Net-times: My Perspective

A few weeks ago I received an email from the Google Blogger folks that they will no longer support the ftp version beginning sometime in March.  Unfortunately I had 4 Blogger services running.  While I was a little bothered by this abandonment, I wanted to move over to a better platform anyway.  Wordpress was the most appealing choice.

I needed a little advice on migrating and I posted the question on LinkedIn.  The generous responses were quick and concise.  It turns out that Wordpress has an import feature…awesome!  I was excited to get moving, but this domain was hosted on a friend’s server which was a bit bare bones, without all the bells and whistles you get from new hosting services.  It has been there for about 10 or more years, but I needed more control.  So, I setup an account with a new hosting provider and moved my files over.  Then we changed the dns and all was ready to begin.

The new hosting provider made it easy to install WordPress.  A couple of clicks and I was working in the admin.  I spend an hour or so looking for a theme I liked and voila, we were in business.  Moments later I find the import function in WP and that process began.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.  I was able to make the connection to blogger, but received a generic message that “nothing was imported”.  Frustrated, I tried this a few different ways still with no luck.

I decided to manually pull the content and post them in the new app.  On this blog it was easy since there are only a few posts.  However, I have hundreds of posts on my other blogs and will NOT be copying everything over manually.  I will need to investigate an alternative that helps ease this process.

Once the content was uploaded I made some changes to the templates and added a few widgets and we were done…almost.  Now I had two blogs running with the same content and that would not be good.  My hosting provider offers a redirect function from control panel.  All I had to do was setup redirects for all the pages and we were done.  Well, the redirect function did not work either.  There might have just been a delay, but either way I was not seeing the results I expected.  That meant I needed to edit the .htaccess file and manually plug in each redirect.  This would include the actual post pages and any other page indexed by the search engines.  A little time consuming, but not a huge problem either.

I then added a few more pages and some ads and the job was complete.  Overall, it took about 10 hours to complete, including time spent choosing a theme/template and tweaking the layout.  Another 3 – 5 hours should be enough to make the additional changes I would like.  I’m happy with the results.

So there you have it.  A small blogger ftp account converted to WordPress manually.  Now I have to tackle the larger blogs!

Kevin

Zingby has been making some good progress lately. We have quite a few number of improvements in the works for the general sns portion and we are specing out more advancements towards a collaborative environment. This includes a number of changes to functionality, formatting, layout and design. Also, long due is a complete notification system which we are developing now.

New groups created recently are: Shanghai Interpreters, China Travel and Shanghai Hotels.

We are also looking for a PHP developer to work with us in Shanghai or New York (must speak Mandarin or be bilingual English/Mandarin). Please visit Zingby if you are interested in joining us.

Kevin

I returned late last night from my trip to Shanghai (China, for those of you unfamiliar with the city of 20 million +). It was more than a year since my last visit and things haven’t changed all that much. Of course, I stayed at my favorite Shanghai Hotel, which I highly recommend.

However, I did notice a few things that were different.

The economy: One of the first things people in Shanghai asked me was about the economy in the U.S. and if we were recovering. This is not surprising given what has happened in the past 18 months. The economy (at least the tech side) has been significantly impacted by the global downturn. There are many great tech professionals not working, just like here in the U.S., but without having the actual numbers, it felt like their situation was probably worse than it is here. So, if you are looking to start up a technology team in China, now is probably a good time to find great talent.

I did spend a few hours gift buying and wondering around some of the tourist areas. Maybe it was the time of year, but it felt like there were less people crowding places like Yuyuan Garden (豫园 a popluar shopping area) and Xintiandi (新天地). Of course there were the usual crowds, but I can remember having to work just to gain a few feet of ground. This time, however, I walked freely.

Construction: Ever since I started traveling to Shanghai for business (sometime in 2005), I was amazed by the amount of significant construction that was happening. From a normal drive from the Pudong Airport, you would see skyscraper after skyscraper being constructed for the 30 mile or so drive into the city. It was amazing to think about the number of people they would need to fill those apartments. This time, however, while there was still noticeable construction, the numbers seemed much less. Also, I did notice that many the massive structures that were being built seemed to be stalled, like construction had been halted.

Business relationship with the U.S.: There has been a strong push of confidence among the people even during this economic downturn. They have always been a people of strength and confidence, but now I see this even stronger. The effect feels like it is bringing our two nations closer. Like any good relationship, a feeling of being on equal footing makes for better communication and progress. As I discussed this topic with some of the people there, there was agreement that they felt the same way.

Since I have grown to appreciate the Chinese people over the years, I am happy we seem to be coming closer together.

BTW, If you travel to China, Shanghai is a must see.

Kevin

Well, we just opened up the alpha version of Zingby and I am very happy about the progress. It was only four months ago that this idea was born and we’ve all been working hard on it to make it happen. The concept is based on professional social networking in China with a twist of collaboration. The networking aspects are round one, so that is where we are today. You will see additional exciting new features coming in the next couple of months.

The in-line Google translate feature is being tested on the website. So far, it works fairly well. You can still get around the website if your Chinese isn’t very good. We do plan to have multiple language versions, but the method of delivering that will probably be a combination of automated and manual translation.

So, take a look, get registered and feel free to send me an invite to network.

(This post is a little bit of self promotion about Twing.com, the product I currently GM)

So, Google is now allowing users to search across forums outside the Google Groups platform. When we started to build the vision of Twing back in late 2006, one of the questions that arose during the business validation and competitive analysis processes was “If Google entered the market, what would happen to Twing?”. Of course, when you consider an 800 lb. gorilla like Google entering your space, there is always pause.

However, while your business could be greatly damaged by such a situation, there is also opportunity. One of the challenges we faced at Twing was mainstream awareness of “cross forum search”. Yes, it is true that more than 25% of the U.S. internet population uses online discussion forums. However, mainstream awareness about the benefits of this content is limited. Users tend to not understand the differences between different collection types.

In our case the comparison is simply between standard web results and discussion content found in forums. Online forum content is also very different from blogs (in their current mainstream form). We refer to forums as places where many to many discussions take place, or groups speaking amongst themselves. Blogs are usually individuals or entities that post broadcasts to other users. Blog comments can be referred to as discussions of sorts, but they are not the same as forums, in general.

Back to the point. Since awareness about our benefits was always a challenge, we viewed an entry from a major player (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask) as an opportunity to generate awareness. For example, if they implemented functionality that replicated ours, they would drive mainstream users to the product. Those (now converted believers in forum content) are possible users of Twing.

Oh, and there is one other reason it’s not all bad Google is getting into our space. It helps justify our belief that this is a growing opportunity, not something of the past.

Now that you have a little insight into our positive way of thinking at Twing, I need to get back to figuring out how to battle the fully armed cruiser on my tail doing 40 knots! (Thanks for the analogy Scott)

Anyway, since you read all the way through this blog post (thank you), have a look at Twing if you are interested in searching forums and online discussions. We think we have done a pretty good job.

Kevin Shea