Author: Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

NUX: Setting Up Ghost (Self Hosted)
Once I used Ghost Pro, I thought about self hosting. I have a WP site that’s basically wasted as a WP site. It’s small, it’s static, and it rarely changes. I thought it would be perfect for Node. There are also a couple of small, basically HTML, sites I run in the back of things. This would be fine to manage that.

But first I had to address a major misconception.

You Install Ghost on Your Server

For some reason in my head I had this working like Jekyll, which I would install on my computer and push up to my server. No, I’m not so much installing Ghost as Deploying Ghost.

But I Installed Ghost On Your Computer

I decided to do this anyway, just to see what I was getting into.

To install Ghost you must install Node.js first. Since I have Homebrew, this is two commands:
```
$ brew unlink node
$ brew install node
```
I had an older version of Node.js installed for whatever reason.

Sadly I can’t install Ghost this way.

Next you download Ghost (I was download 564,730) and at this point I hesitated. The directions don’t tell you where to put the files. It just says this:

Next, grab the newly extracted ‘ghost-#.#.#’ folder and drag it onto the tab bar of your open terminal window, this will make a new terminal tab which is open at the correct location.

Since I know that upgrading involves replacing the files, I’m no fool, and I made a new folder setup: ~/Sites/ghost/sitename.com/ That’s where I ran node commands:
```
$ npm install --production
$ npm start
```
Done. Now I have Ghost up and running locally.

Install Ghost on My Server

In a word? Ow.

The main issue is Node.js and Apache both want to use the same ports. That’s impossible. And I want to keep Apache running port 80 because this VPS runs… well… WordPress. This is where I stopped the first time I tried to do all this and tossed this post into a long draft.

There are directions on How to Host Ghost on an Apache Subdomain, which luckily is what I wanted to do. Except it was complicated and messy and required root.

So the NUX here? Absolute crap. It’s just not something a new user would want to do, be able to do, or be able to maintain.

And that sucks.

Ghost’s got a great interface, one that I like better than WordPress for blogs and simple sites. It’s nailed simple in a way we crave. But it came at a cost. WordPress’s simple to install is fraught by it’s IDIC complex. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, with the themes and plugins, lends WordPress amazing abilities but a pretty insane learning curve. Ghost I could sort out in a couple hours but you really can’t do too much with. I wouldn’t use it for a store. I might use it for a blog if I had to start over.

Except I can’t (easily) self host it because of stupid Node.js.

If they can sort that out, make it so I can easily, without root, install and manage Ghost, I’ll be back.

Until then, Managed Ghost Hosting is the way to go. Or WordPress. Take your pick.
29 April, 2015
Detoxify Your Website
The following are my speaker notes for WordCamp Minneapolis 2015. The slides are up at https://helf.us/wcmsp2015/:

There Are Many Kinds of Toxic People
- The hater
- The know-it-all
- The concern troll
- The Pilkunnussija
When your site gets popular, you get a diverse group of regulars. Not all are created equal. There’s the hater who hates you all, the one who knows everything, the one who CLAIMS to want to help but really derails you on small things, and then… Well you can google that last one, but the short version is the one who says “you spelled it T E H” in the middle of a passionate discussion about the next season of Sherlock, and Oh my GOD did that really matter?

You Dread Your Own Site

Where Did The Fun Go?

You used to love your site, seeing the comments, checking out what the new people had to say. And now, thanks to those other people, those toxic people, you hate your own site and you’re pretty sure the community is going dark and twisted and you know what it’s time for?

Cleanse Your Colon

Keep your Community Healthy

It’s time to give things a scrub. There are only four steps to being able to survive a successful blog cleanse. If you’ve ever tried those cleanse drinks, you’ll know that it’s not easy to make it through, but you can do this. Just … don’t Google Image search ‘colon cleanse’ please. I regret that.

Step One

Forget the First Amendment

You know the one. The one people always throw out at you, that they have the “right” to say what they want? They don’t. They just don’t. They can shut up now. The site is yours, you bought the domain, you pay for the hosting. The First Amendment has never had any bearing on our blogs so don’t be afraid to delete comments.

Step Two

Be Consistent

If you’re going to clean your site and make sure it’s what you want to be and do and work on, then you need to make your rules and stick by them. If a rule is “no talking about George Clooney’s personal life” then you have to be strict. Keep it solid and don’t waver, not even for yourself.

Step Three

Arm Yourself

WordPress has some built in tools that most people use when thinking about spam, but what if I told you to use Comment Moderation on their key phrases. What if you took the people who slammed you and attacked you and put their emails in the block list? Done. Get them out of your life.

Step Four

Trust Yourself

If you get that feeling, that gut feeling that says “This is about to go wrong” then you need to believe yourself. Trust yourself. Have faith that you know the vibe of the site you’ve been working on all this time.

WordPress Tips
- Use the Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist
- Use plugins like Comment Probation to monitor new people
- Watch their IPs
Outside WordPress
- Block them from your email
- Use Twitter and Facebook’s block functions
Don’t Give Up

I’ve been wrangling communities online for a long time. I’ve faced burnout and exhaustion and pain. But I’m not alone. I have the other communities like mine to lean on. I have fellow forum mods to ask for backup. I have friends who tell me I’m going too far.

Don’t give up. You’re not alone.
27 April, 2015
Mailbag: Homogenous websites?

I have a site for my business that has multiple physical locations that have online booking for each location. Right now we basically have separate websites that look very similar for each location (except for some content) with separate domains [URLs redacted]. Is this what you meant by homogenous websites? If WPMU ins’t a good option, can you steer me in the right direction for how you would design this type of site?

Yes. That’s pretty much exactly what I mean when I call a site “homogenous.”

You can’t see it, but each URL I removed had identical design. Same layout, pretty much the same splash page.

When I talk about ‘sameness’ with websites, I really do mean exactly this. Each site on the network has the same information, the same about page, and actually pretty much the same everything except for the booking page.

Right now, each site has a locationdomain.com/book-now URL. Without looking at the code, I’m going to guess that the book-now pages are inserts. Either templates or shortcodes, but something that doesn’t need to be on the domain URL to be unique. Just some content in the page.

And I would have maindomain.com/book-location Or better still maindomain.com/location/LOCATION/book

That second example looks weird, I know. You see, I’d do it with Custom Post Types for each location. My CPTs would be pages and their slug would be /location/. Then each page would be LOCATION, giving me URL formats like /location/lexington/ and so on.

My thought process is that if the majority of the content of each site is the same, and the design of all sites are the same, then I don’t need a multisite unless there’s a specific need to silo data.

There are very few cases, in a homogenous network, where you need to silo data. Exceptions are pretty much all based on legal requirements.

And if you have a song in your head, here it is:

24 April, 2015
NUX: Setting Up Ghost Pro
NUX stands for “New User Experience” and I’ve been dabbling in it recently with WordPress, trying to understand where we fail for new users. My friend did a comparison for his company of other similar tools and told me that Ghost’s was the worst. I didn’t believe him, so I decided to check it out.

Ghost is a simple, powerful publishing platform. It’s dead simple. It’s basic. And it’s weirdly hard and complex. The code is simple, but much like WordPress, it’s hit the wall of explaining new concepts to people. Ghost Pro is their ‘managed hosting’ version, where you sign up and get a blog.

Of note, this is not talking about the self hosted Ghost application.

Registration Is Easy As Pie

This is easy. You go to the main page of Ghost.org, you pick a username and password, you press ‘test it out.’ That then asks if you want the download or to make a new site, and don’t worry about the credit cards yet. You get 14 days free. If you pick the new site, it asks for the site name, the URL you want (it’ll be something.ghost.io) and then…

It’s weird that it wants my name and password, and I do wonder if it’s making another account on the system. Do I now have a user account and a ‘network’ account?

Writing A New Post Is A Lie

Once you have your site, you’re dumped here:

They even have an animated ‘Write A Post’ button there, which is great. Except it’s a lie. That link kicks you to the https://something.ghost.io/ghost/1/ page which is the ‘Hello World’ type post and you can edit it. Except you’re not told you can edit it. You’re just told your site is live.

First up, that “Write A Post” button should have been “Complete Setup”.

Second, when I do complete setup, I should have a nice popup to tell me “Your site is setup! This is your first post. You can edit it…”

There is a nice EDIT button, but that should have been animated too. That takes you to the editor, which is realtime and actually quite nice.

Continuing Setup Is A Five

If you go to https://ghost.org/setup, it will tell you there are five steps to setup.
1. Create an Account (you’ve done that to get this far)
2. Writing a post (you have to write a new one, not edit the existing one)
3. Picking a Theme
4. Add a domain
5. Share your work
Write A Post? Let’s Try.

The setup is an editor only on the left, with a preview on the right. Fine. Click click type. Then I wanted to add an image, so I tried the old drag & drop from WordPress. Nope! Looking at the Help, I found this:

When adding images to your Ghost blog, you start by either pressing Ctrl+Shift+I or by typing in ![]() into your post editor. You will then see an image box show up on your markdown preview.

That was fairly easy to find, but then I got this:

It took me a moment to realize I could click on that to get the uploader interface. In fact, not until I hovered over and saw ‘No File Chosen’ did it register. The little link icon on the bottom left made sense, but there was nothing that told be “Click here and upload.”

Scheduled Posts … Why?

I decided to try scheduling a post. Since by default the save button on the bottom right is ‘Save Draft’ and I knew by hovering that I could do a ‘Publish Now’ there, I assumed the little gear to the left was for extra things:

And lo, it did show me a lot of options, that were just a bit too long for my 15″ monitor:

There I was able to pick a future date, but instead of changing to ‘Schedule Post’ the button remained ‘Publish Now’ which was rather disconcerting. Picking publish, it worked just as it was supposed to, though, so there’s that.

Themes Don’t Fly

Time to pick a theme! From the getting started flow, I pressed the button for ‘Marketplace’ because I don’t need to watch a video, right?

That button takes you back to your Ghost dashboard. From there you have to click on the link at the top of the page for the Marketplace. Then you download the theme’s zip, go to the settings page for your blog, and upload the zip there. Very weird. Very odd.

Overall? Not Yet.

I like it. It’s easy to write once you figure out a couple things, but the disjointed behavior of where you go to do things is confusing and a bit of a headache. For a brand new user who’s never have a website, it fails when you compare to WordPress.com except in the arena of posting content. It’s simple for that. It’s the management levels where it fails.
22 April, 2015
Hello, Mike
There’s an interesting thing when people think I’m Mike. Or perhaps it’s interesting when people think my name is Mike.

My name is four letters. Three are the same as Mike. The last is an A, however. The best guess I’ve ever been able to make has been that people read ‘MIK…’ and their brains absolutely stop. This has been a problem my entire life, in and out of tech support, from school to work to everything in between. I was called ‘Mike’ at my SATs, much to the hilarity of my classmates.

But I rarely correct people these days, certainly not when I’m online, because it’s one of those things that really only matters if we meet in person. In person, I will correct you. “Actually it’s Mika. With an A.” I’ll always be polite when you ask me how to pronounce it. The first time. The second and third time get you teased. At four or five, there will be serious remarks. At seven, I start intentionally mispronouncing your name.

Since most of my communication, even with my own coworkers, is online, and since there’s a fellow named Micah (pronounced the other way), I really give people a pass with mucking up my name. It happens and if it’s not intentional or obstinance, I don’t mind.

At the same time, I like to keep track of places where I’m more often called Mike. I try to make sense of the madness just to understand the world a little more. While all of this is anecdotal, and while I did make a scratch sheet where I tallied these things over the course of 4 months, this is not some government funded study. The numbers are also off if I’ve been talking to people from countries where Mika is a normal name, and moreso in Japan, where it’s a girl’s name.

When am I Mika or Mike?

So here’s the non-scientific notes I’ve boiled things down to:

I’m Mike…
- If I do technical things really, really well
- When I talk code/development
- When I talk about my wife
- When someone is incredibly upset for whatever reason
I have no name…
- When I do technical things really wrong
- When I disagree with developers
- When I apologize to people
I’m Mika …
- When someone realizes they’ve been wildly out of line and apologizes to me
- When someone has been really personable and polite the whole time
- When I talk to someone who consistently uses proper grammar and punctuation
What Does This Tell Me?

It’s important to note that the ‘technical’ things I do well or not don’t actually have to be correct. Many times I do the code things really well and they just disagree. But if I’m perceived to be correct, I’m generally a Mike.

When people are angry they tend to stop reading well, the comprehension goes out the door. That lends some credence to my theory that people’s brains stop. Strangely, though, when I get things really, really, wrong (or am perceived to do so), the use of any name in their replies plummets. Like I found three in a year. It’s possible that those people, still being angry, are reading my name as ‘Mike’ but cannot find it in themselves to be angry at a male name in the manner they’re about to be.

As for me talking about my wife, that’s just heteronormativity in action, and for the matter of this study I ignored it. It skewed results. It’s the same with folks who are from Scandinavia, where Mika is a boy’s name.

My Conclusion?

People still often default to thinking everyone’s male.

I too have this flaw, I admit. But seeing it in others and how it impacts me certainly makes me think about it more.
20 April, 2015
Mailbag: A Case Against (Part Of) Jetpack

You told me to try Photon, but I noticed you’re not using it on all your sites. What gives?

When people ask me how to speed up their sites for images, I often recommend Jetpack for the CDN boost. It’s a double edged sword, though. While Photon does two things amazingly well (resize images and put them up on a CDN), it’s hosted on wp.com which means I can’t use it.

What? Why not? No, it’s not that I have something against wordpress.com, it’s that other people do. Like China, Pakistan, and Turkey.

The list is probably longer. But those places, among others, block WordPress.com which means every module of Jetpack that phones home (stats, photon, tiled galleries, LaTeX, related posts, etc) cannot be active on my sites that have a large enough user-base in those places. When I leave those Jetpack features on, the site grinds to a halt for them, which is a terrible experience for my (often non-technical users).

Now that said, I do still use the stats plugins on all my sites with Jetpack. It’s a pretty safe loader to run, and it doesn’t slow the site down terribly (see Issue #566 for the code magic). Photon on the other hand I had to disable entirely because my poor users in China were complaining they could see nothing. I can live with a little delay for loading. I can’t live with an image heavy site not working.

So should you use Photon? Yes! Unless your visitors are blocked by WordPress.com.

17 April, 2015