Whew! The blog is working again and the upgrade was relatively painless. Like jumping off the high dive for the first time. Just a little bit of water up my nose.
I was on WordPress 2.6 and upgraded to 2.9.2. The big incentive was my obsession with getting threaded comments functionality. It’s just so practical and fun and conversational. I can now REALLY answer questions in the comments and you can actually see the answers connected right below the question asked (and my picture shows up next to my comment so you know I’m responding, yes!). You can even join in too! F A B U L O U S. A better way to talk about sewing!
I can’t tell you how I’ve struggled with the comment issue for the past several years. I’ve always answered questions with personal e-mails to the commenter. While I love that connection I always felt like I should be doing it in the comments. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn’t. In the mean time, I also had comments I just wanted to acknowledge and say ‘Yeah, right on!’ I would save them in my inbox planning to give a thoughtful response.
The result: hundreds of comments, all read, waiting for me to go back and give a quick e-mail response to, stress over watching the pile build, guilt, and more guilt over watching the pile build. Well, no more!
I’m beyond apologizing, I recognize I need to deal with the issue because it certainly is not taking care of itself. To that end… moving forward I will respond to all comments in the comments. A conversation, yay! I’m actually going to turn off receiving the comments into my e-mail inbox, I will just visit the blog dashboard and respond.
A few more opinions about the technical side of the blog thing (please feel free to skip unless you’re a techie blog geek like me and find all this stuff absolutely fascinating):
- In case you’re wondering, I do just about all my own technical work. Of course, you probably could figure that out because if I’d paid someone to do this latest upgrade there would already be a pretty picture in the header right now and fancy fonts in the side bar.
- I originally chose a self-hosted WordPress blog 4 years ago! Yikes! Will I blog for the rest of my life? Hmmm. I HIGHLY recommend this solution if your blog is in any way related to your business aspirations. In a nutshell:
1) Over time your blog content will take on value, you should OWN the URL that all that content resides on. Don’t like your web host? Your web host goes under? Your blog service doesn’t provide the functionality you need to grow your business? Who cares, you own the URL and can move your highly valuable content anywhere you want.
2) WordPress ROCKS! It’s open source software and the functionality is growing exponentially on a daily basis. There is a plug in (free user contributed add-ons) for absolutely everything you could ever imagine wanting to do a on a blog. And these days, the plug ins are looking very much like fully functioning website templates including e-commerce, photo galleries and drop down menus.
- What’s a WordPress Theme? It’s the other part of having a WordPress blog. WordPress is the software that organizes the technical workings of the blog and manages the database interface. The Theme is the pretty stuff. The code that creates the user interface your readers see. My latest theme is Headway. It cost me $70 for a lifetime license (do a google search to get 20% off if you end up purchasing this theme.) I’m not an affiliate just so you know.
- Why did I purchase a theme instead of selecting one of the gazillion free themes available? OK, the free themes are fantastic. I have used MistyLook for the last two years and I have LOVED this free theme. Sadish Bala, the very talented author, has a forum and answered many of the questions I had when customizing things to get the look I wanted. The problem: Sadish is not upgrading MistyLook to take advantage of new features available in WordPress (yes, I wanted those threaded comments!). A common problem with all free themes. Of course it is, who in their right mind would upgrade a free offering for the rest of their life. I decided to go with a paid theme that has a chance of being supported and upgraded for years and years to come.
From my research, there are two paid themes battling it out in the marketplace right now: Headway and Thesis. I chose Headway because it provides a very easy user interface for customizing the basic things I’m interested in: fonts, colors and page formats. It also has a gazillion other features and in planning ahead I’m hoping a robust framework will support all the ideas I have for the evolution of this blog.
- In my last post, Kristin asked if the threaded comments was a feature of WordPress or the theme itself. Threaded comments were incorporated into version 2.7 of WordPress (available as a plug in for prior releases). The problem was that not all themes would support the feature. MistyLook did not which is why I did both a WordPress upgrade and installed a new theme.
- Questions? Let em fly, I’ll answer with my new fancy threaded comments feature 
I finished the Cog + Wheel quilt. It’s fabulous! Will share all that in my next post.
MistyLook is up-to-date and it does support multi-threaded and multi paged comments. I don’t know why you would think otherwise.
I am still in the WordPress world as you can see me active at http://wprocks.com .
Thanks
Sadish
Sadish, I will update my post to acknowledge that. I had looked into this awhile back (maybe a year ago to be honest). I looked at the forums and thought I came across threads that said that threaded comments were not supported. Wish I had known that, it could have saved me installing a new theme!
Congratulations on your self improved website. I feel compelled to leave a coment so that you have one to have a threaded reply to. Your new piecing project i looking fantastic.
Thank you Patricia, it’s working! Yay!
Well, I have just RECENTLY stumbled onto your site & blog, and think it’s ALL just fantastic. I am relatively new to quilting and am finding lots & lots of helpful info here, and now, lucky me, I find some geeky stuff too!!!! Does it get any better than this? Perhaps if you also offered homemade chocolate chip cookies (before AND after baking) and brownies?? Seriously, tho, congrats on the upgrade and THANK YOU for the details & hard work!! And, yup, the quilt looks really good! And sew on and sew on!
oh yes, we definitely need cookies too, fresh out of the oven with the chocolate all gooey, mmmm.
good info here, kathy.
and the quilt! it looks great.
Glad you got it fixed so quickly. At least, it was fast from my perspective
Kathy, I love the cog and wheel, and I think trudging through all this html stuff is the only way to feel like I’ve learned something, which is what I want.
it just occurred to me that figuring out the html is very similar to template piecing!
You are SO talent Kathy! Techy and artist – how does that work together for you?
I’m convinced they’re very similar Mary. I used to do techie stuff for a living, that was over 10 years ago so it’s always a challenge to learn the new stuff.
very interesting… I’ve been wanting threaded comments myself, but didn’t realize that it was available with wordpress. so excited to hear that it is!!
can’t wait to see your quilt – it looks fabulous!
From the WordPress dashboard select Settings/Discussion. Under ‘Other Comment Settings’ click the ‘Enable threaded (nested) comments’ checkbox. Voila!
yay, thanks! that sounds easy enough… (we’ll see!)
Congrats on the successful upgrade, and I can’t wait to see more of that glorious cog quilt. You’re making curved seams look easy!
I wouldn’t say they were easy but I got my groove on by the end of it. I took lots of pictures!
Your blog looks awesome! It inspires me to get busy on mine.
Yeah for success!! In blogland AND with the cog and wheel quilt. I have considered blogging, but I can’t even journal on paper without feeling silly. The only time I was successful/comfortable with journaling was when I was recuperating from spinal surgery………..go figure.
Looking forward to more info on this new quilt!
So, you’ve now get ME thinking that threaded comments are the way to go – do people who comment get and email when you reply via the comments? I always worry that the person I’m responding to wouldn’t actually get the answer!
I’m afraid my template doesn’t support the threaded comments because I quickly make the settings change and tested it, and it doesn’t seem to be working…uh-oh, you’ve started a monster!
Thanks for the awesome post – you do the world a great service whenever you post something like this – converting complicated information into something simple, so that someone just starting out can get a handle on the lingo!
I know when I comment sometimes that I can subscribe to the replies, I’m not seeing that as an option right now, I’m hoping that’s a plug-in!
Kathy, I just wanted to say thanks – you’ve inspired me to finally figure out how to add nested comments to my site. (I made the mistake of creating my own WordPress theme years ago by heavily modifying another theme, so any updates involve some heavy digging into the code!) I think (hope!) I’ve finally managed it now.
Next task is to add a way to subscribe to comments by email so that people don’t have to keep checking back to see if/when I’ve replied…
Thanks for all that techie stuff. I need to go upgrade my WordPress and see what my theme supports. Mine’s heavily modified by a friend starting over would be a major project. I’ve been contemplating some other changes too though…
It’s great to see Pink Chalk learn and grow!
Love the Hope Valley cog and wheel…and thanks so much for all of this info. Just wondering where one goes to purchase their URL???
The URL’s are referred to as domain names. I own several: pinkchalkstudio.com, pinkchalkfabrics.com and kathymack.com (I had to buy my own name when it became available but I don’t use it for anything at the moment!)
I have purchased and continue to manage my domain names at eNom.com There are quite a few places you can buy a domain name from. I like eNom.com, they’re a legitimate company, have rock bottom rates and aren’t always trying to sell me ‘features’ I don’t need.
After you own the domain name you find a web host where you can establish your blog or website. Many webhosts will give you a free domain name with your webhosting package.
I started with Yahoo and liked their service but outgrew it when I started the store. I now use HostGator and recommend them.
Thanks Kathy!
Wow, what a stunner of a quilt front. Thanks for all the technical info, always interesting. Haven’t been doing much sewing lately but knitting a bit, this quilt front is so inspiring. Hope the new store is coming together nicely for you and the gang! ox
Lots of work on the space! I can’t wait for it to come together!
Thanks for all the great wordpress info! Do you know if, when you respond to a person’s comment, does your response also get sent to their e-mail? I’ve thought about doing threaded comments, but I realize that very few people (if any) actually take the time to come back to the comments section of a post. I feel it’s very time-generous of them to comment in the first place, and therefore unrealistic of me to expect that they would return.
Yeah, that’s why I’ve always liked responding directly to e-mails. I’ve seen a feature on some blogs that allow people to ‘subscribe’ to the replies. I need to investigate that. I’m hoping that responding to the question in the comments ends up providing more value to everyone in the long run. I’ve hit the wall in doing both and I’m coming to terms with my limitations.
The quilt- the quilt- I am in AWE!
Thank you Morgan, it’s an awesome pattern, I had lots of fun with it.
wow on the quilt. i’m doing the hills one for my daughter (my first quilt!). DS’ new fabrics are just stunning. And congrats on doing all the tech stuff yourself–impressive as always and so great that your whole business is going so well!
Hi Susan! I love the Hills n Hollers quilt too, I’m so in love with Cog & Wheel I want to make them all now.
Thanks for the info on WP and the themes. For the last year I had been thinking of switching from Movable Type, and the only thing holding me back is the fact that WP does not support multiple blogs from one application. (I currently have 2 blogs.) Happily, I found out that WP 3.0 will support multiple blogs, so I’ll be making the switch in the spring.
The thought of having more than one blog makes my head hurt MJ!
I wonder if everybody with a blog struggles with the comment-answering thing? I used to always respond in the comments, but then I wondered if people ever came back to look for the answer, so now I respond via e-mail (although sometimes I let it back up and then don’t answer at all
).
I use Thesis, but I haven’t checked into threaded comments yet. That, combined with the ability to subscribe to comments, may be the best way of all. I’m sure that everyone with a blog does want to acknowledge comments, and in my case, my commenters are usually the best part of the blog!
Your site looks great and I am glad you enjoyed working with Headway. Let us know if you need anything or have any ideas on how we can keep improving Headway.
Kathy, hi,
I’m in the process of deciding whether to go with Headway and have looked at a LOT of sites. You’ve done such a lovely job with the fonts and layout that I think I’m sold. Thanks and beautiful work.
Really good write up. Continue to keep up the very brilliant work.