ctts – Page 3 – Climb to the Stars

Angst: My Categories are Still a Mess [en]

[fr] Mes catégories, c'est toujours le chenit. J'ai les outils qu'il faut maintenant pour faire le ménage, mais il me manque l'essentiel: quelles catégories un monstre comme CTTS devrait-il avoir?

My categories are a long-standing source of worry.

They were created in an unenlightened effort to “go ontological”, when I [switched to Movable Type](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/01/03/switch-to-movable-type/). By the time I [switched to WordPress](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/06/23/switch-to-wordpress/) over four years ago, I was already thinking about [cleaning up my categories](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/06/24/batch-category-editing-for-wordpress/) (lo and behold, the birth of Batch Categories — I didn’t waste any time, did I?)

My categories are still [a mess](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/18/my-categories-are-a-mess/). WordPress has had [native tagging](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/30/tags-and-categories-oh-my/) for a while now (I’ve happily retired the [Bunny’s Technorati Tags plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunny-tags/)), [Rob](http://robm.me.uk/) has taken over [Batch Categories](http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/batch-categories), so it now works rather than just sit there in lists, and [Christine from the Internet](http://www.neato.co.nz/) has written a nice [Tag Managing Thing](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tag-managing-thing/) (which seems a bit broken in 2.5.x but might still work).

So, I could use the [category to tag converter](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/category-to-tag-converter/) and get rid of all my categories. I would feel much lighter. Then I can use a combination of Tag Managing Thing and Batch Categories (which allows search by tag, and, actually, I see it now, allows not only addition of categories to selected posts, but tags, so maybe I don’t need Tag Managing Thing for this, and this sentence is a bit long so it’s going to end here, sorry) to re-create nice categories for my blog.

But as always, here is where I stall. What categories should a monster like CTTS have?

Want to listen rather than read? It’s here:

December 2007 Recap [en]

[fr] Un récapitulatif de mes publications du mois de décembre. Principalement (vous trouverez le détail dans la partie anglaise de ce billet) des articles au sujet de Going Solo, de mes activités professionnelles, des bidouillages WordPress et quelques sujets divers.

Contrairement au mois dernier (mes excuses plates pour cela, d'ailleurs), j'ai publié un certain nombre d'articles en français. En voici la liste:

Du lavage de linge sale en ligne -- suite de l'histoire Pointblog, et des arriérés de Christophe Ginisty, du coup (son entreprise me doit toujours 1050€)
Blogs en entreprise, un peu en vrac -- quelques pistes pour saisir la problématique du blog d'entreprise
Arghl! Du spam par SMS! On fait quoi? -- conseils pratiques si vous recevez des SMS de pub
Website Pro Day, deuxième! -- l'édition une a eu tellement de succès qu'on a remis ça (s'enfermer durant une journée pour bosser sur son site pro)
Trois heures pour se mettre à bloguer -- concept d'atelier-blogs pour particuliers que je suis en train de mettre sur pied
Qui prendrait des “cours de blog”? -- face au scepticisme de certains, discussion du public-cible pour une telle offre
Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage -- pour comprendre en quoi consiste ce fameux "experiential marketing" dont j'ai passablement parlé en anglais
Qu’est-ce que je fais, au juste? -- une tentative d'expliquer ce que je fais, dans le cadre de la réfection de mon site professionnel

Si vous vous sentez d'attaque pour lire quelques articles en anglais, je liste les 5 (et 3) plus importants en fin de billet.

It’s high time for a [December 2007](/archives/2007/12/) Recap. 36 posts, including the [November 2007 Recap](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/november-2007-recap/). In future, I’ll try to do the recap nearer the end of the month. I will.

And I thought November had been busy?!

### Going Solo and Going Far

Let’s get cracking: I’d say one of the major themes of December 2007 was my [announcement of Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/), and a whole bunch of posts I wrote around that. I’ve now [copied the posts](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/15/websites-for-going-solo-and-going-far/) over to the blogs of both [Going Solo](http://going-solo.net) and [Going Far](http://going-far.com), so I’ll link to them there.

**On the [Going Solo blog](http://going-solo.net):**

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/): the announcement
– [Picking a City for an Event: Lausanne](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/picking-a-city-for-an-event-lausanne/): explaining my decision to hold the event in Lausanne, rather than London, Paris or Berlin
– [Headache: Picking a Date for an Event](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/headache-picking-a-date-for-an-event/): where I share some of the pain involved in choosing a date (I actually had to [change it to May 16th](http://going-solo.net/2008/01/10/about-a-date/) later on

For some reason, [Badges at Conferences](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/badges-at-conferences/) didn’t get copied over to the Going Solo blog — but it’s clearly related to this conferency stuff.

**On the [Going Far blog](http://going-far.com):**

These posts are more general musings (most of the time) on the whole “[starting a company](http://going-far.com/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/)” thing.

– [News from LeWeb3](http://going-far.com/2007/12/12/news-from-leweb3/): [LeWeb3](http://www.leweb3.com/) (which I maintain should have been called LeWeb4) is where I started talking about Going Solo and approaching possible sponsors — a very important step for me
– [Why Events?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/16/why-events/): an explanation of why I decided to start organizing events in addition to my current work as a consultant and [speaker](http://stephanie-booth.com/en/speaking/)
– [Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My!](http://going-far.com/2007/12/17/advisors-boards-companies-partners-oh-my/): trying to come to grips with the different levels of involvement others may have in your company (still figuring that one out, by the way)
– [Websites and Blogs, Where Does One Start?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/19/websites-and-blogs-where-does-one-start/): yet another post ending in a punctuation mark — worrying about online presence, and finding it kind of ironic as it’s my job to help people with theirs

Here, too, a post which I think I should also have copied over, but which got left behind: [Feeling Like a Born-Again Blogger](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/feeling-like-a-born-again-blogger/).

### WoWiPAD, WPD, and Work-Related Stuff

While on the topic of events, December saw some action in the “get together and do stuff” department: [Website Pro Day (WPD) and World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/). The [second WPD](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/website-pro-day-deuxieme/) *(French post)* was announced and took place on the 28th. [WoWiPAD1 and WPD2 News](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/wowipad1-and-wpd2-news/) was a short announcement/sign-up post.

As a result, I’ve worked a bit on my [professional site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (this month too, actually), and written about trying to map out what I do and how to “advertise” is: [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (with a French version: [Qu’est-ce que je fais, au juste?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/quest-ce-que-je-fais-au-juste/).

I also decided to start organizing a blogging crash course. As this targets local people, I’ve blogged about it in French: [Trois heures pour se mettre à bloguer](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/trois-heures-pour-se-mettre-a-bloguer/) (the concept — I’ll be proposing this as a workshop at [the LIFT conference](http://www.liftconference.com/) once I’ve figured how to write it up… tomorrow — deadline is 20th!) and [Qui prendrait des “cours de blog”?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/qui-prendrait-des-cours-de-blog/), my vision of the target audience for this kind of course.

I sent in a talk proposal for BlogTalk 2008 ([BlogTalk 2008 Proposal — Being Multilingual: Blogging in More Than One Language](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogtalk-2008-proposal-being-multilingual-blogging-in-more-than-one-language/)). For the funny story, I had a nasty time booking my flights, then my talk was rejected, then I decided not to go to BlogTalk and started cancelling my flights, then I was invited to come on a panel (which I’ve just agreed to moderate), so I had to un-cancel and rebook a couple of flights. Sigh.

Still in the “work-related” department, as I was booking my flights with [Kayak.com](http://kayak.com), I decided to write up the experience: [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/). This was a chance to share what I’d learnt with my fellow travellers, and in the same time provide a demonstration of what kind of material I might produce during an [experiential marketing campaign](/focus/experiential-marketing/). The very next day, I came upon an article on a French blogger’s site (about some form of blogvertising) which prompted me to give some explanations about the experiential marketing concept in French: [Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/23/marketing-experientiel-vs-publireportage/). So… two rather long blog posts just before [Christmas](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/christmas/). (There would be another post or two to write about the end of my adventures in organizing travel: sites that don’t take non-US credit cards, for example, or various weird pricing structures and policies you can bump into. But not now. Today, my travels for Feb/March are booked, finally.)

Though it was written early in the month, [Blogs en entreprise, un peu en vrac](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogs-en-entreprise-un-peu-en-vrac/) *(in French)* also belongs to this pile of “work-like” posts, as it is an explanation of the issues surrounding corporate blogging and what it involves. I actually wrote it for a prospective client at the time.

### WordPress Things

Another major theme for December was **WordPress-related things** (as you can see, I’ve been knee-deep in code):

– [Ridding WordPress Plugins of Template Tags](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/04/ridding-wordpress-plugins-of-template-tags/): a couple of neat tricks to save your plugin users from having to add template tags all over the place
– [WordPress Sandbox Theme Problems](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-sandbox-theme-problems/): not all resolved, I’m afraid
– [Nasty Problem With Basic Bilingual Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/): [resolved](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/#comment-346641), thankfully!
– [WordPress Deaf to Pings](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-deaf-to-pings/): seems to have mostly resolved itself, though I do often end up republishing posts 3-4 times to help the pingbacks get through
– [Browser Language Detection and Redirection](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/browser-language-detection-and-redirection/): not strictly WordPress stuff, but useful to anybody with a [multilingual](/focus/multilingual) WordPress site
– [Bunny’s Language Linker: New WordPress Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/bunnys-language-linker-new-wordpress-plugin/): now also [in the WordPress Plugin Index](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunnys-language-linker/) — helps create links between equivalent pages on mirror-translated websites.

### The Rest

Now we find ourselves faced with a bunch of posts that don’t seem directly related to one another. My interests are varied, and I must say that I sometimes wonder how anybody else but me would find such a mixture appealing.

Here are some about **Web 2.0-ish related stuff**:

– [Twitter Advertisers and Friend Collectors](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/15/twitter-advertisers-and-friend-collectors/): why I block some people on Twitter
– [Hashtags For My Followees](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/hashtags-for-my-followees/): an explanation of hashtags on Twitter
– [Granular Privacy Control (GPC)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/granular-privacy-control-gpc/): a thought or two on the Google Reader Shared Items “privacy” non-issue
– [Hoosgot: The Lazyweb is Back!](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/31/hoosgot-the-lazyweb-is-back/): announcing Hoosgot, reincarnation of the Lazyweb

What’s left? [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/), where I express that though I’m glad to have my photo taken, I do consider I have some rights to the resulting photo as it’s a picture of *me*. [Fresh Lime Soda Episodes 8 & 9](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/fresh-lime-soda-episodes-8-9/) (yes, that was bad — episode 10 is waiting on my hard drive to be edited).

And two more posts in French: [Arghl! Du spam par SMS! On fait quoi?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/arghl-du-spam-par-sms-on-fait-quoi/) — some practical advice on dealing with SMS spam. And last but not least, [Du lavage de linge sale en ligne](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/05/du-lavage-de-linge-sale-en-ligne/), about using blogs to wash dirty linen in public. The dirty linen being, in this case, the fact that one [Christophe Ginisty](http://www.ginisty.com/) CEO of Pointblog (the company which ran the now-defunkt [Pointblog blog](http://www.pointblog.com/)) owes a bunch of people — including me — money for work we did. This has been dragging along for years now (I wrote an article in early 2006 for a magazine that Pointblog was producing).

### Selection

There you are! A [month of blogging](/archives/2007/12/) in just one post! Not feeling up to reading it all?

If you were to read only three posts (sticking to the English ones):

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/)
– [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/)
– [World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD) and Website Pro Day (WPD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/)

Ready for five? Add these two:

– [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/)
– [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/)

November 2007 Recap [en]

[fr] Un résumé des divers billets que j'ai écrits en novembre 2007. Je sens que je devrais faire une version française complète de cet article... mais honnêtement, pas le courage de m'y remettre juste là!

A few days ago, I had an idea: why don’t I write a “recap” post of what I wrote during the month? Sometimes I go on writing binges and it gets a bit hard to follow, so maybe this will help. *Note that some of the links here point to older posts, I’m not being 100% strict about “November” — but everything is indeed related to that month.*

So, what was the deal for [November 2007](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/)? Looking back, it was a busy month. Mainly conferences, as I travelled to Berlin for Web2.0Expo, Serbia for BlogOpen, and Paris for ParisWeb in the space of two weeks, giving a talk each time — and [a fourth in Zurich](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/26/blogging-in-internal-communications/) when I got back. I also decided and announced that I was [starting a company](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/), and [moved CTTS](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/28/server-move/) back to my server, [upgrading WordPress](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/29/upgrade-shmupgrade/) while I was at it.

### Talks and Conferences

#### Berlin, [Web2.0Expo](http://berlin.web2expo.com/)

Although I did [live-blog](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/01/on-liveblogging/) quite a few of the sessions that I attended, I didn’t write a “summary” post like I did for [FoWA](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/10/05/my-notes-of-fowa-autumn-2007/) or [WordCamp](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/07/22/a-day-at-wordcamp-2007/) earlier this year — heading off for Serbia and Paris right after, **and** being sick, I guess, didn’t exactly make for ideal conditions to be a model blogger. So, here’s a list of the sessions I blogged about:

– [Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users Workshop](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/05/kathy-sierra-creating-passionate-users-web20expo-berlin/), and also [her Keynote](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/06/kathy-sierra-keynote-web20expo-berlin/) the next day (I got personal thanks from her for these notes, and many people seemed to appreciate them)
– [Jeremy Keith: The Beauty in Standards and Accessibility](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/06/jeremy-keith-the-beauty-in-standards-and-accessibility-web20expo-berlin/) (I really enjoyed his talk)
– [Jesse James Garrett: Delivering Rich Experiences](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/07/jesse-james-garrett-delivering-rich-experiences-web-20-expo-berlin/) (only got the end of the talk, unfortunately)
– [Ankur Shah & Gi Fernando: (Facebook API) Disrupting the Platform](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/07/ankur-shah-gi-fernando-facebook-api-disrupting-the-platform-web-20-expo-berlin/)
– [Lars Trieloff: i18n for Web 2.0](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/07/lars-trieloff-i18n-for-web-20-web-20-expo-berlin/)
– [Cory Doctorow: Europe’s Copyright Wars – Do We Have to Repeat the American Mistake?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/08/cory-doctorow-copyright-wars/)

My [talk proposal](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/08/09/another-multilingual-talk-proposal-web-20-expo-berlin/) didn’t make it, but I had a chance to give [“Waiting for the Babel Fish” at Web2Open](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/05/reminder-speaking-tuesday-at-web2open-berlin/), the parallel unconference running during Web2.0Expo, in the Expo area. Somebody filmed a part of it, but unfortunately it never made it to me. It was fun, though — starting out with three people, and finishing with about 20 (the room was clearly hard to find, I myself got quite lost on the way).

I took [photos of the conference (and a few of Berlin)](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157602926000696/), of course.

#### Novi Sad (Serbia), [BlogOpen](http://blogopen.eu/)

I was [invited to Novi Sad in Serbia](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/12/blogopen-in-novi-sad-serbia/) to give a talk about [my experience as a blogging consultant](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/12/being-a-blogging-consultant/). I had a great time giving the talk (and before that, taking [silly facial expression photos](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157603111529724/) to illustrate my slides) and was taken good care of by [Sanja](http://auroraborealis.blog381.com/), who volunteered to act as my host during my stay.

Unfortunately I fell ill there (food poisoning), but did have time to go out and catch [some photos of Novi Sad](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157603111523044/), in addition of [those of the conference](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157603145532635/).

My talk got [quite a lot of coverage](http://del.icio.us/steph/coverage%2Bblogopentalk) (in Serbian!), including [two short video snippets](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blogopen+stephanie+booth&search=Search) (thanks again!).

My departure from Berlin had been quite hectic (wrong airport!) and I was provided with the most scary landing experience in my life, courtesy of JAT airways, when we arrived in Belgrade. Leaving through Belgrade airport to go to Paris was not exactly a fun experience, either. I tell it all in [Berlin, Belgrade: Two Contrasting Airport Experiences](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/14/berlin-belgrade-two-contrasting-airport-experiences/).

#### Paris, [ParisWeb](http://2007.paris-web.fr/)

It was nice to be in Paris, see my friend [Steph](http://unadorned.org/dandruff/) again after many years, and meet all the fine people behind ParisWeb and the francophone web standards movement — some of whom I’ve known online for years through their involvement in [Pompage.net](http://pompage.net), a [web standards-oriented translation magazine I founded](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2001/03/21/faire-part/) way back in 2001.

I was pretty ill though and just wanted to go home — no live-blogging, and not many photos. More than half of the photos in my [ParisWeb set](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157603546219446/) were kindly taken by [Fabien](http://arkhi.org/blog/) while I was pretending to be a window for [Chris Heilmann’s demonstration of Javascript event listeners](http://www.wait-till-i.com/2007/11/18/minified-metro-sticky-event-handling-and-and-great-new-encounters-that-was-parisweb-2007/) ((http://www.dailymotion.com/ennui/video/x3irwh_chris-heilmanns-javascript-workshop_fun)). You should definitely check out [Fabien’s photos](http://www.23hq.com/an.archi/paris%20web%202007) rather than mine if you want some visuals from the conference.

A video of the talk I gave should be available in a few weeks.

#### Zurich, ASCI

After the success of my talk [How Blogging Brings Dialogue to Corporate Communications](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/24/how-blogging-brings-dialogue-to-corporate-communications/) in September, I was invited to Zurich again to give a similar talk focused on internal communications: [Blogging in Internal Communications](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/26/blogging-in-internal-communications/).

### Starting a Company

November was a busy month not only because of all the speaking and the travelling, but also because I took the decision to become a full-fledged business woman and create my own company. I [announced this](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/) and also blogged some of my first musings as an entrepreneur: [Competition, Colleagues, or Partners?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/19/competition-colleagues-or-partners/). Way more about this in December or under the [Going Solo tag](http://climbtothestars.org/tags/going-solo/).

### Geeky and Other Stuff

I didn’t just blog about conferences and business stuff. As I mentioned, I also [changed servers](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/28/server-move/) and [upgraded WordPress](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/29/upgrade-shmupgrade/) on this blog, leading to [an update of my Basic Bilingual plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/30/basic-bilingual-03-for-multilingual-blogging/) (update which was actually [broken, but has since then been fixed](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/) — please upgrade if you haven’t), and some [tortured thoughts about cleaning up categories on CTTS](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/30/tags-and-categories-oh-my/) (I still haven’t done anything about this).

I also [tried creating a Netvibes widget](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/17/netvibes-widget-of-my-shared-items/) (a rather disappointing experience, in hindsight, though it was some fun geeking out).

Last but not least, I [created a focus page on experiential marketing](http://climbtothestars.org/focus/experiential-marketing/) after a [quick round-up of Stowe Boyd’s writings on the topic](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/20/stowe-boyd-on-experiential-marketing/). (I’ve done some more thinking since then and need to update the page, by the way).

### Selection

If you were to read only three posts?

– [Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users (Web2.0Expo, Berlin)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/05/kathy-sierra-creating-passionate-users-web20expo-berlin/)
– [Being a Blogging Consultant](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/12/being-a-blogging-consultant/)
– [Experiential Marketing](http://climbtothestars.org/focus/experiential-marketing/)

Five? Add these two:

– [Blogging in Internal Communications](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/26/blogging-in-internal-communications/)
– [I’m Starting a Company](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/)

Tags and Categories, Oh My! [en]

[fr] Il est temps de faire de l'ordre dans les catégories de CTTS. Je veux en garder 20-30. Vos suggestions sont les bienvenues.

The time has come. [Wordpress now has native tagging.](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/22/wordpress-finally-has-tags/) I’ve imported my old tags **and** my even older keywords (yeah, even though tags and keywords are slightly different… what the hell). I’ve created an [index page for my tags](/tags/) and an [index page for my categories](/categories/). Go and look, then come back.

So, what do you think?

I think the “tags” page looks pretty good (just needs a little CSS fixing so that the huge tags don’t prevent you from clicking on the smaller ones they hide). I mean, it’s a sprawling mess, but that’s what a tag collection should look like. Later, I can add fancy stuff like related tag clouds in the sidebar, or something like that.

But my, look at that listing of categories. It’s a huge sprawling mess, and it shouldn’t be. It should be a concise listing of rather widely defined areas I write in. Not easy. So, dear readers, I’m going to ask for your help.

See, I’ve installed this neat plugin, [Tag Managing Thing](http://www.neato.co.nz/wordpress-things/tag-managing-thing/), which does a lot of what I was dreaming up for a possible future version of [Batch Categories](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2004/07/13/batch-categories-09/). Well, one thing Tag Managing Thing doesn’t do which Batch Categories did, was to assign posts to categories and remove them. Tag Managing Thing only deals in organising tags and categories — **including** converting one into the other. **Update:** [Rob Miller has a Batch Categories plugin](http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/batch-categories) which should do the trick. I can’t remember if he used any of my work or started from scratch, but in any case, it looks very much like what I had dreamed up for it 😉 **[/update]**

So, here we go. I want to keep — oh, let’s be reasonable — maximum 20-30 categories. (I’ll convert the rest to tags.) Some of the new or obvious ones will remain: Events, Youth, Social Software (maybe Social Tools?), Languages… Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to write a list of categories at the bottom of this post, and I’ll keep modifying it until it looks reasonably good. I’ll be (heavily) relying upon your input for this. Thanks in advance. I really don’t think I can do this alone.

New categories for CTTS:

– Events
– Languages
– Youth
– Blogging
– Technology
– Social Tools
– Travels
– Livre (the book)
– …

Please leave your ideas in the comments! The [category index](/categories/) handily gives a post count for each category or subcategory.

Upgrade, Shmupgrade [en]

[fr] Comme lors de chaque mise à jour wordpress, c'est la prise de tête. Plugins, thèmes... il faut vraiment que je mette de l'ordre dans mon site!

Like each time I upgrade WordPress, I find myself facing the sprawling mess that my site has become, and the umpteen hacks made to template and plugins to get things working roughly how I want them.

So I think: time to clean up! Get rid of K2! re-write plugins, so they insert fun things in my themes without me having to put them in by hand all the time!

And then it all goes down the drain, because I try one theme, and another, and another, and none really fits, and I don’t want to **yet again** go through the half-dozen addition of template tags to make my blog bilingual and shiny. But I do want it bilingual and shiny, don’t get me wrong.

I want to use sandbox. I’d like to adapt my Basic Bilingual plugin so that it injects lang="fr" and lang="en" where necessary. I want a clean layout, and I still like my [blue header image of Ouchy](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/83450335/) (pronounce “ooshee”, please).

I have tons of things in the sidebar, and they need to be laid out so they don’t look too cluttered (a challenge, yes, I know).

I want my tag pages to link to technorati, maybe show my flickr photos with the same tag, or my del.icio.us links.

I want [ajax-ification](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/1306106896/) so that I can correct spelling mistakes and add/remove tags without going to the admin interface ([Inline Tag Thing](http://www.neato.co.nz/wordpress-things/inline-tag-thing/) looks promising, but I’m not sure I like the interface).

Sigh.

Maybe I should just start a CTTS design contest. Give out prizes. Something like that.

Or stop wanting to push my blogging tool where it isn’t yet? I don’t want to give up.

**Update:** for the curious, the temporary design is [Diurnal](http://www.sndbx.org/results/designs/diurnal/), a sandbox skin. The colours change with the time of day — pretty neat in my opinion.

General Suckiness [en]

[fr] Pour une raison ou pour une autre, mon site à décidé de perdre sa feuille de style. C'est bien dans la ligne de ces deux dernières journées foireuses. Suggestions bienvenues.

So, yesterday I spend four hours on British trains to get from Luton to Sydenham Hill. Today I [try to live-blog a conference](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/10/03/short-fowa-complaint/) which only provides power strips at the back of the conference rooms, and offers wifi which is just about as stable as my cellphone connection (understand: mostly useless).

It’s only logical that my website should decide to stop displaying correctly, without me doing anything obvious to it.

If anybody has an idea, let me know. And please forgive us while we look a bit naked. Probably won’t have time to fix this right away.

WordPress not Sending Pings Anymore [en]

[fr] WordPress fait des caprices et a arrêté d'envoyer des pings automatiques (trackback, pingback) sans me prévenir. Grinche.

Once upon a time, I loved WordPress because I didn’t have to enter trackback addresses manually anymore — at least, not when I was linking other WordPress blogs, or pingback-enabled blogging tools.

Those days are gone, and I’m not quite sure when it started. I’ve been having a creepy feeling for sometime that I wasn’t getting as many “internal” (CTTS to CTTS) trackbacks as I should. Today, I checked.

Heck.

You know me, I specialize in weird, not-so-reproducible issues. So, it wouldn’t be that WordPress has stopped sending pings altogether, no, that would be too simple.

WordPress has stopped sending pings *most of the time*. But sometimes, every now and again, it sends one. Or a couple. Or three.

What is going on, would you say?

Le Web 3, Server Still Down [en]

[fr] Je suis à Paris. Mon serveur est toujours en rade, ce qui veut dire que ce site a des problèmes d'accents et que la plupart des autres sites dont je m'occupe (et ceux des clients, aïe) ne sont pas disponibles. J'y travaille.

Just a real quickie to say I’m at Le Web 3 (found some wifi) and my server is [still mostly down](http://steph.wordpress.com/2006/12/09/murphy/), meaning this site has encoding problems and most of the sites I manage (and my clients’ sites) are unavailable.

I’m working on it but am stuck with a bunch of Dreamhost trouble tickets they need to answer.

**Update:** real crappy wifi. Can barely stay on long enough to see how much mail I have.

Tag: ctts

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