Tag Archives: Website work

Sharing

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I’ve had a social media connection app on my website for a long time… and it’s been non-functional for a long time too. I have tried 4 different ‘auto-post’ plug-ins so far and not a single one has worked as advertised. They are uniformly terrible.

This is one of the pitfalls so many creators run into. I am NOT a web developer. I am NOT a coder, programmer nor an IT professional. I have NO desire to be any of those things, and yet if I want my own content to be accessible I have to spend time working on things like this. The more I try to make things work here and they continue to fail, the more and more angry I get. I despise working with these things. If I were independently wealthy I would hire somebody. As the kids these days say, “Thanks, I hate it.”

Social media is still a thing. Failbook is hated, but is still the dominant platform for most people to connect on. There are a dozen others out there – but I just don’t have the time nor the energy to deal with them.

I suppose I’ll have to just commit to doing this the old fashioned way and post a link manually when I want to remind people that I do in fact still blog from time to time.

This Site

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I am not a fan of change simply for the sake of change. Many (most?) things can simply be ‘steady on’ and I’m good with that. I frequently see solutions looking for problems in the day job and people pick these things up simply because they are new and flashy.

I really like solutions… IF there’s actually a problem to address. If things are running smoothly, why change them? I really like a certain level of consistency. I remember when everyone’s web site absolutely needed frames. Then everyone’s web site needed flash. Java. There are lots of things that have come and gone. That’s not me.

However.

I get it for certain marketing functions. I do. Sometimes things need to be freshened up and given a new coat of paint (or digital wallpaper at least).

I’m not a web designer. I know there are parts of this site that are broken and have been for some time. I know there are parts of it that need desperately to be updated. I have actually gone out and started a conversation with somebody that might be able to help me with this. Let me rephrase that – I know she can help me, the question is if I can afford her (she’s a pro). Coming from the creator community I will NOT ask somebody to work “for the exposure”. Just like winter time – you can die from exposure.

So – some small hope that things will brighten up in the near future. We’ll see how it works out together!

Failbook

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Facebook has become a known and common method of communicating with friends, family, associates and all manner of folks. It is a beast. It is huge… and it will do as it pleases.

Social media in general has come under fire for being a terrible thing that allows people to do and say rotten things to each other. It has become a storm of political hyperbole and equally outlandish backlash. I have grown to hate it. I joined Failbook almost a decade ago. It’s stunning to put it that way. Ten years of “like this post” and everything that goes with it, but now I am reconsidering.

The platform itself has privacy and security issues. To paraphrase some younger folks I know, “DUH!”. A socially connected computer program that reaches millions of people is going to have issues. That many people can’t be mixed together and have everything come out perfect. Just can’t happen. The biggest solution to that is I don’t put things out there that I don’t want others to know or that aren’t already public knowledge. I don’t connect it to my bank information or anything that I can’t drop or replace (yes, that includes my phone – it would be a pain in the ass, but I could do it).

It doesn’t connect my website posts automatically anymore. I will admit this is annoying. I prefer to work here when I can and link this site over. It used to be an automated thing, and now it doesn’t work. I have a series of developer messages that would require some amount of research and picking and pecking here on the site to get the connection to work again. I am not a web developer. I am not a programmer. I maintain this site on my own with my bare minimum amount of knowledge. Bluntly I don’t want to spend my time on a web site. Every bit of time I spend working on a web site problem or looking up programming connections or whatever other nonsense doesn’t work now is just more time away from the work I want to be doing. I don’t want to be a programmer, just an author.

Even if I could get it to work, there’s a fair chance nobody would see it anyway. The Failbook folks have decided that your small business links shouldn’t be seen in everyone’s feed… just the big companies that they work with. The site itself is worse than any needy significant other you have ever had. Constant messages about new posts, new friend suggestions, things YOU’VE MISSED! OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU NOT ON THERE LOOKING AT THIS THING RIGHT NOW!?! They will do anything in a desperate attempt to capture your attention. They want you to scroll and click and like and all the other crap they’ve got going on. It has become intensely annoying. I have complained about it, out loud, frequently. This prompted my wife to yell at me, “Quit bitching! That’s how they make money. You react, you check, you click and they get paid. If you don’t like it, get off there and shut up about it!”

She’s not wrong. The purest distillation from that is a single fact. What you put up there IS NOT YOURS. I’m sure there’s a volume of legal mumbo-jumbo somewhere that declares what words are yours to use or not use and how they can collect it and catalog it and… whatever. It’s all bullshit and it’s not yours. They hold all the keys. They want to change something, they will. They want to deny you access, they will. You get the point. That is why I go through the trouble to maintain this site. It is mine (to the extent that any web based service is truly possessed). If I want to turn the whole thing purple I can. I will post as I please, when I please and all six of my readers will still see my words (after they check their news aggregators because this isn’t cross posting any more). I like the simplicity of it. It’s not going to win any awards, but it is mine. All the changes, all the anger, frustration and screaming into the void over what Failbook should or shouldn’t do amount to nothing. In the end it hasn’t dramatically changed my true friendships. It’s nice to be able to connect, but then I was also on Myspace and Livejournal. We see how those turned out.

I’m planning on staying on Failbook for now, but I’m not jumping through the hoops to make posts from here connect. Their site really isn’t worth the effort.

Latin Distraction

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“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”

In a different aspect of my life I’m working with a web developer to create a new web site (professional, day job type stuff). He gave me a link to the page he’d got pulled together and asked me to check it out. When I did, I saw the above text and was completely distracted. I couldn’t decide what language it was, but my first thought was Latin. I have never been particularly good with languages, but as soon as I saw this I wanted to know what he was posting up on our website – even if it was “just a place holder”.

As it turns out that’s exactly what it is. It’s a place holder that’s been used since the days of typesetting and was started back in the 1500s. It’s average text spacing (I guess) and is meant to fill up space without actually distracting you with what it says. I suppose most people would look at it and just skip it as unreadable. I of course couldn’t let it go – I was completely distracted by it – and ended up learning something new!

It’s good to be distracted sometimes.

Social Test

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So – it’s been forever since I was going to have my posts here connect to social media. I made an effort today to form that connection correctly. I have doubts that this actually worked, but this is the test. Hopefully this will show up on my “wall” without further intervention from me.