The Blog Studio

The last few days have seen a higher then usual number of Gloom and Doom posts proclaiming that “Blogging is Dead” and the “Golden Age” of blogging has come to end. A few people even think that blogs have been dead so long they are ripe for a retro-comeback. Discounting the general web fixation of declaring things “Dead” every so often (Bon Jovi anyone?), is it true? Is blogging dead? The main post I’m referring to is from Jeremiah Owyang. The 2nd post is a response to that from Brian Solis and for good measure here is one from Mark Evans.

No. Not only is blogging still very much alive, it’s far from “Living on a Prayer”. Blogging might appear to have taken up residence in the digital hospice, but that’s just because blogging has become the norm. It is an accepted, integral part of the web. More people read and write blogs then ever before, so how can it be on life support?

Many pundits are declaring blogging “dead” because it is no longer the newest, hippest kid on the block. That’s certainly true. If you examine who the people writing the eulogies for the blog are, they are overwhelmingly tech reporters. To a tech reporter, a blog is old news. They’ve been around forever, don’t have the exciting, shiny new start-up street credibility or cache of being the new kid on the block anymore. There isn’t much of a story there for a tech reporter. In the tradition of great reporters throughout the ages, when there is no story...make one up!

Blogs have become one of the main components of the internet. They are a standard, accepted backbone of the web . The other 99.9% of the web audience who aren’t tech writers realizes that a good chunk of their news, reviews, opinions and media are consumed via blogs. Blogs are so much a part of the web landscape today, that readers just see them as “websites”, not as a wholly separate entity and writing format.

The shifting nature of what a blog actually is, plays a big part in the perception some have that they are “dead”. BoingBoing. TechCrunch. Mashable. MetaFilter. Slashdot. When you think of these sites, do you think of a dying medium? Certainly not, All of these sites bring in massive amounts of traffic, regularly break news and interesting stories and have large and engaged user communities. Each of these sites is also most certainly a blog. This is the point of contention. While all of these sites are blogs, most readers just think of them as “websites” or “news sites”. The definition of what we think of as a blog has changed. A blog is no longer an overly long, scrolling page with spinning HTML stars where a 13 year old goth girl reprints Cure lyrics and discusses her depression to an audience of 8 unique viewers per day. Many of the most popular, and most respected “news” sites, are blogs.

Either way you look at it, it’s a game of semantics and definitions. Whether we choose to call a site like Mashable a blog, or something else, is at the heart of things, unimportant. The site, and its brethren are alive and kicking. The blog is not dead, it has just gone through a name change in some cases and a perception change in others. Blogs have become such a dominant force on the web, that we no longer separate them out from the other sites out there. This is an excellent thing, and a more potent argument for blogs being alive and well. So to all the writers out there, declaring the Death of Blogging, I have one question to ask. Where did you publish that article declaring the blog is dead? I thought so…

Now you need to come up with a strategy, an idea and a voice.

Before you start hitting publish on your computer (or smart phone) you need to stop and think about what you’re going to be saying and how you’re going to be saying it.

There are a lot of theories and examples and how to’s out there in the world for you to read and take from. And I’m not here to tell you that any of them are more right or more wrong than any other. But, I will tell you how I feel and why I feel that way. That’s why I’m writing this post.

Be Conversational. I can’t stress this enough. Think back to when you were a student in elementary or high school or even post-secondary classes, were you more engaged and attentive in a lecture format that had you staring with glazed over eyes at a talking head or were you more engaged and excited about what you were being told when you were part of the conversation? For me it was the later. I wanted to be talked to not talked at. I wanted to be part of the discussion. I wanted to raise my hand and be called on. And that’s exactly how I feel about blogging. I want to talk to my readers like they are friends sitting in the living room with me. And that’s how I wanted to be spoken to as well.

Don’t Be Afraid To Brag. If your team is doing fantastic, amazing, terrific things - tell the world! Your people deserve the spotlight and your future clients deserve to know that you are awesome. You may want to hold onto a little bit of humility so you don’t turn into that kid who is always talking about herself in the third person and boasting about her resume, but at the same time you’ll want to slip in some of those accomplishments and make yourself stand out from the crowd. Use your blog space as an opportunity to make announcements about big projects or parties or donations or sponsorships. Use it to tell us about the great new community manager you hired in the office. Use it to tell us the things that you are proud of. Just remember to be humble.

Teach, Don’t Preach. This is a huge issue for me. If you know something, believe something, trust in something with every fibre of your being and you want to tell me about it - DO IT! However, do it in a way that doesn’t leave me feeling like you’re telling me to think like you lest I turn myself into an idiot. Give me a list of reasons why I should believe you and follow your lead. Tell me how green the grass is on the other side. Heck, give me directions on how to get over the fence. Just don’t push me over the fence if I’m not climbing fast enough for you. If you’re talking about something that I’m interested in and want to know more about and get into, I will. You don’t have to be my crossing guard. Just show me that you’re excited and knowledgeable and give me the map. I’ll do the rest.

Proofread. This may seem like a simple step, but it’s one that is far too often missed or done so quickly that errors go live online when they could be avoided. There are going to be times when your fingers slip, your mind starts a sentence in one tense and ends it in another or a word just gets misspelled. It happens. The cool thing is that you can make me forget that it happens by cleaning up your copy before it goes live. Whether you have someone else in the office give your piece a once over or you take a little break, run it through spelling and grammar checks and then send it to the world is your choice. Just make sure that it’s not a step that you skip. Trust me.

These are my 4 biggest things for you to keep in mind. As you go on and get more comfortable with your blog you will find that it starts to come easy. You’ll know what point you want to get across and how you want to do it. You’ll be tearing up the blogosphere and will have people begging for more content. That’s a good position to be in. Prepare yourself, you’re going to get there.

Oh, I forgot one thing - Have Fun! You’re not writing a text book, you’re running a blog. Enjoy yourself, when users can tell you’re enjoying yourself they’ll be back to share in the good times when you post again. 

The good folks at Wordpress made version 3.3 available on Tuesday and website owners all over the world are jumping on board. There have been 65 million Wordpress downloads since 3.0 was introduced in 2010 and it’s estimated that 15% of websites are running on Wordpress and 22% of new websites are using the platform.

Wordpress 3.3 is a big step forward in a few ways and offers new and updated features and functions for all users.

Some of the highlights include:

• Drag and Drop Media Uploading. No more clicking to browse though folders and files. All you have to do is grab your media and drag it into the box. As a big plus this is an all-in-one media centre. Whether you’re pulling in an image, video or audio file you have less to do and a faster system to do it with. The new media uploader also saves time with its multiple upload capabilities and general ease of use options. Your positioning, sizing, tagging and caption functions remain the same with Wordpress 3.3, only the uploading has changed. And it has changed for the better.
• Small Screen Optimization. With the boom in the mobile market there are more and more bloggers and site administrators working on the go from smartphones and tablets. Wordpress 3.3 has created an easier and sleeker admin option. The key to the small screen optimization is the left side menu bar. The side bar automatically collapses in a small screen format. While not having your menus may sound like a detriment to your work, it gives you so much more space that you won’t miss it at all.
• Fly-Out Menus. Less clicking is more productive. Wordpress 3.3 is upping your productivity one admin menu at a time. Everything on the left side looks the same with the layout of administrative options but it’s smoother, cleaner, faster and easier to find what you need and get to work on your website. Instead of expanding and contracting menus when you’re working on your website you can simply hover over the menu that you need and have the expanded options appear for you. When you stop hovering the options disappear. Time, space and headaches are saved.
• Tumblr Importer. With the growing (and growing) popularity of Tumblr there had to be a step taken by the good people at Wordpress for importing posted content. With a one click plugin you can move your content from your existing Tumblr account to your Wordpress website. Multi-site web publishing (and life) just got a lot easier. If you’ve got a release, report or meme you need to bring over this new gadget will get the job done.

What does all of this mean to you? If you are a blogger, designer or Wordpress website administrator it will not take long for you to notice the difference. And the differences that you notice will only help you. From Tumblr imports to media uploads to fly-out menus, you will start to see your experience improve in your day-to-day Wordpress life.

By no means is this the be all and end all of Wordpress improvements, but it’s a great step forward and a perfect holiday gift to all of us!

Right this second, there are 50 million blogs running on WordPress. That number seems insane, but it’s true. It gives you some perspective on what it takes, and the logistics involved, whenever WordPress comes out with a new update. Having 50 million installs go smoothly, and making 50 million users happy is no easy task. Despite all that, with the release of WordPress version 3.2 aka “Gershwin”, the development team has managed to smack another home run out of the ballpark. After a week of using the new update, I’m deeply impressed, and can recommend upgrading if you’re a WordPress user.

The first thing you’ll notice is the changes to the WP dashboard, On the surface it looks prettier. The fonts, spacing and layout have all been changed, an the improvements look fantastic. WP has never been known for its looks, especially on the backend, but it really looks great. Considering the time many of us spend with the dashboard, it’s a welcome improvement. Working in an attractive environment is a nice bonus and it’s hard to argue with solid UI.

Really, what we’re all interested in though is what’s going on behind the scenes and under the hood. It might sound very exciting, but the biggest thing to come out of Gershwin is that it includes a new theme, “2011” that 100% HTML5 compatible. It’s a good looking theme as well. There’s plenty of flexibility between with colours, columns, and layouts. It appears simple, but since it’s HTML5 compatible, and it can be switched around to your liking, it’s a huge bonus. In the past these features would have been included with a premium theme you need to pay for, but Gershwin offers them for free. It isn’t a perfect theme, but we suspect it will do what’s necessary for many bloggers and you’ll see it popping up often on blogs all over the web.

At its’ heart, WordPress is a blog, so it’s for bloggers, the people who write and post all day long giving us stuff to read and share. The new distraction free writing interface is for them. As bloggers with thousands of writing hours under our belt ourselves, we can tell you: This is awesome! What’s in the new writing interface? Nothing. That’s the point. It’s a big, blank canvas with no distractions and the bare minimum of writing tools. It has just the basics: font changes, adding links, bullet points and some basic formatting. Other than that, it’s just a wide open canvas for putting together your thoughts. The severe clutter that has always been a part of the WP writing screen is gone. You can create a new post, and get down to business with plenty of room to create. This is a basic change, but a huge one that we know will make a lot of people happy. 

Sick of IE6? So is WordPress! WP 3.2 is dropping support for this mess of a browser. Is this a new feature? Not exactly, but the more popular services that get rid of IE6, the sooner it will disappear. Which is a huge win for every dev, and webmaster, that likes to keep their sites clean and running well. Along with this change, the minimum requirements to run WP 3.2 have changed as well. PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. are now both required to install Gershwin. This shouldn’t be an issue for 99% of people who want to upgrade. Both pieces of software have been available for more than a year, which is plenty of time to get your host server ready for this change. What’s the benefit to the end user? Speed. Requiring these upgrades should make a marked improvement in how fast pages load for people reading your work. Sometimes it takes a hugely popular piece of software, like WordPress, to force upgrades that in the end benefit everyone on the web. We definitely approve, and the number of users that will see this as a negative is miniscule.

In some ways, WordPress 3.2 can be seen as an update that is cutting away the fat. Improved basic software requirements, a streamlined writing interface and a completely re-done dashboard are all a part of this. When it comes to UI, less is often more. Which is certainly the case here. Should you upgrade to Gershwin? Absolutely. You’ll see improvements in speed and stability, a better user interface and a fantastic new writing canvas to create your ideas with.  It’s only been a week, but we’re hooked.

If you need a hand upgrading, be sure to drop us a line. You never want to upgrade without doing a complete backup. You also want to check the compatibility of your themes, plugins and widgets. We’re always happy to get you set in the right direction, so let us know how we can help.

WordPress was the victim of a hacking attack, and user data including passwords may have been compromised. Back doors were also discovered in 3 popular WordPress plugins. We wanted to get the word out to our clients, and all the WordPress users out there as quickly as possible, so you can protect your sites from any possible issues. We highly recommend you take a moment to read through this post, and keep your eyes on our Twitter stream as well to stay updated. At this point, the situation is unsettled, and information is still coming in, so there may be frequent updates throughout the day.

Currently, there are two areas of concern for WordPress users. First, because the plugin repository on the WordPress.org site was compromised, the admins are instituting a forced password reset. If you use any of the services associated with WordPress.org, we recommend logging in to change your password immediately. This includes users of the WordPress forums, uploading any plugins or themes, or obtaining an API key. The extent of the data breach hasn’t been fully disclosed to the public yet, but its better to be safe than sorry here.

The second, and potentially more serious data breach involves back door code being found in several popular WordPress blog plugins. If you use AddThis, WPtouch, or W3 Total Cache, and have recently updated the plugin, there is a chance you may have also installed the back door along with the plugin. If you are a user of any of these plugins, immediately visit the corresponding plugin page, then download and install the newest version of the software. These updated versions will set things straight by removing the corrupt version of the plugin, and replace it with a safe version.

This is where things currently stand, so if you are a WordPress user, please make implementing these changes your priority. This current attack constitutes a serious security threat, so the sooner you secure your site, the better off you’ll be. We expect that there will be further updates throughout the day as more information becomes available, so stay tuned here and on our Twitter feed. We’d also like to thank the WordPress team and community for doing a truly excellent job of discovering these devious security breaches, coming up with fixes at warp speed, and being completely transparent with the user community while sharing the relevant information. That isn’t an easy thing to pull off, but team WP is doing it well.

If you need assistance securing your site, or have any questions about how this security breach might effect your WordPress installation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at The Blog Studio. Stay safe and secure out there people!