Writing Tips

writing

In this series of posts I’ve been discussing my opinion on various aspects of writing, including blogging, writing articles and whitepapers, or just writing documentation in your company. If anything more comes to mind I’ll write it and link it from this post.

Here are the posts that made up this series.

I’ll put a link to this post from the main website and from the blog toolbar.

Hope you enjoyed the series.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle : Do you even internet? (broken links again)

Broken-LinkI mentioned in a recent post that Oracle are often guilty of changing URLs, which breaks all the documentation links in your site. Someone replied with this link. I knew I had a lot of clean-up to do, but I expected most of it to be old URLs, like stuff pointing to 8i, 9i etc.

I’ve just been looking and vast swathes of links have been changed in the 12.1 docs. In some cases, articles I wrote a couple of weeks ago are screwed. The reference manual is guilty of this big time!

  • Before: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/refrn10140.htm
  • After: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/GUID-70035A22-E031-4975-A51C-871AE1F2F260.htm#REFRN23823

Check this one out too.

  • Before: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SUTIL/release_changes.htm#BABEJJAA
  • After: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SUTIL/GUID-F4EE2A42-3986-4597-9088-A506173ABABF.htm#GUID-0FC02CF3-D149-4EA9-AE3E-CB869921CF40__BABEJJAA

I’m not even going to make them links, because they will probably change again next week. 🙁

URLs DO NOT CHANGE!

This is really basic internet stuff. If you must change them, you have to put proper redirects in place so people can still get to your content FOREVER!

I’ve written about Oracle doing this before (here and here).

I’m always trying to encourage people to get involved in the community, but how can they possibly write good content if it is riddled with broken links to the docs? Going back to repair old content is soul destroying, so don’t make them do it!

Oracle. Please, please, please learn how to internet!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Check out the MySQL documentation. It is arranged so neatly and you can flick between versions so simply. I know the documentation is much smaller, but something like this must be possible with some planning!

Update: I’ve written something a little more constructive on this subject here.

Writing Tips : Copyright Theft

writing

If you’ve followed my blog you will know people try to steal my articles all the time. It happens to all bloggers, unless they are unpopular or rubbish. You don’t really have to look for it, because your readers will spot it and tell you. 🙂

Some things to remember about this stuff…

All material published on the internet has an implicit copyright, even if there is no explicit copyright notice on the site. This means, unless the copyright owner gives you explicit permission, republishing their content is an act of theft. When you are writing, make sure you are doing the work, not stealing other people’s work.

Google actively downgrades the search rankings of duplicate content. They know who published the content first. By stealing the content you haven’t really done yourself any favours and you’ve broken the law. Way to go!

If you find someone is stealing your content, you have options. All blogging platforms and hosting providers are duty bound to follow up on copyright theft claims. If they ignore it, they can be deemed culpable. You should:

  • Contact the owner of the blog and politely ask them to remove the content.
  • If they don’t do it in a timely manner, issue a DMCA (or geographical equivalent) takedown notice to their hosting company. Hosting companies get really twitchy about them, and tend to react really quickly.

There are movements like Copyleft and Creative Commons, where people actively encourage redistribution, but even then you have to follow the rules. It’s not a golden ticket to do anything you want with the content. The content producer still reserves some rights. Remember, unless explicitly stated differently, the default stance is the material on the internet is copyright, not copyleft!

Be careful about RSS feeds. Some people consider an RSS feed as giving people the right to republish your content. That is exactly what RSS aggregators do. I would suggest you limit your RSS content to excerpts. In WordPress that would be “Settings > Reading”, then pick the “Excerpt” option. That way you give people a taste of the content, without showing them everything.

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…

Writing Tips : Can I get paid to write?

writing

I’ll prefix this post with a warning. I’ve never done any paid blogging myself, so this is based on emails I’ve received from people requesting me to write for them and from comments I’ve heard from others. With that in mind…

Apart from having adverts on your blog or selling books, there are other ways to earn money from writing. You will have to decide if they suit you.

Paid Articles. Some websites, blogs and magazines pay for articles. I’m not sure what the going rate is these days, but I seem to remember a couple of well known sites suggesting I could earn up to $1500 USD per article. I’m not sure if that was bullshit or not because I didn’t pursue it. I guess this can have a number of benefits in addition to the cash. If the website or publication is prestigious, it could help raise your profile and the profile of your blog, but I’m guessing they are only asking people who already have a good profile anyway. 🙂 Getting a regular column in a magazine could be a nice little earner if you like doing it. It’s never really appealed to me. I like writing a certain style of article. I don’t think that style translates well to what most publishers are looking for. Added to that, I like to hit the “Publish” button when I’m happy with something, not wait for other people to edit it beyond all recognition. It’s the control freak in me. 🙂

Ghost Writing. Some companies want a professional blog that is regularly updated with content, but don’t have the time or skills to really accomplish that. Those companies make a point of hiring ghost writers to do the work for them. I guess I’m a little naive, but I was blissfully unaware of this until recently when a colleague mentioned his friend was a professional blogger. I asked what he blogged about and the answer was essentially anything. He has his own, “how to make money from blogging”, blog 🙂 and ghost writes for other people. I guess this is just like being a journalist or doing the paid articles thing, except that your name is not associated with the work, so it’s not going to do anything for your profile, but if it pays the bills, do you care?

Infomercials. Some people get paid to write about products or services on their own blogs. I don’t really have a problem with this provided you make it abundantly clear that the post is an informercial. I’m not sure about the legalities in other regions, but in Europe you are breaking the law if you don’t make this clear. From a moral perspective, I do have a problem with it if you don’t actually believe what you are saying. I guess each person has to make this choice for themselves. I’ve been a vegetarian for about 30 years, but next week I’m starting a series of posts sponsored by Wallmart about my favourite ways to cook steak… 🙂

I’ve been asked to write infomercial type posts a number of times, sometimes for products I really believe in, but I’ve always said no. I’m not motivated by money, so it’s not necessary for me to go down that road. The only advice I would give is to be careful you limit the amount of this type of content. If people start to believe you are just an opinion for hire, you may start losing the respect of your readers.

If you are blogging as a potential money earner, then this stuff may be of interest to you. Just be careful you don’t compromise yourself!

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…

Writing Tips : How can I make money?

writing

You’ve started a blog. This time next year you’re going to be a millionaire!

If you are interested in making money from a website you can. There are a number of advertising options, with the most popular for the small publishers being Google Adsense. Having said that, you’re going to get a rude awakening when you start earning 20 cents a day.

Advertisers care about reach, so advertising is a numbers game. If you want to make big money, you have to get big hit rates. How big is big? One of my friends works in advertising and for direct advertising they don’t consider sites with less than 500,000 hits per month, but even at 1,000,000 hits per month they still consider it a small site. If you happen across a really niche concept, an advertiser may *need* your small number of hits, but for most blogs, unless you are getting massive numbers of hits, you’re not going to retire on your advertising income.

Another big factor is the subject area. On an internet scale, Oracle is a niche subject. If you want to make money, you probably need to write about a more popular subject. The most heavily subscribed subject on YouTube is Minecraft. Gaming channels kick ass for hits and money making. Ask PewDiePie.

So I’m saying don’t write an Oracle blog right? Wrong! What I’m saying is money shouldn’t be your sole motivation for writing an Oracle blog. If it is, you will fail and stop. Be motivated by something more important than money. If it goes well, then some money may follow, but you are probably not going to be the next J. K. Rowling. 🙂

I’ve got another more specific post in the series about getting paid for writing.

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…

Writing Tips : A URL is for life, not just for Christmas!

writing

I’m currently doing yet another pass through my whole website correcting broken external links. This is nothing to do with my bad management. This is to do with people changing their URLs and not putting the correct redirects in place. I’ve just done a scan of my website and there are over 800 broken links to Oracle documentation!

There seem to be several ways people deal with URL changes on their website.

  • They do nothing and quite happily let broken links fail and get picked up by their 404 error page.
  • They put in a generic redirect page that takes you to the top of the website, not the original content the link pointed to.
  • They put in a correct redirect, but only for a limited period, after which, the URL fails and you get the 404 page.
  • They put in place a proper redirect and it stays there forever, so all previous URLs for the content continue to work and direct to the correct content.

In my opinion, the only acceptable option is the last one. A URL is for life, not just for Christmas. A variant of this slogan from my childhood. 🙂

From your perspective, broken links (internal and external) are bad for your website. It’s annoying for your readers and make your site appear poorly maintained. Broken links are one of the factors search engines use to judge your website, so it is in your interest to keep things ship-shape.

Being an Oracle blogger can prove difficult at times as Oracle have this annoying habit of changing their URLs a lot and not putting the correct redirects in place.

Don’t add to this problem. Once you start writing, try to keep all the URLs alive forever. If you move your blog to a different service, leave the old one there and put links to the new location. If you self-host, life is easier as you can do redirects using “.htaccess” or directly in your “httpd.conf” file.

You can identify broken links in your site using a link scanner. I’m currently using SiteCrawl.net, which seems to do the job OK. Once you’ve identified the broken links, you can start the arduous task of correcting them. This involves finding the new home of the content and correcting your link to it. It’s not fun, but it has to be done. Once you see how boring and annoying it is, you will appreciate how important it is that you don’t piss off other people by not maintaining your own URLs.

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…

APEX 5.0 Rollout

apexLast month there was a frenzy of activity when APEX 5.0 was released. I had been having a dabble with the Early Adopter for a while, but I felt the need to do a local install.

The only slight issue I had was with static files and that was down to me not RTFMing properly. 🙂 Patrick Wolf wrote about this issue recently here.

Having not had any problems while I was playing with APEX 5.0, I started the task of upgrading all the installations at work. We don’t do any major development, just basic CRUD screens and interactive reports, so it wasn’t too high profile a task. Anyway, the upgrades went smoothly and everything is running on APEX 5.0 now. Happy days! 🙂

Of course, if you are doing some complicated stuff that is pivotal to your business, you probably need to be a bit more meticulous about your planning and testing than I was, but it’s pretty good news that of the 20+ installations, none had any upgrade problems. 🙂

I’ve played around with ORDS 3.0 before the GA release.

We currently use the Oracle HTTP Server to front our stuff for historic reasons. I guess the next move will be to implement ORDS, but I’m not sure when that will happen…

Cheers

Tim…

 

Writing Tips : How do I publicise my writing?

writing

This is quite a touchy subject for me and I’m maybe not the best person to ask.

On the one hand, I feel you should grow an audience in an organic manner. If your content is good, they will find you.

On the other hand, I’ve been doing this for so long it is relatively easy for me to get heard. If I was starting today and producing the same type of content, would you have even heard about me or would I be lost in the noise of a billion bloggers?

Here are some things I would suggest:

  • Make the title relevant. People will see it in their RSS feed or on social media and they will make a decision about whether to read it based on only that. Catchy is good, but relevant is more important!
  • Find out the blog aggregators that are available for your subject matter and submit your RSS feed to them.
  • Make sure links to your RSS feeds are visible and working. RSS is not anywhere near as popular as it was, but every little helps.
  • When you write something new, post a link to it on social media. You will often have different followers on different platforms, so don’t worry about posting the same link on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn etc. If someone decides to follow you on all networks, then it’s their fault if they feel spammed. 🙂
  • Put some form of share buttons on your blog. Companies like ShareThis and AddThis make it really easy. Let fans of your work publicise it for you.
  • Ignore Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies. The search engines change their indexing criteria constantly. What SEO companies advise today will be detrimental to your search placing tomorrow. I’ve been doing this for 20+ years. Believe me, SEO is a scam! Write good content and people will find you!

Above all, be patient. It takes time and consistency to build an audience. Two blog posts are not going to make you famous, unless you’ve done something really interesting or really naughty! 🙂

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Systems Event 2015

ukougI have a bone to pick with UKOUG. I’m coming from Birmingham and I’m a lazy git, so why the heck am I on in the first slot? 🙂 It was a 04:30 start to the day, for a train journey starting at 05:50. I could have got a later train, but it would have been busier and more importantly, more expensive… After putting the latest of my writing tips posts live and lying in the bath (sorry for the bad mental image) for a while psyching myself up for the day, it was a quick taxi ride to the station, then on to the train. The train was reasonably busy, but I had reserved a seat with a table and power socket, so I was able to use the time to write up a blog post about yesterday’s Oracle Midlands Event #9 and to do some last minute run throughs of my talk.

Since I was up in the first slot I missed the opening greeting to set up. The event was very Exadata-heavy and I was doing a virtualization talk, so I wasn’t really expecting anyone to come, but I had a pretty good crowd, which was nice. Many of the people in the room were already working with virtualization, some as users of the services, others as administrators. I don’t think there would be a lot that was particularly new to this audience, but I’m hoping they found at least something useful in there. After the session, I stood outside the room chatting to one of the guys about the issues he was currently going throught relating to Oracle licenses on VMware. It can be difficult, especially when there seem to be a lot of people out there actively trying to throw a you bum steer. My statement on this  matter is always, only ever deal with Oracle Licensing Management Services directly, not sales people, which working this stuff out and make sure you have everything down on paper before you start!

I only managed to catch the tail end of “Oracle Exadata Meets Elastic Configurations” by Svetoslav Gyurov so I will have to assume it was totally awesome! I love you Sve! 🙂

redstacktechDuring the session changeover, I got to speak to some of the folks on the Red Stack Technology booth. I popped by to say thank you for taking over the sponsorship of the Oracle Midlands events. They were also a sponsor of the UKOUG Systems Event itself, so a double thank you was in order. 🙂

Next up was “Oracle Exadata & Database Memory” by Frits Hoogland. Exadata is “posh-RAC”. Lots of stuff about RAC databases are also common to singe instance Oracle databases. As a result, this sesison was actually relevant to single instance, RAC and Exadata. Frits is one of those deep-dive guys, but the session had enough top-level and deep-dive content to appeal to all tastes. I really enjoyed it.

Next up was Roger MacNicol speaking about “Oracle Big Data SQL”. I had seen a bunch of this information last year at Oracle OpenWorld, but it also included some architectural information that was new to me. I was unaware of the architectural similarities between implementing smart scans in Exadata storage cells and getting Oracle to talk to Hive and HDFS. Very interesting!

I went to see “Migrating To Exadata The Easy Way” by Martin Bach because I wanted to watch him present. I don’t see working on Exadata in my future, so that aspect of the talk was not my focus. As with Frits’ session earlier, most of the content was relevant to Non-Exadata and Non-RAC environments too, so there was something for everyone here. Migration to new hardware and operating systems, no matter what the kit, comes with a similar set of issues and constraints. It also sparked some interesting discussions after the session, which meant I missed Jason Arneil‘s session on “Engineering DBaaS At Large Scale”. 🙁 Hopefully I’ll get to see that at UKOUG Tech15?

There was a panel session at end the day. It is fatal to ask me to get involved in these things as I have an opinion on everything and find it impossible to keep my gob shut! I did warn them! 🙂

I spent much of the social event talking to @DBASushi about Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. I made some comments about Cloud Control in the panel session, which he wanted me to clarify. I’ve said before, I think all organisations should use Cloud Control, but there are some things about it I find infuriating, totally unintuitive and bloaty. During the discussion it became aparrent that some of my issues are because I need to RTFM a bit, but others are (in my opinion) problems with the user experience (UX) of the product. No offence to anyone involved, but some parts feel beautifully crafted, while other parts feel slapped together.

From there is was a quick goodbye, then off to Euston to catch my train home. Once again, a reserved seat with a table and power socket. Happy days!

Thanks to UKOUG for letting me come out to play, as well as all the attendees, presenters and UKOUG staff I talked to. Also thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for continuing to let me fly the flag.

Cheers

Tim…

Writing Tips : Should I write off-topic posts?

writing

I’m a Jedi master at writing off-topic posts! This blog started life as an Oracle blog, but now I just write reviews of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. 🙂

The simple answer is you should do what you are happy with. I had been writing on my website for 5+ years before I started this blog. When I started the blog, I thought it would be technical. It quickly became apparent that the Oracle content was better suited to my website and the blog became a series of opinions, rants, movie reviews and book reviews. That’s why I changed the tag line to, “Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)”.

I know in the early days that kind-of frustrated a lot of people. I used to receive negative emails and comments about it all the time. That doesn’t happen much these days because most readers seem to have become accustomed to my stance of “Oracle content goes on the website. Bullshit goes on the blog.” I’m sure some people would say bullshit goes on both. 🙂

Blogging platforms allow you to categorise and tag your content. I would suggest you make use of that so if someone is really irritated by off topic posts, they can avoid them.

Speaking for myself, I like to read the off-topic posts written by people I follow. It gives me some insight into the person and makes me feel connected. If I actually meet them in person, I feel almost like I know them already. It’s kind-of freaky! 🙂

If you find yourself consistently writing about a completely different subject, you might want to consider starting up a new blog. I’ve written some MySQL and SQL Server articles and put them on oracle-base.com, but if I ever start doing more of them, I would probably branch them off into a separate blog. It’s not necessary, but would seem a little cleaner to me.

Check out the rest of the series here.

Cheers

Tim…