Sephy’s Platzish

I can’t exactly say that my Google Reader is down to 10 unread like it was last time I went through this, and to be honest, I’ve not had much time or that much of a pressing desire to read other blogs - it’s nothing personal, it’s just me.

Another thing that you will have noticed is that I’m not posting every day - I’m ok with that, because I’d rather have posts every few days that are of some quality instead of just having the quantity of mediocre posts. So, with that said, let’s have a bit of a retro edition of the TW3, just looking at the Bumpzee aspect, with a new list of blogs that have joined the US Blogs community. As always, if you have a blog and are in the US, feel free to join the community.

• The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Big Lie
• Just Thinkin’
• Covered With Love
• Nardeeisms
• Ivy League Conservatives
• Beautiful City - Miami
• Just a Girl in shorts talking about whatever

In addition to that, I should also add that I have put together a post for the Aussie Bloggers Blog about one of the subjects which I kind of fancy my talents - reality TV (little that I thought I’d be a pseudo expert on the subject, but really, all you need to do to become one is watch the show. ). I talked about how the first couple of weeks of the new series of Big Brother is going. My opinion - definitely for the better.

Coming up this week, I believe there’s an anniversary coming up pretty soon, and also, logo-free HD, is it possible?

Til next week y’all!

I’ve cleaned my Google Reader down to 10 unread items, and I have quite a few things to link to, and I think I’ve only doubled up on one site!

Trust me, the mark all unread button was used with great gusto.

Posts I liked

• First off, some sad news from the beginning of the month, with Katie getting into her first accident. Luckily it looks like the damage was only superficial, and nothing bad happened to her or the internals of the car.
• Of course, then she went on to show off some awesome-looking Chicken Fried Rice. I’ll have to adjust the amounts lower and try it out once.
• Meg has a debate about the bog roll - over or under? Personally, I’m an over
• I have never seen this much text on a billboard. However, if you note, Mercedes’ billboard in NZ is at a stoplight, so if you get stuck, you have some free entertainment.
• Ah, what would the world be without Peter Popoff? The Rev. Anaglyph is still getting mail from him. Now with baggies, oil, and chewing gum?
• If you’re using the CommentLuv plugin, you should seriously consider the effects on your site. Not only could it be slowing down your server, but your database could be growing exponentially…
• With New York considering going to a congestion charge like London, Streetsblog shows how Paris is defeating congestion by encouraging bicycling and public transit. Could New York use this as a model?
• Seeing that Northwest (Orient) Airlines might be going the way of Eastern, Ansett, Pan Am, and Laudair, Yesterday’s News looks back to when the first introduced stewardesses to their flights.
• Would you want to smell this flower? Amorphophallus titanum smells like rotting flesh. Apparently it also has a nickname: Bob. I kid you not.
• Some of the most interesting photos you see of a city are from its river (or at least off of the beaten path). Such is the case with Berlin, as seen from a river boat.
• And, last but not least, Yahoo might be having issues, and a sign of that might be the restrictions on fun in their toilets.

New Blogs in the US Blogs Community

• Well, shockingly, Bumpzee is down again…

The US Blogs community is open to bloggers in the US that are a part of the Bumpzee community. If you’re interested in more about the community, you can view the main page of the community.

Keywords

• home improvement tips - Uhh…make sure everything works? Seriously, how do you all get here from these searches? I know, but how did I get onto your list?
• channel 36 pbs switch to digital analog - assuming you’re in Milwaukee (though considering your IP says that this is the US Senate Sergeant at Arms, I’d think not), I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the current setup of channels. I should be getting a set top box to get digital this week, so I’m looking forward to it.
• gifting non-solicitation form - Still no response from the cash gifting people on YouTube. Why not, folks? It’s a great opportunity for free advertising, or if you wish, you can remain anonymous!
• wordpress 2.5 old look - Sorry, mate. Ain’t happening (Maybe someone will write up an admin script to get the look the same…still wondering what feedback led them to changing the whole damn thing)…
• gas price speculators crude refineries congress - Here’s how the oil pricing scheme works - speculators bid up the prices of everything, Congress blames the companies who get profits out of this bidding up, and the speculators bid up the prices some more. Who loses? Everyone, except for the speculators. But are they given their comeuppance? Nope. They’re not a “fancy” enough target.

Around the Blog

First off, I introduced a new service for anyone to take advantage of, one thing that the Horoscope said that should be done, in addition to my own experience. It’s WordPress Upgrades. With a new version available, now would be a great time to inquire about an upgrade.

Going along the line about the speculators, I really do hope that they’re happy. Really. Nice move not even showing your faces…

Also, Skype is a great program, but it’s lacking in some important areas - like accessibility.

Coming up, I’ve got an interesting question that I’d like to have y’all take the challenge and answer, but more on that later this week.

Til next week (or in two weeks), y’all!

…because I’ve been working on this for a few days now.

It all started a week ago tonight, when one of the folks on the Aussie Bloggers Forums posted a question about text widgets in WordPress. As it had happened, I knew that there was a way to go beyond the maximum number of 9 in the Widgets screen. As it turned out, along with some posting of code here and there, my solution worked perfectly, and a suggestion came about that I might be willing to upgrade to 2.3.3, and you can see where things went from there.

Then, one thing led to another and I volunteered to help her out with the upgrade process. For someone like me, who knows their way around the structure of a WordPress blog fairly well, it was simple, but for someone who might not be as familiar with the back-end (especially working with the raw files on an FTP server), it can get quite daunting, and understandably so. You can check out the result, as it happened on the forums here.

A little story, which I’ve related in the past about how finicky WordPress can be when you’re upgrading it - when I first upgraded my test blog to a new version, I forgot to deactivate the plugins before deleting files and uploading new ones. The result? Nothing. White pages and a freak out.

Where are you going with this?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Let’s return to the horoscope for my sign for today, as written by Eugenia Last. Mind you I don’t read these things at all, but I just did today for the fun of it (anyway, what else do you do when you’re just kinda lounging in the car, listening to the radio while waiting to go to your volunteering gig? I’d already read through the sports page. ). This is how it read:

You will excel where work and money are concerned. You can develop your own position by offering a service that is in demand. There is money to be made if you use your ingenuity to fill a need in your community.

Immediately upon reading that, I knew that today was the day where I would introduce a service that I realized might have some demand, especially after my experience of helping out with the upgrade described above.

It’s something that, as I have mentioned, can be a bit daunting if you aren’t the most experienced. Even if you are experienced with WordPress, but time constraints limit you in your ability to upgrade your blog or blogs (especially if you do have a lot of blogs, this can take quite a long time), this might be for you.

What’s on offer here is the ability to have someone else upgrade your WordPress blog, along with any plugins that are installed, and provide you with backups of your blog (i.e. a full WordPress export, along with a compressed copy of your installation as it is prior to the upgrade).

If you would like more detailed information, including pricing and contact details, you can check it out on the WordPress Upgrade page.

And, yes, I will do upgrades to version 2.5, if you wish.

Back from a one-week vacation, TW3 returns this week with more of the usual links, including a wrap-up of the last two weeks on the blog here.

Posts I liked

• Have you ever wondered how the inner workings of a TV broadcast work? The Daly Planet received some high-resolution photos from the folks at ESPN showing off their broadcast capabilities.
• Ah, Russia. The land of all kinds of oddities, including some lax plane maintenance. Thankfully, these are just cosmetic things as far as I can tell…
• Passive-Aggressive notes has dug up a classic note, from around 2001. Apparently at Condé Nast Restaurant, someone was unhappy with the lack of egg salad…
• The UK continues to be a source of things comedic, and this is no exception. If you’ve watched the 24-hour news channels (or even the local news), you know how often they’re begging you to give your input. So, what exactly do you reckon?
• Lastly, if there is one link you read out of this whole wrap, it should be Raj Dash’s explanation of why he hates WordPress 2.5. Sadly, it seems that we’re stuck with it. We can only hope that the folks at WordPress will keep the 2.3 branch alive. Either that or someone will come up with a replacement dashboard that is like the one everyone’s used to already.

New Blogs in the US Blogs Community

• Along the Lakeshore News

The US Blogs community is open to bloggers in the US that are a part of the Bumpzee community. If you’re interested in more about the community, you can view the main page of the community.

Keywords

• wordpress 2.5 missing subpanel - I can’t say I’m surprised that something’s missing in there - it seems they released this one half-baked…and an update isn’t forthcoming for a few weeks yet
• driving test tips singapore - Erm, I dunno; maybe don’t stall the car if it’s an automatic? Or, don’t try to interfere with the F1 cars as they round the corner? I’m at a loss y’all!
• dress like a whore - Another one I’m at a loss on. All I know is that I’m not an authority on that one. Maybe you should consult Britney Spears or that chick who hosts that show on Speedvision - Vida Guerrera I think her name is. I call her Slutty McSlut…she looks like she has experience…
• wordpress designers fuck up widgets - Could not have said it better myself. In fact I think I said just that.
• what to wear on a plane in june - It might be warm, but you should always dress with safety in mind. I’d personally go with a pair of sweatpants, as surprising as that might seem - there’s no chance that you will trip over them in case you need to move quickly, and you can easily roll up the legs for comfort…

This week around the blog, I’ve been talking about this theme that I’m making. First up, I had to do some reading of the Codex, but then I quickly got an idea together and it suddenly had some form to it. Right now, it’s still got that basic form, but the comments box has gotten to a more appropriate width.

I also asked about why Entrecard changed their pricing system, when it didn’t need changing (sound familiar?), along with having a discussion of cash gifting. Just so you know, I’ve offered an opportunity to some of the folks on YouTube to be interviewed by me; whether they do it or not is up to them, but I think it would be a quite fascinating look into what could be considered almost a second world.

Coming up this week, I’ll have that announcement about a new service that I’ll be providing, along with wondering if someone is happy about the state of certain things.

Til next week, y’all!

Admittedly, I haven’t been the most active with Entrecard dropping and getting my blog advertised on other blogs (in fact, I’ve got over 10,000 credits now just kinda sitting there at the moment). As I was browsing the site today, however, I noticed some new things - most of them good, but one of them quite confusing.

First, (somewhat like I did with WordPress), let’s go to the good stuff.

Drop Statistics

One of the new things you’ll see when you view the profile page of a blog on the site, you’ll see this new addition to the blog information -

That’s a pretty cool feature, because it lets you see if a potential advertiser has taken an interest in your site before they decided to commit their credits to advertising with you. For me, if I have a whole bunch of ads queued up in my queue, I can go through and see who’s had the most drops and kinda order them as to that, instead of trying to make a personal preference sort of thing…

Navigation in the Inbox

By far, this is the coolest new feature that they’ve added. You can now see everyone who has ever dropped their card on your widget in the inbox, instead of the “old” way of the last 70 or so. Also, to fix one of the more tricky problems of the old inbox, they’ve added a dropdown so that you can choose if you want to show the cards you have or the ones you haven’t dropped on yet today.

For both of these, I think the answer to “why” is fairly obvious - it’s something that there has been demand for in the past. However, something that I don’t understand the reasoning behind is something that kind of blindsided everyone - the new Ad pricing structure.

New Ad Pricing

As I was looking in my dashboard, I noticed that my price to advertised had almost halved itself from the around 200 that I’d been maintaining for quite some time now (thanks to averaging about 100 drops on my site per day, multiplied by 2), to 128 (or 2⁷).

The strange thing is that, if you look at the post announcing this change, there are some of the same generalities strewn about, somewhat like WordPress did. In my (and probably about 90% of Entrecard users), apparently this was discussed in the Forums, but like WordPress, the changes seem to have no bearing on what users have been used to - a system that (for the most part) worked.

Just as an explanation of how the old system worked - the price to advertise was based on the average number of cards dropped on your blog over the last 5 days, multiplied by 2. Now, it’s based on varying exponents of 2, with the number of ads determining the exponent used for 2. For example, if you have 1 ad in your queue, then it costs 2 credits, 2 means 4, 3 means 8, et cetera.

Now, all those cards dropped on your site? Well, that just means you and the dropper get a credit for it, along with positioning on the popularity rankings (which are now available in the Browser feature).

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In the end of it all, this (as they call it) Long-Awaited change to the pricing structure sounds to me a bit like WordPress 2.5 - a half-baked “fix” to something that really didn’t need fixing with little to no explanation as to why it was done. The old system was simple to figure out - you drop a card, that site’s price goes up by around 2/5th credit. Now, we have a system where if you want to advertise on even a moderately popular blog, you need to have a ton of credits bankrolled.

The only question, which for all intents and purposes is rhetorical, I have is “Why?”. Why, when you’ve made such good changes as the new features in the inbox and on the individual pages, did you drop the blog information from the Browse by Category page? Why did you drop the Nearby tab, which was useful for bloggers to connect to folks in their country? Lastly, why did you change your advertisement pricing from a stable one based completely upon merit to one that becomes based upon daily fluctuations in ads appearing or not appearing, with anyone with more than 7 or 8 ads in their queue (128 and 256 ec per ad respectively) having drastic jumps in the price of an ad?

Perhaps, a suggestion would be that beyond 8 ads in the queue, the next “level” of ads would be at a set separation - say, 128 or even 256, thus making a progression of 256, 512, 768, 1024, 1280, etc. (with the 128 progression being 256, 384, 512, 640, 768, etc.). That would eliminate the exponential growth problem that is natural with the exponential system in place, along with making the most popular blogs more accessible to everyone out there for advertising once again.