Last week I had the pleasure of attending the first ever BirdBrain10 unconference in Tel Aviv. Mel Rosenberg, a microbologist by trade, put together a day of interesting people to talk about creativity and invention. There were a lot of inspirational people there, but the person that  I found most inspirational of all was Jeff Pulver. I have been following him on Twitter (@JeffPulver) and often found his tweets inspirational, but I didn’t realize that he actually lives his life the way that he tweets. I find that so cool.

Here are some of my favorite take aways from Jeff’s talk:

• You can’t outsource fun – There are so many things that can be outsourced so that we can truly live our lives. Fun is not one of them. Why would it be? Don’t take fun for granted and make sure that you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Fun is a very important part of life.
• You can’t compete with fun - And why would you try? If there is something that is fun to do or something that is mind numbingly boring, fun will always win.
• People are more creative when they are having fun – When you’re having fun, you let your guard down and open yourself up for new ideas. Being creative is a natural by-product.
• Getting fired can save your life – Jeff was fired from a job in the World Trade Center shortly before the 9-11 disaster. It literally saved his life. Although that is true, I also believe that working at an unsatisfying job is also the recipe for a quick demise. If not physically, than emotionally. We spend most of our waking hours at work. Shouldn’t it be fun and inspiring?
• Experiment with niceness – Jeff practices anonymous acts of kinds all the time. I really believe that doing nice things and not expecting anything in return makes people happy. And when I say people, I’m talking about the giver, not the receiver (although, I’m sure it’s nice to be the receiver as well!) By doing these kind acts, we are able to self actualize ourselves as good and nice people. Trust me, it works.
• Don’t be discouraged by the person next to you if they don’t get it – There are so many people out there that have a lot of great ideas, but are discouraged by people around them who just don’t get it. I know that when I started The Pet Wiki, I really believed in creating a great place for pet lovers to share information, but most of my friends thought that I was daft. I didn’t listen to them, and I’m in the process of creating something great, and having a lot of fun in the process.
• Hire people who don’t have experience; they don’t know what can’t be done – I really like this one. It’s very true. In the past when I hired, I was fortunate to work with a wonderful group of junior programmers who were inventive and enthusiastic. They did not have the trauma of past mistakes and they were able to let their imaginations fly to what could be. Allowing them to follow these ideas freed them to do great things.
• Great thoughts often come in the shower – Did you ever have an a-ha moment when you were in the shower? You’re not alone. Showering relaxes us and lets our minds wander freely. It strips away the distractions of life and lets our creative natures come to life. When Jeff told this in a speech to people at Texas Instruments, one of the executives, seeing the truth in what he said, asked Jeff how long should his people shower. Gotta love it.

I started thinking about writing this post when I was in the shower. Think about how much better it would have been if I were able to write it in there. It was much more interesting – I came up with some very clever stuff. Maybe one day they will make a computer that is waterproof for people like us. I think that I finally figured out a potential use for iPad 2.o.

Creating the perfect team

I am at a very curious part of building my business. I started The Pet Wiki for fun. It was just me and my mom plugging away, creating great content and making a fun site to be on. Things grew nicely, and I left my job to do this full time a few months ago. Well things are still growing nicely, and I’ve started my search for the people who will help me turn my site from good to great.

I am a pretty social person. Although it’s been fun working on something I love and something that I believe in, I really like working with people. Being able to share ideas and bounce suggestions off other people really helps build a better product. I have been fortunate enough to build a great team in the Content Department at Answers.com. Now it’s time to replicate that greatness in The Pet Wiki.

What am I looking for? Most people start by searching for specific abilities that people possess. They look for people that look good on paper. They want prospective employees to have this degree or have that many years of experience or program in a certain language. Although all those things are good, paper credentials can only take you so far.

I’m not your traditional manager. In the past, my favorite question that I asked potential employees was “What is your favorite thing to do?” Some would start by saying that they liked working on interfaces or like writing editorial articles. That’s not the kind of stuff that I was really looking for.

I want to know a person’s passions. Whether it’s rock climbing or writing the perfect function, if your eyes don’t light up when you’re talking to me, you’ve got a lot to do to win me over. Once I know that you are passionate about something, I will find the best way to work with those passions. There are so many people that I’ve met that have forgotten what their passions are.

There are a lot of 9-to-5ers out there that are just looking for a paycheck. I understand that, and I respect what they do. It’s a lot harder for them. I was talking recently to a programmer friend of mine that said that he would get out of high tech if he could. He has no passion for his job and has no idea what he really wants out of work (other than the money). I find that sad.

We live in an amazing time. Most of us no longer have to do grueling  work that we try to forget at the end of the day. We are engaged, or at least have the opportunity to be engaged, in what we do.

So far, I’ve started working with a friend who is very engaged in social media and content. I know that I talk a lot about them and that I have very strong opinions about how they should be used, but working with her has been a real eye-opener. We have been able to collaborate on some great ideas that we should be able to push out, together, in the upcoming weeks.

I have also starting looking for a part-time programmer. I have a couple of leads that look promising. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I can find the right person to fit in my fledgling team.

It’s been a great adventure so far, but now the true adventure begins.

No, this post is not about another get rich scheme. I was recently at a conference where the discussion of making money on Twitter came up. What I got out of it was that there was basically no way to make money directly through social media. At least not short term money. That just ain’t so.

Every month, without fail, my anipals, led by in infamous Romeo the Cat, throws a paw pawty on Twitter. Firstgiving.com helps out by giving a secure way to donate to the causes voted on by animals all over the internet. Every month I’m amazed at the generosity that is shown by people all over the world for different animal causes.

These pawties are always themed. The one that took place this weekend happened to be Olympic themed, but I’ve been to others that have been Las Vegas, Farm and Beach themed. There’s even been a wedding between pets on different continents. There’s always a DJ, and there’s always a bartender (who else is going to server the virtual meowmosas?)

These aren’t just a few fancy hash tags that are thrown up on Twitter that people hope get a bit of attention. There is organization involved with the whole movement. People who sign up to keep the drinks flowing and the music going. There is support day and night – the whole length of the pawty. Gifts are donated and prizes are given for quizzes that need answers. It’s a ton of fun.

The problem with making immediate money on Twitter is not that it can’t be done. It takes some work, but it’s really possible – my anipals have taught me that. The problem is that these amazing (dare I say it) people, are doing it selflessly. They are doing it for a higher purpose. And doesn’t everyone want to be involved with that?

Finding your way

There are two types of people in this world: searcher and navigators. Searchers are the direct people who know what they want, find the search box and type away. Navigators look around and see what other information is out there that might interest them on any given subject. They might not realize what they are looking for. They might just want to go on an expedition. They may just be the type that hates to ask directions.

For the adventurers out there that want to swim through the river of information, it is important to make their path as painless as possible. When it comes to the MediaWiki, there are a few ways to do just that.

You know how there are those cool links at the bottom of the pages in Wikipedia that contain links to similar subjects? Like the page on the Mets’ Daniel Murphy that has links to all the people on the Mets current roster at the bottom of the page. If all that information gets in your way, all you need to do is hide it.

It’s great for Wikipedia, but how do you get it on your own MediaWiki site? There are a couple of things you have to do. One involves template, the other involves modifying MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css.

Let’s start with templates. To create templates, all you need to do is create a page called Template:TemplateName (change TemplateName to whatever you want to call your template). Now that you have the page, set it up to look the way that you want and you are ready to use it. Use standard WikiText or html.

You can even be clever about it and send variables to the templates. Here’s an example:

The origin of this dog breed is {{origin}}

To call the template on any page in your wiki, all you need to do is type {{TemplateName}}. If you set up a way to send parameters, like in our dog breed example, call it by typing {{DogBreed|origin=”United States”}}

That’s a very quick overview of templates. You can do a ton of stuff with them, but I don’t want to get too off the topic of navigation. The idea is to create a template with a lot of links that can be used in a lot of places. In the Daniel Murphy example, the same template used to show all the links to the other players also exists on all the other players pages. One template for 40+ team members. Not bad. Saves a lot of time in typing, and to make a change, you update it in one place and all the pages that use the template will have the change as well.

Templates are cool, but having a lot of links all over the place can get to be a bit much. That’s where the second part of my plan comes in. Notice that the box has a little hide/show link on the right hand side. To make sure that all those links don’t get in the way, it’s nice to be able to store them away. To do that, MediaWiki has added an easy way to modify and add the css and javascript files that run in the background for every page. You don’t need any ftp access (you do need administrator privledges) and can make the modifications directly in your browser. The pages that need to get modified are your MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css

Disclaimer: I didn’t write any of this code – this is stuff that I put together from both MediaWiki and Wikipedia’s sites. I’m repeating it here because I found it a bit hard to find and get working correctly.

Add this to your MediaWikiCommon.css

/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy
   from .de.  Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */
div.NavFrame {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 4px;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    text-align: center;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    font-size: 95%;
}
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {
    border-top-style: none;
    border-top-style: hidden;
}
div.NavPic {
    background-color: #fff;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 2px;
    float: left;
}
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {
    height: 1.6em;
    font-weight: bold;
    background-color: #ccf;
    position: relative;
}
div.NavFrame p,
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {
    font-size: 100%;
}
div.NavEnd {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    line-height: 1px;
    clear: both;
}
a.NavToggle {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    right: 3px;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-size: 90%;
}

Add the following to your MediaWiki:Common.js file:

/** Collapsible tables *********************************************************
 *
 *  Description: Allows tables to be collapsed, showing only the header. See
 *               [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]].
 *  Maintainers: [[User:R. Koot]]
 */

var autoCollapse = 2;
var collapseCaption = "hide";
var expandCaption = "show";

function collapseTable( tableIndex )
{
    var Button = document.getElementById( "collapseButton" + tableIndex );
    var Table = document.getElementById( "collapsibleTable" + tableIndex );

    if ( !Table || !Button ) {
        return false;
    }

    var Rows = Table.rows;

    if ( Button.firstChild.data == collapseCaption ) {
        for ( var i = 1; i < Rows.length; i++ ) {
            Rows[i].style.display = "none";
        }
        Button.firstChild.data = expandCaption;
    } else {
        for ( var i = 1; i < Rows.length; i++ ) {
            Rows[i].style.display = Rows[0].style.display;
        }
        Button.firstChild.data = collapseCaption;
    }
}

function createCollapseButtons()
{
    var tableIndex = 0;
    var NavigationBoxes = new Object();
    var Tables = document.getElementsByTagName( "table" );

    for ( var i = 0; i < Tables.length; i++ ) {
        if ( hasClass( Tables[i], "collapsible" ) ) {

            /* only add button and increment count if there is a header row to work with */
            var HeaderRow = Tables[i].getElementsByTagName( "tr" )[0];
            if (!HeaderRow) continue;
            var Header = HeaderRow.getElementsByTagName( "th" )[0];
            if (!Header) continue;

            NavigationBoxes[ tableIndex ] = Tables[i];
            Tables[i].setAttribute( "id", "collapsibleTable" + tableIndex );

            var Button     = document.createElement( "span" );
            var ButtonLink = document.createElement( "a" );
            var ButtonText = document.createTextNode( collapseCaption );

            Button.className = "collapseButton";  //Styles are declared in Common.css

            ButtonLink.style.color = Header.style.color;
            ButtonLink.setAttribute( "id", "collapseButton" + tableIndex );
            ButtonLink.setAttribute( "href", "javascript:collapseTable(" + tableIndex + ");" );
            ButtonLink.appendChild( ButtonText );

            Button.appendChild( document.createTextNode( "[" ) );
            Button.appendChild( ButtonLink );
            Button.appendChild( document.createTextNode( "]" ) );

            Header.insertBefore( Button, Header.childNodes[0] );
            tableIndex++;
        }
    }

    for ( var i = 0;  i < tableIndex; i++ ) {
        if ( hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], "collapsed" ) || ( tableIndex >= autoCollapse && hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], "autocollapse" ) ) ) {
            collapseTable( i );
        }
        else if ( hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], "innercollapse" ) ) {
            var element = NavigationBoxes[i];
            while (element = element.parentNode) {
                if ( hasClass( element, "outercollapse" ) ) {
                    collapseTable ( i );
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

addOnloadHook( createCollapseButtons );

/** Dynamic Navigation Bars (experimental) *************************************
 *
 *  Description: See [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]].
 *  Maintainers: UNMAINTAINED
 */

// set up the words in your language
var NavigationBarHide = '[' + collapseCaption + ']';
var NavigationBarShow = '[' + expandCaption + ']';

// shows and hides content and picture (if available) of navigation bars
// Parameters:
//     indexNavigationBar: the index of navigation bar to be toggled
function toggleNavigationBar(indexNavigationBar)
{
    var NavToggle = document.getElementById("NavToggle" + indexNavigationBar);
    var NavFrame = document.getElementById("NavFrame" + indexNavigationBar);

    if (!NavFrame || !NavToggle) {
        return false;
    }

    // if shown now
    if (NavToggle.firstChild.data == NavigationBarHide) {
        for (var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild; NavChild != null; NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling) {
            if (hasClass(NavChild, 'NavContent') || hasClass(NavChild, 'NavPic')) {
                NavChild.style.display = 'none';
            }
        }
    NavToggle.firstChild.data = NavigationBarShow;

    // if hidden now
    } else if (NavToggle.firstChild.data == NavigationBarShow) {
        for (var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild; NavChild != null; NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling) {
            if (hasClass(NavChild, 'NavContent') || hasClass(NavChild, 'NavPic')) {
                NavChild.style.display = 'block';
            }
        }
        NavToggle.firstChild.data = NavigationBarHide;
    }
}

// adds show/hide-button to navigation bars
function createNavigationBarToggleButton()
{
    var indexNavigationBar = 0;
    // iterate over all < div >-elements
    var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div");
    for (var i = 0; NavFrame = divs[i]; i++) {
        // if found a navigation bar
        if (hasClass(NavFrame, "NavFrame")) {

            indexNavigationBar++;
            var NavToggle = document.createElement("a");
            NavToggle.className = 'NavToggle';
            NavToggle.setAttribute('id', 'NavToggle' + indexNavigationBar);
            NavToggle.setAttribute('href', 'javascript:toggleNavigationBar(' + indexNavigationBar + ');');

            var isCollapsed = hasClass( NavFrame, "collapsed" );
            /*
             * Check if any children are already hidden.  This loop is here for backwards compatibility:
             * the old way of making NavFrames start out collapsed was to manually add style="display:none"
             * to all the NavPic/NavContent elements.  Since this was bad for accessibility (no way to make
             * the content visible without JavaScript support), the new recommended way is to add the class
             * "collapsed" to the NavFrame itself, just like with collapsible tables.
             */
            for (var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild; NavChild != null && !isCollapsed; NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling) {
                if ( hasClass( NavChild, 'NavPic' ) || hasClass( NavChild, 'NavContent' ) ) {
                    if ( NavChild.style.display == 'none' ) {
                        isCollapsed = true;
                    }
                }
            }
            if (isCollapsed) {
                for (var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild; NavChild != null; NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling) {
                    if ( hasClass( NavChild, 'NavPic' ) || hasClass( NavChild, 'NavContent' ) ) {
                        NavChild.style.display = 'none';
                    }
                }
            }
            var NavToggleText = document.createTextNode(isCollapsed ? NavigationBarShow : NavigationBarHide);
            NavToggle.appendChild(NavToggleText);

            // Find the NavHead and attach the toggle link (Must be this complicated because Moz's firstChild handling is borked)
            for(var j=0; j < NavFrame.childNodes.length; j++) {
                if (hasClass(NavFrame.childNodes[j], "NavHead")) {
                    NavFrame.childNodes[j].appendChild(NavToggle);
                }
            }
            NavFrame.setAttribute('id', 'NavFrame' + indexNavigationBar);
        }
    }
}

addOnloadHook( createNavigationBarToggleButton );

/** Test if an element has a certain class **************************************
 *
 * Description: Uses regular expressions and caching for better performance.
 * Maintainers: [[User:Mike Dillon]], [[User:R. Koot]], [[User:SG]]
 */

var hasClass = (function() {
	var reCache = {};
	return function( element, className ) {
		return (reCache[className] ? reCache[className] : (reCache[className] = new RegExp("(?:\\s|^)" + className + "(?:\\s|$)"))).test(element.className);
	};
})();

To use these to get your fancy hide/show sections, you need to use the following html divs:

<div class=”NavFrame collapsed”>
<div class=”NavHead”>Title of the Box</div>

<div class=”NavContent”>

The html/links that you want to use

</div>
</div>

To see more information on how to use this type of navigation, check out Wikipedia’s explanation.

I happen to use Dynamic List Pages in my navigation sections. That creates a lot of links of pages that are in the same category. To see how it turned out on The Pet Wiki, check out Great Danes. At the bottom of the page you’ll see my handy work.

That gives some nice links that drill down into related areas, but what if I want to get back to the main sections? Don’t worry, MediaWiki has taken care of that too. There’s a nice little page called MediaWiki:Sidebar which lets you easily modify the left side bar of your site. I used it to add links to my main categories: Dogs, Cats, Birds… (you get the idea) so that people will be able to get to the main section that they are looking for. The syntax is pretty simple. For the title of the section, add * and for pages that you want to link to **. Here’s an example from The Pet Wiki:

* navigation
** mainpage|mainpage-description
** Dogs|Dogs
** Cats|Cats
** Birds|Birds
** Rodents|Rodents
** Horses and Ponies|Horses
** Reptiles|Reptiles
** Other Pets|Other Pets
** All Pets|All Pets
** portal-url|portal
** helppage|help
* TOOLBOX

The first part is the page that you want to link to, followed by the title.

There are more ways to add links, but I think that these are the two most effective. Besides providing people with a way to get around your site, adding links has a nice SEO advantage as well. The code provided is totally readable by search engines, and this is a great way to give spiders more access to your pages.

<div xmlns:cc=”http://creativecommons.org/ns#” about=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/geebee2007/3516653918/”>Image: <a rel=”cc:attributionURL” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/geebee2007/”>http://www.flickr.com/photos/geebee2007/</a> / <a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>CC BY 2.0</a></div>

While that’s all fine and good, why would I bring that up in my blog? Because I was expecting totally different user behavior for The Pet Wiki on Superbowl Sunday than I got. Instead of the number of visitors being down for Sunday, it was up. I had incorrectly assumed that people would be too busy getting their game on to pay any attention to their pets. I guess I was wrong.

What surprises me more than just being high traffic for a Sunday was the fact that I didn’t really do all that much to drive it. I’ve been working at creating internal links on pages to make the pages easier to navigate and to make it more friendly for SEO for the last few days – nothing that would have impacted this past Sunday, and spent very little time on Social Media. I’ve spent more time tweeting other people’s pages than my own. While that may build trust in the long run, which leads to brand loyalty, which leads to traffic, I have no idea what went on this past Sunday.

Even when I look at the pages that got the most traffic, I don’t notice anything strange. If there were a spike in a certain page that could help explain it away, I could understand, but the percentages were still the same for the most popular pages.

Don’t get me wrong, I like traffic, both explained and unexplained. The problem is that the unexplained type is really hard to reproduce. Since I’m kind of new to the pet content field, maybe I just don’t realize that this is the norm instead of the exception. I know that I was also pleasantly surprised on Thanksgiving to see a growth in traffic. Christmas and New Years were down, as expected.

I take the numbers that I see very seriously. I try to correlate what I do with what effect it has on the site, but sometimes I’m just left wondering.

They say that the job of the future will be in statistical analysis. With the ability to collect so much information, the need for people to make sense of it all will be way up there.

Maybe what I need to learn from this is that football really is a very animalistic sport. Maybe because the Colts are a pet, it made more people think about their pets and they went on the site more. (Sarcasm – I don’t really believe this.) I guess that I’ll wait until next year and check out the numbers again before I draw any conclusions.

What kind of numbers did you see on Super Bowl Sunday? Hopefully better than Peyton’s.

Home Sweet Home

After figuring out what color to paint my office a few weeks ago, I finally got down to the job of actually painting it. If you read my post on “What Color Should I Paint My Office?“, you should already know that I chose blue for its ability to enhance creativity.

I was lucky enough to get my son involved in this endeavor. He went the high road and I went the low road. Here are my room-painting take-aways:

• Talk to someone in the know: Especially if you don’t really know what you’re doing. When I went to the hardware store to buy paint and all the painting accessories, I immediately went for the new fangled brushes that were supposed to be all the rave. The guy behing the counter told me to get a roller and a couple of plain brushes, and there was no need for anything else. I got both. The newer ones dripped paint all over the place. Find mentors and listen to them.
• Make your own mistakes: Using the brushes that were supposed to be better winded up costing me a lot of extra time, but if I didn’t buy those brushes, I’d always be wondering what I was missing. It’s good to make mistakes. That’s what caused people to grow.
• Duets are more fun than solos: I really enjoyed painting with my son. I could have done the whole thing by myself, at least I’d like to believe that I could have, but sharing it with someone else made time fly by.
• Open a window: Airing things out is always a good idea. This goes way beyond painting. When you feel like you are getting nowhere on something, take a walk and get some air. Clearing your head will give you new perspective.
• Touch it up later: The most important part of any project is getting it done. It won’t always come out perfectly the way you planned, but you can always make it better later. It’s better to get something out and fix it, than to not release anything at all.
• Savor what you’ve done: All in all, I have to say that I’m pretty proud of myself (and my son) for the job we did. It’s more than OK to give yourself a pat on the back for your accomplishments.

With all this blue around, I’m feeling pretty darn creative. For my next project: landing page redesign for The Pet Wiki. Now I’m ready.

Last week was a bit of a frustrating week for me. I cut my leg pretty badly and spent most of the time in bed. Luckily, I have a laptop, so I was able to push on with work. At least that’s what I thought I’d do.

I am a huge fan of the MediaWiki and a huge fan of adding plugins to any MediaWiki site. Most of the time all you need to do is upload some files and make a few changes in your settings, and then you are good to go. That is not always the case. Sometimes you need to get a bit down and dirty with the code. Although I may not feel comfortable writing an extension from scratch, playing with existing extensions is usually right up my alley.

I want to add a rating system to the pages on The Pet Wiki. There were two extension candidates to choose from. After trying repeatedly to get each of them working, spending many man hours on it, I decided to call it quits.

Some of the things that calling it quits did for me:

• I can’t do it all. I am totally cool with that. The Pet Wiki is a project of love. I made some great progress in a relatively short amount of time, and then set my expectations really high for being able to get everything done. Life doesn’t work that way. If this is something that is really important to me, I can always go to outside help to get it accomplished.
• Long hours do not equal high productivity. I could have spent another few days trying to figure out why the extension thought that I wasn’t using JavaScript, even though I was. The more time that I threw at the problem, the less I got out of it.
• Prioritize what else needs to be done. I thought that it was going to take me half a day to get it up and running, but after 3 days I realized that there were things that I wasn’t doing that needed to get done. If adding a rating system were all that mattered to my site there might be something to talk about. But since this is a nice to have, and things like editing the new content that has been added, and maintaining the homepage are more important, there is no way that I could take the luxury to play. You need to know how to get down to business.
• Evaluate the feature. A feature that takes half a day to install is very different than a feature that takes a week. Sometimes a feature is so important that it is worth working on for months to get it done right. In those cases, spending time that is needed is crucial to the advancement of your site. That is time well spent and a real investment into what you are doing. Spending 3 days and not making any significant improvements on something that should take half a day is not. Each feature should be evaluated for what it is.
• Don’t be afraid to say it’s a no-go. Just because I invested a lot of my time trying to get it right does not mean that I have to make it work or all that time is lost. It’s important to not let your pride come in the way of other progress that you can make. The time is lost anyway. There’s no way to get it back. It’s time to cut losses.
• Shelve it. I still think that it would be great to have a rating system in place. It is something that I’d like to get done and I think it will be a boost to usability. But it can wait. When I can schedule more time to play with it, I will. I didn’t give up, I’m putting it away until it is the most important thing for me to do for my site.

Although this was a frustrating week, it was still a good one. It helped me reflect on how much stuff I usually do get done. The fact that I didn’t win this battle is okay. There are a lot more fronts and a lot more wins ahead of me.

I find understanding what makes people do what they do fascinating. When it also falls in the realm of website usability, that’s even better. Reading: Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? by Susan M. Weinschenk (Ph.D. in psychology) really reminded me about how little our conscious minds are in control of what we do.

The basic concept of the book is that you need to appeal to all parts of the brain, the old, mid and new brains in order to get people to find your site compelling and make them click. The old brain is the part of our brains that are necessary to stay alive. It takes care of the mundane things like breathing, digestion as well as stuff to keep us safe. The mid brain controls our emotions. That impulse buying that we do – that’s where it comes from. And then there’s the new brain. That’s the smart part of our brain that does all the thinking. It’s the concious part. If you can engage all three you have it made.

Social validation. A good example of how our old brain works against us is social validation. We are not the independent thinkers that we like to think we are. We are wired to want to fit in and belong. Even though we don’t even realize it, we look to others to try to figure out how to act.

• Where do you see this behavior on the web? Chat rooms. People will lurk before they participate in the conversation. If there are a lot of people hanging out, they will assume that other people will assist when questions arise. Surprisingly, the more people in the chat room, the longer it will take for questions to be answered.
• Do you listen to strangers? You do if you follow the information from online reviews. By adding voting to pages on your site, you just might be able to encourage people that what you have to say has more meaning.
• Like the user reviews you are reading? They can be even more believable with a story behind them. Knowing who is giving the review helps us feel more in tune with the review. The more they seem like we are, the more that we trust them.

Better to owe than not to give. Another way to get people to like you (and your site) is to make them feel indebted to you. Giving stuff makes people feel indebted to you. What can a website give people? The first thing that came to my mind was e-books. I recently got an e-book of bird treat recipes for signing up to something for Bird Talk magazine. Smart people. For consumer sites, things like free shipping can go a long way to good feelings.

Make it scarce. Scarcity makes us want stuff more. This works very well for sites that sell stuff. If someone comes to your site and sees that you’re almost out of a product that they want, it will make the customers want it all the more. This is especially good at getting people who haven’t made their final decision. This can push them over the edge.

Make it simple. Don’t give too many choices. Too many choices overwhelm us, and can nearly paralyze us from making our decisions. Barry Schwartz, who studies the link between economics and psychology, spoke at TED about the “Paradox of Choice“. Less really is more. Keep it simple and only give a few choices, not every choice under the sun.

Make it accessible. When I say accessible, I’m not talking about good website design (although you should do that too). People like immediate gratification. Since there is no way for people to actully see or feel their online purchases, get it too them as quickly as possible. iTunes (or Amazon.com’s MP3 shop) does just that. Buy it and get it. eBooks work well for this too.

Positioning. By putting the product that you’d like to sell in the first position on the page you increase your chances of selling it. They spoke about this for products, but I believe the same to be true about any type of information that you are trying to push. If you have stronger parts of your site that you’d like promote, display them at the top.

Talk to me. Instead of using the Queen’s English make it more conversational. We like it when people talk directly to us. By using the word “you,” you immediately give your users the feeling that you are communicating directly to them.

Talk to the old brain. The old brain is only interested in three things: safety, food and sex. By using images that scare, feed or turn you on, you get your users’ attention. The old brain is also always scanning. By using images that change, you’re more likely to get your users’ attention.

Get commitments. No matter how little the commitment that you get, it’s the stepping stone to something bigger. Try using surveys to get a little buy-in from your users. From there you can push for more. By answering the surveys your users are making a public statement about your site. The more public the better. They also have the extra benefit of social validation. If they are positive, they can be shared and enjoyed by others.

Use people. Use pictures of people to help your users associate with a person. The more the people look like your target users, the better. We naturally trust people who look like us. We feel more comfortable with attractive people. Narratives also help.

Tell me a story. Stories are natually engaging.  Adding a picture to your story helps engage all parts of your brain. Just hearing the word “story” helps perk us up for what we are about to read.

Get social. People like to find others out there that they can talk to. By allowing users to talk with each other, and by engaging your user in conversations, you are connecting with everyone’s need to be social.

These are my main take aways from this very enjoyable book. It’s a quick and fun read. I have some ideas on how to incorporate what I’ve learned on The Pet Wiki. It feels a little sneaky to actually follow everything that Weinschenk suggesets. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I talked about installing extensions last week. This week I figured that I’d dive into which extensions I love to use.

Before I get started on my list of favorite MediaWiki extensions, I want to say that it is amazing how much people have contributed to making MediaWiki one of the most fun and useful platforms to use. There are so many great extensions out there, that it is really hard to choose which are my favorites. I’ll try to keep the list as focused as possible. You MediaWiki developers make it really hard!

Here’s my list – I couldn’t figure out what the order of importance was, so I just put them in alphabetical order.

• AWC’s Forum – The AWC Forum extension is more than your exeryday extension. It doesn’t really run inside the normal wiki part of your wiki. It is a full powered forum that runs in your mediawiki’s wrapper. It’s a little more intense to set up than your regular extensions. To get all this functionality, database tables need to be added to your wiki. Not to fear, the extension comes with a setup program that installs them for you. Like any forum, it allows users to have group conversations, and includes a system for direct messaging one another.
  
• CanonicalHref – Is there a way to get to pages in your wiki using different urls? This is an SEO no-no. You want to make sure that the search engines can only get to a page of content from one url. If not, the SEO power may be split among the different URLs that have the same content. By adding a canonical url to each page, you tell the search engines which url should be used for this page, no matter how they got there. The Pet Wiki runs on version 1.15.1 of the MediaWiki. I’ve been told that this extension will be part of the MediaWiki core code when 1.16 is released.
• CharInsert – I find WikiText (the markup language that is supposed to make it easy for people to add to a wiki) very cumbersome. There are lots of square brackets all over the place and I’m never 100% certain that I got it right. That’s ok. By adding CharInsert extension, I get a nice grouping of WikiText functions that I can use to both get it right and save time. I find that I use it a lot when I’m adding categories to pages. It’s a huge time saver.
• ContributionCredits – It’s nice to give credit where credit is due. If people spend their precious time adding to the wiki, there is no reason that they shouldn’t also get credit. ContributionCredits is a nice way to display just that.
• CreateBox – You decided to set up a wiki because it’s a great way for people to share their knowledge, right? The one thing that I found really hard to explain to people is how to add new pages. No more. By adding CreateBox to my homepage, it’s easy for people to add content. All they need to do is type in the box and hit the create button, and they are ready to type away.
  
• DynamicPageList – This is one of the most useful extensions that I’ve ever found. It’s really incredible. It creates lists of all the pages in the same category. A good example of it in action is the Dogs page on The Pet Wiki. By adding a couple of lines to the page, it displays all pages categorized as dogs. You can only imagine how much work it was to add one breed to that list before. Now it is done automatically.
  Code:
  <dpl>
  category = Dog Breeds
  columns = 3
  </dpl>
• EmbedVideo – This does exactly what you would expect it to do. It allows you to embed video easily into your wiki from the major video providers, like YouTube, Google Video and Dailymotion.
  
• FBConnect – I have to put FBConnect in my favorites, but I really have a love hate relationship with this extension. This is an extension that is still in beta, and is missing some functionality to make it a realy winner, but the concept is sound. Instead of making people go through the nasty process of registering for an account, they can now hook in to The Pet Wiki with their Facebook user account.
  I’m currently looking for someone to help me finish developing this extension. Whatever changes are made to it will be shared back to MediaWiki.org. If you know anyone interested in giving me a hand, send me a line.
  
• ShareThis – This is a cool extension that allows people to share information from your wiki through a slew of different types of social bookmarking. It comes with some very standard ones, but you can add some of your favorites (or take out some that might not be relevant to your wiki) to customize it just the way that you like.
  
• Slideshow – This is an extension that I don’t use enough. It does exactly what you would expect it to do – it takes pictures that you’ve uploaded onto you wiki and displays them as a slide show. You can customize the speed and the transitions of the slides.
• SocialProfile – This is the mother of all extensions. Those nice people at Wikia have created a bunch of wonderful extensions that they are kind enough to share with everyone. What SocialProfile does is create an amazing way for people to create a profile and link with other people. Besides allowing people to use an avatar, so that you can see who you are talking to, it also allows people to message one another. You can “friend” people, the same way that you do in Facebook (you can also “foe” people, but I took that out). Like the AWC forum, this extension creates database tables specifically for its own use. I’ve modifed it in The Pet Wiki to allow people to give little bios of their pets.

There are a ton more extensions out there. If you’re new to this, I would suggest going to MediaWiki.org and browsing through the extensions. Which ones do you like?

ShareThis extension on The Pet Wiki

One of the most fun things about using MediaWiki to build your site is all the cool extensions that people have created to make your site better. When you look at your site and say “Wouldn’t it be great if…”, someone has probably already thought the same thing and has created an extension that you can use. I won’t say that the extensions are always a perfect fit, but they are there, and can be modified to do what ever you want them to.

Here’s an example from The Pet Wiki: I’m a social kind of gal, and I really like to share and allow others to share what they read. What better way to do this than add social bookmarking to my site. The first thing that I did was go to MediaWiki.org and search for “extension social share.” (Using Google also works.) Viola! I got “Extension:ShareThis” in the search results.

Each extension page has instructions on how to install it. For most extensions, all you’ll need to do is ftp files to the extensions directory and modify your LocalSettings.php file to get it up and running. Some are a bit more complicated, but only a bit.

Since you already set up a MediaWiki development environment, you should check to make sure that the extension works in your dev environment. This is very important. You can crash your whole site by turning on an extension that doesn’t work with your site.

Even if it does seem like you’ve done damage, it’s very easy to remove the extension by removing the offending line from your LocalSettings.php file. Always make sure to move the extension files before you make your modifications to LocalSettings.php. Updating LocalSettings.php turns the extension on. Depending on the extension, it is also used to set properties for the extension.

One thing that is particularly amazing about using extensions is that it lets you upgrade your MediaWiki wiki to new versions without needing to worry about losing all the work that you’ve put into adding funtionality. I personally can’t wait for MediaWiki version 1.16 to come out. A lot of incredible work has been done to enhance usability. As soon as it’s out, I’ll be able to upgrade and not lose the look and feel of what I’ve put together. Man, those people at MediaWiki.org are a bright bunch!