Night after night I make the same mistake. You’d think I’d learn, and hopefully putting this in writing will get me over the hump.

The mistake? I crawl into bed thinking I’ll just turn out the light and listen to a podcast. So far, so good. Snuggle under the covers on a cold winter night, turn on my iPhone and listen. It’s a beautiful thing. And there are so many podcasts I love: Lullabot’s Drupal podcast, the MacCast, and, naturally, the Apple iPhone Show, to name just a few. (Somehow the latter never gives advice about whether or not to sleep with your iPhone.)

The problem is that invariably I drift off. I come to an hour or so later, conscious enough to remember the iPhone is in bed, but that if I put it on the bedside table, it’s at risk of turning into a cat toy. So then I’m stuck half-asleep, half-awake in a tangle of wires. Come to think of it, I’m lucky I haven’t choked myself.

As if that’s not enough, today I read of a report linking mobiles to disturbed sleep. Apparently it has to do with to exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals. I suppose I could put it in airplane mode, but somehow I think this may be not just a wireless signal, but a signal to me. Read a book instead.

Yesterday I was (happily) a bystander in one of those interactions that are so prevalent in smallish volunteer organizations coping with the new media. Out of the blue, my church’s Green Team (our environmental conscience) got an email from someone no one had heard of before, telling them they should “champion, promote and implement the conversion of our tree eating, postage wasting newsletter to an internet version.” Yikes.

Astonishingly, our very kind and patient Green Team co-chair bristled and let the person have it. She noted that they were just a small group of volunteers who didn’t have a magic want. Then other church leaders weighed in, pointing out, for example, that online actually is the primary mode of distributing the newsletter.

Eventually the thread made it to the Communication Committee (AKA Comm Comm). It’s where newsletter responsibility actually lies. Comm Comm is a sizable group, full of older, less-than-reticent members, and at that point, there was much hilarity. Thank heavens. It was absolutely the right response. We’ve been down the online-vs.-print road goodness knows how many times in the last few years. If I could have an ounce of chocolate for every hour Comm Comm has spent talking about and working on this issue, I’d be a very fat diva.

Yet still there is so much to see and learn from this kind of interaction. The take-aways for me right now are:

• Humans yearn for the simple. Alas, the shift into new media is anything but simple.
• Volunteers are fragile. They are at risk for lack of appreciation, and having a healthy, vibrant community to disperse such issues into is a wonderful antidote.
• Good humor can save the day when dealing with complex issues mixed with tender feelings.

What do you take away?

It’s remarkably easy to get Drupal working on Vanderbilt ITS servers — easier than WordPress even. Here’s all I had to do:

1. Send in a form request to ITS to set up a new database. This is likely to take a day or two. Once it’s set up, hang onto the connections strings and….
2. Download Drupal (version 5.6 in this case).
3. Unzip and move the contents to the correct directory on your computer.
4. Read the install.txt.
5. SFTP all of the files to the server. (I use Dreamweaver for this).
6. Change the permissions (temporarily!) to the file /sites/default/settings.php, so the server can write to it. I do this using CyberDuck.
7. Manually add a “files” directory and set permissions on it so that it can be written to.
8. Point your browser to the base url of your soon-to-be Drupal website. At this point you should see the setup screen. As well as filling out the required fields, click on “Advanced’ near the bottom of the page, and then replace “localhost” with the host ITS supplies.
9. Voila! Drupal should appear. There are just a few minor housecleaning items left.
10. Change the permissions back on the settings file you altered in step 6.
11. Go to the status report (in admin/logs/status) and see if there are any problems. You’ll see immediately if there are. Probably “Cron maintenance tasks” is highlighted. Just run it manually for now.
12. Chances are you’ll want cron to work automatically in the future. ITS has to do this for you. (They don’t allow SSH.) Email ITS Partner (its-partner@vanderbilt.edu) and tell them you need a cron job that looks something like “0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://exampledrumpalsite.vanderbilt.edu/cron.php” — replacing “exampledrumpalsite.vanderbilt.edu” with your own drupal URL. This example would run your cron every hour on the hour. If you don’t need it that often, tell ITS.

That’s it. Now go forth and build a fabulous Drupal site for VU.

Mr. Web Diva never ceases to amaze me. This year what he wanted most for Christmas was tree-climbing gear. You can see the results in the photo at the right.

Of course there’s a story behind this. The Cliff Notes version is my dearest college friend is married to Peter “Treeman” Jenkins. They gave him a taste last fall and he was hooked — literally.

He’s far from alone. Tree climbing is turning into major form of outdoors recreation, with organizations, gear, catalogs and (you guessed it) websites springing up all over the world. The root (so to speak) organization, though, is the Jenkins’ Tree Climbers International.

Last year they did a complete overhaul of their website, and the result is outstanding. It’s not just pretty and interesting. It’s packed with great information, has lots of Web 2.0 technologies like forums and a “gear rater,” and  — best of all — it’s easy for a non-techie to run it. The Jenkins decided to use Joomla! (a major open-source content management system), and they hired 3by400 to do the job.

They are thrilled with the results — and with good cause. This, I’d say, is the web at its best.

Now that Apple is letting you play with your iPhone screen real estate, guess what web developers? When someone saves your home page to their iPhone, you can give them a nice little custom icon. It’s not unlike the favicons that show in browsers, except it’s several times bigger, and thus several times easier to design.

There are simple instructions on how to do this for your own website on Dan Dickinson’s blog. The one catch is your site has to be in the root folder. If it’s in a subdirectory (e.g. vanderbilt.edu/mydepartment/), it doesn’t work. If you do have access to the root folder, it boils down to creating a 57 x 57 pixel PNG image, naming it “apple-touch-icon.png” and saving it in said root. That’s it.

For Vanderbilt Med Center web developers, here’s an image I created that you can download and adapt for your VMC site. If you use the PSD file, it’s incredibly simple to change the background color so it matches your site.

• A Photoshop (PSD) file
• A PNG file

[Thanks to colleague Chris for letting me know that this won’t work for non-root folders.]

Three things converged on me yesterday. First, my favorite web professional organization decided to focus next on mobile web design. Second, Steve Jobs in his Macworld keynote said that in its very first quarter (July - Sept 2007), the iPhone zoomed into second place for the market share of U.S. smart phones. Third, a colleague gave me the latest issue of Marketing News (1/15/08) and lo and behold one of the feature articles is, “2008 will be the year of mobile marketing.”

It’s more than just mobile marketing. It’s mobile web. According to what I read, the app that’s most popular on the iPhone is its web browser (Safari). Certainly it’s my favorite. In fact, it’s why I bought one in the first place. The iPhone has broken down that dreadful cell phone garden wall and my bet is Google’s Android is going to break it down even more. They are claiming the World Wide Web in the U.S. for a device other than a PC — and that’s the way the Web was always meant to be — device-independent. (Other countries are way ahead of the U.S. in this arena.)

Add to this that I’ve been drooling over first the iPhone and now Android since they were twinkles in Apple’s and Google’s eyes, and guess where I’m headed. I’ll be getting ready for my next web professionals meeting — starting to code my sites for the mobile web.

On Saturday, February 9, from 9:00AM to 5:00PM, I’ll be at PodCamp Nashville. If you’re interested and from around here, why not come too? There are still openings if you register soon.

According to their press release, “Participants of PodCamp Nashville are guaranteed to return to their offices revitalized and excited about what New Media has to offer. Students, hobbyists and professionals are encouraged to attend to network and to learn. Experience with blogging or podcasting are not requirements to participate.”

Sounds like a winner to me.

Tomorrow, Tuesday January 15, I’ll be wearing a black turtleneck.

It’s not that I’m an Apple zealot nor is it a statement of solidarity, although I do like many of their products — a lot. In truth it’s just one less early-morning wardrobe decision.

No jeans, though.

Some people look a lot better in dungarees than others.

According to various news sources, HRH Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has a geek streak. Be still my heart. Not only is her hair whiter than mine, she’s old enough to be my mother — and there are increasingly few I can say that of.

A couple of weeks ago, the news was that Buckingham Palace was putting the annual Christmas message on YouTube. More noteworthy than that, the Queen has been televising these messages since 1957. TV was quite new in 1957.

Fast forward to 2008. Reports are she’s playing on her grandson’s Wii and loving it, plus she has her own iPod and Blackberry. Prince William says she’s a natural. I’ve no doubt she is.

When you use secured MySQL for your database, like Vanderbilt ITS servers, installing WordPress causes one peculiar problem that can be a pain to debug. Or at least it was for me. I couldn’t find any documentation anywhere. Fortunately, one of the ITS server admins had alerted me that the standard php mysql_connect function needs fine-tuning to connect to their server, and I guessed that was the issue with WordPress. Specifically you need to add the MYSQL_CLIENT_SSL constant at the end.

In WordPress, the file you have to update is wp-db.php in the wp-includes includes folder. As of today it’s found on line 69. Find the line that reads:

$this->dbh = @mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword);

Replace it with:

$this->dbh = @mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword, true, MYSQL_CLIENT_SSL);

That’s all there is to it.

But as long as I’m blogging about this, I thought I’d give those of you having to upgrade WordPress my list of things to do. (I wrote it down so I don’t have to rethink it with every upgrade.)

Upgrading WordPress With a Secured MySQL Server

1. Download and unzip the latest upgrade.
2. Rename your current blog folder (local side) something like blog.old. Put the newly downloaded and unpacked folder in its place (being sure to rename it as needed).
3. Review the readme file. Assuming upgrade instructions are the same as always, in the new folder….
4. Copy your old wp-config.php
5. Copy your old wp-content/plugins
6. Copy your old wp-content/themes/
7. Edit wp-includes/wp-db.php (see above)
8. Continue following the readme instructions, which usually means uploading the new files and pointing your browser to /wp-admin/upgrade.php

One last step: thank Vanderbilt ITS for their help and support with this kind of work. They rock.