Cocktail Confessions

http://support.wordpress.com/api-keys/

Oh, and here’s a gem (look for illianaconnect’s response) :http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/api-key-for-self-hosted-blog?replies=22

It appears I will have to rethink and make some modifications behind the scenes over the few days to get some of the widgets I want installed to display correctly.

It seems the main culprit is my email address and wordpress account.  The email address that I used for this site, currently, is cocktails1@hotmail.com, but I didn’t take into consideration that it has been tied to some ofther things I am involved with and thus is reporting false data captures.  So while the new stat counter is working, it is reporting on my other hobby sites as well, and not just this site.  It appears I will have to create a new e-mail address, and new WordPress master account and keep that seperate from my other blogs and then come back and make the appropriate modifications to recognize only this site.

In the meantime, I have installed the WordPress Statistics plug-in for my own behind the scenes reporting successfully, but as explained above tie it to a new master account/email once created.

I also installed a very neat looking animated widget that will serve as a visual counter for the reader to the right margin that will also be working correctly once I get a new master account.  It will give stats on how many people visit per day, from what cities, and even what countries.  It can do some other stuff as well, but that’s all fluff.   Not sure I’ll actually keep it in the long run, as I just was really looking for a basic visitor counter.

I also have added the link widgetbox.com, a repository for various free and premium widgets.  Some are useful, some are just plain fluff.  Just sign up for an account, find teh widget you like, copy and past the appropriate code in your blog and possibly configure your options..

Lastly, I may try an experiment with Audacity this evening.  I have a song in mind for the intro of my upcoming podcasts, so I need to find the CD, rip it as an MP3 to my local drive, fire up Audacity, crop about 10 second or so and do a fade out until I can begin recording my own voice.  Also deciding on the opening introduction and format, so I may do a few dry runs and get a raw track before I tag it and upload.  It’s coming slowly, but I have confidence I’m getting close….and then the fun can begin.

Update (3:30pm): I haven’t had much luck in some of the behind the scenese stuff, so I just revereted back to the original e-mail address, and changed the stat counter to something a tad more generic.  The problem I think is embedded with the unique API Key that WordPress dole’s out, 1 per unique login account, and since I am my site with GoDaddy instead of a static WordPress domain, it seems that WordPress.com does not like to issue out API’s without WordPress.com accounts.  Seems very strange as I clearly have a WordPress blog and can log in with the appropriate sign on, but doesn’t synch up correctly.  So I’m using a key associated with a totally seperate wordpress account.  So far it seems to be working, but I’m not clear how they distinguish one site from another.

In the future I may have to deactivate the plugin, uninstall it, then reinstall it to get a fresh attempt for a different API key, if I get one.  Like I said, whil eit appears to be working right now, it’s not very straight forward or clean.  Not the way I would do it.

A lot can be said about the process of selecting the appropriate Internet hosting site, especially if you want to do podcasting.

Just a simple search on just about any engine will offer up dozens upon dozens of links for website hosting.  There are plenty of free ones out there and just as many that charge nominal fees to some whose fees seem a bit pricey compared to the feature set one may be looking for compared to many other common names ones.

For the most part, other than perhaps some exclusive bells and whistles, they all pretty much do the same thing.  There really is no right or wrong way to select an Internet host, it really depends on a few factors and you can rank them in importance as to how you see fit: reputation, brand name, customer service (the big one in my book), ease of use, available software, metered versus unlimited bandwidth, guaranteed up time, integration tools, and your own programming expertise.

For myself and this website, I went ahead and selected GoDaddy.com, and trust me, I am not getting any kickbacks or freebies for mentioning them here.  Here are the main reasons I went ahead and selected GoDaddy: 1) I already had an account with them in regards to the organic dog biscuit company I run and found their tech support very helpful, the main site is a breeze to use, and they have dozens of options.  It also doesn’t hurt that they have a one-stop-shop in setting up WordPress as well, and when I did add this to my existing account, they did all the WordPress installation and configuration behind the scenes for me…I didn’t have to have my own server, download the and configure the application on my own, etc.  They also have a very good reputation and I don’t expect them to be closing up shop anytime soon.

That doesn’t mean GoDaddy is the best out, as there are many sites that are just as comparable, and if you really want to do things from scratch (and I mean everything because you have both the programming knowledge and the time) there are quite a few that offer space and low to free pricing.  Some of these sites may require you to know and use additional software such as FTP clients (or FileZilla, or Cyberduck, to name a few) to upload various files.

But as the old saying goes, “you get what you pay for.”, and I’ve heard stories from people who sign up for free sites to learn they are always reliable.  They either close shop after a few months, have limited or practically no technical support, bandwidth issues, or even a questionable reputation.  There are also some out there that will do everything for you, but then you pay out the nose for many things you can do on your own with just a little patience.

Some free ones that you may want to look into include: libsyn.com and blogger.com.

For my purposes here, in addition to the familiarity with the host I already explained near the beginning of this entry, I liked GoDaddy’s tiered pricing structure and the ability to upgrade seamlessly if I ever need to.  I’m starting with the ‘economy’ package which affords me 10 GB of space and 300 GB of data transfer per month (i.e. bandwidth).  If I ever need to grow, I easily can to the next two tiers, ‘deluxe’ and ‘unlimited’ without losing anything.  They are also good in issuing prompt credits and other goodies as well.  If you don’t want to use GoDaddy’s/Wordpress integration, they also have cookie-cutter blog & podcasting package as well that offer new users easy to use templates and plug-in’s which take out most if not all the technical pain.  But then again, going this route will limit the flexibility you would normally get by using WordPress instead.