Asymptomatic

Man, this week has been difficult. We've had a few server issues with work clients, and I've been playing around with my own servers, and it's just been a mess that I'm hoping will be in the past come next week. But I've learned some lessons, and I figure I might as well pass them on because people are apparently still buying hosting from really bad places.

What do I need? This is the most basic question you need to start asking yourself before you even hunt for hosts. Having some idea of your demands, both from a technical perspective and a logistical perspective can save you some pain in the future. Here are some really basic considerations:

Shared/VPS/Dedicated -- What level of hosting you choose will depend on the types of service you intend to run and the affordability of storage space. Shared hosting is for small, single, low-traffic installations, like a single blog or a low-traffic forum. VPS hosting allows you to interact with the server configuration directly, to host more complex applications and more of them. Dedicated hosting gives you full control over what runs on your system, plus often includes dedicated storage that is many times what you'd get from the other options. But there are more things to consider....

A few of the folks I "hang with" online are/were involved in the 9rules network. I am not a member, but I had tried to become one at one point. I've been following the recent actions of the network with some interest, and thought I would save my thoughts for later as they may be relevant for other communities in which I am involved and have influence. Some background on the current issue is probably in order.

Essentially, many people had joined the network for the purpose of being affiliated with other bloggers who created great content. Their goal was to enrich the web. These folks chose to participate in the network insofar as they posted new, quality content to their own blogs, which were syndicated specifically to the rest of the members. Although the network powers-that-be had created a site for interaction among members, these folks never saw participation in those forums as a requirement to their membership, simply their continued contribution of quality blog content.

Recently, the terms of membership changed so that you must participate in the forums to remain a member. The people who thought that their blogging contribution was enough realized (with different levels of reaction) that they would no longer qualify for membership and asked to withdraw. This accounts for more than half of the people who I relate with who are/were also 9rules members. What's bothersome to me, especially had I been a member, is the process surrounding the change of the terms of service....

Meetup wastes no time, and doesn't give me a chance to explain anything before sending out notices to everyone in the Philly WordPress group telling them that they have no organizer. Just another failure in the whole Meetup system. So what's the story?

Here it is, plain and simple: I'm tired of breaking my Saturday in half, showing up at the meetup at 2pm, having two other people there who only want to talk about how great WordPress.com is (something about which I have very little interest, and a mild distaste for), and finally having everyone who I would have hoped to see at 2pm for WordPress trickle in for the 3pm blogger meetup, whose activities are really what I want to get out of this meetup in the first place.

And then, the first month I miss the meetup as a result of unplanned work excess (something that already has me stressed out), the place we hold the meetup (which never did have wi-fi) apparently has some kind of event. As a result, I get a bunch of emails from angry meetup people saying, "Gee, thanks for letting me drive 2 hours to a locked restaurant for a meetup that didn't happen."...

I guess that Echostar/Dish Network decided to roll out a new version of their software onto my satellite receiver recently. There has been talk of it on the forums, but I'm still wondering just what benefit this software supposed to have to me.

I only noticed that the software update had taken place because the receiver is now completely unable to play back a HD show while it is recording it. As an example, I was recording 24 in HD last night but wasn't watching it. About 45 minutes into recording the show, I turned on the TV and started to watch. I tried to, anyway.

After selecting the show from my recording list, the information bar appeared, superimposed on a black screen. A minute or two later, the screen went to static. I assume that the system rebooted. I was able to start the show playback again, but the recording had obviously stopped. I needed to manually start recording the rest of the live program, and I missed several minutes between the two separate recordings....

I was thinking a bit about the meetups that have been going on in Philadelphia and in New York City. We don't really have a format for our discussions. Not that I was thinking of changing that, but I was curious:

If you could have someone who knows something about WordPress talk about one thing with you, what would it be?

I imagine that there are a lot of people who are just starting WordPress or who are considering whether they should that might like to hear what it's all about. Or if you've just gotten started, you might have questions about why things generally work a certain way....