Studio Non Troppo

Photo: .Baz

Thanks to a blogger who has done this before and documented his methods, I was able to move the Studio Non Troppo blog to its new host without any major problems. The only apparent casualty has been the plugin I use to upload photos to the blog, which will take some time to troubleshoot, but it looks like all other systems are go. Edit: I just had to change one setting in the ‘Miscellaneous’ panel – the plugin is working fine now.

Of the methods I’ve seen for transferring a WordPress blog to a new web host, this one was the easiest. The WP-DBManager plugin (written by Lester Chan) did all the heavy lifting. If you’re going to attempt this, make sure you have updated your WordPress installation and the WP-DBManager plugin to the latest versions.

I’ll write more soon about web hosts and the challenges involved in finding a good one. For now, though, I’ll sign off, reminding you to make your site backups. “Have you saved yet?”

Photo: Don Fulano

First my email went out, and then two of my sites went down (they’re on a single web hosting server).

I sprung in to action. Well, not really.

I have backups of the sites and another email address I can use, but there’s not much to do when a server problem like this happens.

What there is to do:

1. make sure the web hosting company knows there’s a problem (call, email, repeat as necessary)
2. wait
3. fret and stew while waiting, knowing that you really can only do 1. and 2. above

Oh, and #4 could be to start (or continue) researching other web hosting services you could use instead!

I welcome recommendations and horror stories in the comments.

Photo: titanium22

We received a cherry tree via UPS last night. Sue had ordered the tree sometime in the fall for delivery in the spring. It’s a bare root tree and is a self-pollenating dwarf variety. We’re excited to have the tree and are looking forward to seeing it grow and blossom and fruit.

The thing is, we don’t know where we’re going to plant it.

It’s a busy day today, and we’re looking to plant the tree tomorrow (the instructions say we can keep it indoors that long). We don’t really have a “perfect” place to plant it, but there are many places on the property we obviously won’t put it, so at least we’ve narrowed down the possibilities some.

Once we plant it, we won’t want to move it. It’s not as if we could try one spot for a week and then move it to another one; it’s not a houseplant. So picking a spot is a commitment.

We don’t know how big it will actually grow, what shape it will be, or how it will affect the other plants nearby or the ecology of our little plot. We’ll be able to prune it, adjust the watering, and move some of the things around it, but there’s only so much we will be able to adjust or control about the tree’s life.

The most important thing is that we do have to plant it. We can’t wait to find or make a “perfect spot” for it.

So, unlike what I advocated in my post about setting things up to be easily modified, we’ll just be putting it into the ground and seeing what happens. I think nurturing and building, though having creating in common, feel very different.

Photo: Kanko*

Musashi, the samurai, artist, and author of The Book of the Five Rings, wrote down a list of what he expected of a master swordsman.

I don’t have the book in front of me (probably having lent it out one more time than I got it back), but I remember one of the items on his list: know the ways of all professions. “Know the ways of all professions” is not the same as “be proficient in all areas.”

The latter is not only impossible; it is pointless to attempt. The former is a more subtle instruction.

Although it may also, in the end, be impossible to know the ways of all professions, setting this as a goal puts one on a path of observation, learning, and most fundamentally, compassion.

In the very specific context of running a business, you may wonder how far you need to immerse yourself in the interflowing currents of marketing, analytics, copywriting, and design. My answer is this: it depends.

How much expertise it is appropriate for you to develop or attach yourself to will depend on all the contexts of your business, not least on what kinds of things you enjoy learning and doing. To learn more about the particular contexts in which you find yourself, and to know what steps you should take, your first choice should be to determine to “know the ways of all professions.”

You can practice anywhere.

Consider all the people involved in creating and installing the following sign:

Photo: * Photography by Chris *
It can be challenging and perplexing, but also fun and rewarding, to think about how and why people do the things they do.

What do web analysts get thrilled about? How do marketers spin utter failure? What is the bane of the copywriter’s existence? What does that odd laugh coming from the designer mean?

To the extent you know the play of wills, frustrations, and breakthroughs for the professionals who could someday work with you, as teachers, partners, or contractors, you will know what is best to ask or ask for.

Photo: hoyasmeg

If you’re in a long-term relationship with your website, design for the future.

Slabs under houses, wiring and plumbing behind walls…I’m not a construction contractor, so I can’t tell you why it’s done this way, but I can tell you what mystifies me about these construction methods: they make it hard to fix things.

Our new house is built over a crawl space and a partial, unfinished basement. It may not be the prettiest place down there, but it is possible to get at things that might need to be inspected or fixed eventually.

In a foundation slab with plumbing (or who knows what else) embedded in it, access isn’t nearly as straightforward and is much more painful to contemplate.

Imagine a house where there are panels you could remove (without a jackhammer, I mean) to get at the wiring or plumbing anywhere in the house. Cleverly camouflaged, narrow (but not too narrow) panels running floor to ceiling, between floors, between rooms.

Now imagine all of the wiring and plumbing itself being constructed of modular components that could be swapped out when necessary.

It would take some foresight and up-front planning to design this way. But wouldn’t it be nice to be able to enjoy the benefits?

Web design is frequently done under a lot of time pressure and with a flood of incoming information, ideas, and design requirements. In putting your own site together, be good to your future self: spend some time up front thinking about how you’re going to test and maintain the site and how you can make it easy to change layout or other aspects of the site later. You won’t be able to plan or execute this perfectly, but even some efforts along these lines may save you your sanity down the line.

What have you learned to do (probably learning the hard way) in designing your websites? Please share your strategies in the comments.

Photo: pochacco20

The answer’s quite simple, really: it’s telepathy.

One evening, you’re watching TV, and you think to yourself, “Gee, I’d sure like some popcorn. I wonder where I could find some organic, fair-trade, healthy, high-butter-content popcorn from a producer that supports classical music.”

And then, unobtrusively but legibly, a small window opens up on your TV, with this message:

Your corner convenience market now carries Figaro’s Pop-Classico Popcorn, a 100% organic, fair-trade produced popcorn utilizing our patented ‘weight-loss butter.’ Remember, your purchase supports Marriage of Figaro rehearsals worldwide.

Photo: Gunnar Wrobel

You wouldn’t argue with the telepathy explanation now, would you? And this is exactly how pay-per-click advertising works. You’re looking for something on Google, and after you click the search button, you’re given a list of search results…and a second list of search results, over on the right side of the browser window.

The second list has a heading, “Sponsored Links.” These are the pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. And if you’ve ever clicked on one that led to exactly what you were looking for, you now know why they can be such a great marketing tool.

The telepathic magicians only show your ad when a webizen is looking for what it is you provide.

And it gets better: Google doesn’t even charge you for showing your ad; they only charge you when someone clicks on your ad.  Yes, there are more details (oh yes! plenty more!) but this is the point of PPC.

And now you know the secret behind it.  Remember, you read it here first.

Photo: woodleywonderworks

It’s important to have a good relationship with failing.

Since failing is not an objective, external fact, but rather an interpretation we make, it turns out there is an art to failing. And like any art, doing it well takes practice.

Let’s say you’ve got a great idea. It’s a really great idea, and you fully expect it to be your personal jackpot.

Your idea is this: you’re going to reveal to the world your comprehensive list of songs that plants like.

You’ve discovered that your Meyer lemon tree likes a particular Puccini aria, but only on weekdays. On weekends, the lemon prefers certain jazz standards, like “Stormy Weather.”

You can get your tulips to do yoga by whistling Sousa marches to them.

And so on.

Now imagine spending years compiling your trade secret knowledge into an encyclopedia of plant song.

You hire web designers and marketing folks. At last, after five years of development and tweaking, the big day arrives, and you launch your product. Unfortunately, no one wants it. One person buys it, but he uses it as a doorstop.

The objective event of no one buying your product is not, in itself, a terrible thing. What is bad is the feeling of disappointment you have. After putting in so much effort, this experience of failure is bound to be hard to shake off. You might even feel like taking it out on your plants.

Now compare that scenario to this one. Same idea, different approach to realizing it:

Instead of spending years (and lots of money) putting a plant song book together, you make a list of “The Top Seven Songs Adored by Jade Plants” (informed by your copious research, of course), and within a few days, you put it online for anyone to see. You don’t charge a cent for it, but you do have a friend who knows a little bit about web design put up a form so visitors can post their comments. Then you tell all your friends about your new site.

Imagine all the things that could happen.

If your friends visit the site, but none of them even comment (or if they only leave comments such as “just stop. please.”) then you have learned something.

If  one of the commenters asks whether you need to have formal voice training to sing to your plants, and the next comment is “Yeah, I was wondering that, too. Will I hurt my voice if I sing to my plants too loud?” then you have learned something else. It might be time to find a voice teacher you can partner up with.

In fancy engineering contexts, it’s called rapid prototyping.

I like calling it “fail as quickly as possible.” Get something out there, learn from what works and what doesn’t, try the next thing. Note that this “proactive failing” really only makes sense if you are doing something. The various ways of not acting, such as procrastinating, don’t provide the same benefits.

Try writing a comment to this post, even if you’ve never commented on a blog before. Share your insights about failing in productive ways. I look forward to reading them!