Random thoughts on art, technology, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate: June 2008

We diligently repost all listings and all rental vacancies to Craigslist every week, on Friday.  The listings were posted this last Friday, as always, and yesterday I saw this response in my email

are you avaiable to show me this property

tomorrow?

When is this place available to move in? i'm

flexable and sold already my house.

Please contact me back - thank you

Great, sure.  I was just about to email back ... then I noticed I had 8 other emails, all from different email addresses all with the same identical text ... all with the same misspellings .... the same double spacing and the line breaks in the exact same place.

So I figure, this is the latest scam making the rounds.  Anybody respond to one of these?  What was the scam?

Anybody else (besides Jonathon Washburn, of course http://www.jonwashburn.com/ ) got  their DNS nameservers mapped yet to an Active Rain 'Outside Blog" ... ???

Using a domain name I had registered at GoDaddy, I mapped it to the new Active Rain Outside Blog nameservers

It's been 48 hours, and so far, no joy

I know the rule is to allow up to 72 hours, but I have had domains propagate in as little as 10 minutes.

Anybody else try this?  Or are there still a few kinks being worked out?

I'm gonna repeat his name a few times, maybe he has a google alert that will pick it up:

 jon washburn, jonathon washburn, jon washburn, active rain, hello, jon, are you there?

P.S.  I know you guys don't intend to offer support on this aspect of Outside Blogs, but I'm not exactly a "high-maintenance" customer.  :-)  I just can't see what I might have missed in my excitement.

I'm cross posting this from a comment by Brad Andersohn ~ Community Builder (ActiveRain) on Jeremy Blanton's Blog 

Here's A TIP I just picked up from AR support:

If it has been more than 24 hours and your personalized domain is NOT WORKING:

Go into your AR Blog setup page, and disable the custom domain section and save.
(just uncheck the "enable" box)

Then go back in and re-enable it and save once again.  This will clear the bug issue
that was discovered over the weekend and stored in your browsers memory.

Make sure you don't add in the http://  or the www, to the domain name, just enter
the domain name ONLY:  ie: JeremyBlanton.com

So if you're one of those still waiting, this WILL be the process that will fix it.

Also check this post of mine:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/572759/Active-Rain-Outside-Blogs

Here's one of those little things that I didn't notice until recently. 

When you compost a blog post, would you like the size of the post-editor-box to be a bit larger?

I often do, especially if I have some images or videos to insert.

I just realized, that in WordPress at any rate, the box can easily be enlarged.

Click Settings -- over at the far right side of the Dashboard.  Then click Writing. 

The first item is Size of the post box.  The default setting is 20 lines.  I increased mine to 60 lines .... and it sure feels better now!  :-)

Welcome to The Cheater's Quickie Guide to updating WordPress

(Had you wondering there for a minute, huh?)

Over the course of a few years working with technology stuff, I have learned the value of healthy restraint when confronted with the urge to fix something that ain't broke.

Nonetheless I was very tired of seeing this little notice at the top of the WordPress dashboard on some of my blogs.

Here are the official WordPress instructions detailing the correct way to update  http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended

But ....I wondered if my Cheater's Quickie Method of updating WordPress would work with the jump from version  2.3.3 to 2.5.1.  I can't imagine why it wouldn't, but then ya never know.

It worked.

Here's how to do it:

Prep work

Download the WordPress zip file

Unzip it

Backup the existing  WordPress folders and files on your host:   Truth is, I have been known to skip this item.  You would be well advised to "do as I say, and not as I do".  One thought:  You will have your FTP program running anyway,  and you ~could~ just FTP copies of the older files/folder to your desktop before proceeding. Then delete them after you confirm that the new version is working.

Deactivate any plugins

FTP to your host

Click on your WordPress folder to open it.   Note if you have not changed the default setting, this file will be named "wp".   If you are using a unique domain name with your wordpress blog, there will be some wordpress related files in the host's root directory.  You don't need to touch those.

In the Host panel of your FTP program,  with the wordpress  folder open,  click on the column title Modified, to sort by the files by date  - check most recent date on your server panel.  In my illustration the newest date is 2/8/2008.

In  the My Computer panel of your FTP program sort by date Modified, select all files with a date later than the most recent date in your server panel, in this case, all files dates after  2/2/2008

Upload those newer files to your host, overwriting existing files 

Delete wp-includes folder in your host panel

Delete wp-admin folder in your host panel

DO NOT DELETE wp-content folder

Upload the new wp-includes folder

Upload the new wp-admin folder

Close your FTP program

Go to your WordPress Dashboard

The first thing you will probably see it this, click Upgrade WordPress

Then click Continue

Done.

DISCLAIMER  This works for me.  I do not know if it will work for other users with other systems and/or configurations.  Proceed at your own risk.

Just in case you missed it..... Active Rain launched their "Outside Blog" beta yesterday.

Here are detailed instructions on setting up an Active Rain "Outside Blog"  from Brad Andersohn

http://activerain.com/blogsview/535622/ActiveRain-Launches-Outside-Blogs

More from the source: http://activerain.com/blogsview/567743/Duplicate-Content-and-Outside

http://activerain.com/blogsview/567937/Outside-Blogs-Known-Issues

Looks good.  Nice, simple ... Good job, guys! ... I'm off to play around with it.......

UPDATE:

Avatar image uploaded ... check

Created new banner image  ... check

Banner image uploader not functional yet... holding

UPDATE:  Banner uploader working now, banner uploaded ... check

Registered a new domain name, must wait for DNS to propagate  ... holding

Thinking about a different way to explain the term "The Long Tail" ....

How's this... suppose I plan to take a weekend trip, and I want to buy a new tote bag to carry my stuff.  I'm going to buy the tote bag online.

I might search on Google for the words "Tote Bag" .... that's a vertical search  .... Google will serve up anything and everything related to tote bags.

Suppose I searched instead for "Large black mesh zippered tote bag" ... That's "long tail"  it's very specific ... so Google will serve me less results, but the results I get, since they will contain all of those words, will be very specific. 

And I will probably be more likely to buy from one of the merchants that comes in close to the top of the search for those words, since that merchant is selling just what I am specifically looking for ....

Does that help anyone in grasping the idea? 

Now, fit that in with the idea of a potential buyer searching for a home .....

large ranch home with pool near Main Street school .... maybe?

A WordPress "Theme" is a pre-designed "skin" that you apply to your WordPress blog to change its appearance without changing the content.  You can be Blue Meanie one day and Cutline the next day.

You can also further customize any theme by making your own edits to the theme files.   You may want the blog's columns to be a little wider to accommodate larger photos.  You may want the font for post title headings to be a different color, or a different size.

Here's a little background on understanding how themes work, so you can begin customizing:

As you browse through blogs, take a few moments to notice the basic uniform elements all blog share:

Header.  The header can be text only, an image only, or text and image together

Main content column

One (OR MORE) sidebar columns

Footer.

Now, go to your WordPress Dashboard, and click the Design, then Theme Editor tabs (In WordPress versions below 2.5, it is Presentation, then Theme Editor)

Take a look of the list of Theme Files.  Each of the various components has its own file.  The Main Index Template includes the PHP code that pulls all the various components together.  Plus there are style sheets that specify design elements such as colors, and font styles across the board.  Column widths can also be changed via the style sheets.

I'll look at making edits to the Style Sheet next.

I'll be using Cutline 1.3 2-Column (original version) for anyone who'd like to follow along.

The blog illustrated is Bloodhound Blog, a national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals.  The authors are sometimes controversial, but always committed to excellence and independence.

Over on Rilla's* blog, a commenter asked about Style Sheets, and I thought I would repeat it here:

A Cascading Style Sheet is a set of instuctions for a web page.  The "CSS" tells the web page to "make the background blue" or "make the header font size 24 points".

The CSS code can be written as a block in the header of a web page, or it can be a separate page linked to the web page.

Orginially, styling instructions were just simply embedded in the web page itself, but as web desgin became more and more complex, the idea grew of "separating content from design"

A little history:  http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/css-history

Example.  Let's say you wanted all your h1 Headers (don't worry about the h1 part right now) ... you wanted those headers to always be red and always be sized 36 points.  Like this:

Every time you wanted that red header in your web page, you would have needed to type in the full HTML tags like this:

<h1><font face="arial" color="red" size="36">This H1 Header is Red-36 Points</font></h1>

If you had dozens of pages and the red header appeared several times on each page, that would be a lot of typing.

By using a style sheet, you would type all that formatting information only once, like this:

h1 {
color:red;
font-family:arial;
font-size:36pt;
font-weight:bold;
}

The headers would still require the <h1> tag, but every time you typed <h1>, all the other attributes would automatically be applied.

Plus, without a style sheet your actual document is cluttered up with a bunch of design coding ... with a style sheet the document remains (almost) a simple document.

*Rilla T. Bot is a roBOT, created by me for the purpose of testing stuff.  Then I discovered how much fun it was to have a 'droid as an evil twin.

Now that I have an Active Rain virtual helper, I can figure out all kinds of stuff without too much disruption (disruption to blogging, that is, other stuff I need to do is on hold.  :-)  )

Want to check out someone's Active Rain CSS style sheet?

Click View -> View Source (or Page Source in Firefox)

Look for a line near the top of the code that looks sorta like this:

<link href="/stylesheets/cache/default.css?1214102933" media="screen" rel="Stylesheet"

Select and copy this part of the line: /stylesheets/cache/default.css?1214102933

Then up at the Web address bar in your browser, type http://www.activerain.com  then paste in the code you just copied ... so the complete address would read

http://www.activerain.com/stylesheets/cache/default.css?1214102933 

Ta-Da!  There's the stylesheet.  The Active Rain heavy hitters already know this.  I'm playing catch up here.

Project Blogger kicked off in the Spring of 2007

You can relive those days, and review all the participants at http://www.projectblogger2007.info/ 

After several grueling months of Online Reality, Mary Pope Handy was declared winner of Project Blogger 2007.

Greg Swann of Bloodhound Blog and Teri Lussier of The Brick Ranch, however,  broke formation with Project Blogger and sailed into uncharted waters with Project Bloodhound, in the process creating Real Estate Weblogging 101,  a remarkable online resource covering real estate weblogging, theory and practice, tricks and techniques, art and commerce.

And now they want to do it again.    

Just what is the difference between the previous Project Blogger and the upcoming Project Bloodhound II

1.    In Project Bloodhound II, there are no winners or losers.  Excellence is its own reward.

2.    Project Blogger was based on one coach - one apprentice.  Project Bloodhound II will be based on the "It Takes a Village to Grow a Weblogger" approach.  Several members of the Bloodhound community have volunteered to share their particular knowledge and skills from design, programming and photography, to social media networking, to philosophy and history with any and all apprentices.

Would you like to become a Bloodhound Apprentice? 

Leave word here, or better yet, go visit Teri Lussier, and let her know.