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Brian said I should blog about my car, and so I've been trying to come up with some way to relate it to the web. I'm not sure just how that will work, so I'll start with a little story about sibling rivalry. My sister, Krisna, has been two years older than me for as long as I can remember. This means that she learned to whistle and snap well before I could produce anything louder than a slightly reedy wheeze. She drove first, voted first, was the graphics editor of our college paper a full two years before I was, etc. She minored in art, so I made it a double-major.
Things went on like this for a while until she eventually started a family and I decided to do my own thing (not start a family). Then, about a year and a half ago, she and her husband (let's call him "Chuck") bought a new, used car. Then, they bought a kit from Greasecar.com. They installed the kit and started running their car on waste veggie oil (WVO) they got from a couple of local restaurants.
I immediately saw my chance to rediscover the art of copying my sister. And so I looked on Craigslist and bought an automatic version of exactly the same new, used car they'd bought, except that it's blue (thanks Wayne!). I also bought a kit from Greasecar.com. And then my brother-in-law selflessly gave up two precious weekends to help me install that kit so that I can run my car on WVO (I get mine from Elevation Burger - THANKS!), just like my sister.
Now here's the thing (the way I relate this back to the web). I once worked in a car shop when I was 16, but I mostly filed papers. I've never changed my own oil. I once paid a shop $80 to replace my air filter. I was never a mechanic. And neither were Krisna or Chuck. But with the help of four very active forums, we all have the knowledge we need to take up our own wrenches, along with some level of confidence that we aren't going to break things that we shouldn't. Or be left totally stranded once we do (we won't, of course, but just in case). So I'd just like to give a shout out to all of the really helpful community members who post photos, resources, and step-by-step instructions for newbies on tdiclub.com, greasecar.com, frybrid.com, and biodiesel.infopop.cc. You're the best!
And Greasecar — that step-by step DVD with the encouraging music was awesome, even though the whatever-you-call-ems that held on my heat shield did not unscrew as easily as yours did in fast-forward. Not bitter ... just sayin'.
Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months knows that WordPress is one of the dominant blogging platforms, with millions of blogs using it as a content management system. This makes it an attractive target for bloggers, who look to it for its abundant repository of plugins and addons, as well as to attackers, who only need to find a single security hole to unlock the entire install base (again, millions of blogs and other sites) to serve whatever purpose they like. This is a list of ten ways to help prevent this from happening to you.
Continue reading "Ten Ways to Avoid WordPress Crackery"
A team of Viget folks spent a long weekend in Texas for South By Southwest. We saw some interesting panels, reunited with folks we hadn't seen in months or since last year, and got to meet and talk to dozens of folks we hadn't ever seen. It was definitely a great time, but it was also lacking a lot that we look for in a great event, especially one being paid for by our professional development budgets.
Continue reading "Building a Better SXSW"
We last redesigned viget.com almost two years ago. As part of that effort, we launched the FourLabs blog, dedicated to sharing “insights and commentary reflecting the four key aspects of our work: strategic consulting, interactive design, application development, and online marketing.” We also noted that it was “ever-evolving” and today, “it” has evolved substantially. Multiplied might be more like it.
We found over the past 22 months that writing for the FourLabs was hard because of you, frankly. Who are you? A designer? Developer? Marketer? We found our readers to be each of these, but not all of them. That made blogging tough. A post about code couldn’t be too techie for fear of scaring off the design readers. A post about UX needed to define what UX is if we expected the non-UX folks to keep reading. You get the idea. A good rule for blogs is to know your audience and stay focused. We were trying to be broad ... but no more!
Today, we’ve launched five blogs, one for each of the four labs (strategy, design, development, and marketing) and a newly focused FourLabs blog. FourLabs is all about us - our work, our clients, our team - and is written for those who care to follow what’s happening at Viget (and thank you for caring!).
Our niche blogs are all about you.
- VigetAdvance, our web strategy blog, will focus on web start-ups, new product launches, and how the web continues to transform every business.
- If you’re a designer, keep up with VigetInspire and the thoughts our design team have about stuff like user experience, web standards, and Flash as well as notable site launches and events like SXSW.
- If you’re a developer, we hope you’ll enjoy VigetExtend and our development team talking about open source, Ruby on Rails, test driven development, and events like RailsConf.
- Marketers should check out VigetEngage, where our marketing team will share tips and ideas on search, email, and social media marketing as well as analytics.
If you think you’d kinda like to follow all four of these, no problem—just keep keepin’ up with FourLabs, where we’ll have a week digest of what’s covered in each, or join our email list for a monthly update.
By launching these focused blogs, our growing team here at Viget can more effectively connect with their peer communities. We can share ideas and generally contribute to the vibrant and ever-expanding industry that we’re all in. And since each Lab here at Viget shares knowledge between them, we think our perspective will be a little unique. We hope you do too!
You’ll notice they each have a different look, and none really look much like Viget.com or even reflect our branding. That’s no accident! We’ll write most of the posts (though guest bloggers are welcome) but we want the content and discussion to be about you, not us. FourLabs will continue to cover all things Viget.
Will this plan work? One blog is hard enough to keep up on—will we be able to sustain five of them? The only thing we can promise is that we’ll give it our best shot. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions!
One more thing: kudos to Rob, Doug, and Steph, who led the charge here at Viget to get all this put together while juggling plenty of client work. Internal projects are notorious for slipping, but these guys were dedicated to getting this done in time for SXSW. Nicely done!
