I just returned from a week long cruise to the Mediterranean.  We made the 11-hour homeward journey Wednesday, and my body clock has still not adjusted.  We visited a number of places on our trek through the Med: Rome, Pisa, Lucca, Naples, Livorno, Taormina, Sorrento, and Pompeii (Italy), Valletta (Malta) and Dubrovnik (Croatia).  We had a great time, and we had the opportunity to see some amazing sites.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.  Click any picture to be taken to the Picasa Album.

I want to cheat a little bit, and include another video from The Common Craft Show.  I love what Lee has done with these videos - his product is explanation, and he does a great job at it!

Why is social bookmarking important for a church staff?  It’s simple really - the same reason it’s important for anyone.  Social bookmarking’s biggest benefit, in my opinion, is that your bookmarks (or favorites) travel with you everywhere.  Since they’re not tied to a specific computer, you can easily access your important sites wherever you go.

I started using social bookmarking when I wanted to track people.  For instance, I would learn about a missionary’s Web page while I was at work, and I would bookmark it.  When I went home and wanted to look at the site, I would think, “What happened?  I know I bookmarked this.”  Finally, I would always come to the realization that it was on the other computer that I bookmarked the site.  So, in comes del.icio.us to the rescue - now my bookmarks are shared between both computers (and any other computer in the world at the same time).  AWESOME!

I was watching a guy install WordPress a few days ago, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. He downloaded the zip file from WordPress.org, unzipped it, and uploaded all the files to his Web server by FTP. Sure, it works, but why do it that way when you can go SO much quicker? Let’s talk about SSH. While this stuff is pretty technical, once you’ve got a grip on it, you have some real power on your hands.

Prerequisites:

• You’ve got to have a Linux hosting package that allows you access to the shell (SSH). If you don’t have one I recommend the Linux Business Package from 1and1 which includes 3 domains (Disclaimer: I profit from sales generated from that link). By the way, their lower packages are cheaper but do not have shell access.
• You need a client to access the Shell. I suggest PuTTY (it’s free)

How to Install WordPress quickly with SSH:

1. Log-in to the shell with an SSH client, like PuTTY
2. cd (Change Directory) to the directory you want to install WordPress in. If you’re on 1and1, you will be in the root of your public Web site when you log-in. With other providers, you may have to use the command:

       cd public_html

   or something similar. You need to know which directory you are in. Are you in a directory that is accessed by http://example.com or by http://example.com/some_directory? Where you are now is where WordPress will be located.

3. Now you’re ready to rock and roll, simply use the following commands to make it happen.

       wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
       tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
       mv wordpress/* .
       rm -rf wordpress

   So, wget downloads the latest release of WordPress to your server, tar unzips it, move takes it out of the wordpress sub-directory into the current directory and rm removes the empty sub-directory.

4. Now, go to the place you put it on the Web. If you dumped all of those files into the public_html folder of example.com, just head over to http://example.com. If you put them into the folder wordpress, head over to http://example.com/wordpress. The on-screen instructions will lead you from here.

This works for upgrading to new versions as well. When updating, I personally like to remove the wp-content directory before overwriting the files because I don’t want the new files to mess with my plugins or themes.

Use caution with SSH as you are entering commands directly into your Web host’s server. They probably won’t let you run dangerous stuff and mess up their machine, but you could mess up your stuff. For instance, rm -rf * would wipe out everything in the directory you’re in. If you’re in public_html, you’ve just wiped your entire site. Read up before proceeding, but I wanted you to know that there is an easier way to install WordPress and other Web apps.

By the way, if you’re using a host that doesn’t give you shell access, you can sometimes still accomplish this by creating a simple Perl script. I make a Perl script that runs system(); calls if I need to do this. You get to figure that one out on your own.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be teaching our staff how to subscribe to RSS feeds, use Google Reader, and start their own blogs. I love this video from the fine folks at CommonCraft.com about what blogs are and why everyone should have one.

I really believe that each minister in every church should, at a minimum, read blogs from others in similar ministries. However, as I’ve seen with the CITRT folks, it helps the whole when each of us write too. We all have something to offer.

So, ministers and ministerial support staff, I encourage you to start getting involved in social media.

Also, check out Aaron Marshall’s post on RSS feeds and Social Bookmarking. This is a great start for your journey.

I was pleasantly surprised to find chat in Facebook today. They had announced the feature on April 6 on their blog.

This is one of those things that might get me going to Facebook just a little more often. If only it would federate with AIM and Jabber. Will Facebook be that open? I kind of doubt it, but what a cool world that would be to chat with nearly anyone you know.

Still, an awesome service from the social networking giant! I’ve never dreamed of instant communication with this many people - literally, about 70% of the people I know and talk to have a Facebook account.  Viva 2010!  Who knows what the web will look like then.  Check out their blog for the other plans they’re implementing with it.

You might also be interested that you can now import posts on Flickr, del.icio.us, Picasa, and Yelp into your mini feed. Read all about that here.