(chris) NiXoNbyname.com   the way i see it

May was another month of change here on NixonByName. I think the site is coming together nicely. Please let me know if you think otherwise. Anyway. Here is the top ten posts of the month, based on visitors to the site. It’s a pretty arbitrary way to measure it, but as good a way as any.

1. I No Longer Feel Trusted By My Own Government
2. Adding FriendFeed Comments
3. LOLPricks: On Mah Hands Free
4. The Day There Was No News
5. (L) China AND Human Rights
6. A Decade Without Seinfeld
7. Spring Domination [PIC]
8. I’ve Been Blogged at GeekDad
9. Everybody Is Wrong About Indy 4
10. Pan’s Labyrinth [PIC]

I have changed the comment system of NixonByName.com over to Disqus in a bid to further “socialise” your comments. The Wordpress comment system is very good, but it’s very blog-centric rather than user-centric. The downside for me is I lose a little  “control” over your comments. The upside is that it will be much easier for you to track your comments, your replies, and your contacts comments. Hopefully this will provoke a little more discussion.

Comment spam is handled very well by Wordpress and Akismet, so I was concerned about how Disqus handled this problem, but by all accounts it works well and very little gets through.

I think this is definitely the way forward. If all goes well here, the same system will be put in place when Photografr.com is re-launched in the near future.

I hope this goes down well with you. I’m very kean to know what you think about this new blog system. I’ve heard very few negative points about Disqus, and my personal experience of the system has been very positive. I look forward to reading your comments on my ill though-out opinions in the future.

Yours Aye.

NixonByName has been going for nearly a year now. I previously had my personal blog over on Vox, which was brilliant, but when they started restricting the feeds and all my readers had to suffer just two lines of text from a post in their reader, it was time to leave.

I’ve always known that my closest online contacts were subscribed to the blog. They occasionally comment, and I have a FeedBurner feed, which normally showed up about ten subscribers. I was aware that there could have been a couple more subscribed to the Wordpress feed, but I really only thought I was posting for my own benefit, and that others really weren’t interested.

As you may know, at the weekend I moved the blog from Wordpress.com to a hosted space. Apart from a few minor hiccups, it’s happened remarkable smoothly. My mate Rob did a load of work to get me up and running and IMed me through the whole process to keep me in the loop.

I’ve added a couple a plug-ins to help analyse who’s reading, but this was mainly done to test what was needed when Photografr.com makes the same move, rather than to test this readership. Well, it turns out there are actually over fifty subscribers to this blog! Only 20% were ever using the Feedburner feed. Now that the site feed is filtered through to Feedburner I can see you all. Hello!

I’m pretty pleased, but I also think that I may need to provide a bit more content to keep you guys interested. Don’t hold your breath, but you may find something interesting here in the near future. I’m keen to begin writing some quality content, but I refuse to put the pressure on myself while the Wee One needs my undivided attention. I’ll always keep posting the photographs and videos, but I will try to write more in those spare moments.

If you aren’t already subscribed to NixonByName, you can get the feed here.

Yours Aye!

Efficient on Flickr

So it’s only taken a few hours (on a Saturday night none-the-less) but the move has taken place. Nixonbyname.com has taken it’s first steps out into the big world.

Big thanks to Rob who not only did all the hard work, but talked me through every step of the process. I’ve learned without having to do anything but pay attention. This should make the move of Photografr.com much easier. We’re looking to make that move pretty quickly.

Thanks to Dave Cohen and Phill Price for their offers of help. I will certainly be drawing on their expertise in the near future.

Now it’s time for a drink and a movie. Slange!

OK so who says I don’t have time to do things that aren’t strictly necessary?

I’ve changed the theme of NixonByName. I was getting a little bored of the old theme. I wanted something a little easier on the eye, so I’ve gone for Andreas09 by Andreas Viklund and Ainslie Johnson. Very nice it is too.

At some point in the next few months I plan to move over to a hosted solution rather than Wordpress.com as a trial before moving Photografr.com over too. I’ll save all that for the summer.