Postcards From Myself

I just thought I would pass along to all of you a great new website dedicated to the way all live now. The Managing Your Digital Life Podcast & Blog is a great destination for information on how to deal with all the electronic stuff you accumulate during your daily life. The folks there, like Scott Bourne and Andy Ihnatko, answer questions like: What sort of hard drive should I buy? How do I create a backup plan? What’s the difference between backup and archive?

They will provide tips, tricks, news and reviews relevant to the most up-to-date storage, backup and archiving systems. The goal is to help you take care of, manage, access and safely store/backup all your precious homework assignments, videos, photos, databases, music files and more.

Managing Your Digital Life is a highly recommended site, so check them out!

Building A WordPress Blog People Want To Read by Scott McNulty is a new book on setting up and running a successful blog. McNulty has written an easy to understand and at times amusing introduction to getting started with what is currently one of the most popular social media platforms.

Both well written and well illustrated, the book covers everything from downloading and installing the software, to setting up the database, defining system parameters, and selecting a template. What is really excellent about these explanations is that McNulty tells you not only what are the best choices, but what impact those choices will have on your blog in the future. There are many selections you can make when setting up a new WordPress installation that can seriously affect how your blog operates in a year or two when it is getting lots of hits, and McNulty helps you to make well informed decisions.


While the book was written based on version 2.6 of the WordPress software and version 2.7 has now been released, there is very little other than administrative interface that does not apply. Most of the setup choices and database decisions are still the same. It would be great to see a physical or on-line update of the book for WordPress version 2.7, but I think that is just me being greedy.
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WordPress Theme Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver is a slim book that is packed with information. Subtitled “A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes”, it is amazing how much the book lives up to its billing. What makes this book so unique and valuable is that it is not a syntax guide or how-to for dummies, it is instead a step by step design tutorial.

The author concentrates on the why’s and wherefores of WordPress site design instead of getting bogged down in the minutia of every single menu possibility or syntax statement. For those looking for a thorough dictionary of all the WordPress programming codex, you need to look elsewhere. While the most commonly used commands are covered, the syntax is not gone into in detail and there are many functions left out. That type of reference is best left to books like WordPress Complete or the online help.

What Silver does in this book is start with the initial conceptualization of a site and then follow it all the way through to the end. From the very beginning with back-of-the-napkin sketches, this book makes it clear that the real heavy lifting of website design work is in deciding what you want the site to do. It is only after your decide what the site should do and how you want that presented that you can begin to program your website and actually get it to function.

Chapters on theme development, debugging, plug-ins and dynamic content go beyond the basics of WordPress to bring a full image to your web design. By showing how all of these features are first planned and then implemented, the author provides a great blueprint for the actual successful creation of a functioning site.

While the book was written before version 2.7 of WordPress was released, there is not too much that doesn’t apply across versions. Mostly this is because more emphasis is placed on the design than the technical details of syntax. Of course that is also the books one weaknesses. You will not want this to be your only WordPress reference. You will either want to avail yourself often of the online help, or you will need a more technical companion, such as the aforementioned WordPress Complete.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. If you need to create a truly custom WordPress site, and especially if you want to create more than one, you need a guidebook like this to blaze the trail.

It is about time to start thinking about your New Years resolutions, right? I know you are thinking I am going to talk about exercising, eating right, or doing all those other things you really don’t want to do, but no. I am talking about resolving to do something that you really do want to do. It may well even go along with a new toy you got for Christmas! How about resolving to actually do backups on your computer files? No, not glamorous, but really worthwhile. What’s more, I can give you a way to make following through on that resolution as painless as possible.

I wrote an article about a mindless way to backup your Windows or Mac computer so you can just set it and forget it. Please check out my post Mindless backups about using Mozy on Palmettobug Digital.

Sorry, I really can’t help you with your other resolutions, but I can hopefully help you with this one.

Craigslist is a great site. I have bought and sold on it for a good while now, and it has replaced eBay as my daily site to browse for deals. I have sold two cars on CraigsList with an average time of listing to sale of under six hours! So, it amazes me how people can screw it up for themselves. Too many listers think that since the ads are free that they don’t have to put any thought into creating them. Not true.

So, let’s look at the most common ways people screw up their listings on CL so that things don’t sell.

1. No Picture – This one kills me. Almost every cell phone in the world these days can take a picture. Crappy little digital cameras can be had for under $50. (I didn’t say it had to be a good picture.) So why would you not have a picture of your item? People are simply going to move on to the next car, boat, or computer listed if you can’t show them what you have. And the ads for cameras without pictures? Freakin’ absurd.
2. No Price – If you want to sell something, you know what you want or will take for it. Come on, give us an idea if you are a reasonable person or one of those people who thinks your crud is gold. Best you can hope for if you don’t list a price? Lowballers or people who have the same thing wanting to know what theirs is worth.
3. All Caps – Same goes for emails, discussion groups, advertisements, and all other forms of communication. NO ONE WANTS TO BE SHOUTED AT! If an ad is hard to read, people won’t read it. And if they don’t read the ad, you can sell the item. That simple.
4. Lame Description – You have all seen them. The are the descriptions that have absolutely no info but just say “call”. Sure, right. Better yet, drop dead. Then there are the descriptions, especially common in computers and electronics, that just are a copy and paste job of the manufacturer’s product brochure. And these are often accompanied by a “representative photograph”. Sucks, but at least there is some picture. Come on people, tell me about the item you are selling – give me specifics and experience, not just quoted marketing speak.
5. Broadcast and/or Non-Location Posting – If I am looking for a car in Charleston, SC, I really don’t care that you have a car lot in Las Vegas, Nevada. And if I am in a big city like New York or LA, I need to know what part of town you are in. Are you a 15 minute drive or a two hour trek. Come on people, the glory of CraigsList is that it is localized. So post local and tell us where the item is. This is guaranteed to get you more qualified shoppers.

Again, CL is a great tool. You can buy and sell all kinds of the stuff you need, or at least want, without a lot of the hassles of eBay or the local newspaper. But you have to use it correctly and not abuse it to make those sales.

While I was writing this I kept thinking of other things in the ads that piss me off, but I don’t want to put them down just yet because maybe I am the only one. I know I am picky, so maybe certain things (like spelling) just tick me off. Let me hear your thoughts on Craigslist. Anything that really gets you going about the posts there? Or maybe even the service in general? Sound off!