What kind of world will we live in if…
The rumors that Google is indeed interested in buying Apple? I can’t imagine it happening, but what the heck do I know?! (I know you’re thinking to yourself, “NOTHING!” and that’s alright, I know your IP#! j/k!)
Of course, if there is any truth to this rumor, I’d expect Apple to have to stop doing this:
New Yahoo! Sync Framework in OS X 10.4.10
Three Steps to “Bang”
As Boldly Going is maturing with each passing day (a great example of this is how our corp home page jumped from “good” to “cool” with the new rotating splashes), we’re very focused on taking steps that get us to the “bang” - to when it’s more than just a couple of guys that think this is a great site that should be visited several times a day.
Brian Clark at Copyblogger has once again dished out some great food-for-thought in Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch. After reading his article, I sized-up Boldly Going against his three steps to a “bang,” which are cornerstone, networking, and attraction…
- Cornerstone: I feel good that we’re working on this. James and I are adding new posts all the time, but there still needs to be a regimen developed for it (before he can even say it, yes - my path to a regimen is far longer, I know!). A concern that jumped from the back of my mind to the front is the question of what our posts say about us…are we properly defining Boldly Going by what we are writing? I think this will come in time, as we write more and as we get feedback.
- Networking: I personally feel a certain amount of isolation when it comes to the Web community, specifically a network of people I want reading BG, contributing content, working with us as production team and as clients, etc. We’re taking steps to utilize our content to help in networking, like the article suggests (commenting on others sites, etc.), but this can be done even more so. Also, more content is more opportunities to network…I’ve got to keep that in mind
- Attraction: Over the last few months, James and I have had several ideas on what would be in this category - what would be “the thing” that puts BG on the map? This Copyblogger article renewed in me the drive to review our ideas, and start developing one of them into what gets us the “bang.”
Thank you, Copyblogger, for giving me some good thinking-material today.
boldlygoing.com
BoldlyGoing.com is our corporate home page. On the portfolio page regarding our community website, we started the discussion regarding how we are using the bgEngine to serve quite a few website domains from the same single WP code install. We went on to discuss on the AreYou portfolio page to discuss how we are using a single them with innovative usage of the sidebar widget system and conditional calls to display dynamic content based upon the page/post/domain being called. We also mentioned there were still some challenges to overcome before being able to consider these techniques viable for customers of ours.
One challenge is how to effectively take advantage of being able to use sitemap.xml files with these domains. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines now enable site administrators to create and serve XML files that essentially map out all of the various “pages” of ones site. I placed pages in quotes because as you may know WordPress, and other database driven CMS’s are able to appear to the world (including search engine spiders) as individually created static looking pages. This sitemap concept allows the search engine to literally have a map to follow through your site.
Not only are bg.com and ru.bg.com (ru is our internal nickname for AreYou 
) running on the same WP install and the same theme, but we are also pointing the user and data base tables for both domains towards the same records. So effectively we have one large site/data schema and are using the theme to sort out what the viewer sees. Hopefully we are able to do similar sorting for the search engines as well.
By installing the google-sitemap plugin along with the plugin to append the sitemap with page links created via the Ultimate Tag Warrior, we have an automated way to update our sitemap every time a new post or page is created on the site. Our challenge is that we would like the search engine to see the two sites individually (which they would be seen as two separate sites if we were installed on a more traditional basis).
Currently the google-sitemap plugin doesn’t have the capability to sense when a post has been created on one of the other domains–because they are both created under the same WP administrative backend! Until we are able to trouble shoot this, the only thing we can do is to create each sitemap manually (through the manual creation link within in the plugin’s admin page) and make sure that we regularly update the sitemaps.
Another challenge with our set up has been the set up and maintenance of our subscriber feeds. We believe by burning multiple feeds in our Feedburner account, and using the feedsmith plugin to redirect the stock WP feed links to our feedburner account, we are able to get around some of the limitations of serving out feeds from the two different domains. So far, the results in our feed reader seems to be showing correct!
One of the more interesting innovations we are in the process of setting up on the Boldly Going corporate home page is some interesting use of rotating image calls combined with random displays of pages. By using the Get Random Page plugin, we are able to create a number of similarly styled pages that will display the large, stylish images which you see on our home page. By combining Matt’s rotator.php 
code, we can effectively display random images on a single page. The result is that if we have several images from a single photographer, we can rotate those photo’s display on that photographers page. The random page plugin will then randomly display a page from the list of different photographers pages. Sort of a double whammy of cool effects for the home page. As we acquire more images and permissions to use them, our site visitors will be able to observe the effects of our usage of these plugins and codes.
Multi-Paged Posts: Yea or Nay?
With the digital ink still drying on James’ five-page post on our bgEngine, I found David Peralty at Blogging Pro supporting a recent “rant” by Lorelle VanFossen, denouncing multi-paged posts. Specifically, she ended her post with…
I have yet to come up with a single good, positive reason to break up a blog post. Have you?
Lorelle is a Wordpress rockstar, and an inspiration for me as I do my part to nurture and raise the young Boldly Going sites, and move my personal Web presence beyond “test posts.” So, it’s with a bit of unease that I disagree with her.
Lorelle sees splitting posts as interference to a reader’s thinking process, and believes that sites split posts just to get more page views. She sees splitting posts into pages as “old thinking:”
I have been frustrated for years about the dividing up of post content and articles across multiple pages. Aren’t you tired of it? It’s old thinking in a new world.
I guess my main disagreement is right there: yes, pages are old thinking. But, before pages, there were scrolls - long, one-page, draping scrolls. We moved from non-paginated print media because that was old thinking.
So, maybe the innovations in publishing are a bit circular. Or, maybe this isn’t just a black-and-white / pages-or-scrolling issue. Maybe the decision to paginate or not lies in several factors - most importantly, anticipating the audience’s preference.
Where I agree 100% with Lorelle is when pages on posts are poorly executed…
Many times, I’ve come to the “continues on next page†link and was determined to keep reading. I click the next page link and it features two sentences. Why bother forcing me to waste bandwidth to load a new page for only two sentences? Ridiculous time waster.
For me personally, I like long posts split into pages. I think in pages. The act of going to a next page, albeit a virtual one, gives my brain a pause that it has come to expect from being raised on books. Pages might be old thinking, but sometimes new thinking makes my head hurt, and makes me want to stop doing what is causing the pain (like a long, scrolling post). Where Lorelle argues pages drive readers away, I would argue long posts might do the same. Again, it’s the fickle fancies of the readers, and understanding what those are.
So, I invite one and all to enter their opinion into this, one of our first “conversations” on BG - I look forward to some good thoughts within our comments section below. Also, carry your thoughts over to Lorelle , and to Blogging Pro.
Enlarge Your Satisfaction with This
Yep, the headline sounds like a junk e-mail subject line, but with one HUGE difference - my headline is 100% true!
You see, one of the more notable criminals who filled up our inboxes with crap like that is, shall we say, very AFK.
With my junk filters, I tend to get very little spam in my inbox - at most, one a day. But, for a time, I was getting 2 - 4 messages approximately worded like “send messages like this to 80,000 addresses.” These were particularly irritating to me because of (1) how they bypassed the filtering, and (2) how the spammer was openly marketing his illegal activities. It was either blatantly arrogant, or amazingly stupid.
After spending time one morning going through his sites, and searching for information on whoever it was, I realized he was just stealing more time from me, and I moved on - knowing that I just had to go in every day and do some quick pointing and clicking to cleanse my inbox.
After a while, the messages stopped coming. I found out why via the Houston Chronicle: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4888179.html.
Finally, a spammer has come through, and enlarged something for me…my satisfaction in believing that arrogant, idiotic criminal nuisances eventually get their just dues.
Wordpress SEO - Andy Beard to John Reese
The conversation started with John Reese’s Income.com Blog post today, “Calling all SEO Super Geeks! 
” and the focus on 4 very specific topics that related to whether or not certain actions have positive of negative effects on ones rankings in the Search Engines. Definitely well worth the read.
As soon as you finish that one, click back here and then over to Andy Beard’s post that follows up on Reese’s four questions. Andy is a hard working blogger (bloggers work hard, right?) and I know for a fact that he spent some time and energy putting together the following post. In fact, if you don’t bookmark it in your favorites, digg it, and link to it, you’re missing out. Really you are!
Wordpress SEO - Siloing vs Massive Ball Linking With Tags | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing
We hope to have you come back to the site and take part in this Conversation. There are so many great memes out there to become a part of, and we at Boldly Going are looking forward to conversing with you about them all. (Okay, about a few of them!)
Problogger’s Guest Blogger
If you’re not subscribed to Darren Rowse’s problogger site, you miss out on great, great posts. Additionally, because of his drawing power, Darren is able to get some really nice, exclusive posting from other high level bloggers. Today’s post is by Penelope Trunk 
- columnist at the Boston Glob and Yahoo! Finance, blogger at www.blog.penelopetrunk.com and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success
How to Get a Six Figure Book Deal From Your Blog
Ms. Trunk has some very astute observations based upon the successful publishing of her second book, as well as publishing in the most traditional sense, hardback on Amazon, B&N, your corner bookstore. You get it.
While I’ve had certain challenges with that old world publishing regime, tending to lean towards the new media and all that the Net has to offer new world authors, I have to say reading through Ms. Trunk’s ten items makes me want to reconsider. I do think there’s a nice balance between the old and the new, and now I have much better guidelines to follow.
Listed below are the ten bullet points from the problogger post. Don’t stop here, however, continue on through to Darren’s site 
and get the nitty gritty on each item. Well worth the trip!
- Solve a problem
- Have a big idea
- If you’re in a niche, make it a big one
- Have a big audience, but say they are old rather than young if you want a lot of money
- Have a lot of blogger friends to promote the book, but talk mostly about USA Today
- Follow conventions
- Find someone to model yourself after
- Your blog goes in the marketing section of your proposal
- Trust that agents know a good proposal when they see one, but try again if you get a bad response
- Use blog comments to train yourself for rejection
bgEngine: Alive and Well!
For some time now Joseph and I have been working on a little top secret project. While it is not quite ready “yet” to release to the WP community, we feel that sharing with you all now is the right thing to do. Let me explain a bit of history.
About 4 and a half years ago or so, while living in San Diego, Joseph and I set up the classic “garage offices” in the house we were renting at the time. I even cut a hole in the side wall and installed an air conditioner (though it never seemed to cool the space very effectively!). We had long expanses of desks made from file cabinets topped with old doors, white boards and cork boards on the walls and hanging from the open ceiling rafters, and even a couple of Hormel Spam Can Banks 
that we had to feed with our spare change anytime we mistakenly referred to unwanted, unsolicited junk email as S.P.A.M.. We’ll discuss why this was important when we announce all about bgEmail. I think I still have those Spam Banks with change in them, somewhere!
During those times we were developing our concepts with bgEmail and something that came to be known as SSCT.
Single Source Code Technologies
Our development platform was php-Nuke CMS and the front end marketing of this concept was to be known as “Self Service Nuke” or SSN as we referred to it in-house. Our thoughts at the time centered around the concept that we would create a start site where a small to medium sized business owner could create a site and then apply that domain to our systems. We would engineer the CMS in such a way that new sites would be powered off of one set of core application code. A single code set that would allow us to easily update and maintain a number of client sites while still providing individual look, feels and capabilities to those site/business owners.
(for feed readers, this is a multi-page post. Please click through to finish the article. Thanks.)
