For a while now I’ve been using Tumblr. I tried to direct people to the environment over there because I love the community and the workflow and frankly the design just works. I can use it from my phone with no effort, and people can share the work in a very smooth and easy fashion. here is the problem. I had a nagging feeling that by pawning people off of my personally owned site and onto another service I was producing content and sharing bits of awesome with little to no feedback to my site. I did the analytics, and despit automatically posting the episodes onto Tumblr I would only get 1 or 2 people clicking through to the site. not really worth the duplication.

However I found a ton of good stories over there, funny little one off jokes, and lulz beyond imagining. I wanted to continue to participate in tumblr while having the awesome work show up on this site. Not an easy task to do it right. In fact it was a pain. So like any good tech, I’ll show you how you do it.

Easy Peasy

1. On WordPress install the Feedwordpress Plugin, Be careful. This is a firehose. it is a great way to aggregate content, funneling all manner of RSS feeds into one blog. But it needs a bit of help with Tumblr.
2. Create an account on feedburner, throw your Tumblr Feed into this. I’ll Explain all the tech details later.
3. Drop the feedburner feed into the plugin and set the options on each menu.
4. Post to tumblr, Enjoy on your blog!

Why the extra step?

I know what you are saying. Paul why bother with the extra step? Why do i need to use a 4th party service to process the feed. it works just fine in Google reader, and everything else. Well I tied plugging the feed directly into Feedwordpress, and it would only update the content from the previous day. Nothing new, until  midnight struck… the blog turned into a pumpkin. Well not really, but the feed was squashed…

That pun hurt me worse than you, I swear

Here is what I really think. when you look at Tumblr the posts are individual, but they seem to be grouped by date, a very logical configuration, except they don’t “close” the day out until the clock strike midnight. So some feed readers see the open ended attribute and can’t deal. Feedwordpress included. However Google is Smart… much smarter than I by pushing the feed through Feedburner it sanitizes the data and allows for nice pretty formatting.

I tried a couple other plugins to get the Tumblr feed through. Feed2Post, didn’t pull in HTML, so video embeds were lost, and I couldn’t get a couple other ones to work at all. FeedWordpress is a beautiful plugin and still in development, give it a go.. Let me know what you think of the process, the new content and the fun button I placed on the right hand side of the page directing you to the podcast. If you can’t find it I need to a brighter yellow, and I hate Yellow.

Tags: integration, new post problem, tumblr, Wordpress

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Tonight we talk about updating wordpress, zombies, electric cars, going to coffee college some fun little tech news stories and other fun bits

Tags: axe sling, bie, Coffee, coffee burger, dad's day, drinks, father's day, ketchup, Star Wars, Starbucks, Wordpress, zom

WordPress 3.0: Thelonious debuted today, this is a fantastic step forward in blogging, and CMS solutions. Here are some of the features that the new version will bring on.

WordPress is what this and most of my other sites are all run on, so being able to upgrade versions to a newer spiffy-er one is always a big event. This time around the name was chosen as a homage to the great Thelonious Monk, keeping in line with the Jazz theme of name conventions.

• A nice cleaner look on the admin side, major CMS capabilities being added
• Custom admin names during installation FTW
• All in one updater screen with maintenance mode, helps you NOT break your blog, always a plus
• No longer stuck with posts or page you get to create your own taxonomies
• New default theme, that quite frankly is gorgeous and clean
• Last but most certainly not least is the merger of WordPress and WordPress mu
• This means that whether you are hosting 1 blog or +1 blog you only need one WordPress install

For those of you non WP geeks out there what does this mean for you? Well not much, if your site admins are good people you should never see the change, and only see the benefits of better content and design in the near future. Great step forward, can’t wait to play around with it!

Don’t believe me? check out the full on description

Tags: monk, new wordpress, thelonious, Wordpress, wordpress 3.0, wp3.0

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On Today’s Show: steampunk, wordpress, Metallica, RvB, Utensils, Bikes

• Best wishes to John And Blanca
• Crazy week in review
• WordPress Tweaking Very short SEO Overview
• Lance Armstrong is Bugging me

Real News Bytes

• Time to buy The White Album again. Holographic Storage debuts
• RvB Explains Gadgets and obsolesce.
• Metallica smells money crawls from under a rock

Tech Cruft

• R2D2 Goes Steampunk, and awesome
• MonoWheel, Transport. Bike engineering hasn’t changed much
• This is a blatant waste of money, squeeze your own tube
  
• What’s inside might scare you. The Dust from your machines hurts their performance
• Not quite there yet but off the grind with a USB crank charger
• Awesome value for the coin, Spin me right round USB Hub

Caffeine & Food

• Off the grid week at Dvice caps with a tasty mallow and a snarky comment session
• Who needs drawers? Utensil Darts
• Star Trek Bottle Opener. Bold go joke goes here
• Coffee Marinade? I’ll try this one shortly.

Contact Me:

• Phone Me: 215-240-1319 :: Email Me @ CaffiNation@gmail.com
• Skype Me thecaffination :: Full Contact Details

Thanks and Stay Caffeinated People!

Tags: Bikes, Coffee, cooking, Food, marinade, Metallica, RvB, Steampunk, tech, Utensils, Wordpress

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On Today’s Show: Upgrades, Hacking, Wind Up Cars, Caffeine and Superheroes

This show sponsored by GoToMeeting, Try it Free for 45 days
Visit http://www.gotomeeting.com/podcast for more details

Podsafe Music & Announcements

• Maria Daines: House of the Rising Sun
  • Folklore House of the rising sun

• WordPress 2.5 is now out, So when will I upgrade? Problem with free software
• The weekend begs of Spring, Trout Season Opened, Baseball Opening Day is tomorrow

Real News Bytes

• Lower than Low, Message board for epileptics attacked
• Day 1: Nothing. The error is obviously Human
• Day 2 Hacking the Gibson… Macbook Air Falls in under two minutes
• Day 3: Windows Vista SP1 laptop fall on final day. After some installs
• Ubuntu Stand alone at the end
• Comcast Degrading Signal? So thats why Lost has looked bad lately

Tech Cruft

• Drive a small car? Need a boost?
• Concept Art, PC on a Pallet. Needs a little tweaking
• Photoshop goes online, and free. But not without issues
• After the last show we talked about small and useful, this fits the bill in spades

Caffeine & Food

• Safe Driving, Caffeine tip
• Twitter is my new source for awesome links
• Snapple‘s New “Water”, Give me beer
• Starbucks buys Clover, mass data collection
• This is stupid. But I like the scale

Want to Contact Me?

• Phone Me: 215-240-1319 :: Email Me @ CaffiNation@gmail.com
• Skype Me thecaffination :: Full Contact Details

Thanks and Stay Caffeinated People!

Tags: caffeine, Coffee, hacking, Mac, Podcast, Superheroes, tech news, ubuntu, Upgrades, Wind Up Cars, Windows, Wordpress