Muckbeast » Meta

Updating to WordPress 2.9.1

Muckbeast — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:18:53 +0000

Maybe some fellow bloggers can help me out here. My WordPress dashboard says:

WordPress 2.9.1 is available! Please update now.

So I click the link, choose the [Upgrade Automatically] option, and eventually it gets to this:

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9.1.zip.

Unpacking the update.

It churns for a few minutes, and then stops. But it is not upgrading. I’ve always done the automatic upgrades in the past, and all my recent plugins upgrade just fine. What are my options at this point for trying to get this update completed?

Looking to hire freelance writers. MMO and Nintendo Wii

Muckbeast — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:06:07 +0000

As many readers here know, in addition to owning and running a gaming company, I am the Managing Editor of the MMO and Nintendo Wii channels at the technology web site Bright Hub. Bright Hub recently broke the top 1,000 barrier for busiest web sites on the internet, and as a result my article budgets have been steadily increasing.

To fill these opportunities, I am looking for some new writers who would like to write articles, reviews, analysis, guides, etc. about MMO or Nintendo Wii games.

The system is very flexible. You would get to research and pitch your own articles, and there is no minimum commitment. I have some writers who write 20+ articles per month, and some who write one article every few months.

Bright Hub pays an up front per article fee, and also gives the writer a significant share of the advertising revenue generated by their articles. The revenue share continues indefinitely. I’ve been with them for over a year, and it is a good system. This is an excellent opportunity to make some money writing about your favorite subject (games!) before the holidays.

If you are interested, send me an email at mhartman@editors.brighthub.com.

Thanks!

Follow Muckbeast, Threshold RPG, and Primordiax on twitter

Muckbeast — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:57:38 +0000

I gave in. I now have twitter accounts for Muckbeast , Threshold RPG, and Primordiax. Please follow both so I can feel like the things I post there are actually being (potentially) read by someone.

Muckbeast on twitter

Threshold RPG on twitter

Primordiax on twitter

MMO Gaming Terminology Dictionary

Muckbeast — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:30:48 +0000

I started a project over at Bright Hub to build up a dictionary of MMO Gaming terms. Right now it is broken up into three sections:

MMO Gaming Dictionary – Combat Terminology

MMO Gaming Dictionary – Character Terminology

MMO Gaming Dictionary – General Terminology

Then I created a place where people can go to post their own new ones:

Add your own!

What do you all think of the idea, and how are we doing so far? What else would you add?

The AOLization of the Internet

Muckbeast — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:19:44 +0000

This is a really sore topic for me, as it is something that really pisses me off about how things are evolving in so many online communities. Everyone is trying to turn their site into a “Walled Garden” where you dare not link to any other site lest you be accused of spamming.

Windows Live and the AOLization of the Internet

Most of us hated the way AOL did that, and yet site operators, forum moderators, etc. are going right down this same path. Then along comes Microsoft, and takes it to a whole new level with Windows Live.

It would be easy to just blow this off as Microsoft trying to create a new AOL, but what bothers me the most is that this is part of a larger, more negative trend internet wide. External linking, traffic exchanges, link swapping, etc. were once time honored methods of sites helping each other grow. Now people are so obsessed with their own page views they think SHARING traffic is losing traffic. This is a terrible philosophy that is rotting far too many communities at their core.

When sites share traffic, they gain traffic. That’s how the internet works. Lets not obsess over ad clicks and pageviews so mindlessly that we forget what made the internet special. The ability to read a story, click a link for more details, return to post your thoughts, click another link for a similar story, etc. is what makes reading things on the internet so much fun. We forget this at our own peril.

Now using Akismet

Muckbeast — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:01:44 +0000

Things are going really well with the new Muckbeast. We are averaging about 600 unique visitors per day now, which is better than ever on Today. The downside of popularity is spam! We have started receiving a number of spam comments, so I decided to enable Akismet, which is an intelligent spam filter for comments.

I hate having to do this, as I worry about real comments getting flagged. If you post a comment and notice it not showing up, please email me: muckbeast ** gmail ** com.

What Generates Traffic?

Muckbeast — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:01:51 +0000

For any blogger, the quest for more traffic is never ending. Moving Muckbeast has made this quest even harder, as I’ve lost page rank, all sorts of links, etc. But one of the weirdest sources of traffic has been a link to an image in my Hellgate London post. Apparently, my link to a picture of the the Hellgate Templar named Avalon generated 50+ unique visitors per day on my old blog. The visitors arrive from various foreign versions of google. Now, obviously that is not super useful traffic, but it is still nice to have, and I have a feeling that google-related traffic really helped my page rank.

A few questions and the picture itself after the jump.

The censored version of the picture:

For the fully uncensored version, click on the picture. You might have to click on it a second time to make it full size.

This raises a few questions:

1) What are good ways to improve blog traffic?

2) Do you have ANY idea what is going on with all the foreign google sites linking to my link of the Avalon Hellgate picture?

3) Should I care?

Muckbeast – New and Improved

Muckbeast — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:39:17 +0000

Those of you who visit Muckbeast via entrecard or its main domain name (http://www.muckbeast.com) have already noticed that things look very different. I am now self hosting the blog. At a later date, I will go into more detail as to WHY I made this decision, and what the upsides are for the blog. For now, this means you will need to update your bookmarks and possible your RSS subscription as well.

I have a lot more control over the blog now, which means a lot more layout, widget, and plugin selection. Please feel free to make suggestions. I am not 100% sure what I think of this theme yet. It seems to be pretty solid, but there are a few color choices I am not totally thrilled with. Again, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Sorry there have not been any new content posts in February. I will remedy that shortly!

Please spread the word about Muckbeast. I am more motivated now than ever to try and make it a well known blog for issues related to game design and the gaming industry.

Thanks for reading and commenting!