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My First Two Months with SpiderOak Hive

October 25, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Note that I no longer use SpiderOak Hive. You can read more about this in the comments of the post.

A couple of months ago, I came across an interesting article by Doug Belshaw that covered his thoughts and experiences with Dropbox, SpiderOak Hive, and why he made the jump from one to the other. In short (and straight from his blog):

I’m moving from Dropbox to SpiderOak for file sync/backup. SpiderOak not only encrypts files in transit, but on their servers. The encryption key stays on the user’s machine so SpiderOak employees (or anyone else) can’t get access to your files.

Shortly after reading the article, giving it some thought of my own, and taking an in-depth look at SpiderOak, I ended sharing the following:

so i made the switch and am giving spideroak hive a try. keeping dropbox free, but everything else is going into spideroak.

— Tom McFarlin (@tommcfarlin) August 29, 2013

My current setup – as mentioned – is the free Dropbox plan (with which I have 6.2GB of space), and a SpiderOak Hive subscription for 100GB. It’s been just shy of two months, so I thought it was time to follow-up with my experience thus far.

Should We Turn Off Comments By Default?

October 24, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the rise of a number of different publishing platforms.

What once originated with Xanga and LiveJournal gave way to Blogger (or The Artist Formerly Known as BlogSpot), WordPress, and which has now opened the doors for platforms such as Medium, Svbtle, Ghost, and so on.

To say that we – as a culture – are exploring the various forms of digital publishing in as understatement. But one thing that I’ve begun to notice about some of the newer platforms is the way that they handle comments.

On top of that, I’ve also begun to notice that people appear to be commenting less on blogs – at least in longer forms – and taking the discussions more to places such as Twitter, Google+, or even just into email.

Some of this I’m speaking based on observation, some of it I’m speaking based on experience. But I do think it raises the question as to if we should consider how we handle comments on our blog.

What Are Your Thoughts on a Weekly Digest?

October 24, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

For the most part, I’m convinced that the last thing that anyone wants or needs is more email; however, I’ve also noticed that there appear to be now, more than ever, various newsletters and emails being sent out monthly, biweekly, or weekly covering a variety of topics:

And the difference that these newsletters and/or emails have is that they are 100% opt-in. That is, they ask permission (that is, the opportunity for you to opt-in) to send you email, whereas other services as for forgiveness (with the opportunity to unsubscribe) for sending you email.

So one thing I’m considering is introducing a weekly digest of sorts for the articles covered on this blog, but I genuinely want some feedback on this idea before pursuing it.

Pricing WordPress Plugins (or “The Dangers of The App Store Model”)

October 23, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to pricing WordPress plugins, this isn’t exactly new territory. In fact, I’d say when it comes to pricing any online service or product, there are already tried and true ways that prove to be useful given certain scenarios.

It’s basic economics, I suppose.

So this post isn’t so much about various ways to go about pricing WordPress plugins, but what opportunities we have as developers, designers, companies, and so on as the WordPress landscape continues to change.

Giveaway: A Year of Free Hosting From InMotion Hosting

October 22, 2013 / Tom

The contest has ended. For details on the winners and how you can get a discount on InMotion hosting, see this post.

As you guys know, one of the things that I like to do for those of you who are regular readers is to provide giveaways for various software, applications, services, and products.

Today, I’m stoked to be offering up a giveaway for two web hosting options:

One year of hosting with the InMotion Hosting Power Plan
One year of hosting with the WebHostingHub

As usual, if you’re interested, there are more details below: