Monstrous failure of my upgrade to 2.3.2 back to wordpress.com for now

Well, I’ve been trying like crazy to get my wordpress 2.3.1 to upgrade to 2.3.2.

so far, I’ve only managed to:

Delete my entire blog at http://www.ds4design.com

fail at upgrade a total of 5 times

Gotten VERY frustrated with the crew at Go daddy who have managed to: attempt to help me with my install, then fail, the next call,, another customer service guy inform me that they’re not allowed to help me, and the assistance provided was unsanctioned.

I’m really considering leaving GoDaddy and going somewhere more wordpress friendly (one of their reccomended providers).

It is bizarre, GoDaddy hosts, and does a 1 button install of wordpress (2.3.1) but they offer zero assistance when it comes to wordpress 2.3.2 yet there are known issues with 2.3.1 and it isn’t good to have that anymore (it can be hacked).

Any hints here would be awesome. Till then,, its back to wordpress.com (should I tell feedburner?! I guess so!)

How about that, Patriots and Giants! Who’da thunk it!

dot org, dot com,, sometimes it costs ya 30 bucks to learn the difference

So I’ve been trying to get this whole blogging thing to work. I’ve used blogger,, wasn’t too enthralled. So I came over to the WordPress side. There are actually two sides to it (yes, I performed a perfect ‘dingus’ and managed to make a sweet move,, not).

The difference in WordPress is that there is .org, and there is .com. I’ve been using dot com. A great service, I really like it.

Where I’m a moron (I’m sure you were wondering) was that WordPress.com (that I was using) does not allow any plugins outside of those that it already has hosted in it’s system.

“But wait!” you say,, There are all those plugins and themes for WordPress, don’t they work there?! Short answer, yes, long answer, the war of 1812 was fought with Canada, but that’s neither here nor there.

WordPress plugins (the ones where you CAN make money, and do neato stuff) are only available with your own hosting (I use GoDaddy) and downloading WordPress (the blogging software that needs hosting) from WordPress.org (note .org, not .com!)

I mistakenly bought the 15$ (it coulda been worse!)

Now (ok, I can be a bit of a slow learner,, stop throwing lit matches at me) I know that to use all the wordpress plugins with impunity (well, ok, they have be on the web. To do that, you have to use the WordPress.org download, then get it hosted somewhere (Godaddy), then you can use any of the fancy plugins and do whatever you want.

To Recap

WordPress.com=> You can write whatever you want, post whatever you want, and do lots of links, but as for monetizing it,, not so much.

WordPress.org=> Download it, host it, go nuts!! This is the way to do the whole “online business/blog” type thing (yeah, we’ll see how this all goes). So far, it goes slowly.

Next up, going through the 30daychallenge again with that wacky Ed Dale (Dan Raine too!). He puts the netmar in Internet Marketing!

I bet you can’t wait till I start podcasting too!! (ugh, I’ll probably just talk about Formula 1 all day).

Stealth mode is very frustrating

Well, I’ve been in stealth mode for,,, years.

Why? Why would I not put it all out there, on the line, and say

Hey!

Look at me toss out idea after idea that doesn’t work!

Oh, yeah,, that’s why.

So coming out of my little shell is a tad odd. There’s a lot to do, and a lot still to be done. Part of this is all just one big “Note to self”. The rest can be chocked up to self serving whining, and offhanded mild publicity attempts.

Like you, I read all the “web marketing”, “Web 2.0”, “social networking” things.

I can be found on Facebook, Myspace, Coroflot, Orkut, Friendster, Linkedin, Cork’d, and a bunch of others I can’t even think of right now.

The problem is, there are so many ways to “be out there,” yet, with “being out there.” What’s really going on? Do you have something to really sell? Are you running a business, or just having fun (and being silly?) Silly is fine, especially if you’re focused on silly,, sometimes, silly is best.

But to do that, you’ve still got to have the knowledge to know just where you’re going with it (plan your silly just a bit here).

As much as I’ve “planned” what I’m going to be doing here, it’s still not as solid as I’d like it to be. I design products and sell them. Personally I prefer to license them to large companies and bootstrap my projects by having big companies buy and sell them. It’s a win win for them, they get a different type of product that is thought out, manufacturable, and works with their current product line. While I get rewarded for my efforts.

I’ll elaborate much more about my process as we go on, but this leads us to the next upcoming post “Not Invented Here Syndrome” and what to do about it.

Also, we’ll deal with the realities of “too many clubs” or put another way,, even if you’re a member everywhere, what should you do with it, and is it worth it?

Cheers!

What’s to be confused about

So I’ve been working on getting all my “web 2.0” “social networking” schmutz together, and, well, I’m still a tad confused.

So apparently to make WordPress really work for you (read, unlock and host with more data) one must buy some credits (no biggie,, but I didn’t know). No wonder WordPress seems to do fairly well and seems rather professional (cause it really is!)

That would explain the limitations I’ve been fighting with loading simple things like feeds and ads into my site,, I wasn’t allowed (told you I’m not really a web guy!)

So yes, I’m a product designer (what, I didn’t mention that?)

So now I know, once I get some “credits” at wordpress I can pretty much do what I want (then I’ll need to buy more space at wordpress, or I need to host my wordpress site at my Go-Daddy hosting site). Whew!! There’s a lot to this stuff.

Then (after blogging and keeping everything updated, I’ll need to build a store to actually sell the things I’ve been making (we’re still on stealth mode there, but things are coming soon!)

Baby Steps people,, Baby steps,,,

The construction of a complete blog, here goes nothing

Well, this blog is here for a number of reasons;

• To publicize my business DS4 Design
• To share what I find interesting
• To share ideas and concepts that others my find helpful
• To occasionally whine about injustice
• To elucidate ideas
• To sell my products
• To share things I’m doing and maybe help other people do the same sort of thing I’m trying to do (in their own way)

Here are the next few things I want to ad here.

A button to link to my linked in profile already found how to do that here.

The feed link to my tumblr posts like here.

to integrate my Twitter feed (follow me freds4hb)

A button so you can buy me a beer (I like beer) here.

As well as monetize it with adsense and other ad revenue (need to learn all about my SEO things here too!)

Of course I use stumble upon, digg, and delicious for SEO type things (still learning there too). I can pretty much be found everywhere as fredshb, so give it a go!

I also want to be sure to have a template that works with all these things I fear my current template isn’t set up to handle a lot of this. We’l see. I’ll be checking myself with my own RSS reader (you DO use google reader right?!)

There’s much more I want to do, but that’s my first bit for starters.