Firefly in Japan on the Your-Japan Blog Network

Note : I copped a lot of flack in the comments section of this article, some of it justified, some of it not.

Lets quickly break down the lines that seemed to cause a problem!

The Title.

I could have chosen a better title, since it’s actually a very positive article about the people who helped me, the open-source community, and Wordpress itself.  But hey, it got your attention, since you’re reading it.

<firefly> Wordpress can’t process it’s own RSS feeds

I’ve said many times this was completely incorrect.  At the time, due to the experience I had in trying to fix the problem, I believed it, but even if it was true, I should have phrased this differently.  This comment was born out of pure frustration, as I had spent 2 days in and out of #wordpress and all over the internet trying to fix this.

As one commentator suggested I should have, I actually did take a much nicer tone in the previous 2 days on #wordpress, saying things like “it seems like Wordpress has trouble with it’s own RSS feeds”, which were ignored.  No harm no foul, no-one owes me support.  For better or worse (probably worse!) this line got me noticed.

<firefly> if you can show me it works out of the box in 2.5, I will immediately apologise and proclaim you god of wordpress and all existence

If you can imagine saying this to your buddy with a smile on your face as he tries to help you with something difficult, this was the intended tone.  Clearly this did not come across, probably due to the inflammatory comment just previous to this one.  Perhaps I should have put in a smiley face !  Simple mis-communication.

<firefly> hey man keep it coming, I’ll take 10 minutes of abuse if it helps me fix this

My pretty much only slightly emotional reaction to getting flamed after 2 frustrating days trying to fix my own problem.  I actually meant this statement 100%, I was happy to get flamed to fix it.  In hindsight, I could have kept this to myself.

In any case, do not draw early conclusions in this article. Please keep reading to the bottom. Some people appear to be missing the point of this article, and jumping straight down to leave a comment. Don’t be that guy. Keeping reading.

Recently I undertook a huge project. A complete re-design and migration from my old busted blog network, to a shiny new Wordpress MU (Multi-User) install.

I am not a programmer, but I have plenty of experience in setting up and configuring IT systems. Despite huge patches in my knowledge, I decided to tackle this myself, hoping to tap the Wordpress and open source community for help as needed.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in for a rough ride.

My goals were :

• Creating a solid and robust blog network for users
• Accessing the innovative and exciting plug-in community built around Wordpress MU
• Syndication and integration of all blogs across the network
• Support from the bustling community

I jumped in, and began installing things.

To answer my first basic Wordpress questions, I used the google, and the busy forums at Wordpress which are filled with experienced helpful people. All of my issues were quickly solved, but progress was about to come to a screeching halt.

A couple of days later, I hit my first major speed bump. I was attempting to manually code a RSS feed into a template, so that all the blogs on the whole Your-Japan network would share posts and comments.

No matter what I did, the RSS widget said “Could not find an RSS or ATOM feed at that URL”. I struggled with this error for hours. I downloaded alternate RSS parsers, I validated feeds, I tested on different sites, I hunted through forums, I sweated through code I barely understood. Nothing.

Sadly after hours of frustration, I realized my humble Wordpress skills were outmatched by this persistent error. I looked up the appropriate IRC channel, and hopped onto #Wordpress, a support chat channel.

Now, being in IT, I’m very familiar with the “stereo-typical IT support guy”. Half based in fiction, half in reality, the smarmy, know-it-all, condescending cubical warrior who will without a second thought, rip a users head off when he innocently requests “my password isn’t working, can you reboot the internet?”. This vicious, bloody thirsty IT overlord is often turned into a friendly and helpful advisor when he discovers that the person asking the question meets these simple conditions :

• Not a complete idiot
• Has IT experience, and is doing their best to apply it to the problem
• Has done their best to research and solve the problem by themselves
  • (bonus point : has read ALL of the related manuals/documentations)

Given my last 10 hours of effort, I was confident in passing these basic checks.

Notes about the upcoming chat :

• None of the text has been edited. Surrounding conversational threads have been removed or moved around for clarity. (Edit : Plenty of technical information has been removed to facilitate reading)
• UAsk-IPwn/Prof99 are not the users real names. It’s not my intention to persecute these guys, they gave me lots of very helpful information, and I’m grateful to them both.
• I unfortunately start my chat by saying that Wordpress can’t process it’s own RSS feeds. I formed this view through my experience, and by viewing other forums on the internet. I feel bad about this statement, since I later found it to be completely untrue.In over 50+ hours of working with Wordpress, I have barely discovered a single bug (the minor ones I found were inconsequential or caused by plug-ins). It’s one of the best, most stable, configurable, robust packages I’ve ever used.

That aside :

/j #wordpress

<firefly> hey
<firefly> Wordpress can’t process it’s own RSS feeds
<firefly> its nuts

Lets get things started by making an unfounded comment. Did I mention I feel bad about this?

<UAsk-IPwn> what makes you believe that?
<firefly> the last 10 hours of me trying to get it to work
<UAsk-IPwn> the technical side, not the whiny personal novella side

Ouch. This is off to a bad start. Perhaps I should say something a bit more humble to smooth things over.

<firefly> admittedly I’m nowhere near an expert
<firefly> you might interpret this as whining, I’m just really frustrated.
<firefly> and a whole bunch of other people on the net are having the same problem, I just don’t get it
<UAsk-IPwn> oh i see
<UAsk-IPwn> not “wordpress can’t parse its own rss feed”
<UAsk-IPwn> but rather “i have a third party widget that is broken”

Hm, nothing I say seems to be having the desired effect. Perhaps I need to tell him that I’m using the standard Wordpress build.

<firefly> um
<firefly> no, the RSS widget that comes with Wordpress
<firefly> if you can show me it works out of the box in 2.5, I will immediately apologise and proclaim you god of wordpress and all existence
<firefly> I’m just trying to get it to work
<firefly> argh
<UAsk-IPwn> jesus you suck at this
<UAsk-IPwn> it’s the standard widget
<UAsk-IPwn> the rss also passes feed validation, which i bet you didn’t even try

That seems a little uncalled for, but hey! If this guys knows Wordpress and he can help, I don’t mind being told I suck. It’s true, I do suck!

<firefly> hey man keep it coming, I’ll take 10 minutes of abuse if it helps me fix this
<firefly> yep, I tried validating the feed, and it checks out
<firefly> when I put in that feed into the RSS widget, it says “could not find an RSS or ATOM feed at that URL”
* UAsk-IPwn sighs
<UAsk-IPwn> ok, the second you got nasty you lost your help
<UAsk-IPwn> enjoy your next ten hours.

Uhoh! Sounds like I hurt his feelings.

<firefly> no, I wasn’t being nasty, I was being serious
<firefly> I know I’m a dumbass wordpress newbie who doesn’t know crap and deserves some shit
<firefly> I’m happy to take it if I can get this up and running

I attempt to clarify.

<UAsk-IPwn> just because you don’t understand how it’s nasty to bite the hand that feeds you by referring to them as “abusive” doesn’t mean you weren’t in fact being nasty.
<firefly> I’m sorry you think I was being nasty, I really wasn’t
<UAsk-IPwn> k. enjoy.

Sometimes I don’t come across too well in text, but I was actually being quite serious. I’ll take a berating from an IRC guy if he can help me fix a problem. Of course, I’d rather not, but whatever.

I decided to try to private message him to apologise for the misunderstanding. I understand suddenly PM-ing someone is a bit of a no-no, but he seemed to know his stuff and he spent some time trying to help me. I wanted to clear up the confusion.

<firefly> I thought it was nice of you to try and help out, I’m sorry you misinterpreted my comment. thanks for your help anyway
<UAsk-IPwn> please don’t message me.

Well ok. That was a dead end. Fortunately, a few minutes after my failed apology, UAsk-IPwn generously decided to take another shot at helping me.

<UAsk-IPwn> start by opening the feed in firefox, which will canonicalize your url
<UAsk-IPwn> then copy and paste the canonicalized url into the widget
<UAsk-IPwn> don’t skip any fill-in fields, like the title; the widget may be retarded and fragile
<UAsk-IPwn> screenshot for me right before you hit save
<firefly> ok sure
<firefly> http://www.your-japan.com/link to screenshot.jpg
<UAsk-IPwn> oh, what a surprise, when i said fill out the title, because the widget might be retarded or fragile, you thought “gee wouldn’t it be great if i ignored him”
<firefly> I’m sorry, I didn’t notice that part. I’ll do it again
<firefly> same result, but worth a try

Oops, I failed test #1. “Don’t be an idiot”. Suddenly, I had a mini-breakthrough.

<firefly> hm, hang on a second
<firefly> if I try to do a wget to that address from the terminal
<firefly> I get
<firefly> Connecting to firefly.your-japan.com|203.141.132.221|:80… connected.
<firefly> HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 400 Bad Request
<firefly> wow. the server could be having trouble resolving itself
<UAsk-IPwn> lal.
<UAsk-IPwn> sucks that you figured that out right before i told you to do it.
<UAsk-IPwn> oh well.

Sadly, I had deprived UAsk-IPwn another opportunity to tell me I was a dumbass. But! Success! I had discovered the root cause of the problem. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really sure of the next step. I decided to ask.

<firefly> how do I fix that
<UAsk-IPwn> call your isp and tell them to fix the server
<firefly> well, I run my own server
<firefly> cue UAsk-IPwn’s groan
<UAsk-IPwn> well you probably shouldn’t be
<firefly> hah

I set myself up. I’m fine with that. Laugh it up, fuzzball.

Next, Uask-IPwn gave me some really useful advice on apache, and some things to check. I checked through them, but couldn’t find the answer. I decided to broadcast my message, only to be answered by the resident clown.

<firefly> UAsk-IPwn : any ideas on the next thing to test? Why would you be able to access content that I can’t access on my own server
<firefly> apache problem, htaccess problem, wordpress problem…?
<MrLulz> knowledge
<firefly> knowledge problem?
<MrLulz> yarr!
<firefly> yes, I know. heh.

Well, that was helpful. Moving on. I did some more testing on my local machine, while MrLulz continued his sideshow.

After some more local testing and some more expert advice from UAsk-IPwn, I discovered that my problem was related to apache. Despite my trial by flame in #wordpress, I was not prepared for what happened next in #apache.

<Prof99> firefly: I just told you what to put in!!!!
<Prof99> firefly: LISTEN TO ME, DAMMIT.
<Prof99> firefly: is there a language barrier here?
<Prof99> firefly: shut up now, and read that.
<Prof99> firefly: if you don’t understand English, please let me know.
<Prof99> firefly: I gave you the answer. Spoon fed you. Just put the directive, and you’re done.
<Prof99> firefly: you have NOTHING to think about. I gave you the solution.

** These messages were consolidated over a 20 minute period

The cause of this explosion? Massive lag to the server delaying my responses, my mis-interpretation of some of Prof99’s instructions and my complete inexperience with Apache.

However – this guy was one of the sharpest guys who have helped me in the last few months. Aside from these comments and his impatience, he asked me excellent, highly technical questions that quickly uncovered the real source of the problem. He provided me with copious amounts of relevant documentation. He gave me very clear advice on exactly what to do, even though I was unfamiliar with apache. Then he directed me to install bind, which worked perfectly. I was in awe of this guys knowledge and experience, and I expressed my gratitude in the channel.

Now, let me try to pre-empt some comments. Before anyone jumps on screaming “Hey SHUTUP ASSHOLE, they were trying to help you!”, I completely agree with you. I was genuinely grateful for the help and support I received, despite some of the conversations being a one-way flame.

From a greater perspective though, it’s important to look at how some open sourcers respond to inexperienced users.

This may be selfish of me, but I want everyone to see the Open Source Community for what it is : a bustling hive of highly intelligent, innovative people, who thrive on creating software solutions to help people, and who happily support people in need of help.

If you’re largely unaware of the open source community, you would be amazed at the amount of available software out there, and it’s all completely free, and supported by the community. To get you started, look into Ubuntu for a revolutionary Linux Desktop. Deki Mindtouch is an amazingly useful Wiki system that’s a dream to use(check out the VMWare Image!). Trixbox is a fully-featured Enterprise level PBX system. I could talk all day on the available software.

My message is this :

If you’re getting into Open Source, be careful how you ask for help. Chances are, it’s not the software that’s the problem, it’s a mistake that you’re making. The people in support channels and forums are busy people, working on their own projects. They don’t owe you anything. Give them plenty of respect, and thank them thoroughly when they slice hours off your troubleshooting time.

If you’re a guru, or a developer, forgive the users. They’re doing their best with their limited knowledge and experience. Allow them their mistakes, and if you feel like helping, do it in a helpful way. Don’t make someone feel stupid because they lack knowledge. As a user in IRC receiving a similar treatment from a guru said “If everyone was as smart as you, the world would be a boring place”.

If you receive support, give back to the community. After I solved these problems with the help of others, I went around to the boards and posted the solutions. Hopefully the next person to encounter this problem will be searching for 10 minutes to find a solution, rather than 10 hours.

Places I Received Excellent Help
I don’t want to specifically name anyone, in case my friendly, helpful gurus are overloaded with support requests. However, there are 2 locations and one plugin that deserve some special recognition.

#Wordpress on freenode and the WordPress Forums are excellent resources, filled with helpful, patient people. I highly recommend them if you’re looking for help. If you’re experienced enough to provide support, and if you have some time, please drop in and do so.

Firestats. Omry, the creator of Firestats patiently helped me hand-code the fancy widget on the right saying “5 Most Popular Posts”. It references the excellent plug-in Firestats, which works perfectly with Wordpress MU. The code to do this is here.

Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with anyone mentioned here, financially or otherwise. I’m just a fan of Wordpress – I run 2 Wordpress blogs, and this WPMU Network.