a few site updates

Over the next few weeks, I hope to make some changes and updates to WWdN. (After I finish my Slashdot interview. Put down your pitchforks.)
Most of the changes will be at the code-level, so I can make my site more compliant and hopefully faster, but I’m also going to update some of the static pages that haven’t been touched in years. For example, the about and FAQ pages are so many years out of date, they don’t even mention any of my writing gigs. Oops. I also hope to add some sort of backend that will let me update my READ LISTEN WATCH links and my appearances page more frequently and more easily. Looks like I have to actually learn more php and MySQL. I believe the emoticon for that is =:o
Yesterday, I switched my RSS feed over to Feedburner, and added a few easy subscription buttons over on the left side of the page. I did this because I have noticed that actual site visits have dropped off significantly since I went to full feeds, and Feedburner gives me subscriber stats that are useful to me when I talk to the press, or try to impress my friends. (For some reason, “About 7500 people subscribe to my feed” just sounds cooler than “I think a bunch of people read my feed.”) I’m also using Feedburner to jam some Amazon DVD links into every 3rd entry in the feed. Click ’em if you want, ignore ’em if you don’t.
I used .htaccess to automatically update existing subscribers, but new subscribers can easily add my site’s feed to My Yahoo!, My MSN, and Newsgator. Hooray!
I’ve also switched my audioblog feed to Feedburner, and it should now support Podcasting. Hooray hooray!

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35 thoughts on “a few site updates”

  3. Ugh, it pains me that so many bloggers are throwing advertising into their site feeds… isn’t that against the whole point of blogging? When reading my favorite blogs, I don’t want to have to wade through a plethora of meaningless advertising to get to the goodies.
    Unfortunately, cause this blog is so damn funny and good, I’ll probably end up making an exception for it.

  4. cbergstrom: You don’t have to “wade through” anything. One link to Amazon is hardly a plethora. The few entries that have Amazon links in them will have those links at the very bottom of the entry, and they’ll be to items that are (hopefully) relevant to the entry. You don’t have to click-through anything, you don’t have to read around anything, and as far as I can tell, they’re pretty easy to ignore if you don’t want to read them.

  6. Jeannette311: I’m not responsible for the LJ feed, so I’m not sure. It shouldn’t change anything, as far as I know.
    LJ readers: feel free to comment or e-mail if something looks weird.

  7. Be aware that things like ‘bloglines’ may well appear as a single subscriber to feedburner.
    You have 452 subscribers on bloglines at present… (I have 7, spread over three feeds…. but hey, who’s counting? 🙂

  8. For the record, the LJ feed seems to be fine. I’m sure you were all stressed about that Wil, so I just wanted to reassure you. 😉

  12. I’ve just starting teaching myself PHP and MySQL (I have some SQL but very little programming background.) I highly recommend Luke Welling/Laura Thomson’s “PHP and MySQL Web Development” as a resource — very clean and clearly written, good examples, and a few full projects included from beginning to end. It also comes with all code on CD.
    Good luck!

  13. I subscribe in NetNewsWire 🙂 I actuall have the subscription in Bloglines and I’m using the NNW beta’s new Bloglines sync feature for all of my subscriptions. The latest NNW is also great for podcasts – it can download directly into iTunes.
    I switched my RSS feed at macmegasite to FeedBurner when I found that over 95% of my hits were from RSS readers. Another big advantage is it cuts down my bandwidth drastically, since only Feedburner is hitting the feed and everyone else reads it from FB. I tried ads but after several complaints, I switched to truncated summaries. I’m still using ads at WorldBeatPlanet and I haven’t had any complaints, although it seems not as many people there use RSS.

  14. I am listening to you read from “Just a Geek” as I write this. Now, damn it, I’m going to have to read the book! I like the way your mind works. I like the way you write. And I liked your reference during the reading to Real Genius, a movie I love.

  15. Sorry, Wil – but you don’t quite have podcasting support yet. In order to support podcasting you’ll need an enclosure element in your items which contain an http link to the audio file.

  16. Wil,
    I hope the comments thing on this post won’t turn into a bitching session about all stuf that isn’t working yet but… the site has been really really slow for the last few days. Whether its due to me being in Ireland or whether its something that was changed with the site, I just dunno. Just thought I’d let ya know.
    Cool post bout the oscars, couldn’t watch it live cos first off it was 2 am in the morning over here and secondly, for the first time ever, it was only available on a premium pay digital satellite channel all thanks to Rupert Murdochs fine fine media group who seem to be buying up anything and everything worth watching these days. I posted my own all-time oscar award list on my blog in protest… and the award for worst blog in the world goes to.. moi!
    Click here for my blog

  17. When I tried to update my Live Bookmark I was informed that /atom.xml does not exist. Neither does /index.rdf. What URL should I actually be using, now that I’ve horked my bookmark?

  21. Darn it… I’ve been using your blog as an example of an RSS 0.91 feed for some python documentation I’ve been writing. (And because I think more people should read your blog.) But Feedburner appears to use something totally different, which means I must hunt up some other RSS 0.91 feed.
    I’m looking forward to the Slashdot interview. 🙂

  23. Wil, Loren here. Just a tip. Why not make your Read, Listen, Watch, and everything else a seperate blog within MT. Then just use MTInclude and link it to the static file output by each blog. Alternately, you can do it the hard way and make each one an individual template which you can update through MT by hand and use the MTInclude that way. If you don’t wanna go that way however, I have some php written up that keeps it all in a DB on the server that I used to use for underachievers. Resizes and everything. Call me up or email if you need help with it.

  24. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but the “Civilian Death Count” feed is borked. While it’s sort of amusing to watch the feed very slowly inch its way up the sidebar, I doubt that’s the look you were going for 😉

  25. Wil, This is my first Post and I have been wondering for quite some time now why you haven’t gotten into Podcasting!! I am glad you are making your Audio blogs available that way!!
    Welcome to the podcasting world.
    From a current Podcaster 🙂 http://www.catfishshow.com
    Cat
    p.s. I love your writting style! keep up the good work.

  26. Ouch! No, Wil, don’t succumb to the evil that is MySQL. Believe me, I’ve worked with it. Go for PostgreSQL… it’s much nicer. I tend to work with PostgreSQL and Ruby, moving from PHP and MySQL, and I highly recommend both.

  27. Have you considered All Consuming (http://allconsuming.net) for your reading info? I use it for mine and it even has an MT plugin(s?) available. Erik Benson, its maintainer, is a greater blogger and *cough* putter-together-of-many-geeky-things. 😉

  29. Wil,
    LiveJournal.com feeds are as follows, http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=foo where foo = one of the following:
    wilwheaton – original RSS feed
    wilwheaton2 – secondary feed created because original only had short entries for a while.
    wwdnaudio – audblog posts
    wilsphotos – photo blog feed.
    All appear to be working, still.
    So long as you don’t change the original feed filenames, it should continue to work. If you change the feed filenames, I’m sure we’ll adapt, somehow.
    As for updating your read/watch/etc…, I use PHPCurrently at my site. The admin interface is branded, but the output is not (and/or can be removed). Here: http://codegrrl.com/scripts/phpcurrently/
    runs under PHP/MySQL.
    More than willing to help with php/mysql if I can (my site backend is hand-coded by me in php), e-mail is fyre at my domain.
    -Eric

  30. AMI (and Wil): The counter feed is b0rked on Internet Explorer, and occasionally Opera. Can be fixed by updating the javascript file, itsself, but that’s something Wil has to do (Wil, if you want fix, e-mail me fyre at fyreplace). Works fine in Firefox. =P

  32. smiles
    for some reason I couldn’t reply on the Oscars post so I will here 🙂
    My household are fans of HD also…
    We watch all types of travel shows and the strange -this is the first floating deep see driller of it’s kind – type shows… It is wonderful…
    Yea to HD
    Looking forward to the CSI episode!!!

  33. *sigh* I’m going to kill the guys at The Dragon Page…
    Thanks to Michael and Evo, I am…
    (a) committed to a podcast and reviewing films for their show.
    (b) subscribing to many, MANY podcasts and quickly filling up my iPod.
    (c) addicted to various web comics
    (d) now staring at a reading list longer than…well, me!
    …and finally…
    (e) surrendering to the stir Mr. Wheaton made on their show, and joining this blog. (Hi, everyone — I’m Tee!)
    At the rate I’m going, I’ll have my next book’s first draft finished…by the next decade! Oh well…guess I’ll be having a good time every step of the way. I’m looking forward to this blog, the podcast, and the end of JUST A GEEK, a read I am thoroughly enjoying! :^)
    Thanks for making your audio podcastable, Wil!

  34. I must say I haven’t jumped on the RSS feed, (my site is not even *REMOTELY* exciting enough to attract enough users to warrant the use of a feed…*sigh* someday, and I call myself a geek?!?)
    Anyway, I have jumped on the podcasting wagon yet, but that sounds like a blast…of course, when only a few people read your blog, I suppose its just as easy to pick up the phone and call each one eh? 😉

  35. Well, I’m blind or stupid or something’s been left out. What’s the URL/location for the podcast of the audioblog?

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