Disruptive Conversations

Can anyone recommend affordable hosting providers for WordPress that currently provide IPv6 addresses?

As I've written about before, I'm working on moving all my sites from TypePad over to WordPress and am currently evaluating several hosting providers. One new criteria I added to my list recently is this:

I would like my blogs to be available over IPv6.

Why? Simple. I tend to write across my various blogs on "emerging technology" issues. Much of the audience for my writing are the "early adopters" who are working with new technology, new toys... and generally working on the bleeding edge of communication.

As some of those folks (myself included) either move their networks to IPv6 or at least experiment with IPv6, I would like my sites to be natively accessible over IPv6 like many other sites are now available including Google, CNN, Facebook and more. Call me silly, but when I'm doing IPv6 testing, I'd like to be able to get to my own sites without going through a IPv6-to-IPv4 converter.

I also want to do this move once, because it's going to be a big enough pain-in-the-neck as it is, between the initial migration from TypePad and then pointing all the domains over, mapping them, etc.

I'm currently testing out Bluehost and in talking to their support team, they are looking to have some IPv6 options available next year... but I: 1) don't want to wait; and 2) want to be sure IPv6 addresses will be available. A2 Hosting offers IPv6 addresses, but only for their more expensive dedicated hosting offerings. I'm looking for someone who can provide more of a web hosting or Virtual Private Server (VPS) offering with IPv6.

SOLUTION?

SixXS offers a great list of hosting providers offering IPv6 and some of those look quite interesting... I just don't personally know anyone hosting on them.

There is, of course, one of the strong proponents of IPv6, Hurricane Electric, who offer a traditional web hosting offering... which might be okay, although I admit that I'm more partial to a system that gives me ssh access with ideally full root access. I can get that root access - and IPv6 - over at someone like RapidXen that goes to the other extreme and just gives you bare bones hosting, i.e. here's your server, here's your command line... have fun. (Which I can be fine with, although I'm not overly interested in being responsible for all the system admin of my system.)

So... with all that, anyone out there have recommendations for hosting providers where I can run WordPress with IPv6? (thanks in advance)

P.S. And yes, it's not 100% clear to me if WordPress plays well with IPv6, but then again, I know some people are doing it!

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One of the supreme annoyances with Facebook for companies/brands has been that back in April Facebook rolled out the ability for users to create "community pages"... essentially "unofficial" pages for companies or brands - or any other topic.

But what was most annoying was this:

In many places on the site, Facebook linked to these community pages instead of the pages that companies had already invested time and money in developing.

For example, on the Info tab of my Facebook profile, the word "Voxeo" is a link to a page:

Here's my problem as the person most involved with Voxeo's social media marketing. That "Voxeo" link does NOT go to our "official" page at:

http://www.facebook.com/voxeo

But instead goes to the community page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Voxeo/112160428800521

which only has information pulled from Wikipedia. That page does not have our most current info... has no contact info whatsoever... and all around is just a pretty useless page!

It's been a rather frustrating and aggravating situation for many folks out there... particularly those who spent a significant amount to build out very detailed Facebook Pages... only to have Facebook point their name in many occurrences within the site over to this new "community page".

How To Claim Your Community Page

Today, however, it seems that we may have an option. B.L. Ochman published an article in Ad Age today titled "Facebook Community Pages Are a Confusing Mess. Time To Fix Them" that points to the recent addition of a "Is this your page?" link at the bottom of each page:

BL Ochman also references an AllFacebook post about this issue from back on November 8th, so this link has been around for the past month or so. (Did you notice it? I certainly didn't... and I'm on our Facebook page pretty much every day... but I'm not necessarily scrolling all the way down to the bottom!)

Going through the process is fairly straightforward. First you must assert that you are indeed the "official representative" for the page:

Next you have to somewhat bizarrely click through another screen that tells you that they now need to verify what you just asserted:

[NOTE TO FACEBOOK: Sooo... why couldn't you have just put this text on the top of the NEXT page and killed this dialog box?]

Clicking through this useless box then gets you to this big long form where you "declare under penalty of perjury" that you are indeed the authorized representative:

After that you are rather unceremoniously dumped into Facebook's Help Center with a message up on the top saying that you will receive an email where you have to click a link to validate this new address.

I did receive that email, clicked the link and then got a message saying that I would receive additional information, presumably as they examine my claim to the page.

We'll see what happens next.

Merging Pages?

What was strange to me in the process today was that I did not receive the message that both BL Ochman and the AllFacebook article mentioned, namely this:

"Once you have submitted the request to merge the Community Page(s) to your authenticated Page, Facebook will review your request and verify that the merge request is for two similar entities. For example, the Community Page for Nike could merge with the authenticated Nike Page, but a merge request for Nike Basketball or Nike Shoes to merge to the general Nike Page would not be approved.

Please keep in mind that the review process may take a few days, and that we may contact you if we need additional information. If we approve the request, anyone who has "Liked" the Community Page(s) will be combined and connected to your authenticated Page."

I would like to merge the pages... in truth I'd really just like to eliminate the community page and have people go directly to our main page... but if that is accomplished by a "merge", so be it.

Is this the next step? After I have been granted admin access to the community page will I then be able to request a merge of the two?

I don't know... but I'll update this post as I find out more in my own process. And if you have already gone through this process, I'd love to hear about it in the comments - please do leave one!

I'm pleased (I think) that Facebook is appearing to offer companies a way to potentially gain a bit more control over how they are represented within Facebook. I'll be curious to see how it all really pans out... (Sorry, do I sound a bit skeptical? :-) )

What do you think about this? Are you going to go claim your community page? Have you already done so?

P.S. Hat tip to Donna Papacosta who posted BL Ochman's article to, where else... her Facebook wall! (and from there I saw it)

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Building off of something I did the first time back in July, I decided to see if I could fit in writing across as many of the sites where I can write as possible. Why today? Partly to celebrate C.C. Chapman's new book, "Content Rules", and partly because... well... it's December 1st and so it seemed a good way to kick off the last month of 2010!

How did I do this time?

Today's tally is 16 blog posts published across 14 sites. And, unlike last time I did this, today was not only about writing. Today's content also included a set of photos uploaded to Flickr and a video podcast. (And in the time it took me to create, edit, render and publish the video podcast I probably could have cranked out 2 or 3 written posts!)

With that... I'll get this post up in the final minutes of the day... and put this "One Day of Content Creation" theme back on the shelf for maybe another six months or so. :-)

For the record, here are today's posts... (and yes, the VoiceObjects Developer Portal post is listed as December 2nd because the server goes off of the time in Germany - and it was already "tomorrow" when I posted the piece there)

Personal Blogs

Disruptive Conversations:

• Congrats to C.C. Chapman on the launch of his new book, "Content Rules"!
• One Day of Content Creation: Dec 1, 2010 - 16 blog posts across 14 sites (this post)

Disruptive Telephony:

• Now We Know What Happens When The Skype Group Video Free Trial Expires...

Code.DanYork.com

• Python heading up O’Reilly’s recent book promotion?

DanYork.com

• Photo Set: Autumn 2010 in New Hampshire

Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks:

• Read the book? How about posting a review on Amazon?

Voxeo Blogs

The Tropo Blog

• Want to play with building Twitter apps on Tropo? Here's source code for 5 sample apps.
• Reminder: Beware of Duplicate Tweets When Testing Twitter Apps on Tropo

Voxeo Talks:

• Want to speak at eComm America 2011 in San Francisco in March?

Speaking of Standards:

• Internet Architecture Board (IAB) Seeking Comments on "Evolution of IP Model"

Unified Self-Service:

• Slides available for yesterday's Jam Session on building Twitter apps

Voxeo Labs:

• Want to understand Phono? Tropo? Voxeo Labs? Listen to this podcast!

Voxeo Developers Corner

• Miss our webinar on building Twitter apps? View the recording and get the slides and source code

VoiceObjects Developer Blog

• How to link VoiceObjects to IMified to create apps for Twitter or IM/chat

Phono Blog

• Using the WordPhone plugin for WordPress? Upgrade to version 0.2

Emerging Tech Talk (video)

• Emerging Tech Talk #58 – Book Review: Pragmatic Guide to Git

Blogs I did NOT update

And as the day draws to an end, I see there are still more blogs/sites that I did NOT update... simply not enough hours today: :-)

• Voice of VOIPSA
  
  
• Behind the Blog
  
  
• Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

Next time...

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A big congratulations to my friend C.C. Chapman and his co-author Ann Handley on the launch of their new book, Content Rules. As C.C. wrote about yesterday, he's rather excited... and understandably so!

I first met C.C. way back in the early days of podcasting when a bunch of us in the Boston area went to events like PodCamp Boston and other great events like that. We've all had a "New England Podcasting" mailing list that has kept a good number of us in touch over the years. I've long admired his incredible passion, enthusiasm and just generally insanely high level of energy!

And of course... the incredible amount of content he creates online!

Which, naturally, makes him the perfect author for a book called "Content Rules"!

I haven't read the book yet... my copy is being delivered soon... but judging from the reviews on Amazon so far I'm looking forward to reading what C.C. and Ann wrote.

They also recorded a great interview with Shel Holtz which you can listen to.

Congrats, again, to both C.C. and Ann!

P.S. And to those of you going to the Boston book launch party on Friday, December 10th, I'll see you there! ;-)