WHY I SWITCHED TO WORDPRESS

September 28, 2009

Gregg as well as Dale were wondering since you switched blogging platforms from Squarespace to Wordpress.

If you were not wondering, you should stop celebration of a mass now.

Here’s what I’m you do with Wordpress which was impossible with Squarespace, even after steady appeals to their tech support.

Comment spam management. I get in between 5 as well as twenty spam comments per day, as well as it’s been increasing. Squarespace has no await for automatically flagging viewable spam (like contains a word “Cialis”), regulating blacklist sites, or CAPTCHA. Wordpress not usually has all these options, though facilities similar to “Moderation required, unless a criticism by this user has already been approved.”
Awesome criticism system. The improved a criticism complement a improved a conversations. I’ve pronounced before which I magnitude a “success” of this blog by a peculiarity of a comments. When a comments spin out a post, when people disagree with me as well as any other, when a points in a comments have been stronger than a post, that is success, since we’re all guidance as well as growing, together with me.In Squarespace you had no carry out over a sore commenting system. I longed for threaded conversations during a least, though perfectly you wish Gravatars, a “recent comments” sidebar widget (to serve prerogative those who stick upon a conversation), as well as compelling my commenter’s own blog posts automatically (more reward).Yes, you could have switched to DISQUS or Echo, though afterwards you would have mislaid all my existent comments. (Had this been a only complaint with Squarespace, you would have substantially usually used a single of those systems as well as pronounced “oh well” to a existent comments.)
Full backup. Squarespace lets you behind up posts as well as comments though not a files you’ve uploaded (i.e. images). Now which I’m hosting Wordpress myself, I’m right away subsidy up a complete complement to Amazon S3 every day or on-demand.
Speed. My stream Wordpress designation serves pages three times faster than my Squarespace site. That’s not trivial.
Site design. Wordpress has “infinite” carry out over your theme. As you can see, you didn’t shift a total lot yet, though for e.g. see a new home page layout with dual columns, a summaries, as well as a thumbnail images. I similar to a leisure to do some-more in future.
Automating amicable media buttons. Similar to “layout,” though right away articulate about code as well as not usually blueprint as well as graphics, I’ve created law formula which automates things similar to those “Retweet” buttons upon a post, as well as emits them in a opposite approach in a RSS feed. Before you had to have those buttons manually, as well as even afterwards it didn’t crop up in a RSS feed!
RSS control. Besides those buttons, there’s things similar to special formatting or a footer for a RSS feed which you couldn’t do in Squarespace. For example, upon a site a

tab has an orange line down a left side, though in a RSS feed it didn’t, which equates to you couldn’t communicate a same meaning. For example, infrequently you usually score calm though a orange club — in a feed you can’t discuss it a difference! Now I’ve combined formula which does this in a feed too.
SEO control. I can right away carry out all about a post — title, URL, meta-description, etc.. With Squarespace you can’t. Besides losing out upon a little SEO, alternative widgets as well as toolbars (social media await systems) collect up upon those things too. In Squarespace, a pretension was so screwed up it even had damaged SGML characters as well as irregular characters which screwed up those systems.
Sandbox. When you wish to try a brand brand new blueprint or a brand brand new plug-in or whatever, you competence mangle a site. With Wordpress, you have a book which utterly duplicates a stream blog (files as well as database) in to a sandbox. Then you can screw it up, as well as usually after I’m confident with a changes do you request it to a genuine blog.
One site to order them all. Currently you do not have anything upon this site solely a blog as well as a about me page. But in destiny which will expected shift (whether or not it’s essentially advertised in a menubar). With Wordpress, this is not usually easy, though a alternative pages can be “anything” if you need them to be — even usually capricious PHP, even though e.g. a sidebar. Since this is my de facto personal website, that’s critical to me.
Community support. There’s 7.5 million Wordpress blogs, so there’s lots of report upon a web if you get stuck.

The downsides to self-hosted Wordpress have been:

Have to conduct a server. (For me you have to conduct a server any way for alternative reasons, so this isn’t so bad).
MySQL out of mental recall errors. A well known complaint in Wordpress; I’ve run in to this a couple of times. Long story, though hopefully is solved now.
Future scalability. Right right away scalability isn’t a regard — I’ve tested it with collection as well as it’s fine, as well as you can enlarge a energy of my practical horde usually by spending some-more income — though if it ever were, which would take work. The work is flattering obvious, e.g. regulating a CDN for immobile content, regulating nginx for caching as well as front-ending mixed Apache servers, etc., though it’s still genuine work.

But geeks similar to me suffer screwing with servers, so you lend towards to spin a blind eye to a downsides…

Why not Typepad or MoveableType or something else? Because you knew Wordpress would work, so you didn’t worry looking.

P.S. Proper post up tomorrow.

Written by aministrator · Filed Under business | Leave a Comment

TOO SMALL TO FAIL: HOW STARTUPS CAN GROW IN RECESSIONS

June 8, 2009

A tiny product called Bingo Card Creator only had a greatest month ever. Patrick McKenzie runs this one-man program company.

In fact, February, Mar as well as Apr were a three greatest months given a pregnancy in 2006. What recession?

Yes, we examination which right. The Bingo-card-generation-software attention is flourishing whilst each zone of a manage to buy is concurrently in a toilet.

Patrick McKensie is as well tiny to fail.

Think Patrick is alone? Balsamiq Studios?is flourishing even faster. After their user interface image pattern product netted $162k in their first year of business, currently they’re creation so many income they’re embarassed about it.?They pulled in $35k?during a initial week of Apr alone.

Balsamiq Studios is as well tiny to fail.

How?

If your niche is tiny enough, a patron need clever enough, your selling targeted enough, your product great enough, your commercial operation happy enough, they have been starting to buy, retrogression or not.

That sounds similar to a lot of “if”s, though let me uncover we which it can work.

If your idea is to have a outrageous association as well as sell $100,000,000 of program per year, you’re starting to have a difficult time. You’ll roughly positively fail, it will take years, it will take team-work between many people we haven’t nonetheless met or hired, it will take a large market, it will take beatable competitors, as well as it will substantially take debt and/or investors. And yeah, a down manage to buy could be your undoing.

But if your idea is to run a not as large sucessful commercial operation as well as be exclusively wealthy, it’s different.?If you’d be happy creation $1,000,000/year or even $200,000/year many intensity problems tumble away. A small, focused marketplace changes a rules.

In a small, focused market, we do not need a large selling bill to get noticed. You know where your commercial operation cling to out — a forums, blogs, village sites, influencers, internal groups. You even know a keywords for AdWords as well as it’s easy?to optimize, like?Patrick did.?It takes time — though not a lot of income — to experience as well as get noticed.?

In a small, focused market, we can turn a universe consultant of your niche. You can set up a many renouned blog, a many busy forum, a many appropriate pick up of how-tos, a many extensive eBook, a simplest, nonetheless many finish software. Or, in my case, a many renouned paperback book?on a theme (37,000 copies as well as counting).

In a small, focused market, we can understanding with competitors. The foe competence be diseased or there competence be copiousness of room for multiform winners. Competitors have been easy to find as well as lane as well as analyze. It’s probable which you’ll never see an 800-lb chimpanzee since a addressable marketplace is as well tiny for them to ever be essential (Microsoft isn’t starting to have a Bingo-card creator). Any alternative aspirant starting right away will be approach behind; if we keep moving they won’t locate up.

In a small, focussed market, we can pleasure commercial operation a single by one. You can rise fans as well as cheerleaders who will buy anything as well as all we make as well as widespread a word to everybody else in a community. You can fast assemble testimonials for your website which sell your services as well as products improved than any leaflet presumably could. It’s simpler than we think; only be yourself.

In a small, focused market, recessions do not strike as hard. Your intensity commercial operation have a clever need, not a flitting interest. Your existent commercial operation have a personal attribute with we as well as will go out of their approach to assistance we succeed, even in difficult times. Because of your tiny size, 99.99% of your commercial operation have been still in your future, so there’s regularly brand new commercial operation to discover.

Prevailing knowledge is which “small is risky.” It’s only a opposite. When we only need to be Ramen-profitable, we can do so even in a recession.

Care to wager? In a single year, who’s some-more expected to survive: Balsamiq Studios, or a association with $30m paid-in collateral which wasn’t essential even prior to a retrogression though has “amazing expansion intensity in a prohibited market?” Whose founders have been some-more expected to put $1m cash in their slot over a subsequent couple of years?

Remind me again — what’s wrong with small?

Am we glossing over a down-sides of tiny business, or is this indeed a many appropriate possibility a owner has during apropos a millionaire?
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