The 42nd Estate

Don’t Panic! The 42nd Estate is dissolving

Adam Pieniazek — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 11:45:55 +0000

After eight years of being a one stop web shop, we’ve decided to dissolve The 42nd Estate and are shutting down on December 31, 2016.

We did not start The 42nd Estate with the intent to end up here but everyone we’ve worked with through the past eight years has made the journey itself worthwhile and more meaningful than the final destination. Thank you so very much for your support.

The words of the author who inspired our name, Douglas Adams, are much more eloquent than we can be in this moment:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish!”,

Adam, Josh, Eddie, John & Justin | The 42nd Estate

How To: Migrate Thesis SEO values to Hybrid SEO values

Adam Pieniazek — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:52:01 +0000

Having recently moved my personal blog from the Thesis theme to the Hybrid theme, I had to also migrate over a bunch of SEO values from the Thesis data set to the Hybrid set. It all went rather smoothly and only took a few minutes. Here’s how to move your Thesis post meta values over to Hybrid.

Since these steps are similar to moving All in One SEO values to Thesis SEO values, please refer back to that post for detailed instructions on backing up your database and accessing the database.

Backup your database

Before making any huge changes to your database, you should always back it up first.

Access MySQL

There are a multitude of ways to access MySQL, the two most common being phpMyAdmin and the good ol’ command line. Whichever way you choose, you’ll need to get to your database and run a SQL query.

Running the SQL Query

If we’ve lost you up to this point, please do refer back to our super detailed post on changing database values. Once you get to the section titled ‘Copy, Paste, Go!’, come back here and grab the below query code.

Otherwise, if you’ve been following along simply grab the below code and run it.

insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, 'Title', meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in ('thesis_title');

insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, 'Description', meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in ('thesis_description');

insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, 'Keywords', meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in ('thesis_keywords');

insert wp_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id, 'Thumbnail', meta_value
from wp_postmeta where meta_key in ('thesis_post_image');

Line by line, this code will insert into each posts meta values a Title, Description, Keywords, and thumbnail URL, using your values from Thesis.

After each set, you should see a message noting how many records were changed:

Query OK, 66 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Records: 66 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0

Addendum: Deleting Thesis database values

After migrating over your meta values to Hybrid, there’s no need to keep the old Thesis meta values cluttering up your database. After checking to make sure the values transferred over correctly, run this command to wipe the database clean:

delete from wp_postmeta where meta_key = 'thesis_title';
delete from wp_postmeta where meta_key = 'thesis_description';
delete from wp_postmeta where meta_key = 'thesis_keywords';
delete from wp_postmeta where meta_key = 'thesis_post_image';

WordPress 2.9 Timezone and Scheduled Posts Missed Fixes

Adam Pieniazek — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:41:33 +0000

On sites running WordPress 2.9, we’ve noticed a small bug appear on a few installations. After the upgrade it appears the timezone settings get misconfigured AND scheduled posts don’t publish on time. If the timezone was manually set (e.g. using UTC +/-), after the upgrade it would reset to a value one lower/higher and on certain server configurations scheduled posts simply wouldn’t publish.

There were a few other bugs, such as Josh Gans’ personal pet peeve, square buttons in the administration panels. The beta for WordPress 2.9.1 is already out but if you can’t wait a day or two, keep reading for fixes to the timezone and scheduled posts bugs.

Timezone Fix

In this blog we’re in the UTC -5 timezone [Eastern Standard Time], but after the upgrade the timezone was listed as UTC -4, throwing off the local time by one hour.

The fix for the timezone is easy, go into Settings –> General –> Timezone and choose a city that’s in the same timezone as you rather than using a manual offset. Yes Bostonians, that means you’ll have to swallow a small bit of pride and choose New York as your timezone.

On some WP 2.9 installs, this quick fix took care of scheduled posts not publishing. On others, we had to take a few extra steps.

Scheduled Posts Missed Fix

Scheduled posts are a great feature of WordPress, allowing you to write articles in advance and set them to publish automatically. Unfortunately, in WordPress 2.9 a small change in the cron code (cron is the process which publishes your posts for you, it’s a part of your Unix based server, not WordPress) causes scheduled posts to fail on some setups.

Important Note: If you’re hosted by The 42nd Estate, you should not experience this bug. If you do, please let us know!

The above timezone fix may also fix your scheduled posts error (it did on this install of wordpress), but if you’re on a very slow shared server or missing certain functions cron.php requires, it may not. If you’re scheduled posts are still not working after re-adjusting the timezones you’ll have to make a minor tweak to a core WordPress file to get scheduled posts working.

In your wp-includes folder, open up cron.php. On line 229 (or around there), you’ll see the below line:

$cron_url = get_option( 'siteurl' ) . '/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron';
        wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 0.01, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );

Change it to:

$cron_url = get_option( 'siteurl' ) . '/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron';
        wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 5, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );

Basically, we changed the timeout setting to a larger number. From reading through some of the Trac tickets out there, the cause may be due to a slow server, improperly configured server, or a bug in Curl. You can change the 5 to anything above 1, it seems some servers would round .01 down to zero, in effect causing an infinite loop that never got resolved.

WordPress 2.9.1

The awesome WordPress team is already hard at work cranking out version 2.9.1 that’ll fix these issues and a few other errors. If you have a few minutes please download and install the 2.9.1 beta to help the WordPress team debug the latest release and confirm that any issues from 2.9 are resolved.

Where to Find Batch Plugin Update in WordPress 2.9

Adam Pieniazek — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:41:53 +0000

WordPress 2.9 was released today and features a ton of additions. Amongst the new features and fixes:

Batch Plugin updates (a-w-e-s-o-m-e)
Built-in Image Editor
oEmbed support
Trash can (awesome – prevent accidents)
Post Thumbnails (awesome)
Sidebar Descriptions
Better Custom Post Type API integration

and a bunch more features.

One feature that I struggled using was the Batch Plugin Updater. Not because it’s hard to use (it’s quite the opposite), but because I couldn’t find it! Turns out the batch plugin updater is tucked in under Tools –> Upgrade.

Personally, I feel a more intuitive spot would be right on the plugins page, perhaps in the Updates Available tab or as a bulk option in the existing bulk options drop down menu, but that’s a minor quibble with an awesome feature that’ll save time for everyone using WordPress 2.9.

Spotlight: The Lost Jacket

Adam Pieniazek — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:02:35 +0000

Stuart Foster from The Lost Jacket approached us to simplify his existing site and transform its look from a blog into an agency site. We were very happy to do so as we’re big fans of the content on The Lost Jacket. Stuart had a great vision for the site, which we took and expanded upon to create a clean, simplified layout that promotes the services of The Lost Jacket while also giving his content a clean and easy to read feel that is a hallmark of the Thesis theme.

A New Homepage Layout

The first thing we did was to restructure The Lost Jacket’s homepage. Stuart wanted a slider effect so we integrated a jquery slider that lists The Lost Jacket’s services, the latest blog post, about the agency, a contact form and social media presence.

Stuart also wanted a focus on converting visitors into RSS subscribers. To help with the cause the homepage lists several options on how to subscribe to the blog via RSS, email and Google Reader. It also lists the current number of subscribers to give social proof that The Lost Jacket’s content really is top-notch.

A New Blog Layout

Previously, The Lost Jacket featured a three column layout, where the content resided to the left, with two columns in the right sidebar. We encouraged TLJ to drop the sidebars to allow for bigger, easier to read content. When we showed a mockup of the idea, The Lost Jacket loved it and told us to roll with it.

To help maintain some of the features from the sidebar, we added a fat footer to the bottom of the site that lists latest posts, latest comments, and latest Posterous posts. There’s also a few links to main pages such as contact, about, and the archives, with the biggest categories (Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, and Social Media) featured again, with unique introductions to each archive.

The Result

We think the end site came out really well. Stuart’s initial vision and willingness to hand over the reins to us while still keeping an open communication line in place allowed for new ideas to flourish up and become integrated into the site. It was a great process and we feel it helped make the end product great as a result.

Go check out The Lost Jacket’s social media, PR, and marketing services. Let us know what you think of the new design, we hope you enjoy it!

A special thank you to Miss Gordon for lending her color & typography expertise to really make the new look sing.

Emergent Group at Boston Young Entrepreneurs

Adam Pieniazek — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:40:57 +0000

We’re big fans of the City of Boston run group Boston Young Entreprenuers, having received excellent advice and met tons of awesome people via BYE. The featured company for November’s meeting has been announced and it’s Emergent Energy Group.

Emergent is all about finding the best alternative energy sources for landowners, developers, businesses, municipalities and academic institutions. They began as a wind power consulting firm and have since expanded to solar energy and other sustainable resources. Emergent was recently named one of the Top 25 Young Entreprenuers of 2009 by Business Week.

They’re based in Boston and are led by four individuals. November’s BYE meeting will be held at WorkBar, a great little place that combines fun with work.

Here are a few more details on the Emergent’s BYE meeting:

Date: Wednesday, November 11th
Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: WorkBar, 129 South Street, Boston
RSVP: Devin.Cole.BRA@CityofBoston.gov or on Facebook

Hope to see you at WorkBar on the 11th!

Five Free Tools to Check if Your Site is Up

Adam Pieniazek — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:32:51 +0000

So, you’ve designed and developed a great site that visitors find extremely useful and that search engines love to crawl. You no have no worries, right?

Wrong!

A great site that is search engine friendly and more importantly useful to your visitors serves no purpose if the server struggles and doesn’t keep the site up consistently and reliably. Monitoring your sites for uptime is a crucial aspect of running a successful web-site. If you’re not already keeping track of your site’s uptime, here’s five free tools to check if your site is up and running.

Down for everyone or just me?

You just tried accessing your web-site and it’s not loading. Uh-oh, time to panic? Not quite. The first thing you should check if your site is not loading on your computer is if it’s actually down or if it’s an issue with your Internet Service Provider.

Down for everyone or just me? is a great single-purpose web-site that will check any site on the web and report back if it’s actually down or if it’s just an issue with your internet connection.

Pingdom

While finding out if your site is down for just you or everyone is a great tool, it’s unreasonable to constantly refresh your site and then go and check if it’s really down. Site monitoring tools allow you to set it and forget.

Pingdom is such a tool, where you can point it towards your site(s) or server(s) and if the site goes down you’ll receive an e-mail, text message, or even a tweet or DM that Pingdom had trouble accessing your site. Pingdom can be set to check your site once a minute and it also has tons of graphs that show uptime and load time historically for your site(s).

You can sign up for a free account that will track one site or one server and send up to 20 SMS alerts.

Are My Sites Up?

What if you have more than one site but can’t afford a premium Pingdom account? Well, Are My Sites Up? is a great monitoring service that is free and allows you to track up to five sites with 25 daily checks. Are My Sites Up also offers a premium service that allows for more sites and more checks. You can receive alerts via RSS, text message, Twitter, e-mail or via a nifty iPhone application.

mon.itor.us

Similar to Pingdom, mon.itor.us will track your site’s uptime and offers a plethora of graphs to show site performance over time. The service is completely free and you can receive alerts that your site is down via e-mail, instant message, RSS or SMS.

Binary Canary

Last but not least, Binary Canary has a free monitoring account that allows you to watch up to 5 sites at a 15 minute frequency. If the site goes down you can be alerted via e-mail or SMS by e-mail. You can also purchase SMS and phone credits to receive alerts that way.

Ensuring your site stays up is an important aspect of running a successful web-site. With these five free tools, you have no excuse to not monitor your site’s uptime and load time performance. Have you got a favorite free monitoring tool you use to ensure your site is up? Let us know in the comments below.

SEO Presentation from City of Boston Marketing Workshops

Adam Pieniazek — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:45:18 +0000

So far, the Marketing workshops organized by the BRA and the City of Boston have been a great success. The crowd yesterday was awesome, involved and asked lots of questions. If you were at either of the events this week and have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail.

Below are the slides from my SEO presentation at the Marketing workshops organized by the City of Boston. I’m planning on recording audio to go along with the slides this weekend and will update this post when it’s up. There’s two options below for viewing the slides, the first is a Google Doc, the second is a Slideshare doc.

And if you enjoyed the presentation, please subscribe to our blog, fan us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter!

Google Doc

Slideshare

SEO Presentation – The 42nd Estate – BRA – City of Boston

View more presentations from The 42nd Estate.

Justin Wright Survives Self-Employement

Adam Pieniazek — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:15:59 +0000

Member of The 42nd Estate, Justin Wright, today celebrates one year of self-employement. Head over to his blog and join in the celebration. He uses the occasion to drop ten self employment lessons he’s learned over the past twelve months that’ll come in handy whether you’re just starting out on your own or have been at it for a while.

Here’s two of my favorite lessons from Justin:

5. Money Isn’t Everything

However, working for myself quickly made me realize how unimportant money is. Yes we need it to survive, but that’s it. Other than food/water, clothes, and a place to sleep, we really don’t NEED much else. Instead, we WANT everything we see on TV. The key is to use your money wisely.

Very true. The less you spend, the less you need to earn, the less you need to work and the more time you have to enjoy life.

9. You Will Learn (A Lot)

Of all the things I’ve mentioned so far, nothing has been more enjoyable than learning. It’s absolutely amazing how many things I have learned over the course of one year. I can easily predict that I’ve learned at least 5 (maybe 10) times as much as I did from high school and college combined. I’ve learned valuable things about business, life, and everything in-between.

100% true. I’ve personally learned a lot more working at The 42nd Estate than I ever did in college or high school. A lot of people struggle with this concept of learning (more) after college, but it can be true. If you’re in a cubicle, you can slide by without learning anything new. With entrepreneurship/freelancing, it must be true or else your skills become irrelevant.

Congratulations Justin and here’s to another year for you and another year for The 42nd Estate!

WordPress 2.8.5 Released & Exploit Scanner Recommended

Adam Pieniazek — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:11:58 +0000

WordPress 2.8.5 has just been released. The main additions are security tweaks, which makes the update a must download. The updates in this release include:

A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.

Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.

Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.

Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

The WordPress crew is also recommending users download the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin to search for any exploits that might be installed on your server. We use the exploit scanner on several of our sites and it’s a good step to take to harden your WordPress installation for security.