Card theme too..Like I have an about page and I’d love to use that theme for that page… But I’m still kinda new to wordpress and didn’t know if would be possible..
thanks
the only way right now (without being to technical) is doing two different installs you could do http://www.mysite.com/home as your regular blog.. then http://www.mysite.com/about with a separate wordpress install and a separate theme..
or.. you could wait till WP 3.0 comes out 🙂 they will offer multi sites under one install.
Jared is right. That multi-install option is basically your only option for something like that. Having run a multiple WP install a time or two, I can tell you it is a bear to maintain in regards to security upgrades and even ”simple” stuff like menu link changes. Where you once only had to do it in one header file, now its two. Google Analytics install procedure gets doubled as well, and the list goes on.
If you can, try to narrow down the look and appearance down to one theme, based on the message and emotional connection that you are trying to make with your reader.
way to expand on what I was saying! great input. I was going to suggest a custom “about” page template could tie in the elements you want from the business card theme but keep everything cohesive.
Thanks so much for the info!!
Looks like it’s best for my skills set that I just leave it alone until WP3 comes out.. I know just enough to do complete carnage to my meager blog… its tough enough trying to do CSS tweeks.. and multiple installs would be way over my head..
Thanks though!
You don’t know of anyone with “extra” registrations to Drive 2010 they need to fill do you? I have become interested in the possibility, but the current “late” price is a little steep for me right now.
Also, what was the thinking behind the permalink structure w/o dates? Is it SEO motivated?
Yes. It’s a best practice for permalinks from what I understand.
yes. sorting by date is somewhat overplayed.