Tag Archives: wordpress

Seven years, but still no itch…

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Way back in January of 2010 I was casting around for a new blog platform. Having moved the original blog over from MySpace to Blogger, I was really looking for the place on the internet that could give me a permanent home – or at least a home that’s as permanent as we make anything in the electronic world. I did my homework and tried to assess all of the potential platforms, finally landing on WordPress as the one that seemed not only to offer exactly what I needed, but the one that seemed least likely to go belly up in six months.

A few credit card payments to secure domain names and for hosting fees and *poof*, WordPress became the one stop shop for whatever words felt like they needed said on any given day. Very little has changed here in the intervening seven years. In fact the page format is almost exactly as it was when I started posting here back then. Fortunately I made a point of choosing a layout that wasn’t destined to feel like a throwback to the early days of the internet and at least to my eye it’s managed to avoid looking too terribly dated.

One of the biggest reasons I selected WordPress from the competitors was that through WordPress.org it gives you the power to control nearly every possible element of your site. Despite good intentions to learn all of those under the hood management tools, I remain stubbornly fixed at the .com version of WordPress. It’s probably time I accept that I’m never going to be the nuts and bolts designer of this place and stick to what I do at least with some marginal level of skill – putting a few simple words on a blank screen and convincing a few people a day to give them a read.

As always, I’m happy to be spending one more “big day” on WordPress with any and all who stumble across my small portion of the internet. We’re seven years in and I still feel like I’m just getting warmed up.

1,001 misguided souls…

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From time to time WordPress tells me things. Last night for instance it told me that I’ve managed to gather 1,001 people who regularly get some kind of exposure to the blog. That number is pretty eavenly divided by people who follow me directly on WordPress and others who are friends on Facebook. Twitter doesn’t even break into triple digits. Still, 1,001 is, in my opinion, a surprisingly respectable number… especially considering there’s nothing here that could be considered a theme, consistency isn’t exactly my strong point, and the very best you can really expect to find here is the addled raving of a working schmuck who’s desperately trying to ignore the fact he’s careening through middle age to the beat of a drummer apparently only he can hear.

This blog has evolved from just a writing exercise to become my “batshit crazy release mechanism” and it’s an absolute pleasure to share it five times a week with all of you 1,001 poor misguided souls. I really do appreciate having each and every one of you along on the road to whatever it is this becomes – even if it’s only ever one lone voice of sanity crying out in a world gone increasingly mad.

2014 Year in Review

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Because it’s the end of the year and I’m using every tool in my arsenal to avoid actually needing to think about a post this evening, please enjoy this very special WordPress version of jeffreytharp.com’s 2014 Year in Review.

Here's an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,700 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Anniversary…

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Yes, yes, I know It’s Thursday and Thursday means What Annoys Jeff this Week. As long as I have an internet connection and a bit of power in one of my iDevices, I’ll get that post up at some point later today. Just now, while I’m sitting here watching the snow turn big_15to sleet turn to rain turn back to snow, I’m taking a moment to wish myself a happy 4th anniversary on WordPress.

I can’t say it’s always been perfectly smooth sailing, but WordPress has genuinely provided a great home for jeffreytharp.com. With 30,212 views, 410 comments, it’s been everything a small blogger who spends his day writing about whatever wild-assed idea crosses his mind could ask for. I can’t say for sure whether I’ll be here in another four years, but consulting my magic 8-ball, I’d have to imagine that signs point to yes. I’m not the kind of guy to tinker with something that works and this joint is filling my need to offer the world my opinion very nicely.

Now if the internet is any guide, I should run out and get myself the gift of fruit or flowers or maybe a new appliance. The internet is a strange place.

Adverts…

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WordPress makes it mercifully easy to keep a mosty respectable blog up and running without forcing you to master all the behind the scenes nonsense. I’ve long since given up on ever wanting to be by own webmaster. It would just be one more thing that I don’t have time to do right and would result in doing a half-assed job that would, in turn, make me crazy.

There are a few things, that WordPress lets you tweak without forcing you into managing your own page. This morning, while I was renewing my lease on adfreebannerhttp://www.jeffreytharp.com and making sure it mapped over to WordPress, I picked up one of these extra options.

Starting today, you should be reading this and every other post completely ad free. If I’m going to spend time making sure you have daily updates, pour ridiculous amounts of time into other projects, and make a half-hearted effort at marketing it, the only ads I want you to see are the ones that put cash in my own pocket. I guess we’ll find out this time next year if the return on investment pays off. Even if it doesn’t in a purely dollars and cents terms, running ad free gives the place a much cleaner look. That by itself is probably worth eating a little extra cost.

The next time you see an advert featured here, you can buy with confidence that you are helping to subsidize my writing habit, rather than putting money in the cold hands of a faceless corporation. With that in mind, why don’t you go ahead and check out the Retail Partners list to the left of this post and find yourself something to read?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Begging. Tonight’s the night when all you parents out there send your children mixed messages by encouraging them off to talk to strangers for candy. Fortunately the houses in my neighborhood are far enough apart that it’s not particularly lucrative bit of ground to cover, so there aren’t typically herds of children wandering around looking for a handout. It’s not so much that I mind the giving away of candy, but like the 4th of July, it’s one of those nights that threatens to send one or both of the dogs over the edge every time they hear the gate close or someone knocking on the door. Then again there’s the unmitigated glee when I open the door so parent and child are faced with a surly looking bald man with two barking dogs at his back… so at least there’s that.

2. Getting Close. Earlier this month it looked like jeffreytharp.com was well on its way to having its best month ever in terms of unique views. WordPress was regularly reporting daily views of 50 or 60 people. On October 3rd, the site posted its biggest single day. Since this past Sunday the number of views per day have plummeted for reasons I haven’t been able to identify just yet. At the rate they’re hitting now, I’ll be lucky to bring in 50 or 60 views this week. Alas, such are the vagaries of the internet. As October draws to a close, I’ll have to content myself with having the 2nd best month in the blog’s short history… and start worrying about how to keep November from ending up recorded as the 2nd worst.

3. Indecision. You can accuse me of a lot of things, but being indecisive is generally not one of them. Right, wrong, or otherwise, when confronted with possible courses of action I’ll pick one based on the best information I have available at the time and move out smartly. I’ll never claim to make the right decision all the time, but I’ll by God make one instead of just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Whether it’s where to have lunch or which program to throw over the side, I wish the populace at large would just stop pussyfooting around and figure out what they want to happen. Walking through life having other people’s bad decisions foist upon you is simply piss poor planning. As far as I’m concerned, any decision made on the spot is better than a great decision made ten minutes too late.

25,000…

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Sometime while I was at work today, jeffreytharp.com rolled over the 25,000 view mark. That’s pretty impressive for some random guy posting whatever pops into his head on a website that doesn’t do any actual advertising. The internet never ceases to amaze me with the reach of its long arms. In that 25,000 visits, every continent is represented (except Antarctica). Not a bad voice at all for a kid from down the Crick.

I started blogging in June 2006, wandered around through a host of platforms from MySpace to Blogger and finally here to WordPress. It started as an occasional post, morphed into posts showing up a few times a week, and now a new post shows up, generally, every day. I’ve learned more about writing from keeping this blog and its predecessors than I ever learned in school. I’ve learned more about myself that I thought I wanted to know too. I’ve learned that sometimes I pull my punches and that despite a life largely lived online, there are still elements that I’m never going to feel comfortable making available for public consumption. I use to feel guilty about keeping some part of myself separate from the blog, but I’m past that now.

After seven years of writing, I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t run out of things to say. I’m even more surprised that there are people out there who are legitimately interested in what’s going to show up on these pages next. For a guy not exactly known for his humility, I’ve found that to be incredibly humbling.

For good or bad, every word written on these pages is mine. They each reflect the moment in time that they were written. For those 629 people currently following jeffreytharp.com and for those yet to find this little endeavor, I really do thank you from the bottom of my heart. Even though I’ve said I don’t write for an audience, I have to admit that it’s far more entertaining with everyone along with me for the ride. Let’s see how things look from the 50,000 view level.

Update from the archives…

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Since it’s sunday morning and dinner is happily doing its thing in the crock pot, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to load up this week’s update from the archives. Today’s offering includes the last post from October and the first four from November 2007. There are no epic rants this go around, but they lose dramatic effect if one pops up every week, don’t you think?

Today’s posts also mark a milestone in the “from the archive” series. There are now less than a year’s worth of back posts waiting to get transferred here to WordPress. It’s bittersweet. I’m sure I enjoy this weekly trip to the recesses of my brain as much if not more than anyone. I’ll be a little sad to see them come to an end.

Enjoy this morning’s posts and remember we’ll be back with poppin’ fresh content tomorrow.

In my own name…

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There’s a certain amount of hubris to running a website in your own name. It certainly makes you easy enough to find (*cough* #1 search result for Jeffrey Tharp on Google *cough*). It means there’s nothing to hide behind when you make a mistake or take a position on an issue. All you have is your good name and the words you choose to make your argument. When it’s your name up there in the address bar, you’d better Harrassmentbelieve there’s an incentive to get it right the first time. In more than seven years of blogging, I’ve never posted anything to this site or the ones that came prior to it that I was ashamed or embarrassed to see running with my given name in the byline.

Of course on the internet it’s easy to be mostly anonymous. It’s easy to fire off a comment or an email when there’s no apparent accountability. The truth is, nine times out of ten there isn’t any accountability. That’s just one of the charming ways the internet is still like the Wild West.

With that being said, it is my personal policy and the official policy of jeffreytharp.com to refer any and all comments that are threatening or of a harassing nature to the sender’s service provider with a request to cease and desist and to preserve copies of all associated posts, comments, and emails for use in any criminal or civil investigation and/or litigation that may arise as a result of failing to comply with this request. We are not going to be drug into the ugly internet business of feeding the trolls, regardless of how tempting that might be.

I reserve the right to edit, modify, or delete all comments that do not comply with WordPress terms of service or that I deem inappropriate, harassing, or threatening. I continue to encourage feedback, discussion, and open debate about the issues, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to open this blog as a free for all. If that’s what you’re looking for, I suggest you go buy your own domain name, set up a website, and rant about how unfair life is on your own nickel, because you won’t be doing it on mine.

Yea verily I say unto you, here endeth the lesson.