The Googleplex Blog

Upgrading MovableType

I wrote a little while ago about customizing the "skin"---or look and feel---of my Photoblog 2.0. Recently I was confronted with a different task with my Googleplex Blog: upgrading from version 2.6 of MovableType to the latest and greatest version 3.31.

MovableType is the software that powers this blog. I upgraded not because I wanted some new bells and whistles (I tend to be pretty conservative about that kind of thing) but rather because I had to: security flaws in the old version had allowed some spammers to hijack the email notification system. Yuck! Why do people spend their time trying to hack systems? What a waste of time.

MovableType has moved in the enterprise direction, leaving your average solo webmaster to the wondrous delights of open source WordPress. So MovableType is now positioned as software to manage enterprise blogs---although they'll still let you download it for free for "personal" use.

As enterprise upgrades go, this one went pretty smoothly. I was careful to make backups of my server-side database, and to follow directions carefully. But, of course, the whole thing didn't work when I restarted it. And you get what you pay for: the free download personal version comes without support.

A little research showed that the problem was that I'd put my MovableType "static" directory within my web server's CGI bin directory, used to execute scripts, which is where my MovableType itself lived. Moving the MT static stuff out of there, and correctly pointing to it in the configuration files solved my problem.

I'm reasonably happy with the upgraded version, and I'm glad to have plugged my security problem. Personally, I still prefer WordPress, but I can see whay an enterprise running multiple blogs with multiple authors and a variety of editorial roles would want to manage them with MovableType.

More generally, I wonder about software getting more complex as it matures. Is it because there are more bells and whistles ("features") in successive versions? This process seems sort like the opposite of entropy, and yet related to entropy at the same time because of the chaos it throws into the lives of IT people who must cope with it.

Berkeley Hills Weblog Makeover 94707

After 500 blog entries, and more than 1,000 photographs, it was time to update the visual design of my Photoblog 2.0.

But like many things software that seem like a good idea when you start, this proved to be much more of a job than I had imagined.

Wake-Up Call

I was Googling myself, and my recent book, Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google APIs. Many writers spend far too much time Googling themselves and their books!

During this fun way to idle away extra hours (ha! ha!), I came across an SEO blog entry that discussed Wired?s interview with me about making money from AdSense blogging. The author of the blog entry was somewhat snide about this blog and Photoblog 2.0: "A startling realization came onto me as a saw the design of each [of Harold's] blog[s]. Sometimes crude, unsemetrical [sic], and painful to the eyes is what I can describe it."

Here's the part that got me into gear. One comment suggested that "someone should tell him [Harold] that old Kubrick theme [the default WordPress design] is a favorite of blog spammers. I almost click away from any blog using that theme when I see it, just as a kneejerk reaction."

A response suggested that I made my blogs ugly on purpose as part of my insidious get-rich-quick scheme so that viewers would click any link (preferably an AdSense link to make me revenue) just to get quickly off my ugly sites: "This is probably a reason for his [Harold's] monitary [sic] success since users tend to click away (in disgust perhaps) as soon as possible and the next thing they click on is a Google Ad. So maybe ugly does work as part of a marketing plan."

I Am Flattered, but...

Guys, I am flattered to get all this attention, and it certainly helps the search engine status of my blogs, but to a considerable extent my critics miss the point. While they are right to pick up on the idea that a successful blog exists as part of a larger idea or plan, it is crucial to realize that search engines do not care about beautiful design.

They don't care in the slightest.

The only thing that matters to a search engine is content.

My Photoblog 2.0 is successful and draws traffic because it has lots of good content. Leaving the photographs out of it, there are articles about digital photography techniques, Photoshop techniques, Miwok naming of Yosemite landmarks, and much more. This content provides information that can't be found elsewhere, and is written from my unique perspective with the same care that I take in writing my books.

The art and craft of SEO is partially about taking relevant content and tweaking it so that search engines can most easily digest and index it. This process does not care about the appearance of the content. SEO is not concerned with making that content *look good* to humans.

Compromise

Search engines may be unconcerned with the appearance of the content they index, but search engines do care about traffic. Visually attractive sites are attractive to humans, get links, and move up in their PageRank. So design does, too, matter. The compromise is to create sites that look great, with the design supporting their content-and where the information architecture is straightforward enough to work for SEO purposes as well.

Kubrick

Kubrick is the theme, sometimes called a skin, that is the default for WordPress, the open source blogging software. Kubrick is famous, and was designed by Michael Heilemann.

The WordPress theme, such as Kubrick, controls how pages in a blog managed by WordPress look, and also how they fit together with one another.

Remember, one of the critics of my Photoblog I mentioned earlier deplored my use of Kubrick.

I like Kubrick. I realize that it has become a cliche, but I still think it is a great design.

I chose Kubrick at the time that I got WordPress installed because I liked it, because I thought it didn't interfere visually with my photos, and because it was the default out-of-the-box, so I didn't have to do anything. When you spend your time chasing three little kids, writing books, taking pictures, and consulting, you don't have too much time left over to worry about design themes.

One of the things I like best about Kubrick is buried inside the code modules that Heilemann supplied to WordPress. Like the dysfunctional computer HAL in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, commented out sections of obscure code, buried in places like the footer template, start saying things like "Dave, what are you doing here", "Dave, I wouldn't do that," and then quoting the lyrics from Daisy, Daisy.

A sense of humor, these open source coders and designers have, yes they does, my precious!

New Skin

Over the past year, I've become pretty serious about my photographs. Well, maybe "serious" is not the right word since I have so much fun with photography. But you know what I mean. I mean that I think my photoblog and photos deserve a frame that will not let someone dismiss them simply because it is the default.

New skin time! Time for makeover Berkeley Hills weblog 94707! (That's my zipcode, by the way.)

The first place I started was to look at existing open source themes for WordPress. There are lots of these, here?s a list of themes on the WordPress Codex.

Some of these pre-built skins are wonderful. Some are garish. But none of them seemed to fit the bill of working well with my photographs.

I realized I'd have to build something for myself.

There are really two parts to a WordPress theme. One is to control the look-and-feel of the blog. The other controls the information architecture: how blog entries, the navigation panel, the blog home page, and so on, are organized.

I realized that I wanted to keep the existing information architecture, which works fine. All I wanted to change was the way things looked.

If you read the comments within Kubrick, this is simply a matter of creating four graphic files, the most important of which is the header graphic, and changing a few style settings.

So I decided to modify Kubrick, rather than creating my own theme. In hindsight, I believe this was a mistake. When I do it again, I will create my own theme, not modify an existing theme.

One thing I should say here is that WordPress is great software. As far as I am concerned, one part of its greatness is that it is entirely written in PHP, with source code available and present. The PHP uses styles to generate the HTML that is displayed. You can change anything about WordPress and its code you'd like under open source licensing.

Pixel by Pixel

Changing the positioning of the graphic elements using their styles took hours of pixel-by-pixel labor. Every time I fixed one element that was off by a couple of pixels, something else broke.

Style Sheet Angst

Style sheets are great. They modularize HTML, and separate form from content. But WordPress is a very complex system, with some styles set in the style sheet, some set in the header module, and the display impacted by code in perhaps twenty different modules.

I spent a great deal of time playing CSS detective and wondering what I had to change to move this dingus to there.

Sometimes I think they should have stuck with tables to organize HTML.

Which Browser Are You On?

Finally, and I do mean finally, I had the new appearance working. Or so I thought. Moving from Internet Explorer on Windows to Firefox, I found that the whole thing was bollixed up. Worse, I found it had a slightly different fit of graphical elements on Mac Explorer, Mac Firefox, and Mac Safari.

I had to add conditional code that checked for the browser that was opening the blog, and picked a different set of styles for each.

By the time I got this all working it was midnight.

If there is anyone running Linux, or one of the browsers I haven't mentioned, would they please drop me a line to let me know if there are any problems?

Voila

Here's the makeover:

Photoblog 2.0 Home page
Sample Blog Entry
Catgeory page

Was it worth it? These things usually seem like they are after you've done them, but not while you are in the thick of the agony. Ah, there it is again: the agony and the ecstasy!

Is It My Turn Yet?

Q: I am the Googleplex Blog. I am running on an old MovableType install that Harold never upgraded because it was one of the last free versions before MT went commercial. My design is functional, but not particularly inspired, and Harold hasn't changed it in years! Is it my turn yet? When are you moving me to WordPress? When are you getting me a nice new skin?

A: Not tonight, Josephine.

Recap

I'm "out of pocket" most of the rest of August, and do not expect to be blogging. I do plan a makeover for the Googleplex Blog when I get back to work: in content, focus, and appearance. So stay tuned!

In the meantime, check out my photo blog and some of my favorite posts from this blog:

Post 1 Jan 11, 2005 Getting Started!
Modest beginings: "I plan to use this blog to answer questions about research, Google, and using the Google APIs." Also, in support of Building Research Tools with Google for Dummies.

Post 20 Jan 20, 2005 The Lord of the Rings
Starting to go further afield!

Post 27 Jan 21, 2005 Make Lay Pay
About AdSense (Really!)

Post 33 Jan 24, 2005 RSS Rocks!
Syndication becomes an obsession tor me!

Post 38 Jan 27, 2005 Dr Dobson and Squarepants Spongebob
Dr Dobson gets spanked!

Post 43 Feb 1, 2005 Dadiaries
Getting personal about fathering

Post 45 Feb 3, 2005 Beyond the Valley of the Google Search Dolls
Google makes its money from advertising

Post 50 Feb 8, 2005 Euphemism Du Jour "Intelligent Design"

Post 62 Feb 15, 2005 Haruki Murakami
Over the borders of the everyday

Post 64 Feb 16, 2005 Power to the Blogosphere!
Jeff Ganon, Eason Jordan

Post 74 Feb 19, 2005 The Anti-Gates
Bill, Cracker, Somer, and Duplo

Post 79 Feb 21, 2005 The real origins of cyberspace

Post 85 Feb 24, 2005 Dead People Don't Validate
Dead People RSS Feed

Post 92 March 1, 2005 Words for Sale
Google meets the Phantom Tollbooth

Post 99 March 4, 2005 Wal-Mart and Google slug it out!
A big Googlefight

Post 110 March 16, 2005 The Decline and Fall of VB6
Whatever happened to Visual Basic?

Post 123 March 22, 2005 Google Code
The Google APIs now in one place

Post 126 March 27, 2005 Contextual Advertising: Not

Post 130 March 31, 2005 Publish the PageRank Algorithm Now!
More than 100 variables is too many!

Post 139 April 9, 2005 It's Time to Scour the Shire!

Post 147 April 18, 2005 Maps and Satellite Photos @ Google

Post 155 April 22, 2005 Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIP)

Post 166 May 2, 2005 Code for Stripping Google Ads from RSS
PHP, a regular expression, what else do you need?

Post 173 May 11, 2005 My new digital photography site is up!
Now photos go on my *other* blog!

Post 177 May 17, 2005 The Long Tail!

Post 183 May 20, 2005 Google Maps Captures UFO

Post 185 May 24, 2005 Google in the Enterprise

Post 186 May 31, 2005 ODP in Trouble

Post 191 June 8, 2005 Nigritude Ultramarine, Seraphim Proudleduck, and Loquine Glupe

Post 199 June 17, 2005 Folksonomic Discovery
43 Things, Flickr, and del.ico.us

Post 207 July 13, 2005 Grokking AdWords Conversion Tracking
It's easy to implement conversion tracking in AdWords

Post 213 August 1, 2005 Do no evil?
Google is a big corporation, like any other

The Googleplex Blog is 200!

Happy Birthday, Googleplex Blog! Well, it's 200 entries, not 200 years (it has only been six months). But 200 entries is really quite a lot - a small book in its own right if you care to look at it that way.

Regrets? Perhaps I would have chosen another name if I had realized how far afield from Google I would wander.

I thought the 200th entry is a good place for me to look back at some (well many :-) ) of my favorites. Thanks for reading. Harold Davis

Some of my favorite posts:

Post 1 Jan 11, 2005 Getting Started!
Modest beginings: "I plan to use this blog to answer questions about research, Google, and using the Google APIs." Also, in support of Building Research Tools with Google for Dummies.

Post 20 Jan 20, 2005 The Lord of the Rings
Starting to go further afield!

Post 27 Jan 21, 2005 Make Lay Pay
About AdSense (Really!)

Post 33 Jan 24, 2005 RSS Rocks!
Syndication becomes an obsession tor me!

Post 38 Jan 27, 2005 Dr Dobson and Squarepants Spongebob
Dr Dobson gets spanked!

Post 43 Feb 1, 2005 Dadiaries
Getting personal about fathering

Post 45 Feb 3, 2005 Beyond the Valley of the Google Search Dolls
Google makes its money from advertising

Post 50 Feb 8, 2005 Euphemism Du Jour "Intelligent Design"

Post 62 Feb 15, 2005 Haruki Murakami
Over the borders of the everyday

Post 64 Feb 16, 2005 Power to the Blogosphere!
Jeff Ganon, Eason Jordan

Post 74 Feb 19, 2005 The Anti-Gates
Bill, Cracker, Somer, and Duplo

Post 79 Feb 21, 2005 The real origins of cyberspace

Post 85 Feb 24, 2005 Dead People Don't Validate
Dead People RSS Feed

Post 92 March 1, 2005 Words for Sale
Google meets the Phantom Tollbooth

Post 99 March 4, 2005 Wal-Mart and Google slug it out!
A big Googlefight

Post 110 March 16, 2005 The Decline and Fall of VB6
Whatever happened to Visual Basic?

Post 123 March 22, 2005 Google Code
The Google APIs now in one place

Post 126 March 27, 2005 Contextual Advertising: Not

Post 130 March 31, 2005 Publish the PageRank Algorithm Now!
More than 100 variables is too many!

Post 139 April 9, 2005 It's Time to Scour the Shire!

Post 147 April 18, 2005 Maps and Satellite Photos @ Google

Post 155 April 22, 2005 Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIP)

Post 166 May 2, 2005 Code for Stripping Google Ads from RSS
PHP, a regular expression, what else do you need?

Post 173 May 11, 2005 My new digital photography site is up!
Now photos go on my *other* blog!

Post 177 May 17, 2005 The Long Tail!

Post 183 May 20, 2005 Google Maps Captures UFO

Post 185 May 24, 2005 Google in the Enterprise

Post 186 May 31, 2005 ODP in Trouble

Post 191 June 8, 2005 Nigritude Ultramarine, Seraphim Proudleduck, and Loquine Glupe

Post 199 June 17, 2005 Folksonomic Discovery
43 Things, Flickr, and del.ico.us

Installing WordPress

I'm installing WordPress to manage my digital photography blog. (Details about my photography site and blog coming soon!)

Why WordPress? Well, not change for the sake of change. Anyone who knows their blogging software knows that this blog is powered by MovableType. I'm pretty happy with MT, and conservative enough from a sysadmin perspective that I haven't even upgraded from version 2.6 (on the if it ain't broken don't fix it theory of IT, even though MT is up to version 3.16 by now!).

But the digital photography site and blog are looking to be a very Web 2.0 kind of thing, running on Flickr, the Flickr APIs, and PHP. WordPress fits in with this: it's written in PHP, with templates easily modifiable by someone who can hack a bit of PHP, truly open source, and truly free. Also the WordPress tag "Code is Poetry" hooked me for obvious reasons.

Unlike MT, which is moving inch by inch towards becoming an enterprise software company. I can't quite tell if technically I'd need to buy an MT license for a new install. Are my blogs a commercial enterprise, which is the issue? Probably I would need a license, even though it's not very expensive, but I just prefer the home spun community of WordPress. As I say, it's very Web 2.0. Will I switch this blog? Probably not anytime soon...

Anyhow, back to the topic of installing WordPress. I'd like to comment on WordPress's Famous 5-Minute Install. For me, five hours was closer to the mark. I'm documenting my two major problems here in the hope that this might benefit someone coming after me.

First, downloading the installation files, unpacking them, copying them to my server, and running the installation script didn't take a whole lot longer than five minutes. That's where my troubles began, however.

Everytime I tried to publish a blog entry, instead of my test item I got a 404 not found error. If you are thinking database problem, you are ahead of me - and correct. The docs say that 99% likely "hostname" in the config file should be set to "localhost" and that "if you don't know what this value should be, check with your system administrator. If you are the system administrator, figure out what this value should be." Well, I finally got wise and plugged in the right address for my dbms server (not localhost), and this worked fine.

Next, the permalink for each entry was broken. I opened the WordPress control panel, went to Options >Permalink > Edit Permalink Structure. I figured that I'd need a new structure, anyhow. Well, I followed the directions and it gave me a bunch of code to add to my .htaccess file, along with the statement that if permissions were set so the file could be written, it would have done so for me. Obviously, I have no problem changing file permissions, but this had me scratching my head for a while because I couldn't find an .htaccess file anywhere in the installation tree. (A red herring, this is a hidden file, so I had to figure out how to get my FTP client to show hidden files.)

Turns out, I simply didn't have a .htaccess file. Creating one from scratch, and copying the suggested code into it, then uploading the newly created file to the directory in the install tree above where I wanted virtual permalinks worked fine. (But time I could have spent better if this had just been in the docs...)

A tough birth, but I think I'm going to like WordPress when all is said and done...

Trashing Movable Type

If anybody was spending their Sunday reading my blog, they'd have noticed that it was mostly hosed (meaning trashed). They might also have noticed that links to individual blog entries still worked, more or less. What a mess!

As they used to say (whoever they are) when I worked at an enterprise database company, "Live by a database, die by your database!" The problem was that my Web hosting company had hosed the instance of the MySQL database used to store the Movable Type entries, and were taking their precious time about restoring the database from backups. Compounding the problem, yesterday before I released the database was corrupted, and after it had been partially restored, I rebuilt the site, writing over the then-current state of the database.

To be absolutely precise, Movable Type doesn't actually store the content entries in the database, at least the way I have it configured (each entry is a file). But it does store pointers to all the information in the database tables, so that without this information one has nothing.

Movable Type, and other server-side blogging software, works with a database and a Web server to form a Content Management Server (CMS). Yes, this is complex software. One should back up content regularly, and not just rely on a remote host to do this with enough care. (Mea Culpa!)

Blogging software started out as something to meet an apparently simple purpose - to facilitate posting of an online diary in reverse chronological order. As time as gone by, this functionality has expanded. Blogs automatically put out syndication feeds, for one example. And blogging has become a widespread communication channel, used for corporate communications, technical support, and so on, as well as personal communications. The complexity of installing, configuring, and maintaining server-side blogging software now rivals that of "grown-up" enterprise content management servers (products from Documentum, Filenet, Microsoft, Vignette, and others).

If you're not a happy propeller head, you probably shouldn't get involved in running your own blogging software like I do (it is a time sink if nothing else).

There are a number of services that will host your blog: Google's Blogger, LiveJournal, or Typepad (both Live Journal and TypePad are associated with Movable Type.)

For the blog you want, hosting costs something. If you are going to run your own copy of Movable Type, you can get Six Apart, the company that publishes Movable Type, to install it for you (again for a fee). And if you want anything fancy in your weblog design, you probably should find someone who is good at creating customized sites using the software and work with them.

Needless to say, I breathed a big sigh of relief when I got my database restored (rolled back to Saturday). I rebuilt my blog, and it was pretty much as good as new. I'm now resolved to be conscientious about personal content backups (in addition to the ISP), ah, after I finish this one more entry...

Blogging Makes History

Captain's Quarters, a blog written by Edward Morrissey, a Minnesotan and self-described "libertarian conservative" has helped blogging change history.

Morrissey's blog has been carrying an eye-witness account of the public corruption hearing in Toronto centering on the highest levels of the Canadian Liberal Party. A Canadian federal judge instituted a publishing ban covering the hearing in Canada with a flimsy rationale. Canadian news media posted the URL for Captian's Quarters for all Canadians to read; it received 400,000 hits yesterday.

Morrissey, a staunch conservative and Republican, says, "These information bans are self-defeating for free societies. The politicans know, the media knows, but the Canadian voters are left in the dark..."

As of today, the judge had at least partially lifted the ban, almost without doubt due to the information getting out through Captian's Quarters.

You can't keep important information secret in a world filled with bloggers, and this is truly a change for the better.

Related link: New York Times coverage