Blogging

A couple of Oracle bloggers (Laurent and Yas) are experimenting with Disqus on their blogs but Tim Hall has expressed some reservations about committing his blog comments to a hosted service outside of his control. Jake Mckee is also taken by Disqus but eloquently expresses similar concerns about ‘data ownership and presentation’. I understand (and used to vehemently share) both Tim and Jake’s reservations. It does seem perfectly natural to want all your blog content stored in your MySql database on your server. What if Disqus servers are slow and unresponsive or worse, even down ? Your blog would be accessible but your comments wouldn’t. What is Disqus isn’t around next year ? ...

Disqus lets you easily track all comments you have left scattered over the blogosphere. Disqus allows you to adminster comments on multiple blogs from a single dashboard. Disqus has built-in effective protection against comment spam. Disqus provides tight integration with Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, MT and Tumblr. Disqus provides Javascript code for every other CMS. Disqus supports threaded comments. Disqus allows you to fix that embarassing typo by editting comments. Disqus ‘eat their own dog food’. Disqus is free to use. Disqus is used on over 4,000 blogs. Disqus lets you subscribe to individual comment threads. Disqus supports gravatars. Disqus lets you rate comments you like (and dislike). Disqus provides an RSS feed for all your comments. Disqus styles comments in keeping with your blog. Disqus is configurable and extensible. Disqus is written in Django. Disqus treats an email reply to an comment thread as as additional comment. Disqus is under active development. Disqus listen to user feedback. Disqus offers an API so you can write your own applications. Disqus allows you to use your OpenId credentials. Disqus offer unbelievably helpful and prompt support. Disqus provide excellent widgets. Disqus supports multiple moderators and a range of moderation options.

Five months ago, I experimented with Disqus powered comments when this blog was running on WordPress. The trial was rather short-lived because I was disappointed that Disqus wasn’t able to fully integrate with all the existing blog comments. Importing comments still isn’t possible but Disqus says this feature is being worked on. However, I have decided to reinstate Disqus for the following reasons: Disqus recently added integration with FriendFeed so any contributions I make on Disqus powered blogs will also be visible in my FriendFeed stream. I am encountering an ever increasing number of blogs using Disqus. I am hoping Disqus will help to trigger more comments, interest and interaction on the blog. Disqus provide a nice combination widget providing ‘Popular’, ‘Recent Comments’ and ‘People’. The most recent release of Disqus included a raft of changes including support for Open ID. Disqus is being actively developed and, more importantly, listen to their users. I still have some reservations that the couple of articles with decent comment threads included replies to earlier comments (which are no longer visible) so we are literally starting from zero. However, hopefully some comments will appear soon and the tabs will actually display something ! ...

It’s no good. I simply can’t go on. I can no longer summon up the enthusiasm for blogging. All the warnings from the blogging 101 courses over the years have proven to be very true. I foolishly dipped my toe into Twitter and then FriendFeed but it’s no good I simply can’t go on with this any longer. I can’t bear to miss my children growing up just because ‘Facebook is so last year, Dad.’ ...

The forthcoming release of WordPress 2.5 was one reason I was hesitant to move to Habari. However, having seen a demo of the revised dashboard in WordPress 2.5, all I can say is I am glad I made the move and didn’t wait. While I am merely an end user (not a UI designer), Michael Heilemann articulates many of my views on the deficiences and usability of the Wordpress dashboard in this detailed analysis. ...

‘Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.’ The migration of this blog from WordPress to Habari is mostly complete. I had a few unexpected problems with a significant number of comments and a handful of posts that contained mismatched HTML tags and didn’t display the corresponding page at all. So I had to painstakingly review every single post with comments and correct the HTML by hand. Inevitably, I forgot the lesson of my previous migration and didn’t give any regular readers advance warning of the impending chaos or any notice of the change in RSS feeds. That’s not because I don’t care, but rather that I treat this blog as a chance to experiment with the technology. ...

I simply couldn’t resist the temptation any longer so this blog is now running on Habari because: The Habari Administration screens look like they have been designed rather than evolved. The WordPress import utility works brilliantly. Michael C. Harris created a TinyMCE plugin for Habari - literally minutes after my initial enquiry. Most of the required functionality (Google Analytics, Feedburner, Akismet, Sitemap) is available as plugins for Habari. Michael Harris also helped me configure rewrite rules so my existing WordPress permalink structure is retained. A gentleman called Harry from London developed this attractive Habari theme.

Adding support for OpenID to Wordpress using this plugin is quick and straightforward. Similarly, the latest version of Drupal includes a core module providing full support for OpenID integration. So, if you have an OpenID, you can now use it to comment on this blog.

Joomla! 1.5 has been released and installed over here. Drupal 6 hasn’t been released but that didn’t stop me upgrading this blog to 6 RC2. I never thought I would say this but I think I am starting to get Twitter. Blame Tim Hall. FTP - Siebel had an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Oracle has an FTP site for exchanging files with customers. Unsurprisingly, Oracle are standardising on the latter. I simply can’t believe how much time I have wasted spent helping intelligent people crossing this chasm. The Europa Hotel in Belfast was the ‘most bombed hotel in Europe.’

Siebel customers (and employees alike) all over the world are busy enjoying Metalink3 which has recently replaced SupportWeb. Everyone (well me, mainly) is taking great delight in taunting Oracle DBA types with incredulous cries of ‘Sorry - did you say you’re still on legacy Metalink2 ?’ A number of readers, impressed with this bleeding edge technology and dying for more, have emailed me asking why this humble Siebel blog hasn’t yet been updated to Drupal 6.0 RC2. ...