Postnuke to Zikula with minimum disruption

Everyone who uses Postnuke and is upgrading to Zikula are going to go through the pain of lost links, indexed pages, and so on.

It was precisely for this reason that I held back for a long time too.

However, Zikula is better than Postnuke, and eventually, there comes a time to commit to the move, or start losing interest in the whole system itself, particularly since nothing is happening with Postnuke anymore.

There are some problems I faced, and some solutions I found, which I will be sharing in a series of posts here.

• The first, and key thing to do is to make a copy of your current sitemap, so that you have all the links.
• Do the upgrade as instructed after backing up the site.
• Go through your modules list with a fine toothed comb, and test them - navigate, access, edit, etc. Upgrade all those that have upgrades.
• Identify the ones that can't be upgraded and deactivate them for now.
• Navigate through your site and see which blocks don't show, which links don't work, and so on.
• Create a list of everything that is going wrong.

In the next posts, we will deal with some of the most urgent aspects of getting your site back into functioning for most visitors coming there rather than 404 pages and inexplicable issues.

10 tips for traffic generating comments

So, like everyone and his neighbour, you comment on blogs to get links and traffic. So, like everyone and his cousin, where is the traffic?

The following list contains some tips to get the most traffic from your comments (and perhaps a few links too)

• Make meaningful comments: I thought I'd get this one out of the way. Its sound, and everyone knows it. Yet, what is a meaningful comment? I'd say, its a comment that enhances what is on the page. Add to the post, disagree with it, support and supplement the perspective of another commenter, ATTACK another commenter, sensitively, if an opportunity arises..... become a part of the story of that page.
• Be real. Have emotions, show uncertainty, have ideas you are enthusiastic about..... share experience not just for authority, but for sharing yourself as a person in related circumstances.
  
• Which blogs to comment on, which posts to comment on: Naturally, you want blogs that are relevant. You want posts that you can comment on with authority and enthusiasm. It works better to comment on posts with a few comments so that you are closer to the original post, and have less competition. Arun Bansi Lal suggests subscribing to blogs to find new comments that you can quickly post on.
  
• Subscribe to comments: This is often overlooked. You make an awesome comment, and the blogger or another person responds to it. If you are in the loop enough to pick up and create a conversation - you have succeeded in creating curiosity around yourself - guess how curious people will try to find out more about you? Click!
• Where to link to? Home page? heh. And you are building links! What you want to do is link to a page that is relevant to that post, or your comment. Who knows, the blogger may simply choose to link to it, if s/he finds value......
• The flip side of where to link to: Sometimes I have a post I'd like to bring people to. So then, I will hunt for blog posts that are relevant to that post, comment and link to that post. For example, I have written this list. Now, I can go around looking for who else has written about effective commenting for traffic, and comment there and agree/disagree/contribute.... and link to here.
• Be generous: Don't hoard your knowledge for your site and comment teasers everywhere. It works sometimes, but it gets old real fast. Be generous in your appreciation when you find something appreciateworthy, be generous in your responses to differing perspectives. Mostly, be generous with links, ideas, contributions..... and not just with some payoff in mind. People are more interested in what they can get, and if both of you think that way, there is no bridge. If you can be generous, the gap is bridged, and then you have a relationship you can take ahead.
• Link to blogs you comment on at times. Its not always about getting your link on their real estate. It often is about you putting your money where your mouth is - all the efforts in the world are not going to build you anything, if you enjoy someone's hospitality for their links, and refuse/forget to acknowledge them when on your own territory.

I think each person has their own ideas of what works best for them.

What works best for you?

Wordpress 2.8.1 Editor Problems?

Symptoms:

1. You upgrade your wordpress. Things are good
2. Suddenly, you go to make a new post, or edit an existing one, and voila, it opens with html code.
3. So you click on the 'visual' tab, of course.
4. Nothing whatsoever happens.

Other symptoms -

1. White text on white background - its there, just not visible.
2. Tough to upload/edit images
3. Tough to assign tags
4. Some issue with moving widgets around.....
   

Everybody and his cousin knew that there was a problem with the text editor in 2.8.0. You have gone from 2.8.0 to 2.8.1. surely this is not happening to you?

So what has really happened? My suspicion is that since they took out the fancy editor in 2.8.1, for some reason, your broswer cache lets it seem to work for a while longer than it actually does, so when it finally clears and you don't have it anymore, you don't even think of the update, since it had seemed to work since then.

What you have lost is just the fancy editor.

Never fear, when this nerd in progress is here!

Do so:

1. Upgrade your Firefox - for some reason, I observed that wherever people having this problem spoke about their browsers, there was mention of outdated versions of firefox. Wondered if they were linked for quite a while before giving it a shot - it worked. Didn't solve the problem completely, but it was much better, and I was then able to solve it easily.
2. You will now be able to see clearly where you stand with this. You will notice the difference between the html and visual views, and both will function, though without the editor - so you have one with bbcode kind of mark up and html.
3. Install the FCKEditor plugin.
   
4. Done.
   

OpenDNS hijacks the Address Bar in Firefox

If you have just started using OpenDNS, your first dismaying discovery is likely to be that typing in words in the address bar no longer results in a google search, but are redirected to an OpenDNS guide search. Done without a warning, this is as good as a hijack.

This would still have been useful and functional if the search results were relevant. Unfortunately, OpenDNS uses Yahoo Search Engine, which is not really as good as search engine, particularly if you search a lot (who doesn't?) or if you are fond of google search (who isn't?).

Does that mean you shouldn't use OpenDNS? Nope. OpenDNS provides fast and excellent DNS service (not search). The additional possibility of being able to manage your account also helps if there are sites you want to bar access to, etc.

Luckily, you can fix your addressbar, and life can be back to how it used to be. This is what you need to do:

1. Start a new window and type "about:config" without the quotes. If you are using a Firefox3, a security warning will come up. Click "I'll be careful, I promise"
2. The top of the page contains a window for filter. We are looking for keyword.URL - type that in, and double click the Value field and type in "http://www.google.com/search?q=" (or the search string for the search engine of your choice).
3. Done. Have a cup of coffee.

FYR:

Web Analytics Demystified

Just wanted to share an awesome post by Avinash Kaushik on his blog. Well, the post was long ago, and I found it long ago, but I found it again in my bookmarks today, and boy, was I glad.

What I really enjoy is the simplicity of this post.

Avinash speaks about using Analytics to improve the performance of your blog in terms simply enough for a child to understand. It literally boils down to what you want to do, and how you go about finding where to begin.

If you are a webmaster or blogger, this one is definitely not to be missed.

Another writer I enjoy reading is Arun Basil Lal of Million Clues. his posts are often packed with good information that is immediately applicable to see results.

Quick tip to increase AdSense income

Long time no write.

Just thought to dash off this note, if you aren't still doing it.

Link your AdSense and Google Analytics accounts with each other, to find out which content is earning money for you. Then, it gives you an idea of what works and what doesn't, and you can do more of what works, rather than waste time on what doesn't.

How much better can an SEO tip get?

Writing with emotion

When you make a post, share a bit of yourself in there. What are you writing about, why is it important to you, how does it make you feel, what do you wish to see, and so on.

As a reader, I feel great joy to discover a human angle to what I'm reading. Most of the time, if it is absent, I will move on without really registering what's being written. There is a sense of connection that brings credibility to the writing that is far beyond the usual "information exchange".

What is it that you wish to read on a blog?