Snappity, snap, snap… Snap me!
Twestival Phoenix Twitter Campaign Launchs
Our Twestival Phoenix Twitter campaign launched today!
This was part of Twestival Phoenix 2013 that I really had nothing to do with. The amazing Amanda Blum took this on and made it happen.
Nicen Up Twitter
It basically involves a website and some technology to measure sentiment in tweets or Instagram potss with a hashtag (#takecharge). Then if we get enough tweets that register positively on a meter, Cox will donate $750 to Teen Lifeline for that day.
This is a big change from the last Twestival. Cox was a major, awesome supporter and donated $10,000 but our twitter campaign was a bit more self serving that time. The hashtag for that campaign was #iheartcox.
This one has no mention of them at all and with the sentiment meter, we’re actually trying to drive some positivity.
Great Folks
I’m pretty psyched about it. In addition to Amanda doing this, we had the excellent Jonathan Kressaty and VUURR donate the tech for the sentiment meter. Bob Rox also helped on the site with his CSS skills.
And as of the first day, the community has been very supportive. Got some great love from some of the Gangplank folk, especially Francine Hardaway.
More details to come on this.
Hosting Fun
I missed a post yesterday so catching up.
The Need for Speed
I’ve been hosting my sites and buying my domains from GoDaddy for years now. I think the value when purchasing domains from GoDaddy is pretty hard to beat. I have a good number of friends who are anti-GoDaddy but I also have a number of friends that work there. I’ve gone back & forth regarding switching everything but never pulled the trigger.
I think the biggest reason that I haven’t moved anything away from them en masse is that it’s nice having everything together. I have a bunch of domains, a bunch of sites and a bunch of databases.
Lately, my host has been just too dang slow. I have 2 hosting accounts with them and one was on their old, old, old infrastructure. I upgraded that yesterday so I’m at least on their newer server architecture.
But things are still slow. So I’m in the process of moving chris.ly from GoDaddy to WP Engine in search of speed.
Yesterday
So with the move to GoDaddy’s newer servers, I had to spend a good amount of time adjusting configuration on my sites. New IP addresses, new MySQL server addresses. That’s part of the reason why I missed posting yesterday.
As far as the move itself, there are a number of things that I need to troubleshoot. I’ve got my files and my database over to WP Engine but everything isn’t appearing correctly yet. WP Engine doesn’t allow certain plugins so I had to remove some of them. And with the move, not all of the files came over with the FTPing. So I’m still working on that. Still on GoDaddy for now.
Why Use What?
I originally moved to host at GoDaddy when I saw their DNS management capabilities. Prior to that, I hosted at Aplus.net, 1and1.com, LunarPages.com and I think something else even. Can’t remember. During that time, I had to submit requests for DNS changes to the host itself. I migrated over to GoDaddy when I saw you could manage your DNS yourself. I still really like that feature.
Well I’ve heard good things about WP Engine and I had a free account so I’m giving that a try. With the site I’ve migrated so far, I’m not seeing blazing speed but we’ll see if I can improve it.
The services other than WP Engine that I also need to explore further are Namecheap, Host Gator, Synthesis and Pagely. Namecheap is another domain registrar with great pricing. Host Gator is supposed to be a very good low cost host. Synthesis is a premium hosting company by the folks I love over at Studiopress and Copyblogger. Pagely is another great managed host but it’s more for folks that don’t need as much access as I like (FTP, database, etc.).
So we’ll see how WP Engine goes and I’ll let you know!
Image credit: Internet Explorer Voodoo by BlubrNL on flickr
No More Moderation?
Wondering if I can pull this off.
I’ve always been envious of some of the less moderated folks out there who speak their minds regularly on social.
I’ve seen Brian Gardner make some changes to his blog and change to a more personal, transparent voice.
I always play it safe. We’ll see if I can pull it off.
This Blog
I’ve been tossing up what to do with this blog.
I’ve been trying to figure out a consistent theme for this blog but haven’t found one that seems compelling and helps me keep writing. With that in mind, I’m going to quit trying to shoehorn it into being topic specific and just write about a variety of things I am interested in. I need to establish a habit of consistent writing so I’m going to commit to the 300 words a day whether it be here or one of other places I post thoughts.
Once I improve my consistency, maybe I’ll try to find a theme to wrap this blog around.
Image credit: RSS Necklace on flickr by alex_lee2001
Scottsdale Camp – Social Media for Restaurants
This past weekend, Scottsdale Camp took place at Sky Song. Being a Scottsdale native, I was excited to take part.
Lara Hardwick from Petit Fromage and I did a presentation on social media for restaurants.
With the social media landscape being so vast and restaurant owners having so little time, we tried to help narrow the focus to the things that bring the most benefit.
We talked about some of the social media platforms that we have seen do great things for local restaurants. Lara also shared many of the things she has learned while using these tools in her own business, Petit Fromage – the only independently owned cheese and charcuterie shop in Phoenix.
Lara also brought a selection of her amazing cheeses which everyone quite enjoyed. ColoRouge ftw!
Much thanks toPatrick Lewis and Tyler Hurst for organizing the event and including us! I hope to be involved in future Scottsdale Camp iterations as it grows!
