Support Tickets

I did some pretty fancy tweaking of code today to see if I can replace the support tickets system on ComLuv, the system at the moment isn’t bad but the last support ticket management software I used was far superior and allowed me to reply to closed tickets and create canned responses.

It will need some more work to integrate it into the dashboard of the site but I’m pretty confident I can do it.

Theme

I feel the need to tweak themes too, I found an old mockup image on my hard drive that I had for a client that never took up the job and I contacted someone about converting it to a WP theme. I love how it looks and I’d really like to have the format for ComLuv so I can start on tutorials and other features.

That’s not to say the current one isn’t great, it’s just that I’m all for “get it done” then “make it work” and then “make it pretty” and then “do it all again until I have what I want.

Newsletter

I had a bit of a nightmare with my newsletter software taking up too much resources while being on the same server as ComLuv so I took steps to transfer it to another server and use the ComLuv SMTP connection to do all the sending. Hopefully this will fix any issues I was seeing..

Tutorials & Videos

I have the new pc set up with a screen recorder and I have a list of videos that I’d like to produce for tutorials on the ComLuv site. I tested it out and my quad core monster can handle the capture on a widescreen so I can do HD videos and host them on Vimeo

Remote Images & Scripts

I have done some serious optimization on the blogger version of CommentLuv so that now there are very few calls to the ComLuv server for images and scripts. This one thing should dramatically decrease the server load during busy times.

Work

And now I have to tweak the system in the shop.  The tweaking never ends!

I usually spend the first part of Sunday doing the weekly books for the takeaway, it takes up most of the morning to go through each days takings and tot it up in an accounts package and check the figures off the parallel sheet. It’s a good system and helps me to know exactly where any errors have happened.

Today though, I did my usual shower, shave, coco-pops and coffee and started fiddling with some bits of the site, which took me off on many tangents of code and template glory until I had a fully moved fiddyp.co.uk on the ComLuv network and rebranded parts of the whole network to be in line with the CommentLuv feel.

6 hours I was at it! I really must get a bumper sticker ..

“WPMu admins can be at it all night”

But really, I’m having so.much.fun!

It Grows!

Looks like the network is growing rapidly and the latest version of CommentLuv hasn’t had a support ticket about a bug for the last 12,000 downloads. Can I has stable?

So far, the new API has given some luv to more than 50k comments on blogs around the world and has attracted more than 200 new blogs and hundreds more registered users. The new-started-only-last-week database has already recorded approximately 20k unique websites (those that have a feed), processed 4k info page displays and recorded over 9k clicks from users on peoples last blog/tweet/digg links.

happy boy!

It’s just starting..

There’s still a huge amount for me to do with regards to the site like adding advertising options, custom themes, editable css files, affiliate payments for selling adverts, custom text link ads and much much more. Stick around, you might see something you’d like to take advantage of. I have big plans for this network, I hope you can be part of the fun too.

Let me know if you’d like to see anything in particular on the site or in the plugin..

Ok, there are some things that tick me off on Twitter. Not enough that I lose my temper and throw stuff but, enough that I can move my fingers in a typey typey way to tell you about it.

This is how I shrink filter the growing list of people I follow..

1. if you send an autoDM with a link to your site

Take the above picture (please, take it and throw it away!). How is it these people have 4000+ followers with autoDM’s like this? do they work? oh god I hope not.

2. if you tell me anything about your god

This is a thing I like about twitter. There’s no religious tweets in my stream, for the life of me I can’t see how 140 characters could get someone to join your god. The religious can tweet to each other all day long but how many people of a different god will continue to listen?

3. if you spurt many many messages in one go so you dominate my column

I know you must be on an interesting site or going through some great links but, slow down! by the time I have checked out the first link. The public timeline has evolved more messages and I lose the rest!

4. if you use viral pyramid follow things

What’s the matter with you? will you hand over your twitter username and password to just any old whacko who promises you a squillion followers? take a second and think about it…

5. if you use number 4 as your first autoDM when I follow you

die die die.

6. if you use big bad swear words too frequently

I get it, I’m an adult and I swear so I understand when things need an expletive or two but not when it’s every second f***ing word!

7. if you have 1 update and it’s a link to your site

Hey! I has got url, an I has got twitter. I can add thems up and gets traffic!
fewls

8. if you spell reely baldly

it’s you’re funny not, your funny.
my funny what?

What gets your goat on twitter?

The title of this post is the question I asked myself many times.. before I used it myself that is.

For the first months of Twitter being talked about I deliberately kept away from it thinking that ‘micro-blogging’ was a complete waste of time. Who the hell would want to know if I’m going for a coffee or what page I’m interested in at the moment?.. turns out, quite a lot of people do actually.

I’ve been using Twitter through an application called Tweedeck for a couple of months now and I’ve really grown used to it taking up almost all of my second monitor space. I’ve discovered many reasons to use Twitter and I thought I’d share my thoughts on twitter here;

It’s not an IM

I hate IM programs, msn, yahoo, gtalk and all the rest because they just suck time away from you while you wait for someone to respond. I’m a fast typist so it’s painful to wait 3 minutes watching the “soandso is typing..” only to get a “yeah, I know!” in the message window.

They’re distracting too, I hate having a “tiddly-dum” noise happening all the bleedin time while I’m trying to watch something. Even though I’m committed to the tv at the time, a “tiddly-dum” will cause me to come to the computer to see what it was. 9 times out of 10 it could have waited but like brown on finger, it had to be investigated.

I’ve switched off all my IM stuff now and my productivity has massively increased! That’s why I like twitter, it’s like a thought catcher. It allows you to put up in less than 140 characters what’s on your mind without needing an immediate response.

If someone asks me a question via Twitter, it doesn’t make a flashing button on the taskbar appear demanding immediate attention. Instead, I can see it when the tweetdeck window gets the focus on my many many windows open.

You can download tweetdeck here, I really recommend using it. This is what my screen with twitter window looks like.

I use 3 columns. One for replies, one for the whole tweet stream and one for direct messages.

It can change the world (in 48 hours)

I donated some money to an organisation that wants to build a new classroom for a school in Tanzania. It was set up by http://tweetsgiving.org during the thanksgiving run up in America. The whole point was to raise 10,000 dollars in 48 hours by using twitter to promote it.

It was an amazing idea and executed wonderfully, people were retweeting messages about it all through the 2 days and before the time was up, 10 grand was raised just from the kindness of tweeters.

It’s not full of spam (yet)

I have seen very little spamming going on with it which is such a change for a 2.0 web thingy. Usually the first thing any popular company does is switch on the money making adverts or get bombarded with cialis (ab)users.

There are a couple of advertising options open to twitter users but not by twitter itself. Magpie is one of them, I used it myself recently to promote some ebay listings using keywords like ipod and ebay. It generated a lot of click thrus and coincidence or not, I sold out of everything I advertised. Just before Christmas too! woohoo

It’s organic networking

I really like this part of it, it’s not like other places where you have to join someone and jump through some hoops to be part of their group. You can just click their follow link and get their tweets in your stream of all tweets. If you think they self promote too much, just unfollow and they’re gone!

You get to see what people are like a lot easier than by reading their blog, just 140 characters forces the person to not over-edit or revise their text.

From this you can see who you want to deal with and not be bowled over by a slick sales page or well crafted and heavily edited authority article. Straight to the brain is the game. I love it.

You find out what’s happening straight away

Just seeing a stream of tweets going by you can quickly pick up a repeated phrase, when the Mumbai attacks happened I knew about it before Sky news that was on in the background!

Shopper gets trampled on Black Friday sales in Walmart? I heard it on twitter first.

It really is a way to get a pulse on the world and especially useful if you’re a prolific blogger who’s hungry for news to post. If you’re early on breaking news or big things to happen then you’re on to a stumbleupon golden egg page.

If you need to know something, like, right now

This is fast becoming one of my favourite things about twitter. The ability to throw a question out there and have it answered within a few minutes or see it get retweeted (re-broadcasting the question to ones own network of followers) is just amazing.

My partner wanted to know how to attach a zipper to a home made woolen cardigan. I had no idea but I thought someone out there in the twitterverse (you’ll get used to these twitterisms) might know or at least, know someone who would know.

One of my followers saw the question and broadcasted it to her own network, within a couple of minutes I had a message with a link to a picture of exactly what to do. That’s the first time my pc has got some praise from ‘her indoors’

You can use the wp-twitip-id plugin!

Ok shameless self promotion here but you can take advantage of the wp-twitip-id plugin which allows you to add a twitter username field to your comment form on your wordpress blog and display a “follow me” link or image next to the comment authors name.

Another reason for people to leave good comments on your site!

You can download wp-twitip-id plugin here

It’s got a really cool api

API or Applications Programming Interface is how so many cool widgets and gadgets get made by the geeky. It’s a way for developers to interact with the twitter server and pull loads of interesting information about the twitterverse.

There will be more and more applications coming out for twitter in the near future, there are already some incredible 2.0 web applications that give a sneak peak of what the internet of the ’10s will be.

Follow me on twitter if you haven’t already and get up to the second updates on my plugins and offers

Follow Me@commentluv

I spent the entire day (minus a 2 hour trip to the haberdashery <- don’t ask!) coding the final pages and scripts for the contest. I have the prizes up and descriptions entered. I was originally going to do 1 gadget per day for a whole month but I neglected to work in how much it would be to post them all!

I’ve had to drop it down to 2 weeks worth of prizes and threw in some cash prizes too. It will work with all sites that registered for the contest (including blogger and typepad). Prizes will be awarded to the commenters on those sites depending on a complex algorithm worked out by monkeys. Commenters need only to register their url at commentluv.com and enter a profile description to qualify and then they can go off and comment on all the registered sites and maybe one of their last blog posts will come back as a winning notification.

it will look something like this…
JoeBlog’s last blog post…CommentLuv Winner! Comment author has just won a prize
The heart box will show the details of the winner if it gets won.

I’ll get some instructions up today and set it to publish at midnight on commentluv.com.

keep an eye out!

The CommentLuv WordPress plugin has been updated to version 2.7 and combined with a new WordPress network. Click below to get the latest copy of CommentLuv or visit the site to create your own WP2.92 blog with CommentLuv already installed.