John August

Meta

Big and little screens

Geek Alert, Meta

[Other](http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/ipad_android_web_traffic_share) [sites](http://www.marco.org/616147756) are showing their visitor stats to see how widespread the iPad and Android devices have become. Here’s a snapshot of this blog for the past four weeks:

visitors chart

Most visitors — 97% — are viewing the site on traditional computers. Of the three percent using mobile, 84% are using an iPhone/iPad/iPod. Like other creative fields, screenwriting probably tips more Apple than the general population.

While the mobile percentage seems low, it’s double what it was a year ago.

Hiring complete

Follow Up, Meta

I’ve picked my Director of Digital Things. His name is Ryan Nelson, and his portfolio can be found [here](http://www.ryanmnelson.com/). He’ll be starting in April.

Longtime friend-of-the-site Nima Yousefi (he coded Scrippets) will be coming on board to handle a few special projects in the meantime.

With ridiculously good candidates to choose from, it’s not just protocol to say it was a tough decision. I learned quite a bit, both from video-chat interviews with applicants and calling references. I would have been happy with any of my final few choices; hiring just one was difficult. It forced me to focus on what I saw this person doing two, six and twenty-four months down the road.

I largely followed my [original plan](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/hiring-a-new-person) for the hiring process, starting with reviewing portfolios and emailing follow-up questions. I assigned a special project to my top few contenders, both to see what they could do and how they would discuss it afterwards.

You can [read the assigment](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/digital_challenge.pdf) if you like. I’ve left it to the candidates whether they want to share what they did with the world.

If you feel like doing your own riff on the project, by all means go for it. If you’re using my text, I’d like attribution, but otherwise it’s free and clear.

Hiring a new person

Geek Alert, Meta, News

I’m hiring a second full-time employee, a position I’m calling Director of Digital Things.

In addition to my actual job of screenwriting and directing, I currently do all the tech stuff: the websites, the wiring, the coding, the iPhone app that’s *thisclose* to beta testing. And I enjoy it. The luxury of a writer’s life is the freedom to explore and obsess.

But the list of things I’d like to do is so much longer than what I could conceivably do that it makes sense to bring in somebody with similar ambitions and a specific mandate. Rather than, “Wouldn’t it be neat if…” I’d like to be saying, “Hey, figure out a way to do this.”

So I’m hiring somebody who can.

My assistant, Matt, will continue to handle my schedule, travel, research and proofreading. The new person will handle stuff related to this website and many new projects.

I see this as a full-time job. Salary would be commensurate with experience, and there’s health insurance.

I’d prefer the person live in Los Angeles for occasional face-to-face discussions, but she or he would be working outside the office most of the time. The new guy would be free to — encouraged to — pursue outside projects, as long as the real work came first.

After a string of terrific and very different assistants, I’ve learned that hiring someone is never a matter of checklists. Each employee brings experiences and abilities that change the nature of the job.

But I can safely predict this person will need to be very digital, with a good balance of design sense and general geekery. A good candidate for this position would be able to talk about most of the following with ease:

* Great opening title sequences of the last year.

* Pros and cons of breaking out CSS into multiple files.

* The feeds aren’t updating right. Is the problem on WordPress, Feedburner or somewhere else?

* Whatever happened to the Stone typefaces?

* Books you’ve bought just for the cover.

* Is that short URL scheme a good idea?

* Why isn’t Google hitting this page? What SEO should we bother with, and what should we ignore?

* Is it worth outsourcing comments to something like Disqus? Could we get Scrippets to work with it?

* If you were marketing a web series about giant killer plants, what outlets would you target and how?

* Since jQuery’s already loading, what else could/should we have it do?

* Getting an offsite backup server going.

* How quickly can we get The Variant onto the new Apple device?

* If we needed to swap hosts in 24 hours, what are the first six things to do?

* Five desert island typefaces, and whether TypeKit is worth it.

* Setting up A/B test pages to track two possible layouts.

A great candidate might also have expertise in several of the following:

* Coding everything from PHP to Flash to Ruby to Objective-C

* Motion graphics and VFX

* Shooting and editing

* Gadgetry and game development

You’ll notice that “writing” is nowhere in these criteria. To date, all of my assistants have been screenwriters, and all of them are now working in the industry. But I don’t see this new position as being a particularly good stepping stone for an aspiring screenwriter.

But it is likely a stepping stone for something else, and a paid opportunity to explore some areas of interest for a year or two. In addition to maintaining existing properties, there’s a range of new projects I’d like to tackle.

Here’s the hiring process:

1. Candidates email digital@johnaugust.com. Include a bio with work experience and background, interests, and (most importantly) links to work you’ve done. I’m particularly interested in seeing websites you’ve designed, along with an explanation of their goals and techniques. But I’m also curious about other projects, like iPhone apps or short films or something else you think I’d be interested in. I’ll be hiring a person, not a portfolio, so let me get a sense of what you’re like.

2. By the second week of February, I’ll narrow down my choices to a few great candidates. I’ll give each candidate a small budget and a reasonable deadline to come up with a site for a specific project, such as The Remnants. We’ll have coffee and talk about what you did and why.

3. I’ll pick the person who seems the best fit.

**Do not apply in the comments.** Let’s save the comments section for feedback about the nature of the job and general discussion.

Blogs and baked goods

Geek Alert, Meta

It’s not that hard to make bread. You simply need the right combination of flour, yeast and water, plus an oven to cook it in. With a little work, you can end up with a delicious loaf most of the time. Plus, you can customize the recipe to exactly your taste.

So why doesn’t everyone make their own bread?

Because it’s a kind of pain in the ass. A lot of things can go wrong, leaving you with a blob of sticky dough. It takes time. It requires bowls and pans that have to be washed, plus an oven that heats up your kitchen. And truth be told, most people aren’t exactly [Nancy Silverton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Silverton).

All in all, it’s much easier to buy a loaf at the store.

Blogs are like bread.
=====

To make a blog, you need something to write about, plus software and hardware to put it on the web. ((Countless blogs are started without the “something to write about” part figured out, which is usually why they go dead after three weeks.))

When I first launched johnaugust.com in 2003, I assembled everything on my own computer, then uploaded it to a shared host. In baker parlance, I mixed the dough in my own bowls, then carried it down the street to the community oven to bake it. I was outsourcing the expensive hardware.

By [2004](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/archives-and-individual-entry-pages-rebuilt/), I outsourced most of the software as well, running [Movable Type](http://www.movabletype.org/) on the shared server. Later that year, I [switched to WordPress](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/new-look-new-engine), which has continued to run the site ever since.

I like WordPress a lot. It’s remarkably easy to install and theme. It’s powerful and flexible. It has an extremely active development community, so if there’s a feature you’d like, someone’s probably already built it. ((This weekend, I installed a plugin
that automatically sends a backup of the site to my Gmail account. Total time: five minutes.))

But make no mistake: you’re still baking your own bread. Things can go wrong. Really, really wrong. And when they do, it’s a lot of work to fix it. A bad loaf of bread is disappointing. A bad error in your database can be catastrophic.

Over the weekend, there was a lot of uproar about a [worm attack on WordPress](http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/) installations that wrecked some [notable](http://scobleizer.com/2009/09/05/i-dont-feel-safe-with-wordpress-hackers-broke-in-and-took-things/) [blogs](http://ihnatko.posterous.com/and-and-and-damn). Amid the sometimes-smug observations by the unaffected, I found one point that needs to be elevated to basic principle:

*Most people shouldn’t be running their own blogging software.*

Services like [Tumblr](http://tumblr.com), [Posterous](http://posterous.com) and [Blogger](http://blogger.com) are excellent and free. [WordPress.com](http://wordpress.com), the hosted version of WordPress, gives you 90% of the benefits with none of the hassle.

In 2003, I had to run my own software. There was no choice. But if I were starting a blog from scratch today, I would do it on one of these services. ((Also over the weekend, I nuked a few stray WordPress installations that had gone fallow. One of the pitfalls of WP’s easy installation process is that it’s tempting to throw up a site to test a concept. A year later, that mostly-empty blog is an attractive nuisance. I suspect that 80%+ of WP installations fall into this category. I’d propose the install scripts like Fantastico default to closed comments and randomized admin usernames.))

Some people like making bread.
=====

For all the hassles, there are some benefits to doing things yourself. Just like the artisanal baker can tinker with a recipe, the self-hosted blogger can tweak things just to his liking. He also has more control over his content — some services make it difficult to migrate.

In a month or two, I’ll be launching a revamped version of this site, which will continue to use WordPress. That means I’ll have to keep up with security updates, backups and a lot of general troubleshooting. There will be more worm attacks and self-inflicted wounds. I’ve decided it’s worth it. For most folks, it’s probably not.

If you’re considering starting a blog, ask yourself whether you really want to bake your own bread. Odds are, you probably just want a sandwich. Buy a loaf and get to it.