Jaseone on Online Support

Why do people read scobleizer.wordpress.com?

jaseone — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:16:48 +0000

I’m interested to hear why exactly do people read Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger? Personally I read Scoble’s little rants just for entertainment value and comment there to try to make sense of what he posts as a lot of the time his posts leave you thinking “what the?” and scratching your head.

I think a lot of people actually read Scoble’s blog to stay on the cutting edge and to find out about all the new, cool stuff so they can keep up with the Jones’ and that just seems a little bit sad to me.

What has happened to the quality of beta software?

jaseone — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:23:23 +0000

What has happened to the age old process of releasing software where the main stages are:

Alpha – Development use only, still not feature complete with any number of bugs
Beta – Feature complete & major bugs fixed
Preview Release – This is typically beta quality software released so people can get a preview of the new software
Release Candidate – feature complete and both major & minor bugs fixed with only obscure bugs left

It seems both sides of the software world, commercial/proprietary and open source are just releasing software willy nilly and not following any kind of pattern, take for example SimpleMachines 1.1, it was at RC1 for quite a long time and then RC2 comes out with significant new features included, did someone forget to tell them what Release Candidate is supposed to mean? Then we have Micosoft with Internet Explorer 7′s public beta that has had numerous significant bugs reported along with a suspected security hole already, I guess that wouldn’t be too bad but IE is so embedded in Windows you have to replace your current version of IE in order to try it and in doing so you are potentially affecting the whole Operating System bringing it down to beta level, that is just not good at all!

Is there some sort of trial with custom templates on WP.com?

jaseone — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 04:39:39 +0000

Anyone know how http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ is using a custom theme? I guess I could ask them directly but hey that would be too easy.

Anyone want a WordPress.com invite?

jaseone — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 04:36:06 +0000

Just like when I first got Gmail I’m finding I have nobody to give invites to that I know.

The first comment that mentions my two dogs names gets the invite.

How many people accept payments for online support?

jaseone — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 04:47:38 +0000

I provide support online in my own time in various places after working fulltime as a Senior Technical Consultant (Mainly for Java, Oracle and VB stuff) so I don’t have any financial problems and hence never think of actually accepting or asking for any payment for helping someone out as it actually makes me feel good helping people out and as corny as it sounds that is payment enough for me.

However I’m interested in finding out how many people do actually charge for such support? Like issues with a WordPress plugin or some layout fixes, that kind of thing.

The WordPress.org forums are hard work!

jaseone — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 01:46:29 +0000

My hats off to Podz, Lorelle, MacManX and all the rest of the regulars that help out at the WordPress.org forums, it is exhausting work trying to keep up with all the posts there!

WPMU and Dreamhost

jaseone — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 14:40:54 +0000

Although Dreamhost is listed in the hosting section of WordPress.org the code base for WordPress MU is a different beast and has other requirements so unless you know PHP intimately then I suggest you don’t try to install WPMU at Dreamhost at this stage.

The same goes for any other host that runs PHP as CGI instead of an Apache module.

A good alternative is A Small Orange, I am not affiliated with them in anyway and that link isn’t even a referral link, I’m just a very satisfied customer and am happy to pimp them for free from time to time!

Should WordPress MU cater to all users?

jaseone — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 03:08:37 +0000

Not that I have any say in this at all but I’ve been wondering lately whether a decent amount of technical knowledge should be a pre-requisite for maintaining a WordPress MU site or not? Should anyone be able to install & setup WordPress MU?

I guess that should be an eventual goal of the project but I don’t think it is close to that goal, so at the moment I know it is harsh but unless you know what you are doing then WordPress MU isn’t for you just yet. For example if you don’t know what a .htacccess file is, how to create a MySQL Database or at least basic PHP then you are going to have a very steep learning curve with WPMU.

Hopefully it will be more user friendly going forward for admins but for now it is more usable for those that have a blog setup under WPMU and not for those maintaining WPMU itself.

New post preview

jaseone — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 02:59:26 +0000

Just saw this this and then promptly tried it out here, what it does is load the post fully themed in an iframe or similar below your post after you save a draft of it so you can see *exactly* how it is going to look, no more guess work on whether you got your styling right or not when doing something like posting an image! Sweet!

What I plan for this blog

jaseone — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 02:51:29 +0000

I thought about this for a while and I think I will use it to share my experiences with providing voluntary technical support online in the various forums I participate in. I will also post related things like anything nifty I manage to do with the software I use, moving that stuff from my personal blog to here and leave my personal blog just for personal stuff.