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Category: CTTS News

About the website you’re reading.

What Are Your Favourite Climb to the Stars Articles? [en]

In less than a week, Climb to the Stars is going to turn 10. That’s quite a ripe old age for a blog! On that occasion, I’d like to give you the occasion to let other readers know what your favourite (and most shareworthy) Climb to the Stars articles are.

I’ll create a post with all your recommendations and publish it on the 13th.

So, amongst the 2339 published posts (including this one) on this blog, which are the three (or two, or one) that you would like to make other people read — or which left the biggest mark for you? Use the form below to tell me. You can also add a paragraph at the end to explain your choice, and I’ll publish it too, alongside your recommendations (and leave your blog URL so I can link back to you!)

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Thanks for helping CTTS have a nice blogversary!

Similar Posts:

  • Happy 10th Blogversary, Climb to the Stars! [en] (2010)
  • Bloggers: an Opportunity to Contribute to the paper.li Community Blog [en] (2011)
  • Today is Backup Awareness Day! [en] (2009)
  • Catching up With Backtype [en] (2010)
  • Zemanta's Related Articles: Very Mixed Feelings [en] (2010)
  • A Blog About Web Analytics I'm Going to Read [en] (2010)
  • Where Does Tumblr Fit in? [en] (2010)
  • Back From Holiday [en] (2009)
  • A Year Ago: Backup Awareness Day [en] (2010)
  • MailChimp, Email Subscriptions, Newsletter [en] (2013)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 09.07.2010Categories CTTS NewsTags 10, 10 years old, anniversary, blog, blog birthday, blogging, blogversary, ctts, favourites, old-timer, posts, recommendationsLeave a comment on What Are Your Favourite Climb to the Stars Articles? [en]

WordPress 3.0 Installed [en]

Painless. That’s how I like my upgrades. This blog now runs WordPress 3.0, and if I were rewriting Basic Bilingual (which I’m not, for the moment: if it ain’t broke…) I would most certainly take advantage of the custom post types or simply custom taxonomies to do so.

I’m looking at moving away from FeedBurner so if you’re subscribed to the feedburner feed, you might want to head over the http://climbtothestars.org/feed/ instead. I’m still looking for a good plugin to give me feed stats (or send them over to Google Analytics, is that possible?) inside WordPress. I’m trying FeedStats right now but it’s too early to say if it does what I want.

I’ll also be seperating out my del.icio.us links from the Climb to the Stars feed (again, is there a plugin that would also me to turn http://delicious.com/steph into a daily feed rather than per item?)

For those of you who receive these articles by e-mail (I know you’re there, yes!), you will shortly be migrated over to MailChimp — but don’t worry, it should be transparent and painless for you.

Similar Posts:

  • Basic Bilingual [en] (2009)
  • Basic Bilingual and Bunny's Technorati Tags Plugins Updated for WordPress 2.1 [en] (2007)
  • Giving FeedBurner a Spin [en] (2006)
  • Basic Bilingual Plugin [en] (2005)
  • Basic Bilingual 1.0 Plugin for WordPress: Blog in More Than One Language! [en] (2013)
  • MailChimp, Email Subscriptions, Newsletter [en] (2013)
  • Simple Technorati Tags Plugin for WordPress [en] (2005)
  • CTTS Upgraded, Jetpacked, and Roboted [en] (2011)
  • Plans for Basic Bilingual [en] (2010)
  • Two Plugin Updates: Basic Bilingual 0.32 and Language Linker 0.2 [en] (2008)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 20.06.2010Categories CTTS NewsTags ctts, e-mail, feedburner, feedstats, mailchimp, migration, rss, stats, update, upgrade, Wordpress, wordpress 3.04 Comments on WordPress 3.0 Installed [en]

The Good Idea That's Not Working [en]

[fr] Proposer à mes lecteurs de voter sur les sujets qu'ils aimeraient que je traite ne semble pas fonctionner pour moi. En rendant ma liste d'idées publique, je l'ai en quelque sorte stérilisée -- je m'en suis dépossédée. Et je blogue mieux de façon un peu impulsive qu'en suivant un programme.

Two months ago I stumbled upon Scott Berkun’s blog and thought his Reader’s Choice series was a really great idea. (I’m reading his book “The Myths of Innovation” right now, by the way, and highly recommend you do so too.)

I decided to give it a try myself, and quickly created a slinkset account for CTTS which I pre-populated with my long list of blogging ideas, which had until then been sitting in a note in Evernote (I’m still in love with it, by the way). The idea was that I would pick the most popular topic twice a month and blog about it, which I have done twice so far.

So obviously, this isn’t really working for me. The fact I mismanaged my commitments for May and June (which means my calendar is bursting at the seams) clearly doesn’t help me keep the schedule, but I’ve noticed another side-effect: moving my “blogging ideas” out of evernote and into slinkset has actually killed that list for me. I think it’s made it scary. How come? I can think of a few reasons:

  • the list is now in big bold text
  • it’s not as easy to edit: each idea now feels like a commitment, rather than a quickly-jotted-down note
  • it’s public, so I self-censor (not much, but I do a little)
  • ideas are rated, so suddenly I feel that I’m blogging more for others and less for myself (blogging mainly for oneself is, in my opinion, one of the keys to a successful and long-lasting blogging career)
  • I’m supposed to pick the more popular idea twice a month, so I don’t feel free to explore the other less popular ones in the meantime.

So, all in all, I’m not sure making that list public was a great move for my blogging. Also, I think that pre-populating the slinkset list (an attempted “improvement — hah! — on Scott’s original idea) was the best way to kill community-generated contributions. (Plus, of course, my readership is somewhat more modest than Scott’s.)

Where do I go from now? I like the idea that readers of this blog can suggest ideas and vote on them. On the other hand, I’m aware that CTTS readers form a “following” rather than a “community”, and I think this kind of system is more suited to communities than followings.

I think I need to put my blogging ideas back in Evernote to reclaim them. I’ve always blogged best when I do it on impulse rather than schedule (I get an itch, which then becomes an urge to blog about this or that).

Do you have any thoughts on all this? I’d love to hear them.

Similar Posts:

  • What Should I Blog About? Have Your Say [en] (2010)
  • Something Strange [en] (2010)
  • The Tweak to Google Tasks That Makes it Work [en] (2022)
  • Visibility is in Feedback Loops [en] (2006)
  • WordPress 2007: Jeremy Wright, Im in ur blogz grabbin' ur kash! Blog Monetization [en] (2007)
  • WordCamp 2007: Lorelle VanFossen, Kicking Ass Content Connections [en] (2007)
  • Google Calendar pour blogueurs de la région [en] (2006)
  • Back to Blogging Challenge Wrap-Up [en] (2012)
  • This is How it Happens [en] (2016)
  • The Frustrating Easiness of Sharing a Link on Facebook (and Twitter and Google Plus and Tumblr and…) [en] (2015)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 21.05.2010Categories Blogging, CTTS NewsTags blogging, community, ctts, inspiration, readers, slinkset3 Comments on The Good Idea That's Not Working [en]

Digital Spring Cleaning [en]

[fr] Nouveau design pour Digital Crumble, et quelques nettoyages de printemps pour Climb to the Stars (notez l'allègement du menu de navigation et des barres latérales, et l'apparition d'un gros pied de page truffé de liens et d'infos.

I’ve played about a bit with Climb to the Stars and Digital Crumble. It’s nice to dip one’s hands in a little HTML, CSS and PHP every now and again.

So, what have we got?

Digital Crumble has a brand new design. Whiter than the last one, but with enough pink to make me happy. (I customized it just a little.)

As for Climb to the Stars, the sad state of my sidebars had been bringing me down for months, so I finally decided to do something about it. I found a tutorial for adding a fat footer to Thesis and tried it out. I have to say that one thing I like about the Thesis theme I’m using here is the number of tutorials lying around to make just about any customization you can think of.

So, a lot of stuff that used to clutter up the sidebars is now in the fat footer at the bottom of each page.

While I was at it, I decided to have only one sidebar instead of two, and cleaned up the navigation bar at the top (most of the extra stuff is now in the footer). I also found a tutorial for moving the search form into the site header (and out of the sidebar!)

I had to fiddle around with both tutorials (mainly the CSS) until I got something I liked. I hope you’ll like it too!

Similar Posts:

  • New Look for CTTS: Thesis [en] (2008)
  • Feedly: More Than a Newsreader, Maybe Your Search Engine of Tomorrow? [en] (2009)
  • CSS and PHP Tutorials [en] (2000)
  • Secrets of my Online Presence Revealed! [en] (2009)
  • Slightly Funky CTTS [en] (2009)
  • Looking For a Good Header Image [en] (2006)
  • Searching For a New Theme For Climb to the Stars [en] (2010)
  • Plugin Idea: Weighted Tags by Category [en] (2005)
  • There's No Place Like Home [en] (2007)
  • Where Does Tumblr Fit in? [en] (2010)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 05.04.2010Categories CTTS NewsTags ctts, design, digital crumble, fat footer, footer, Menu, search box, sidebars, theme, thesis, tumblr, Wordpress3 Comments on Digital Spring Cleaning [en]

The Big 2009 Category Revolution [en]

[fr] C'est fait! Transformé toutes mes vieilles et bien trop nombreuses catégories en tags, et créé de nouvelles catégories toutes propres. C'est encore le chenit mais ça va s'arranger.

There we go! After beating around the bush for literally years, I have decided to scrap my existing category system (80 or so to begin with, 300 or more after WordPress accidentally converted some of my tags to categories somewhere along the line).

All categories have been converted to tags — so the classification is still there. I have created new categories (feedback welcome, let me know if you think something is missing or out-of-place — they’re in the sidebar) and will be moving things into them as I can (ahem).

At the moment, lots of posts are in the “misfits” category. I know there are links to old category pages lying around, so I’ll have to set up redirections to them. But at least when I write a new post, I have clean categories to choose from.

For those, who, inevitably, will ask: tags and categories are not the same.

Similar Posts:

  • WordPress.com Still Messes Up Tags and Categories [en] (2010)
  • Plugin Idea: Weighted Tags by Category [en] (2005)
  • Tags and Categories, Oh My! [en] (2007)
  • Batch Categories 0.9 [en] (2004)
  • Angst: My Categories are Still a Mess [en] (2008)
  • My Categories are a Mess [en] (2006)
  • Tags and Categories are not the Same! [en] (2006)
  • The Four Lost Months Are Back! [en] (2009)
  • Four Lazy WordPress Plugin Desires [en] (2010)
  • Technorati Tagified [en] (2005)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 18.08.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags categories, tagging, tags, taxonomy1 Comment on The Big 2009 Category Revolution [en]

Back From Holiday [en]

[fr] Une fois n'est pas coutume, je vais répartir sur les prochains jours la publication des nombreux articles que j'ai écrits durant mes vacances, histoire d'éviter de vous assommer d'un coup avec. J'espère que vous apprécierez!

I’m back from my two weeks of holiday (even if there was a week of work in between them) and have written quite a lot (short stories and posts). I usually publish posts as soon as I can, but after over six months of managing the ebookers.ch travel blog I have gotten used to scheduling posts, and decided it was not as evil as I initially felt.

So, instead of dumping a truckload of posts upon you this very minute, I’m going to schedule them over the next days. I hope you appreciate the effort!

Similar Posts:

  • Maker Days and Manager Days [en] (2009)
  • In Praise of the Morning Routine [en] (2011)
  • A Short Note and Update [en] (2009)
  • I Need to Blog! [en] (2009)
  • What Are Your Favourite Climb to the Stars Articles? [en] (2010)
  • Blogging Feast and Famine [en] (2011)
  • Weekly Planning: Weekly Routine? [en] (2010)
  • Cockerel, Anybody? [en] (2012)
  • From All to Nothing Doesn't Do it [en] (2011)
  • Blogging Like Cleaning the Flat [en] (2009)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 16.08.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags blogging, Blogosphere Interest, ctts, scheduling, Site NewsLeave a comment on Back From Holiday [en]

The Four Lost Months Are Back! [en]

[fr] CTTS devrait avoir retrouvé tous ses billets et ses articles! faites-moi signe si vous constatez des choses étranges. Merci!

At long last, the four months that went missing when I dropped my WordPress database. Many thanks to feedly, who sent me an archive of my 1000 or so last posts, Backtype, who sent me a few hundred comments, and Claude, who stitched them all together with the last backup I had of my blog.

In the process, I discovered that WordPress is smart about imports: if you import over already existing posts, it will not squash them, but if there are extra comments in the import, it will add them. Yay!

Now, what’s left to do:

  • fix my sidebar content a little, and maybe my top navigation
  • do something about the face I now have 330+ categories (some tags got mixed up in there — how about I just convert all my categories to tags, and start building new categories that make sense from now on?)
  • a few posts have shifted dates (for example, the post below now has a date which is 3 days later than what it should)
  • I need to get rid of the duplicate comments left by the disqus plugin, again, but I can’t use the user-agent trick anymore (the field is empty) — anybody got a plugin or script which will clean out duplicate comments? 5000 of them?

If you notice anything funky with CTTS, please let me know.

And watch this space on the 24th of each month: I’m declaring the date Backup Awareness Day!

Similar Posts:

  • Progress in Restoring CTTS [en] (2009)
  • My Categories are a Mess [en] (2006)
  • Disqus Plugin Aftermath: Removing Duplicate Comments [en] (2009)
  • WordPress Finally Has Tags! [en] (2007)
  • Tags and Categories, Oh My! [en] (2007)
  • Quick Update on Blogging Disaster [en] (2009)
  • Simple Technorati Tags Plugin for WordPress [en] (2005)
  • Today is Backup Awareness Day! [en] (2009)
  • Tags and Categories are not the Same! [en] (2006)
  • Today: Backup Awareness Day! [en] (2009)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 14.04.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags ctts, Stuff that doesn't fit2 Comments on The Four Lost Months Are Back! [en]

Elsewhere [en]

[fr] Si vous ne suivez que CTTS, voici quelques adresses (certaines en français) où vous pouvez trouver mes publications récentes, ailleurs que sur ce blog.

Now that I’m a little scattered all over the place online, a few pointers to recent publications you might have missed if you just follow CTTS:

  • Digital Crumble, nearly daily
  • a couple of articles on the eclau blog (in French)
  • a “status” article on the Going Solo blog
  • my third newsletter (since September!!)
  • articles on the Fleur de Pains blog (a client, in French)
  • a few posts on EBF, which I manage for Blogwerk (also in French)
  • an increasing number of photos on Flickr
  • a few comments here on there captured by Backtype
  • and, of course, Twitter (me, eclau, Bagha)

Similar Posts:

  • A Mess of Facebook Pages, Groups, and Profiles (Part 1) [en] (2010)
  • Kitty Pic Caption Contest [en] (2007)
  • Secrets of my Online Presence Revealed! [en] (2009)
  • Where Does Tumblr Fit in? [en] (2010)
  • Catching up With Backtype [en] (2010)
  • Another Small Step With Google Buzz [en] (2010)
  • Feedly: More Than a Newsreader, Maybe Your Search Engine of Tomorrow? [en] (2009)
  • Losing Credit [en] (2012)
  • Here's the plan [en] (2009)
  • Bagha: One Year, Coming Up [en] (2011)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 12.04.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags blogging, ctts, elsewhere, Links, me, Offsite, publication, Site NewsLeave a comment on Elsewhere [en]

Quick Update on Blogging Disaster [en]

So, most of you know by now, Tuesday night I mistakenly dropped the database containing my whole blog. No, I didn’t do it on purpose, imagine that — I intended to drop a table, and got confused by the PhpMyAdmin interface and hit the wrong button.

Long story short:

– I have all my data
– the data is in WordPress import format, more or less, so I should be able to restore all the past posts and comments (might lose some of the comments, if there were more than 250 comments made since last October)
– I might have time to do this this week-end, but not before
– I still have problems uploading the big WordPress import file, but need to try fiddling with Apache server settings

If you’re new to this blog and want to have an idea of what it’s about, you can check the Internet Archive, though the last year will be missing from it.

Thanks to everyone for your sympathy, support, and offers of help. As you can imagine it was pretty stressful (specially happening in the evening before Lift09) but I’m much reassured now that I have figured out that I have not, finally, really lost any content. It’s just going to be quite a bit of work to restore it all.

Please learn from my troubles (I’m learning, in any case) and make regular backups of your blogs and databases.

I’m having a wonderful time at Lift09. See you all tomorrow, Lifters!

Similar Posts:

  • Backup Awareness Day: Sometimes Badly is Better Than Not At All [en] (2010)
  • Trying the Disqus WordPress Plugin [en] (2008)
  • Here's the plan [en] (2009)
  • The Four Lost Months Are Back! [en] (2009)
  • A Year Ago: Backup Awareness Day [en] (2010)
  • Progress in Restoring CTTS [en] (2009)
  • I dropped my database [en] (2009)
  • LIFT'08 Workshop: Get Started With Blogging [en] (2008)
  • Using hAtom [en] (2006)
  • Falling in Love With MailChimp [en] (2010)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 27.02.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags blogging disaster, ctts, Stuff that doesn't fit, update6 Comments on Quick Update on Blogging Disaster [en]

I dropped my database [en]

yeah, it’s silly. I thought I was dropping a table, and PhpMyAdmin didn’t ask me to confirm so expected the confirmation message from PhpMyAdmin and hit OK straight away.

Feedly are going to send me an export of my last 1000 posts. Backtype have some of the last comments. I seem to have a wordpress export file (30Mb!!) dating back to october.

So, there is hope not too much may be lost.

I’m a little concerned about the “other language” custom meta stuff. And comments. Oh well.

Back up your blogs, children.

Similar Posts:

  • Here's the plan [en] (2009)
  • Plans for Basic Bilingual [en] (2010)
  • Quick Update on Blogging Disaster [en] (2009)
  • Disqus Plugin Aftermath: Removing Duplicate Comments [en] (2009)
  • Catching up With Backtype [en] (2010)
  • The Four Lost Months Are Back! [en] (2009)
  • Call to WordPress Plugin Developers [en] (2005)
  • Progress in Restoring CTTS [en] (2009)
  • Converting MySQL Database Contents to UTF-8 [en] (2004)
  • Fixing Newline Abuse in WordPress [en] (2004)

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Author Stephanie BoothPosted on 24.02.2009Categories CTTS NewsTags backup, ctts, database, phpmyadmin, Stuff that doesn't fit12 Comments on I dropped my database [en]

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Stephanie Booth

Climb to the Stars is Stephanie Booth's personal site. Blog powered since summer 2000. Follow her on Twitter (@stephtara), Tumblr (Digital Crumble), Facebook and Google.

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