I really like this post by Steve Pavlina that I wanted to share it here with you. Enjoy!

One of the most potent lessons I’ve ever learned (and would love to impart to you) is just how powerful a seemingly simple perspective shift can be.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I hope you realize just how profound that statement is. But just in case you don’t, let me share a personal story about it.

During my first 5 years in business (1994-1998), I lost money every year, turning my $20K life savings into $150K of debt. That’s a net loss of $170K, or $34K per year on average. In 1999 I finally went bankrupt when my credit ran out.

Every year since then, my business made a decent profit.

So I suffered a negative cashflow each year from 1994-1998, and then from 1999 – present (12 years in a row and counting), I enjoyed a positive cashflow each year.

What the heck happened in 1999? What was responsible for this major change in results?

Learning How NOT to Make Money

I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when I felt the shift. I underwent a radical change in my perspective. I turned the way I thought about business upside down. My attitude and my motivation changed.

Obviously there were some catalyzing experiences that led to this epiphany such as getting kicked out of my apartment and going bankrupt, but when the conditions were right for it, the actual mental and emotional shifts happened fast — in a matter of minutes. It was like flipping a switch, partly in my mind… but mostly in my heart.

Here are the main before-and-after differences:

During my first 5 years in business, I focused on making my business successful. I pursued deals, money, and projects as if they were things to be acquired. I wanted to create hit products that sold well (computer games at the time). My motivation had a lot to do with proving myself, with making my mark on my particular field. I visualized my games getting glowing reviews, and I imagined seeing them selling in software stores. Money was a big concern. I always went for the deal that I expected would put the most money in my pocket and lead to the greatest success.

During my last 12 years in business, I focused on having fun, enjoying life,and creatively expressing myself. I stopped worrying about whether or not I was ever going to be successful. The bankruptcy supplied plenty of proof that I’d already failed dismally, so I didn’t see any point in continuing to pursue the same priorities that led me there. I was using a cardboard box as a piece of furniture, a symbol of just how much financial success I’d been able to achieve. Since I’d been soundly thrashed while playing the success game, I decided to change the rules and try my hand at the “let’s just play for fun” game.

A Tale of Two Mindsets

My initial motivation for starting my computer games business was to make more money. For several months before that, I worked as a contract game programmer on the side while going to college. I completed a 4-pack of Windows games, doing all of the programming and much of the design work for a local games company. When the games got published, I received about $1 in programmer’s royalties for every $7 the company received. Other people at the company contributed artwork, music, and some design work, and of course they closed a deal with a publisher too. But these were fairly basic games from a resource standpoint, and it was clear to me that I was doing well over 50% of the actual production work, probably 70-80% in terms of sheer hours invested. I even wrote the help files and instruction manuals.

I recognized that with a bit more effort, and with the help of the right people, such as an artist and a musician, I could essentially do what this company was doing, and I’d get to keep a lot more of the profits. Finding talented people to work with wasn’t too difficult, so soon I was off and running.

I had the technical and design skills to create more games at least as good as those I created for the local game company, but after years of trying, I was never actually able to make a profit.

While running the business for the first 5 years, I was constantly looking for ways to make money. If I smelled potential dollar signs, I’d chase after them. I ran after a lot of elusive deals that fizzled, fell apart, or collapsed, even after some advances were received.

I worked hard, hard, hard, sometimes even sleeping at the office. But I could never get the money coming in with any consistency. Ironically the harder I tried to make money, the faster I lost money. Instead of the Midas touch, I somehow mastered the Medusa touch.

Looking back, I didn’t do that initial contract programming work for the money. I did it for the love of game programming. I was in college at the time, and a friend pointed out a flier about a game programming position. He suggested I take a look at it because he knew I was into computer games, and we were both computer science majors close to graduating. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me.

I went for an interview with the company. I felt confident about getting the job, and I really didn’t care how much they paid me. I just wanted to work on games. So when they asked me how much I wanted to be paid, I said “$10 an hour,” which was a ridiculously lowball amount. Game programming may not pay as much as some other types of programming, but it certainly pays more than $20K per year, even for a starting programmer who’s still in school.

That company hired me on the spot, and I must say they got a great deal. I hit the ground running and threw myself into the first project they assigned me. They were stunned that I had a prototype up and running after only 9 days, and they actually pulled me off that project and assigned me something more ambitious.

One time my project manager asked me how many hours a week I was putting in. This was during the summer when I wasn’t attending classes. I told him about 40 hours, which would have seemed reasonable because I worked at their offices Mon-Fri during normal business hours. But I actually lied. In truth I continued working on their game projects at home on evenings and weekends. Realistically I was probably putting in 60-80 hours most weeks. And those hours were dedicated to solid coding work, not to email or any other distractions. I said that I worked 40 hours a week because I didn’t want to make the other programmers in the company seem less dedicated. I was on good terms with them — and I wanted to keep it that way.

I wasn’t working hard and fast for low pay to impress anyone. I did it for the sheer love of the work. I was enthralled by the technical challenges of each game. There was nothing else I wanted to be doing. I probably would have done that work for free.

Within a month or two, I think the management of the company could no longer stomach seeing me do such high quality work for so little, so they voluntarily doubled my pay. I didn’t request it, but I received it with gratitude. $20 per hour is a lot for a college student.

By the time the royalties were added in (after the game hit store shelves the following year), I probably ended up making about $50 per hour for programming those games, even though I only asked for $10 per hour. Plus it was really cool to walk into software stores and see something I created on the shelves.

That’s rather beautiful, isn’t it? I certainly thought so. It’s a classic example of sowing first, then reaping.

And then over the next 5 years, I proceeded to take this beautiful model and completely screw it up.

I underwent a perspective shift that seemed intelligent at the time. The potential for greater success hit me, and I began seeing dollar signs. That local games business immediately offered me another project to work on, and I turned them down so I could start my own game development business. I did that specifically because I wanted to make more money.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was simply expressing the American entrepreneurial spirit, right?

Getting My Ass Kicked by Kolrami

After 5 years of total failure, I finally had to admit that my great plan wasn’t working. Going bankrupt was a hint and a half that something went awry. The more I chased after money, the faster it ran away from me, as if screaming, “The horror! The horror!”

So in 1999 I finally gave up. I didn’t enjoy living this way. It wasn’t producing the results I wanted, so for that reason alone I could justify declaring “game over.” But beyond that, those 5 years were very frustrating. I did my best to be positive and optimistic, but seeing some great projects canceled after years of work were serious disappointments.

In my moment of epiphany, I realized that my decision to pursue money was when everything started going kittywompus. Becoming more financially ambitious simply did not work.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Peak Performance,” the master strategist Kolrami competes with the android character Data in a game of Strategema. The crew expects Data to win, just as you’d expect a modern chess-playing computer to kick your ass at chess. They confidently advise Data to take the shortest path to victory in order to put a dent in Kolrami’s smugness. However, Kolrami soundly defeats Data without breaking a sweat. Data is stunned by the loss and assumes he must have some kind of programming defect, going so far as to remove himself from active duty until he can figure out what’s wrong with him.

Later in that episode, Captain Picard informs Data that it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. This leads Data to challenge his assumptions about the game. He accepts Kolrami’s offer of a rematch, and this time he plays Kolrami to an endless stalemate, leading Kolrami to eventually surrender in disgust. The crew celebrates Data’s victory and asks how he did it.

Data confesses that he couldn’t defeat Kolrami by playing to win because that’s what Kolrami expected him to do. Every advantage-maximizing move that Data attempted was blocked by a superior counter-move from Kolrami. So in the rematch, Data used a different strategy. He bypassed obvious avenues of advancement and played for a draw instead of trying to win. This visibly frustrated Kolrami and allowed Data to theoretically play the game indefinitely, rendering defeat impossible.

This episode may contradict game theory and minimax algorithms, assuming that Data could search ahead more moves than Kolrami could, but setting aside that issue, I found tremendous value in this lesson. It seemed like the perfect analogy for my own situation. I felt like I’d made no serious mistakes, but I still lost. When I reviewed my previous moves, they still seemed reasonable even though they led to failure, and pondering whether I might have a defective brain proved as unhelpful to me as it did to Data.

During my first 5 years in business, I played to improve my financial score. I saw each business negotiation partly as a competition. If I got more money out of a deal, it meant that the other party got less. The more I succeeded in setting things up to maximize my financial score, the more I had to diminish the scores of others. In order to maximally win, someone else had to lose, at least a little bit. The harder I tried to win, the more friction I created that would ultimately cause me to lose.

Maybe some people are good at playing this kind of game. I wasn’t. Someone always had more resources, more time, or more expensive lawyers. The more I pressed for gains, the more I felt an opposing force pushing back against me. This led to many problems such as delays and cancelations. I could blame others for it, but the truth is that I was responsible for creating that reality.

When Internet marketers treat you as a dollar sign, can you sense it? Can you feel that tugging sensation — the sense that their main motivation is to get something from you? How does this ultimately affect your relationship with them?

Bypassing Obvious Avenues of Advancement

In 1999 I decided to stop trying to make money. I stopped trying to achieve success. I had 5 years of failure to convince me that it was time to change my approach. The bankruptcy was like a bonk on the head that told me I’d better not live the next 5 years like I lived the last 5. I had no more credit and no more cash to burn, so I had to make immediate changes. I had little choice but to try a different path.

When I tried to succeed, Kolrami always showed up to kick my ass. I could never defeat him no matter how hard I tried. The harder I tried, the more vigorously he thrashed me.

So I surrendered to his superior skills. I stopped trying to win. I accepted the irony that trying to get a higher financial score actually doomed me to a negative score. The opposing force was always greater than anything I could overcome.

I decided to apply Data’s lesson to my business. Instead of trying to win, I began to play for a draw. I bypassed what seemed like obvious avenues for financial advancement, recognizing that it was exactly what Kolrami expected me to do. If I made those self-maximizing moves, he would simply knock me back, and I’d be worse off than when I started. Again, I had 5 years of experience to drill this lesson into me.

In practice what this meant was that I stopped trying to maximize revenue or profits. In each business transaction, I opted to give more than I received in return. I always sought to leave extra value on the table.

For example, in mid-1999 I priced my next game release at only $9.95, even though I believed a competitive price would have been $19.95. I began writing articles for free. I committed hundreds of hours to unpaid volunteer work. I hosted free discussion forums on my website to help other game developers succeed. I spoke at conferences and hosted roundtables for free. I made it impossible for Kolrami to counter my moves because my moves weren’t competitive.

Last year I uncopyrighted all of my articles and podcasts and donated all of them to the public domain. I also committed to placing my new articles directly into the public domain (including this one). I encouraged people to republish, translate, and/or sell my work for their own financial gain if they wanted to.

I deliberately and intentionally earn less revenue and less profit than I feel I’m capable of earning. When it comes to income generation, I hold back when it seems like the logical move would be to advance. While Kolrami expects me to play to win, I’m actually playing for a draw.

Playing for a Draw

When I played to win, I lost for 5 years in a row. I never actually won. Even when it seemed like I nailed a winning move, it always turned out to be a mistake that led to my being checkmated several moves later.

When I played for a draw, I was able to make money for 12 years in a row. And I didn’t have to work nearly as hard to make that happen.

When you play to win in a competitive game, you’re playing for someone else to lose. If you want to maximize revenue or profits, you need to maximize the amount of money your customers or clients pay you. The more money you make, the less money they get to keep. You can only go so far down this path before you start meeting serious resistance. And the more tactics and techniques you use to try to combat that resistance, the stronger the resistance becomes.

How many businesses have had to learn this lesson the hard way? The more they try to extract the maximum amount of money from you, the more you feel driven to resist them, such as by resorting to piracy to cut them out entirely.

Which businesses do you dislike most? Do you feel those businesses are playing to win at your expense? How does that affect your ongoing relationship with them?

What are your favorite businesses? Why are they your favorites?

One of my favorite businesses is Google. I like them because I feel they give me a lot more value than they ask in return. They provide me with a free search engine, free email, free calendar, etc. I benefit from their engineering expertise every day, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve paid them back in some ways over the years, such as by generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of business for them when I had Adsense on my blog… and probably millions if you include all the referrals I must have sent their way, such as other bloggers who signed up for Adsense after learning about my results with it.

Facebook, on the other hand, left me feeling used and abused after two years as an active user of their service. So I shut down my personal page and my fan page and wrote multiple articles about why I had to abandon them and take my social networking to greener pastures. Ironically, one of those articles racked up 2000+ Facebook likes.

Of course these evaluations are being continually refreshed. Google might screw up, and I may have to bid Larry and Sergey adieu. Facebook might correct its problems, and I’ll have to refriend Zuck. But for now, my perception is that Google is still playing with me, while Facebook still wants to play at me.

Becoming an Enigma

What does it mean to win? What does it mean to succeed? Does it even make sense to pursue these ideals?

I learned the hard way that it’s actually easier to enjoy an abundant and fulfilling lifestyle by playing for a draw instead of playing to win or succeed.

When you play for a draw, you change the way others relate to you. They may not understand this consciously, but they’ll behave differently towards you nonetheless.

Some of your decisions may confuse people at first, especially if they’re used to dealing with businesses that play to win, but generally people seem to respond positively. A business that plays for a draw is a breath of fresh air.

When you leave extra value on the table without trying to extract it, that value rolls over into goodwill, which is the lifeblood of a sustainable business.

For example, by giving away so much free content, my business receives a massive number of referrals. New referrals happen every single day — passively and with zero marketing costs.

I’ve done okay financially too. Not counting income from my workshops or my book, my blog alone has generated well over $1 million in revenue since I started, mostly from joint-venture promotions and affiliate programs. That’s plenty for me to sustain a positive cashflow and to enjoy an abundant lifestyle.

What about the economy? I live in Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. state, according to the U.S. Dept of Labor. Lots of people here are looking for ways to make money, and they’re getting thrashed by Kolrami. They’re trying to beat a game that they can’t win. The odds are better in the casinos.

The irony, however, is that I perceive my actual income as much lower than it could be if I put more effort into it. There are lots of ways I could potentially earn more money, and some are dirt simple. For instance, for about an hour’s work, I could immediately start earning at least an extra $10K per month in passive income just by putting up Google Adsense ads, which I used to have on the site for several years. See this post if you want to know why I dropped Adsense. I deliberately choose not to earn this money.

Now you might be wondering, What kind of idiot would pass up an easy $10K/month in passive income? The kind of idiot who’s had his ass kicked by Kolrami way too many times. 

You see… I don’t run my business to optimize revenue or profits. When I tried to do that, my real-world results were the exact opposite of what I wanted. So these days I deliberately make business decisions that leave significant value on the table, untapped and unextracted. Kolrami cannot make sense of these moves, and therefore he cannot counter them. Consequently, any potential competition with him remains in a state of perpetual stalemate. He cannot defeat me, and theoretically I can keep playing indefinitely.

Instead of seeing me as a competitor, my peers in this field tend to regard me as a bit of an enigma. Many of them became very curious when I did the whole copyright giveaway thing last year. From their perspective it seemed like a very risky thing to do, perhaps even foolhardy. Some regard it as very brave, while others simply don’t know what to make of it. Most aren’t willing to go down a similar path, preferring to keep all their work copyrighted so they can control it. They know that I’m an intelligent and strategic thinker, but since this action doesn’t really make logical sense from the standpoint of maximizing revenue, they don’t perceive me as any sort of competitive threat, so by default I’m treated as a non-threatening ally. And the truth is that I’m not a competitive threat of any sort because I’m not playing this game to win. I’m still playing for a stalemate with Kolrami, and I plan to continue doing so indefinitely.

Making money is very easy now. I don’t consider myself uber-rich, but I’ve achieved what I consider to be functional abundance. All my bills are paid, and I have sufficient income to enjoy the lifestyle I desire. I can work when I want and take time off when I want. And I feel I can keep this going indefinitely.

Even though I’ve made plenty of money from this business, I always have the sense that I could be earning many times more than what I’m actually earning. But I deliberately avoid that level of success, not because I’m resistant to success but because I recognize that the pursuit of such success is a trap.

It was a major lesson for me to learn that I can actually make more money by trying to make less money. I can achieve more success by trying to succeed less. This is what has actually worked for me in the real world.

The path of abundance isn’t the path that maximizes velocity. It’s the path that minimizes friction. If you try to maximize velocity, you end up maximizing friction too, thereby causing massive amounts of heat. Ultimately, you burn up.

If you race to every destination by driving as fast as your car will allow, is that the optimal approach? Or is it better to intentionally hold back a bit, driving at speeds well below your car’s maximum potential?

Success = Sustainability

Instead of seeing success as some kind of accomplishment, victory, or conquest, I think it’s wiser and more effective to define success as sustainability.

This isn’t just about how we run our lives or businesses. It’s about how we relate to each other and to our planet as a whole.

Is the most successful energy company the one that extracts and sells the earth’s resources as quickly as possible? Is a successful relationship one in which you extract maximum value from your partner, leaving them drained at the end of each day?

I like Stephen Covey’s analogy of the goose and the golden eggs. If you try to maximize all-out production by extracting as many golden eggs as possible, you eventually kill the golden goose, thereby causing your production capacity to crash. For long-term sustainability, you must nurture the golden goose. Getting greedy with the eggs will cause Kolrami to swoop in and turn your goose into foie gras.

The game of business isn’t winnable. No matter how hard you play to win, you’ll always lose in the end. Even if you become an extremely cunning player, laying waste to all who oppose you, eventually you’ll die, and your deathbed score resets to zero. Kolrami always gets the last move.

But if you largely ignore the score and play for a draw instead of trying to win, Kolrami cannot defeat you. You can play the game for as long as you like.

When you seek sustainability, the games of money and business are transformed. Instead of competing for survival and success, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Playing for fun is a whole different ride.

When you play for fun instead of trying to win, most people will relate to you in the same manner. Some players may initially assume a competitive posture with you, but once they realize you’re playing for fun instead of trying to win, they’ll quickly lower their shields, and they’ll begin to play the game with you at your level — for fun. Even highly competitive players naturally sense there’s no honor in thrashing an opponent who isn’t trying to beat them. No real victory can be achieved against a player who stands no chance of winning. Players that try to overwhelm defenseless opponents simply make themselves look ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you’ll never encounter a stubborn victory-minded person who seeks to trounce you anyway, but it’s a lot rarer when you decline to resist them. Competitive people tend to expend more energy on those who resist them. If you offer no resistance, they’re more likely to consider you a potential ally.

When I tried to win in business, I experienced frustration and failure. When I played for a draw, I had fun and enjoyed sustainable success.

If you’re still trying to win, maybe it’s time to give it up. Kolrami is just too good. You cannot hope to beat him. He’ll take all your best moves and turn them against you, causing you to end up worse off than when you started.

As for defeating Kolrami, in the strictest sense, I did not win.

I busted him up. 

Thanks for the inspiration, Gene. You are still loved. <3

I read with excitement an article by Steve Pavlina on how he feels after he stops using Facebook for 30 days.

He was spot on and I have to agree with some of his points. The most apparent one is nothing beats face-to-face communication. Also using Facebook can be very addictive and detrimental to your productivity.

I have reproduced the whole article here. Enjoy and more importantly learn why you should not let Facebook take over your life.

It’s been about 30 days since I quit Facebook, so I wanted to share an update on what that’s been like. Many others also quit the service last month, and many more are on the fence as to whether they should do the same.

Here are some realizations I’ve had as a result of leaving Facebook after 2+ years as an active user. I’m sure some of these realizations can be generalized to social networking as a whole, but I’m going to focus mainly on my personal experience with Facebook. I can’t guarantee you’ll find much overlap between my realizations and your experiences, but I’m sure some people will see similar patterns.

Facebook communication is mostly low-priority noise.

When I dropped Facebook, I noticed that the communication volume in my life dropped significantly. However, I felt no drop in the level of significant and meaningful communication. What I seemed to lose was mostly a lot of noise.

Generally speaking, communicating via Facebook is a shallow experience. You read streams of brief messages from a variety of people, but the messages don’t contain much depth. Most are trivial and mundane. Some are clever or witty. Very little of the information you’ll digest on Facebook is memorable and life-changing. Using Facebook can still give you a feeling of connectedness, but the long-term benefits are negligible.

Facebook essentially gives you the emotional sense that you’re doing something worthwhile (i.e. connecting with people), but when you step back and look at your actions and results from a more objective perspective, it becomes clear that you’re really just spinning your wheels.

Consequently, when I dropped Facebook, I let go of a lot of trivial communication, but I don’t have the sense that anything truly valuable has been lost.

Impulse sharing comes with a price.

In the weeks after quitting Facebook, I still felt the urge to share certain things with my online “friends”. I’d have a clever thought and feel, I should post this. Or I’d take a really cool photo and think, I ought to share this.

In the past I’d have shared those tidbits out of habit. Then I’d check back in later and read through a few dozen comments people left. And there would be a little emotional reward in having that sense of connection.

But without the option to impulse-share during the past 30 days, I allowed those feelings to come and go without acting on them. I noticed that there was a consequence to sharing in real-time. I wasn’t being very present in the moment. While things were happening around me, I was off thinking about my online posse and what I might wish to share with them.

When I stopped acting on the desire to impulse-share, I become more present to what I was doing in the moment. Instead of being distracted by thoughts of connecting with people at a distance, I did a better job of connecting with the people right in front of me. I felt more immersed in my experiences. That was a subtle change at first, but it feels good.

During the past two years, I’d often feel obligated to share frequent updates with my online “friends”, most of whom I’d never met in person. If I didn’t post an update for a while, some would complain. If I shared something cool, people would thank me for it.

Now that I’ve been rolling back this conditioning, I can see what a dead end it’s been. I allowed social media to condition me to behave a certain way, but it’s not a conscious choice I would have made otherwise. So it’s nice to regain conscious control over this part of my life.

Even after 30 days, the desire to impulse-share is still there, but it’s growing fainter, replaced by a growing desire to “be here now,” fully present in what’s going on in front of me. I still like sharing, but it’s better to do so thoughtfully instead of impulsively.

Friends lose their individuality and become part of a collective.

Facebook compacts so much communication into a single stream, and this can have a depersonalizing effect. As I continued to use the service to interact with people en masse, I gradually began thinking of my online friends as a network, stream, or blob, as opposed to valuing each person as a unique individual.

When I’d post a status update, who was the intended recipient? Which friend was I updating? In truth I wasn’t sharing with anyone in particular. I was simply sharing with the collective.

If I posted something on a friend’s wall, I wasn’t just communicating with that friend. I was communicating with their posse too. If I used the private messaging feature, it was just one message among dozens. Friends were becoming like interchangeable drones.

One thing that surprised me was just how few of my Facebook friends I actually missed when I left the service. It was difficult to think of my old Facebook friends as individuals. They were all just part of the collective whole. When I unplugged from the collective, it wasn’t like I’d lost any individual friends. I can barely remember the names of all the people I used to connect with there. I’d already lost the ability to distinguish Third of Five from Seven of Nine.

Dropping Facebook wasn’t at all like disconnecting from hundreds of individual friends. I didn’t miss anyone in particular because my Facebook experience was like connecting with a collective. I noticed the absence of the collective when I left, but I didn’t miss it per se.

The exception is that if I knew specific Facebook friends from real life, meaning that we’d met in person and had at least one good conversation together, then I could still see them as individuals. But I don’t need Facebook to stay in touch with those people anyway, so I didn’t feel like I was losing any of these connections by dropping Facebook.

I realize this might sound rather strange, but it’s the best I can explain it. My Facebook page was maxed out at 5K friends and was very active. If I’d only had 50-100 friends, then it might not have felt like I was interacting with a collective.

The feeling that I was interacting with a collective began to feel rather creepy, as you might imagine. I’m glad to be off of Facebook, since I really don’t wish to be assimilated. It’s nice not to feel like there’s an endless stream of other people’s thoughts flowing through my mind all the time. I can hear my own thoughts once again, and they’re a lot more relaxed and coherent.

Facebook creates a false and unsatisfying sense of socializing.

I’m somewhere between an introvert and an extrovert. As a child I was very introverted. In kindergarten I was the kid who played in the sandbox all by himself. I don’t think I was lonely. I just found sand toys more interesting than people.

As I aged, however, I gradually became more extroverted. Partly this was by choice. I pushed myself to develop my social skills and to embrace what I once avoided.

It’s said that you’re an introvert if you recharge your batteries while being alone, and you’re an extrovert if you recharge in the company of others. That metaphor doesn’t seem to work for me though. I prefer balance, usually by taking turns. If I spend a lot of time alone, I feel a strong desire to go out and be social. But after a very social week, I feel the desire to retreat back to my cave and enjoy more solitary time.

Being active on Facebook had the effect of filling my social bucket. But it was essentially a false fill, like drinking salt water instead of fresh water. Instead of providing a real sense of connection that satisfies, it made me think I was out there being social, but I’d still be “hungry” afterwards. Facebook activity could never recharge my batteries in the way that face to face interaction could.

When I dropped Facebook, I began feeling genuinely more social when I’d go out. Even when running errands, I’d notice myself chatting and joking around with people more often. When I was active on Facebook, I wouldn’t do that as much because I had the false sense that I was being social by interacting with my online posse.

Facebook is computer interaction, not human interaction.

The reality of using Facebook is that you’re just typing and viewing insignificant bits of information on a digital device (computer, cell phone, iStuff, etc).

The next time you use such a service, pause for a moment and do a reality check. What are you actually doing? Who’s with you? How is this advancing your life? What if you do this for 20 more years? What do you expect to gain from it?

You can call it social networking, but it’s not really a social experience if you’re actually alone sitting at a computer. Real socialization is face to face.

There’s a tremendous richness to in-person socialization that just doesn’t translate over the Internet, at least not yet.

A ***hug*** isn’t a real hug. A smiley isn’t a real smile. All you’re doing is pushing buttons.

I’ll go so far as to say that Facebook isn’t social networking. It’s anti-social retreating.

If you want to disagree with me about this, you’ll have say it to my face. If you try to tell me off by typing something on a digital device, you’re only proving me right. Evil, I know.

A friend isn’t necessarily a “friend”.

I can be friendly with people from all walks of life, but when it comes to which people are most compatible as my long-term friends, the Facebook pool isn’t a good fit for the kinds of lasting friendships I really wish to cultivate.

The main issue is the age difference. Most of my Facebook friends were in their 20s. I’m sure that’s a big part of the service’s demographic. It’s also a big part of my blog’s readership, and many of my articles are targeted to the needs of that age group. I already have many friends in their 20s, but if I draw too many of my friends from this pool, it comes with a price.

I can relate to what it’s like to be a 20-something these days, so I’m able to be a friend to someone in that age group, but it’s rare that such people are able to be a good friend to me. They simply don’t have the life experience to give the kind of value I gain from a good friendship.

In your 20s it’s common to do a lot of soul-searching and experimenting to figure out what to do with your life. To get the career part of your life going well, you basically have to figure out 4 things: (1) what you can do to earn a good income, (2) what skills and talents you can develop to a high degree, (3) what you enjoy doing, (4) what you can contribute. It takes some effort to figure these out. Then it takes more effort to massage yourself into the area of intersection, such that you can earn a good income doing what you love and what you’re good at, and thereby make a meaningful contribution too. Most of the 20-somethings I know are still struggling to figure this out, so they can’t be of much help to me in working on what lies beyond this.

I like having younger friends. They help me stay young at heart, and they help me keep my thinking from becoming stale. Their needs and concerns provide me with an endless supply of ideas. But I also need older, more experienced friends, especially people in their 40s, 50s, and beyond. I gain so much from their wisdom and knowledge. Having the right balance is key. Otherwise you become socially stagnant, and the sparkle drains from your social life. Instead of appreciating your friends, you start taking them for granted. I noticed I was beginning to fall into this trap last year, so I knew it was time to shuffle the deck and rebalance this part of my life.

The problem with Facebook is that it greatly unbalanced the social part of my life, skewing it in the direction of spending lots of time with people nearly half my age. This dragged my thinking backwards in terms of maturity. When I dropped Facebook, my social life began to rebalance itself automatically. This is causing other positive ripples as well. Many problems are easier to solve when you approach them with a 40-something’s discipline or a 50-something’s patience as opposed to a 20-something’s youthful energy.

Ask yourself what your life would be like if 80-90% of your social interactions were with people roughly half your age. Can you see how that might unbalance your social life?

For many years this has been a challenging part of my life to balance. It took a while to recognize and accept that my online “friends” and my best in-person friends come from different pools and move in different circles.

Most of my Facebook “friends” wouldn’t have been very compatible as in-person friends. We wouldn’t have had enough in common to develop a particularly deep friendship, and the interactions would have been too unbalanced. So it seems odd to refer to them as friends in the same way I’d refer to my in-person friends.

I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t just fill up my social bucket with an endless supply of 20-something friends and expect good results, even if they’re very intelligent, growth-oriented, open-hearted 20-somethings. This kind of imbalance happens by default when I leave too many doors and windows open since the bulk of my online readership is in their 20s. If I allow too many of my typical readers to become my friends, my social life becomes unbalanced and stagnant, even as it maintains the illusion of freshness. It took a long time to recognize that this was happening.

In order to rebalance this part of my life, I’ve had to deliberately close some of those accessible avenues, such that I can spend more time connecting with people who can add serious value to my life and help me keep growing (peers, mentors, etc). I like having some 20-something friends, but I can’t have hundreds of them. So that’s one reason Facebook really had to go — using Facebook was a lame attempt on my part to expect that my peers would come from the same pool as my readers.

Facebook is ruled by addicts.

This is probably obvious, but the Facebook “friends” that you’ll interact with most frequently will tend to be those who are the most addicted. They post more status updates and comments because they spend a lot of time on the service. So you end up giving the most attention to those who are the greatest addicts.

In short, you end up spending the most time interacting with the people who are the worst influences — highly unproductive people who don’t value their time. This can have many adverse effects, such as causing you to become more addicted to the service and to feel the urge to post more often just for the sake of posting.

If your strongest connections on Facebook are the most addicted, how is that going to influence you over time? The closer you become with those people, the more you’ll get sucked into spending more time on the service.

After I left Facebook, I asked myself, Should I really be giving so much attention to the greatest social networking addicts?

While even the biggest addicts can be very intelligent, helpful, and growth-oriented, their addiction tends to sap their ambition, causing them to make little forward progress in life. It should come as no surprise that many of these people are financially stagnant. It’s hard to improve your finances when you devote so much time to non-income generating activities each day.

When I dropped Facebook, I also dropped off the radar of some of the biggest social networking addicts. I’m no longer subject to their influence, which was probably stronger than I’d care to admit. Breaking free of this cycle was a wise choice. I should have done it sooner.

Facebook is lazy socialization.

Social networking makes it easy to become socially lazy. With a few clicks, you can delude yourself into thinking you have an active social life.

But is that the real story? Are you enjoying some intelligent face time with these friends? Or are you merely exchanging witty banter? Do you deeply value these friendships? Are you having the social experiences you desire? Or are you just wasting time clicking and typing and telling yourself you’re being social?

What else could you be doing instead of social networking?

You could go dancing or see a show with your boyfriend or girlfriend. No one special in your life? Wonder why… A person with halfway decent social skills can change that in a day. Has the Internet become your social hiding place? Does the thought of going outside and socializing with strangers make you anxious? If so, you can overcome that weakness with practice.

You could have a nice chat with a wealthy mentor about how to improve your finances. No wealthy friends? Think you’re going to meet them on Facebook?

It’s a good idea to pause and take a look at your social results. Has social networking transformed your life for the better? Has it helped bring empowering relationships, valuable contacts, and intelligent mentors into your life? Or does it leave you drifting in a sea of social drifters?

I found that spending more time on Facebook didn’t produce much value for me socially. I did make some interesting contacts now and then, but it wasn’t worth the time spent.

It’s true that in-person networking is more challenging. If your social skills are weak, you can pretend to be a social butterfly online just by throwing a lot of time at it. But you’re still going to be limited in the long run by your ability to connect with people face to face. Make sure you don’t let your social skills atrophy to the point where you end up spending more and more time alone, vainly trying to feed the illusion that you have a real social life.

Be sure to keep challenging yourself socially. If you only do what’s easy, you’ll grow weaker with each passing year.

Facebook is an expensive way to increase visibility.

I know there’s a great deal of hype about the business value of social networking. Much of that hype is circulated by those who are trying to make money from it. Be wary of taking advice about gold from those who make a living selling picks and shovels.

From a business standpoint, one supposed benefit of social networking is that it can raise your visibility. Raising your visibility is great. If you’re more visible (among the right people), you can attract more business. That part is all good.

But not all visibility-raising methods are the same. If you use Facebook to raise your visibility, it comes with a hefty price. As you raise your visibility, you also increase your accessibility.

For example, if you have a Facebook page, then you also have an inbox. At this time Facebook makes it impossible to disable the inbox. People can email you there. People I’d never met would email me on Facebook each day. Why? Because they could. Facebook made it easy for them to do so. They didn’t need my permission. Facebook would even let non-friends email me whenever they felt like it. Maybe that’s a bug, but that’s how it worked from my perspective.

If you have a Facebook page with a wall on it, then people can post comments on your wall. If you have a fan page, someone can “like” your fan page, spam your wall, and then “unlike” your fan page, and it’s impossible to ban them from repeated abuse. You just have to deal with it.

At low numbers, more accessibility isn’t so bad. Maybe you’d like the chance to communicate with more people. That’s all fine.

At higher numbers, the visibility-accessibility linkage becomes untenable. The more visible you are on Facebook, the more people have access to interact with you in some way, whether it’s by sending you private messages, posting messages on your wall, or inviting you to events and groups. Beyond a certain point, this kind of contact becomes impractical to deal with in any meaningful way.

I like that Facebook may have helped to increase my visibility by introducing people to my work who might otherwise never have learned about it. However, the price tag for that gain in visibility is a corresponding increase in accessibility. That price turned out to be way too high for me. I like helping people, but I can’t serve as a personal friend and therapist to thousands of individuals. That isn’t a sustainable way for me to contribute.

When I dropped Facebook, I breathed a major sigh of relief. In a way I’m still sighing 30 days later. It really is a great relief not to be so accessible anymore. I finally feel like I have the space to think about what I desire to contribute of my own accord instead of feeling overwhelmed with an endless flood of requests from others. The visibility gains that Facebook provides just aren’t worth the price. There are much easier and more effective ways to build visibility that don’t yield an accessibility penalty, such as doing interviews.

What About Twitter?

As for my Twitter account, the jury’s still out, but for now I’m still using it.

Twitter doesn’t create the same accessibility problem because by following zero people there, I’m not forced to have an inbox on the service. Even if I did have an inbox, it wouldn’t be bad because people could only send 140-character messages. But I find it best not to have an inbox there at all, so I never need to worry about people expecting me to reply to their direct messages. A few people apparently consider it poor Twitter etiquette to have thousands of followers and not follow anyone back. I don’t lose any sleep over it.

Occasionally I’ll skim through the public messages that people address to me, especially if I posted a question for feedback purposes, but I normally don’t pay much attention to the @stevepavlina replies since they’re mostly re-tweets of my own stuff. So if you tried to get my attention by publicly posting a message to me on Twitter, there’s a good chance I never saw it.

For now I’m okay using Twitter for posting broadcast-style messages because Twitter doesn’t force upon me the scaling headaches that Facebook does. If I double my Twitter followers, the service doesn’t require me to spend any more time there to keep my account tidy.

I nuked my Linkedin account at the same time I left Facebook. Linkedin is supposed to be a business networking service, and I had about 350 contacts there, but I always found that service utterly useless, so it was a no-brainer to dump it.

Try a 30-Day Facebook Fast

If you have any doubts about your own Facebook usage, I highly recommend you to try a 30-day Facebook fast.

It’s easy to do this because Facebook lets you (temporarily or permanently) deactivate your account without deleting your data. So if you decide you want to go back to using it later, you can always log back in again, and everything can be restored with a few clicks, including your wall, photos, etc.

As for the how-to, all you do is login to your Facebook account, and click Account -> Account Settings. Then at the bottom of that page, click “deactivate.” Follow the instructions from there. This won’t delete your data, but it will take your profile offline. You’ll become invisible on the service. To restore it later, just login again and click a similar link to bring it back.

If you really want to stay in touch with certain people from Facebook who don’t already have an alternate means of contacting you, you can send them a private message before you deactivate your account to let them know how to reach you during your hiatus.

I’m a big advocate of testing. If you’re an active Facebook user, and you go 30 days without it, you’ll gain a much clearer understanding of its role in your life. In my case it was obvious within a few days that the benefits I got from using it weren’t worth the effort, but there were other subtleties I didn’t notice until weeks later.

This is your life. It’s up to you to ensure that you’re getting good value from your online activities. Don’t just go through the motions because you’ve been conditioned by some service to behave a certain way.

As for myself, I’m sure it’s obvious that I have no plans to return to Facebook. Resistance is NOT futile.

*** hugs *** 

A 404 error page is a nuisance to visitors of your website. It can be caused by a broken link or mistyped URL.

Not only that, it is embarrassing to a certain extent so we want to avoid it as much as possible.

It is very difficult for us to know when the error happens and which page causes it.

Recently I found a solution by accident.

While I was doing migration from Joomla to WordPress for one of my blogs, I found a WordPress plugin that helps me to detect any 404 errors.

My initial intention was to find out which old links in Joomla that were broken and redirect them to new WordPress links.

I thought I would stop using this plugin once the migration was completed. Until now, I am still using it – just for the purpose of detecting error pages on my site so that I can fix them whenever possible.

The best part of it is it is done automatically and an email is sent to me if an error is detected.

Here is the WordPress Plugin You Need to Detect 404 Error Pages

You can detect bad pages in your WordPress blog by installing a plugin called Useful 404’s.

Follow the instructions on the page to install.

Once you install and activate the plugin, you have to put this piece of code (<?php useful404s(); ?>) in your theme’s 404 page by going to WordPress Dashboard: Appearance > Editor > 404 Template. Put the code right after the title or heading.

Next, in the plugin’s settings page, you can activate or deactivate email notifications, and customize the email messages that you are going to receive.

Now you are set to go.

Whenever an error is detected, an email will be sent to you. Then it is your job to fix anything that is causing the error.

This plugin can really help you save lots of time and headache. Go try it. You will be pleased with the new found traffic that would otherwise be lost.

I just bought a new mobile phone for myself. No, this is not a reward but my old phone is not working well. The problem is the other party can’t hear me at all or the line is noisy.

If not due to the problems, I would have not bought this new one. Come to think about it, I only buy handphones when I have no choice (in this case they are not working.)

It took me a while to decide to go for a new one instead of getting it fixed. I always think thoroughly before I buy anything. If I don’t have a compelling reason to buy, I’ll not buy.

I’d like to keep things very simple. I am not where I want to be yet but I am still learning to be a minimalist.

Back to my story.

I did not buy the phone the moment I saw it. I don’t need a fancy phone but one that serves basic functions of a mobile.

I surveyed 7 shops to get the best price. It seems a lot of work. But let me tell you this. I save a whopping of $90 for exactly the same phone.

I bought a Nokia 7230 on September 26. My old phone is a 3-year old Nokia which I can’t remember the model.

It is not that I can’t afford the phone but why should you pay more if you can get it for less?

As Benjamin Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

You should make getting the best price as your shopping motto. I am not the only one who is a “proponent” of this concept.

Many millionaires concur with me. One of them is Marc Fisher. He says this in his light reading book called The Lazy Millionaire. He even dedicates a whole chapter on this topic.

He is even more creative than I am. He saved $2800 when he was buying a BMW for his father. $2800 is the monthly salary for many people.

Marc could afford the normal price but getting the lowest price thrills him. He says in the book:

Money you did NOT spend yet is power, freedom in your hand.

Use what you have saved to invest in assets that generate income.

This being said, I am not asking you to become a cheapo or penny pincher. Getting the lowest price and being a penny pincher are two different things altogether. You can still enjoy life while paying for less.

I have a site that run on Joomla for more than 3 years. I wanted to migrate after realizing that I like WordPress better and I find it easier to use.

But one thing held me back.

I have hundreds of pages that have been indexed by search engines, especially Google. I don’t want to put all my efforts into building this site to waste after I migrate to WordPress as the old URLs would have been rendered useless. This would cause frustration not only to searchers but also to me as they would land at my 404 error pages.

I put on hold the migration plan until I found this article – which contains the solution to my biggest worry. He is my star.

I regained my confidence and started planning to convert my Joomla site to WordPress. The rest, as they say, is history.

It is now been about a week since I migrated my Joomla site to WordPress. To be exact, I migrated from Jommla 1.0 to WordPress 3.0.1.

When I was searching for articles about this topic, there were not many talked about the tasks you need to do AFTER the migration. Every one talks about the migration itself, which is quite simple to do.

Since there is lack of such documentation, I would like to record my personal experience on migration from Joomla 1.0 to WordPress. Not only about the migration but also include things you need to do after the migration so that you can still enjoy traffic sent by search engines and linkbacks.

I will do my best to keep this as simple as possible… and here it is:

1. Backup your site. I used a feature provided by my web host to back up the whole site. This is important before you begin your migration. Just in case anything goes wrong, you still have your site running.
2. Migrate all your posts to WordPress. I used a script called Joomla to WordPress Import Wizard that I found on OneStopJoomla.com. Unfortunately I hit a “Query failed” error at Step 3. I took a look at the coding and found out that there was a mismatch of field between Joomla and WordPress table structures. I did some changes to the script and manage to get it work. Instructions on how to use this script can be found on the site.
3. After the import, check and make sure the categories in WordPress are correctly assigned to your articles.
4. Don’t forget your static pages. I just did some copying and pasting.
5. Copy (not Move) the “Export” folder into the root directory of your site. To make it work, you have to change the URL in WordPress Dashboard > Settings > General. Change both the WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL) from http://www.domain.com/export/ to http://www.domain.com/. Again, before you do this, it is better to do a backup of your site.
6. Make sure the home page and inner pages run properly without error. If everything runs smoothly, you can now remove/delete your Joomla files and folders. What I did was to rename all of them. If I need anyone of them, I just rename it to its original name.
7. Make sure the formatting of articles is not out.
8. Set your permalink in WordPress. Do this in Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks
9. Replace Joomla tags such as {mosimage}. You can do a quick SQL search in phpMyAdmin for all the articles that contain string “{mos” by using command “LIKE”. Once you have removed these tags, do the SQL search again to make sure you have completely removed them. I replaced {mosimage} with the corresponding URL of the image.
10. Replace old self-referenced URLs (that is Joomla URLs) with new WordPress URLs in your articles. This is very tedious if you have many URLs in your old Joomla.
11. Install plugins that you require – such as Recent Posts, Popular Posts, etc.
12. Make sure you copy scripts such as Google Analytics, Aweber, etc. to your theme’s header or footer.
13. This is very important if you don’t want to lose your link juice. To make sure your old indexed pages can still be found in search engines, you have to install 3 awesome WordPress plugins: Useful 404’s, Simple 301 Redirects, and Google XML Sitemaps. Without these plugins, I would have still in Joomla. Each plugin serves different purposes.

• Useful 404’s – This is very useful. It detects 404 error pages and immediately sends an email to inform you which page caused the error so that you can fix it. It is an on-going process as I still do this until today. To get it work, you need to modify your theme’s 404 page by including a special command [<?php useful404s(); ?>] as mentioned in the instructions of this plugin.
• Simple 301 Redirects – This is a no-frills plugin. But it serves the function I want. After you get an email from Useful 404’s, you need to redirect the old URL to the corresponding new URL. This is where Simple 301 Redirects comes into place. I tried using Redirection plugin but it caused an error in my site. So I stay with Simple 301 Redirects.
• Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin helps you generate a Google-compliant sitemap for your site. This expedites the process of indexing your new pages in WordPress.

The list above is based on my own experience. It worked for me pretty well.

I agree it is a lot of work. But the good thing is it is a one-time job only. You do this once but reap the benefits many times over. The list can give you a good headstart.

(By the way, the theme I use for my newly migrated website is Genesis Theme Framework by Studio Press. A premium WordPress theme that I highly recommend.)

I am glad I did the migration. I hope this guide will help you to have a problem-free and seamless migration to WordPress.

Malaysia is going to celebrate its National Day in 5 days. And it reminds me of a special person: the late Yasmin Ahmad – an award winning and highly acclaimed filmmaker.

Below are a few TV commercials that I like most.

Everyone of them is equally touching and Yasmin had never forgotten to send her message across in her work to the audience: universal love (especially beyond race) and family values.

Yasmin’s videos are simple and down to earth. No fancy high tech effects. The general public can easily feel connected to the videos.

Hope you enjoy the videos too.

Petronas Chinese New Year: Old Folk’s

A few mothers bragging about how great their children are during the festive season of Chinese New Year. No matter what high-paying job a child holds, nothing beats the time he spends with mother. Spoken in authentic Penang Hokkien dialect with English subtitle.

Funeral

A TV commercial initiated by the Singapore Government. We shouldn’t be too serious but to accept imperfections in human as something beautiful… as nobody is perfect. Painfully funny. In English with Mandarin subtitle.

Family

This is my favorite video of the three. Also an initiative by the Singapore Government. It is about a father’s undying love for daughter. Narrated in English.

I created a niche blog in September last year. After posting a few pages of content, I waited for the site to be indexed by search engines.

Upon checking the blog days or weeks later, I found something unusual. Something I had never seen in my other blogs.

When I checked in Google (using site:domain.com), there was only one entry. Even that, the listing was a bit awkward and it didn’t look like a normal search result. When I used the same parameter on Yahoo, there were no results.

I thought I might give it some time to get back to normal.

Not until recently, after busy with my other projects, I decided to do something about this weird phenomenon. My initial plan was to move the entire blog to a new domain – thinking the existing domain caused the problem (Google blacklisted it?!).

In the midst of moving the site, I predicted the same problem would have had happened after the move.

Somehow something triggered me to take a look at the source code (Ctrl+U). And this action brought this problem to light. I managed to find out the main culprit for this. It was due to the following code:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

I knew why this happened, now I had to find out what caused this. I thought it was something to do with my settings in my WordPress theme. After searching for it high and low, my efforts remained fruitless.

Leaving me with no choice, I had to go through every setting in WordPress to find out the cause, one at a time – starting with General Settings.

When I reached Privacy Settings, I knew something was wrong. It was set to the second choice which is I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.

I thought to myself, “Damn, who and when the setting was done?”

I really don’t know who did that. It could be me but I totally forget about that. Just because of this one radio button, my blog was under the radar (as far as search engines were concerned) for 8 months. Imagine the amount of sales I could have made if not because of this careless setting.

I quickly changed the setting to the first: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers

Thank god. Now everything is back to normal.  All my previous SEO efforts were wasted. I have to start all over again.

Don’t make the same mistake as I did. And don’t simply change the settings in WordPress for no reason. If you are not sure what you are doing, just accept the standard settings. Otherwise, you efforts will be penalized… just like what happened to me.

Note: This post is applicable only to Thesis 1.7, not 1.5.1. When I was using Thesis 1.5.1, there was no such feature.

If you are not using Thesis theme (I ask you to seriously consider using it) for your blog, I will let you know of a plugin which does exactly this in a minute.

But first let’s talk about how to create a 301 redirect in Thesis 1.7.

301 Redirect is the best way to redirect any web page to another link (it could be internal or external link) because it is SEO friendly and you won’t be penalized by search engines for doing this. I usually use this for cloaking my ugly, long, and non-memorable affiliate links.

Follow these steps to create a 301 redirect page for Thesis users:

• Login to WordPress Dashboard.
• Create a new page: Pages > Add New (or Posts > Add New). I prefer creating new pages.
• Enter the title of the page. This will become the URL of this new page. Make sure this URL is what you want by checking the Permalink. To change/rename, click Edit and then Save.
• Goto field 301 Redirect for this Page’s URL (scroll down a bit), enter URL of the destination page – the page you want this new page to redirect to. In this case, it can be your affiliate link, for example.
  Click Publish.

Easy peasy!

Now you can test it by entering the URL of the new page in the browser, and if it works properly, it will send you to the destination page – the URL you just entered in 301 Redirect for this Page’s URL field.

I used to create PHP files just to cloak my links. Then I used FTP software to upload the files to my web server. As you can see, it is a very troublesome process. But with Thesis, you can do this in a flash. No FTP is required.

Video Tutorial

Watch this video if you are STILL not sure how to do it. Hope the tutorial video can help:

For Non-Thesis Users

Here is what I promised you at the beginning of this article.

If you are not using Thesis theme, you can still configure 301 Redirect in WP by using a plugin. Try this: 301 Redirect Plugin for WordPress. I have not tried it myself. But judging from the positive feedback, I believe the plugin works as promised. Why not you give it a try?

I was using Thesis 1.5.1 and I didn’t bother to upgrade it until today – as it was running smoothly before this with no hiccups. Why should I rock the boat?

But somehow, for some reason, I think it is now time for me to use Thesis 1.7 before I am being left out in the dust

Before I talk about the upgrade, let me share with you some new features found in Thesis 1.7 first. Features that I like are:

• You can do SEO optimization for every page and post individually – using the meta tag.
• The new Home Page controls.
• Cleaner and faster code.

Now back to upgrade. I did a Google search and found one nicely done article on upgrading Thesis 1.6 to Thesis 1.7, as well as from Thesis 1.5.x to Thesis 1.7. The latter was what I was looking for.

I just followed the instructions mentioned in the article:

Repeating above information as a first and crucial step: Backup your site’s database and its web files, using whatever tools are provided by your web host, before the upgrade. It is not possible to just ‘click back’ to an earlier version of Thesis after the upgrade to 1.7 without the possibility of losing certain settings. This is why backups are vital. It’s your responsibility as a site owner to know how to create them, and how to restore them.

Using your DIY Themes login info, access the Thesis Theme Download Area page. Click the link that says ‘Download Thesis 1.7 now.’

The file thesis_17.zip should be on your local computer in the area where downloads normally go. Move thesis_17.zip to your desktop (unless it’s there already).

Unzip the thesis_17.zip file to produce a folder named thesis_17.

Open the thesis_17 folder that is on your local computer’s desktop to find inside the folder named custom-sample. Now delete the folder named custom-sample.

Start your FTP client and access your web installation. Navigate through your web installation’s file structure until you can see the thesis_16 folder (which is located inside wp-content/themes). Open the thesis_16 folder to find the custom folder inside.

Download that online custom folder (from your 1.6 installation) to your local computer, and place it into the thesis_1.7 folder (replacing the custom-sample folder that you deleted earlier).

Use your FTP client to upload your thesis_1.7 folder into wp-content/themes on your server. (You will put the folder alongside your existing thesis_16 folder, the default theme folder, and the classic theme folder.)

Follow the by-now familiar steps of opening the thesis_1.7 folder and then the custom folder, setting permissions for layout.css (to 666) and the cache folder (to 775). Log into WordPress and go to Appearances > Themes, then activate Thesis 1.7. (If you click ‘Preview’ first, you may see a Thesis site with no content. This is normal for Thesis in preview mode; pay it no mind and proceed to activate.)

As for upgrading from 1.5.x to 1.7:

So far as upgrading is concerned, the difference between 1.5.x and later editions of Thesis is that the later editions have layout.css and the rotator folder inside the custom folder. That’s it.

What this means for the upgrade process detailed above is that in Step 6, when you place your 1.5.x custom folder into the thesis_17 folder on your local computer, you must make sure to put your layout.css and the rotator folder inside of that custom folder. Apart from that extra half-a-step (call it Step 6.5, if you like), the upgrade process for 1.5.x –> 1.7 is the same as for 1.6 –> 1.7.

When I did a preview of 1.7 in WordPress Dashboard, I noticed the design was not as exactly as the old design. But I activated 1.7 anyway. When I checked out the live site (with 1.7 as the theme), it looked just fine. Phew!

The whole upgrade process was done in less than 20 minutes (including copying and checking).

Cool.

More often than not, by default, WordPress blogs always display the latest posts on the home page. If your blog is located at the root and let’s say your domain name is domain.com. You will see the latest posts at domain.com.

Sometimes, we don’t want this. We want to display a static page as the front page. In other words, the content at the root directory (hence domain.com in our example) is always showing the same thing. It won’t change even though we have just posted a new entry.

[One of the examples of such sites is my PLR Articles site. I don’t want the home page to display the latest offerings of my PLR article packs. But instead the home page acts more like a mini sales letter.]

How do we set a page as our home page in WordPress? It is easy and it doesn’t need complicated coding.

Just follow the steps below:

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard
   
2. Goto Settings > Reading panel
3. At Front page displays, select A static page and select the page you want to have as Home page from the drop down menu
4. Set Blog pages show at most to 1
5. Click Save Changes

Voila. That is it!