Thripp.com is a new WordPress MU-powered social network focused on blogging, with the goal of harnessing technology to work with you—to enable your creativity by empowering your voice, while backing you with a community of supporters so you never have to go it alone. I just launched this on 2008 May 24, so we have a long road ahead. Join if you want to build a community that trusts it’s citizens.

Right now, the community is mostly me. I read everything posted and am active at my own Thripp.com blog, so you can count on the site progressing.

So far, I’ve implemented basic networking features: comment threading with email alerts, a friends system, subscriptions, and comment tracking, a forum, a blogs directory, collaborative blogging, mirroring to LiveJournal, Facebok photos integration, privacy controls, sitewide latest comments and posts lists, and social bookmarking. I’m planning to adapt BuddyPress to add more stuff, once it’s released.

Read the features page for lots more. But there are no themes. Just the one you see now.

You can register and start blogging, or you can post to the forum and comment on most blogs as a guest.

Featured blogs:
What’s life all about? by Hong
Photography by JT
Brilliant Photography by Richard X. Thripp [My site, with special features not yet available to the community.]
Daytona State College News by Richard X. Thripp [At DaytonaState.org yet on the Thripp.com network.]

Thanks for visiting!
Richard

Stats: Thripp.com has 536 blogs and 1147 users.

For a long time, Thripp.com has had an error in its JavaScript file. This goes back to when I condensed all the JavaScript used on the site to one compressed file four months ago, which was tough to do because the JavaScript was from separate plugins.

Everything worked fine, but you’d get a yellow triangle in the status bar in Internet Explorer only, with a cryptic error message. I could never get it to go away because there were actually two problems at work:

1. Prototype.js has to go at the end of the conglomerated JavaScript file because it ends with the document.write function which always has to be at the end of a JavaScript file because it inserts HTML or other code into the HTML (or something like that).
2. The code for WP Grins, the plugin I use for clickable smilies on the comment forms, must go AFTER Prototype, because it requires functions from the Prototype library.

Sounds impossible, right? The solution is to split them into two JavaScript files. I’d become so driven in optimizing the site for the fewest HTTP requests that I didn’t even think of that. I took WP Grins out of the merged thripp.js file and installed the unmodified plugin. I’m letting it do its own thing.

No more yellow triangles in Internet Explorer. The JavaScript errors are fixed.

A while ago, I noticed that loading up my blog in Internet Explorer, the posts were out of date. I had to hit F5 to see the new material. I never had this problem in Firefox, so I didn’t know the issue.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I have to press F5 after logging into my Thripp.com account in either browser, else I’ll get the same page with no admin bar or anything.

I figured it out today. Months ago when I installed WP Super Cache, I couldn’t get it to put the .htaccess file in /wp-content/cache/. I just guessed at it and made a file that says this:

AddEncoding gzip .gz
AddType text/html .gz

It turns out, WordPress ordinary generates HTTP expires headers and such for each pageload, but with the full HTML caching, you have to rely on Apache to do that, so the .htaccess file is essential. It should look like this:

# BEGIN supercache
<IfModule mod_mime.c>
AddEncoding gzip .gz
AddType text/html .gz
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.gz$ no-gzip
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Cache-Control ‘max-age=300, must-revalidate’
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/html A300
</IfModule>

# END supercache

I had to set up a new WordPress installation to get that, because I can’t get WP Super Cache to create the .htaccess file on this WordPress MU installation for some reason.

However, I still had the problem with getting the same page upon logging in. I examined WordPress and WP Super Cache’s HTTP headers with web-sniffer.net, and made additions to .htaccess to imitate them, so that in fact, your browser won’t cache pages at all:

# BEGIN supercache
<IfModule mod_mime.c>
AddEncoding gzip .gz
AddType text/html .gz
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.gz$ no-gzip
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Expires ‘Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT’
Header set Cache-Control ‘no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0′
Header set Pragma ‘no-cache’
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/html A300
</IfModule>

# END supercache

I suppose that might be too harsh, as nothing is cached now. However, everything’s gzipped already if you’re logged out, so it will still be fast. I don’t want to deal with this problem anymore, and I’m glad I’ve solved it. If you use Internet Explorer, clear your cache! Firefox is smart enough to check the Last Modified date anyway (which was always correct on Thripp.com), but IE is not.

At the end of the line under each post’s title, I’ve added the word count, thanks to a simple WordPress plugin called Post Word Count. On the post I wrote today, Transcending Limiting Beliefs, it says “4,604 words,” for example. (Quite lengthy, I know. )

The word counts also appear on printable views, at the end of the info line. Interesting statistics for your readers, I think. This is especially useful on category and archive pages, which only show excerpts.

I’ve released version 1.1.1 of Tweet This, and upgraded everyone here. Now, the post title appears in the Twitter post box when you click any of the links around Thripp.com and DaytonaState.org.

Also, you can configure or disable Tweet This on your blog by going to Settings > Tweet This. You get the same config page that you would on your own WordPress installation, which looks like this:

This version caches URLs, so your Thripp.com blog will load faster now. You can change the URL service (several are available, including TinyURL) for your blog, restrict links to single views, exclude the post title, or remove the links entirely. Enjoy!

I’ve put into place the final list of reserved names for Thripp.com. These are the names you cannot register as the part before “.thripp.com”. All these names are also reserved at DaytonaState.org.

beta browse chat email example f forum forums help join lib library mail my news photos photos-g2 proxy richardx rx rxthripp s search shop thripp tiny tn today u www x you z

beta.thripp.com: Reserved for beta testing.

browse.thripp.com, news.thripp.com, today.thripp.com: Reserved for a community zeitgeist.

chat.thripp.com: Reserved for possible chatrooms.

email.thripp.com, mail.thripp.com: In use for Thripp.com email accounts (let me know if you want one).

example.thripp.com: Reserved for demonstrations.

f.thripp.com, forum.thripp.com, forums.thripp.com: f.thripp.com is in use for the community forums, and in the future, forum and forums.thripp.com may redirect there.

help.thripp.com: Reserved for possible help pages.

join.thripp.com: Reserved as a possible registration point.

lib.thripp.com, library.thripp.com: In use / reserved for The Thripp Public Library.

my.thripp.com, u.thripp.com, you.thripp.com: Reserved for user homepages.

photos.thripp.com, photos-g2.thripp.com: In use for my photo archive + Gallery2 backend.

proxy.thripp.com: In use for a simple web proxy with PHProxy. May be developed in the future.

richardx.thripp.com, rx.thripp.com, rxthripp.thripp.com, thripp.thripp.com: Reserved for me.

s.thripp.com, search.thripp.com: Reserved for a possible search engine.

shop.thripp.com: Reserve for possible shops.

tiny.thripp.com: Reserved for an image or file-hosting service. A working demo is in place.

tn.thripp.com: In use for thumbnailing services.

www.thripp.com: Reserved, because a lot of people type www before URLs.

x.thripp.com: Renamed, permanently redirects to th8.us.

z.thripp.com: In use for my URL obfuscation service.

I could’ve reserved a lot more names, but there’s no need to. If someone develops something great at blogs.thripp.com or some other great domain, I don’t want to be the one to stop him.

I’ve repealed the previous list:

- about account accounts activate activation admin admins administrator atom beta blog blogs cgi-bin comments confirm directory donate features feed feeds forum forums g2data g2queue help home icons includes index invite join latest-comments latest-posts lib list log-in log-out login logout mail main members mission news page pages photos post posts profiles register repository richardxthripp-files richardxthripp-photos root rss rthripp rx sign-up signup subdoms the-mission thripp tn today users web wp-activate wp-admin wp-atom wp-content wp-includes wp-login wp-signup www x

A lot of interesting names are now open. My favorite is -.thripp.com. Yes, you can register for it. Don’t waste it; use it for something great!

Finding your name

Just type in yourname.thripp.com or yourname.daytonastate.org into your web browser’s address bar. If it’s available, you’ll see the registration page with the name already filled in.

I’ve created a WordPress plugin called Tweet This, which lets your readers share any of your posts on Twitter by clicking an icon that looks like a bird. It’s active on all Thripp.com and DaytonaState.org blogs! Try it out with the buttons here.

Check out the Thripp.com and DaytonaState.org registration pages. Signing up for a new blog just got easier: you can set your password right from the page:

Before, you’d be emailed a random password, but that isn’t convenient. With this solution we have the best of both worlds: you can leave the fields blank to get a random password by email, or you can fill them in to choose your password right away, and it will still be emailed to you for your records.

Enjoy!

2008-10-08 Update: I removed this feature because it doesn’t work right as the comment count increases… I’ll have to change the math behind it some time.

I’ve added a value metric in the sidebar of every blog! Also, there are stats on the average number of words per post, number of tags and categories, and the number of threaded comments and pingbacks.

My blog is worth $829,191. This development blog is worth $7189. Daytona State College News is valued at $2440. VicAndHelen.com is a measly $15. My mom’s blog is worth $1270, while my cousin’s is just $73. A new blog is worth $1.

What’s your blog worth? Check your sidebar now. If you haven’t posted in a couple months, you’ll have to make a new post or re-save an old one for the stats to be right.

How are these stats calculated? By multiplying the blog’s word count by the tangent of the number of comments in degrees plus 0.1 times the number of spam comments, all divided by the cosine of the number of threaded comments in degrees, then flipped to positive if negative, of course!

Enjoy, and keep blogging away.

Tag, date, and category archives have a new format: they show the first 100 words of each post, including HTML and images. To read more you have to click “CONTINUE READING.”

Before, they were full-text just like regular pages, basically becoming a holding pen for posts. Most people browsing archive pages don’t want to read everything; they’re skimming for information. But the reason I refused to use WordPress’ the_excerpt tag is because it strips images or HTML. Since my Thripp.com blog is a photo-blog with the photos at the top of each post, that is unacceptable.

After much searching, I’ve found a better way: a plugin called The Excerpt Reloaded. It lets you customize the excerpts by using a new function, the_excerpt_reloaded, instead of the_excerpt. I’ve customized and activated it for all blogs on Thripp.com and DaytonaState.org.

I dropped the file in the mu-plugins folder, after removing the changelog to possibly save resources. Since the Thripp.com network only has one theme, I just edited index.php to use the_excerpt_reloaded on archives and category/tag pages. I don’t use separate templates for those pages; I just use conditional tags in one index.php file.

if ( is_category() || is_archive() )

the_excerpt_reloaded(100, ‘<a><abbr><acryonym><b><blockquote><code><em><i><strike><strong><u><img><p><ul><li><script><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6>’, ‘content’, true, ‘… CONTINUE READING’, false, 1, true, false, ‘p’, ‘Click to see whole entry.’, 1);

else the_content(__(’… CONTINUE READING’));

It’s as simple as that! Check out an example here. This is easier to skim, looks good, and will help our Google ranks.

Remember that when you write or edit a post or page, you can enter your own excerpt under Advanced > Excerpt, and that will be used instead. I never enter an excerpt… I don’t think it’s worth the effort. But you can if you’d like.