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Goodbye Google, WordPress Here I Come
By jpenston | November 9, 2007 |
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It is all change here…
Firstly, my hosting provider objected when I queried an anonymous request for payment and gave me 24 hours to get off his server. After a 10 hour flirtation with Fasthost, during which time I learned that their version of subdomains didn’t include the ability to host a directory underneath it (unless I paid them 10 times more money as a “reseller”), I found a new home at EUKHost.
Meanwhile Google Blogger’s FTP service did its best impersonation of striking french transport workers and would not publish - a problem that affected hundreds of users - and I decided to bite the bullet. Enough was enough: WordPress here I come.
The Rocket I Needed
I’d been casting envious glances as WordPress blogs ever since I hastily moved my blog from Blogware to Blogger in March. Having decided in haste back then, I have been repenting at leisure ever since as the complexity of getting my heavily customised template into WordPress php gave me the chills. That was until Google’s FTP service went comatose and I read hundreds of group users pleading / begging / crying for help from their lords and masters at Googleplex. Take control, Jeremy. So I did.
Google’s support is appalling. It’s not a joke and it certainly is not funny. Their help pages are shallow and they point you to the groups for support where it seems users are left to wallow is a state close to desperation as they try and get the attention of an employee who might help. There are no obvious email support routes and god forbid they should offer support by telephone. You certainly get what you pay for with the Big G.
If you use Blogger and are prepared to let Google hold all your files, the service is ok when it works. They have been adding widgets to blogspot and custom domain services for a while, but I wanted the files on my own server. In March I lost the blog when yet another hosting company tried to charge my phone number instead of my credit card (and tried to ring my email address to tell me that payment wouldn’t go through). I decided then that come what may, I would hold the files myself and back them up to my hard drive regularly - something you can’t do with blogspot or custom domains.
There Must be Something Better
I wanted widgets. I wanted plugins. I wanted Web 2.0! Google’s FTP service is grudgingly provided and it does not give you any of these features. They want the content on the Google Cubes, not under my control on my hosting service. I wonder why…?
So I invested the time in learning the basics of php and WordPress and actually, moving the template was not nearly as hard as I expected once I found a similarly structured theme among the library of hundreds of freely available designs. All I had to do was change a few images, colours and add in a few bits and pieces that I had hacked in to the Blogger template.
Importing the content was relatively easy too, once I found a hack that enabled me to keep my permalink structure when I ran the Blogger to WordPress import (note: I had to publish by FTP Blogger to Blogspot before it would let me do this). It takes a bit of courage to start playing around with the contents of php files, but I’m glad I did. Even so, there were one or two pages where the formatting ended up a bit odd, but the more I tried to fix those, the worse it got.
Happy with the Result?
So here we are, what do you think? I dropped the iPhone inspired menu now that the novelty value of the “touch screen menu” has worn off. It feels a bit passe, I must say - ironically on the day that Apple launches the product here in the UK.
I have added a few of the widgets and plugins that I had been eyeing up. It will be a bit of trial and error for a while, but I want to see what you (readers) like. We shall see where we end up, but with the wealth of open source plugins available on WordPress, there is a lot of scope to experiment.
Understanding my Readership
You will no doubt have noticed Digg. I have a soft spot for that service and I am hoping that every now and again, you will like something I read enough to give me a Digg. I need the feedback and I haven’t really been getting enough of it to keep up with what people are interested in me writing about.
For the same reason I have also added a rating widget, which is more anonymous than Digg and can give better qualitative feedback because you decide how many stars to give an individual article. Unlike with Digg, you don’t need an account, you just fire and forget.
You may be starting to think that I am a bit insecure because I have also added a Popularity Widget. This one though requires no input from you whatsoever. It ranks the articles based on views, numbers of comments, trackbacks (something else Blogger lacks that I wanted), etc. and tells the world how popular a piece is compared to the “most popular” on the site. It also dynamically lists the top ten in a menu on the left sidebar which might also be helpful for people who arrive and want to browse what I have written.
Networking ipdev.net
Also in the left sidebar you will find another experiment, again based on Digg. This could crash and burn horribly or it could make the site more dynamic - I don’t know. What it does is list the top ten articles on Digg’s universe that have been dugg by “my friends”. Since I don’t have any friends at the moment, this could be a disaster, but for a while at least, I’m prepared to give it a whirl and see if anyone wants to contribute.
I am hoping that this will allow all readers to share interesting articles with each other. I know that ipdev.net is a small niche and I am expecting that the very bright people who read it, also read other interesting stuff. What content is going to show up? I have no idea…
Finally, there is an improved search facility, a tag cloud and a bigger and better set of options allowing you to subscribe to what I write through RSS, Bloglines etc. My Feedburner stats show that my readers use 37 different news aggregators between them which is why you have ever Tom, Dick and Harry that ever built an RSS Reader listed there. I’m sure to offend someone now though having missed off their fave…
Beginning of the End for Google?
So back to my friends at Google. So long and thanks for all the (free) fish, but my experience with them is also worthwhile sharing in a wider context. We have all heard over the last couple of weeks about Open Social, the Google (software stak on a) Phone and the Google PC. In the recent past we have also seen the emergence of gmail and Google Docs and hundreds of small acquisitions like Jaiku.
These initiatives “beyond search” have certainly put the frighteners on all parts of the industry from Telco to Microsoft, but I wonder whether we are seeing the company expand too far beyond its area of core competence. All these new avenues take them closer to environments where they have to interact directly with customers and provide them with help.
My experience of Google’s help is very poor. Even by the low standards set by the industry in general, Google are bad. The sort of like it or lump it, or even the F-you attitude shown by the company I was hosting with until last weekend is bad for business and sooner or later, it may come back to haunt them.
Are they Starting to Panic?
Furthermore, Google seem to be in an undue hurry, have neglected key security considerations and OpenSocial got hacked. It seems that it was announced to take the wind out of Microsoft’s sails after their Facebook investment which to me sounds more like the cry of a jilted lover pawning the engagement ring to buy a flashy pair of shoes.
Some commentators initially went as far as to call it a Google checkmate when MySpace joined the party, but I believe that you cannot really compare a service with an established set of 3rd party applications to one who have simply “announced” an initiative. OpenSocial has a long way to go before it is real - announcing products before they are ready is the sure sign of a company with a closer eye on its stock price than its operational performance.
The same is true of the gPhone. Perhaps the hype didn’t come from Google, but they did nothing to quell it and what resulted was a very damp squib when we learned that it was simply a software stack. Again, this might have perhaps been more of a defensive measure against Apple that the product announcement that gFans wanted. Whatever comes of the initiative, we won’t be seeing it until next year.
Operating systems, user applications and in particular the provision of 700MHz-based access services will necessitate a quantum leap in Google’s ability to thoroughly develop products and support trouble tickets to deliver what customers expect. Sure they can make money from ads, but can they fix a problem with your software or your access if you have one? If they can’t, we might see a growing number of people saying goodbye to Google.
Topics: Android, Google, OpenSocial, WordPress, blogger |
November 12th, 2007 at 4:27 am
jeremy
keep up the good work! hopefully more time to write and less time administer!