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We’re in the middle of a re-vamp here!

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Thanks for your patience, I finally found time yesterday to finish my new blog-template. To me, this is much more than just some graphical brush-up: my aim was to closely integrate my “non-datadirt” social web activities, to unclutter the design and to build a lean, xhmtl-valid and fast-loading template suitable for videos as well as for longer essays. The result you're browsing now is far from finished, there are still some details which await tweaking.

For now I just wanna thank all coders, geeks and programmers out there: since I'm using wordpress (and that would be a couple years by now), browsing the plugin repository for new add-ons is like shopping in a free gadget story. I really admire those folks who turn a brilliant idea into a great and easy-to-use plugin! datadirt is not just the result of my own work, and I'm well aware that I'm standing on the shoulders of web 2.0 giants. I'll try to give something back by reviewing some of these great plug-ins. And I wanna send out a very special THANK YOU SO MUCH! to Matt Mullenweg and the whole WordPress Crew and to all fellow bloggers from whom I learned so much – especially Jeremy Shoemaker for his great and inspiring postings and his insights on the web.

btw: This was really a hard one for me: I'm not a designer, and usually I'd simply hire a specialist for this delicate task, but since this is my own blog, I wanted ultimated control over the code (that's a real time-saver when you constantly add some bells and whistles) which meant that I had to do this myself. Frankly, I'm quite happy with the (temporary) results, and of course I'm very eager on your opinions. So pls let me know what you think about datenschmutz 3.0.

datadirt updates via twitter: @datadirtrss

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dsrss-twittericon_biggerI'm not too big a fan of mixing personal twitter accounts with automated postings, so I set up a dedicated twitter account for this task. If you prefer to receive datadirt postings via tweet, just follow @datadirtrss. Of course I'll continue to use my personal acccount @datadirt for manual updates, while the frog-bot will send out automated updates via the new account.

Of course I set the profile to auto-follow – by the way, let me remind you of the twitter auto-follow accounts list, which keeps growing and gives you some instant followers (which is especially useful if you're starting a new twitter account and want to “polish” the numbers a bit: it's a psychological issue, as most users won't follow an account which has less than 10 followers).

If you run a WordPress blog and want to set up your own posting-bot, this is what you have to do:

  1. Set up a fresh twitter account.
  2. Optional: use tweetlater to set up account automation. (I highly recommend auto-follow for bot-accounts!)
  3. Optional: Upload an avatar, adjust the twitter colour settings and design your own background – you'll find plenty inspiration at twitterbacks.com.
  4. Install Alex King's Twitter Tools on your blog. The plugin automatically sends a tweet every time a new post goes live. (Optionally, you can can also use Twitter Tools to post an entry every time you send out a tweet and/or show the latest tweets in your sidebar.)
  5. Actually, there's no fifth step – but you need some followers, right? At this point you should think about how you can promote your new twitter-bot on your blog. Usually, it's a good idea to place a button in your sidebar.
twitscreen

So good luck with all your twitter endeavours – seems like building an additional traffic stream always pays off!

PS – Note to twitter-spammers: I realized that many accounts follow fellow tweeters who have their account on auto-follow. After waiting till they receive the follow-back love, they quickly unfollow. I regularly (about twice a month) go through my “following” list anyways – I simply used to kick out the bottom-feeders, but since many are trying more than once, I've started blocking everyone who unfollows me quickly after the follow. And I urge you to do the same if you want to keep your account clean.

WordPress.tv: Automattic goes television

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WordPress.tvOne week ago, Automattic launched a brand-new WordPress-centered video site: WordPress.tv features various screen casts, presentations and tutorial videos on the world's leading blog content management system. The available clips are bound to water the mouths of beginners and pros, as they range from basic explanations like “How to post a blog entry” to all the advanced presentations held during last year's WordCamp.

Keeping Automattic's mission statement in mind, this launch is a huge step in my opinion – videos and screen casts are extremely helpful when it comes to understanding the potential of WordPress:

Blogging is too hard. Through WordPress we?ve enabled millions of people to effortlessly publish to the web. Now we want to enable millions more.

Some of my friends didn't have any programming in mind when they started their blogs. But it seems that sooner or later almost everyone feels the strong urge to start tinkering with his theme, installing new plugins and so on. So since the technology is a part of blogging, ease of access is the way to go. Now I'm fully aware of the fact that competitors like Typepad take a totally different approach, but to me fading out the underlying scripts doesn't make too much sense in the long run, and this is why I'm very excited about the new video repository, especially since there's much more goodness to come:

On WordPress.tv, you'll find tutorials for both WordPress self-installs and WordPress.com to help you get blogging fast and hassle-free. We?ve kicked things off with the basics ? now you can shape what comes next. Just drop us a line and let us know what you?d like to see added.

There's a contact form for entering your own videos (just take a look at the guidelines) and a commenting function. Personally, I would like to see two new features added in the near future: a basic editorial “rating” (beginner, advanced pro) and a user rating (WP-Rating might do a great job on that). Once again, congrats to Matt and his team – I'm positive that during the next month a couple of online enterprises are going to copy WP's idea and open their own niche-Youtubes. Here's an interview with Matt on the way Auttomatic operates – quite interesting stuff:

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 50/2008

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wingsuitMain bloggerilla topic of the week: the new WordPress aka 2.7. Matt and his team change a lot in the backend – it's like Obama said: “Change, we can do it!” What O did not mention though was the fact that change makes most folks rather uncomfortable. In that respect, it's more like TLC sang-rapped: “Don't go chasin' waterfalls / listen to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.” In other words, I've heard a lot of user complaining about a so-called uglification of the CMS. My five cents: so far I've only updated half of my blogs, and I really dig the new look and all the new features.

The new WordPress 2.7

A lot of hard programming work has gone into this release: every backend-screen is customizable, so it should be easier than ever to fit WP to your needs. Furthermore, this updating-round is the last manual one: from 2.7 or “Coltrane”, WP updates do happen on the fly without any ftp-uploads (just like the current plug-in update function). This new release is so full of features that you might want to take a look at the official WordPress Blog. This screencast sums up all the new blogging-goodness:

Jerry nails it again

I really dig this guy, not just because he's funny and a good writer – I also learned a great deal from him. And I can only fully endorse this quote from an article about blogging and not selling out:

I get probably 10-20 solicitations a day to write about someone

Weekly Blogistan Round-Up no. 48/2008

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weekly round-up KW48Another week bites the dust: and much ado is going on about something that hardly anybody understands: the global financial crisis is spilling over from bankruptcy-filing banks to the car industry and plenty other businesses. Neither Obama nor the new Austrian government (if this comparison sounds strange to you: I live in Austria) will have an easy job: and while the EU is planning coordinated measures, I keep asking myself one question that nobody could answer so far: The governments deem giving cheap credits to banks appropriate. Why don't they hand out those credits – on the same terms – directly to needy companies?

After all, this money is supposed to fuel the economic fire, but so far the amount of money parked at the European central bank by national institutes has increased! Doesn't sound like a good plan to me… but luckily, online-entrepreneurs who specialize in marketing need little to no start-up capital: and that's one of the reasons, why our businesses will bloom in the near future.

Who to follow on twitter

Dan has dug the archives and came up with a list of twitter opinion-leaders:

One of the best ways to get started is by following the

Plugin.Mania: WP-dTree

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Ever been jealous of you neighbour's miraculous dTree? Oh, I see – you have no clue what a dTree is. Well, those things don't grow in gardens, that's for sure: we're talking Scriptaculous here: dTrees are the nifty little menu structures with the “+”-signs that make hierarchies expand or collapse.

No more need for manuel coding, WP-dTree by a guy who calls himself “Plugin Author” does the trick:

WordPress