This is not the post I originally intended to publish today. This was supposed to be a post about tweaks I made to one of my niche sites to drastically increase my opt-in subscription rate.
But since no one cares about that, I figured I’d skip the topic.
Just kidding. That post is still coming, probably on Monday.
The Issue
While working on the aforementioned post I did something extremely idiotic. I accidentally hit the “Publish” button.
It just so happened that it was pretty late at night, and I was already tired from playing a marathon game of soccer (I know…excuses, excuses).
Frantically I clicked to change the status of the post back to “Draft”, but it was too late. The damage had been done.
I logged into Triberr to make sure that the post didn’t make it into my stream yet…it wasn’t there (whew!). I went on forgetting to double-check before I went to bed (I told you I was tired…not thinking clearly).
The following day (being today), fellow Triberr members were tweeting links to my non-existent post. OH…SHIT!
What’s worse is that people were clicking on it!
Coincidentally this mistake happened on the day that Dino talked about the trust dynamics of social networks, and pointed out that Triberr requires a lot of trust between members.
The problem with the situation is that it not only reflects poorly on my blog, but also on Triberr members who share in my undelivered promise for a post.
And for that, to my fellow “Tribesmen”, I apologize.
The Solution
I thought to myself “isn’t there a feature in Triberr that would allow me to confirm whether I want to share a post or not? If it’s not there now…it should be! I’ll have to have a chat with Dino about it”.
I quickly dismissed that thought.
That would make Triberr a lot less convenient…even defeating the purpose of the platform somewhat. Plus, this wasn’t the fault of Triberr…I’m the ass that made the mistake.
So how do I prevent myself from making the mistake again?
Quite simply actually…
Tristan Higbee of Blogging Bookshelf recently wrote a post about his brand-spanking-new (and free) plugin called Publish Confirmation.
Screenshot of Tristan's Plugin
The plugin does just what it’s name suggests. It makes you confirm that you want to publish your post before it actually goes live.
Well that would have saved a lot of people some trouble, wouldn’t it?
So there you have it…the plugin that every Triberr member should have, and the quick and simple solution to never making the mistake I just made.
Your Two Cents:
Are you a Triberr member? If you are have you ever made the mistake I made? What did you do about it? Do you take an precautions to prevent such a thing happening again?
P.S. Sorry again to all the Triberr members that shared in my debacle!
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Hey Eugene, fellow Anubis warrior here!
Man, it happens, it’s all I can say
Tristan wouldn’t have a market for his plugin if we wouldn’t have all made the same mistake in the past.
At least you owned up to it and got out in front of it. Even better you blogged about it and I’m more likely to remember this lesson since you decided to share.
(Also gotta pick up Tristan’s plugin)!
Anyway this is a greta topic for a post because we can aaalllll identify with it. See you out there!
Thanks for stopping by John. Honor to have an artist like yourself here.
I know mistakes happen, but I still felt pretty awful about it. Figured I’d put it out in the open and share the lesson I learned.
The unfortunate thing is I read Tristan’s post about his plugin a while ago and never got around to picking it up…so it all could have been prevented.
Oh well.
Hey Eugene, also fellow Anubis member, & I’m with John! #$*% happens, but the important part is how you handled it, so kudos to you for handling this sitch the right way!
Thanks for stopping by MaKenzie. Great to have you here. And thanks for the kind words! Lesson learned and won’t happen again
.
That kind of thing hasn’t happened to me yet, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have.
Thanks for letting us know about the plugin. It sounds like an useful thing to have in place.
Definitely useful, unfortunately I waited to download it until after the mistake happened. But now it’s installed! Won’t happen again!
Eugene, aloha. Thx for letting me know about the plug in from Tristan. Though I remember I thought “good idea” when I read it, I did not take action on it. Your post sounds like a good reason to get it.
Eugene, I have long thought there should be an Oops button for posts and tweets. It looks like this plug in will help us to avoid pre-nature publishing.
Best wishes for a terrific day. Aloha. Janet
Hi Janet, I thought it was a great idea too, but didn’t act on it.
Just goes to show I still have a huge procrastination problem. Would have taken 2 seconds to install and prevent the problem.
I have accidentally published when I wanted a draft. And then I scrambled to finish it. I figured I had 15 minutes to get the blog post right. Ok, it happened more than once. [grin]
Worse, is triberr.it tweets that went out without links. Not my fault. It was bugs and I don’t blame Dino and Dan. Because they work in overdrive as it is and, yeah, I know all about bugs and software development.
But I still felt like shit about it. On the other hand, all those triberr.it fails of mine uncovered bugs that nobody knew about. So the bright side is that you won’t have my headaches.
If I was that close to finishing the post I probably would have just tried to edit it really quick too. Unfortunately I think I was waaaay more thank 15 minutes away from the finished product.
I’m definitely not blaming anyone but myself for this one, especially Dino and Dan who have put together, what I think, is probably the best community on the internet.
Unfortunately my mistake couldn’t bring to light any big issues like the ones you found, but I guess small lesson learned
.
haha….thnx Tristan
So, there is another thing you can do, assuming you dont have to go to sleep
Once the post is imported into Triberr, there is a pause and delete button. But the timing between when the post is in your feed, and when Triberr post-collector runs, and when the post gets cued up, and so on…is fairly unpredictable even for me.
All I know is that it takes anywhere between 1 minute and 1 hour
with +/- 1 hour 
Anyways..this does happen and the plugin would work nicely as well
I have trouble getting a good night’s sleep as is, I should have just stayed up and checked the feed
I deleted that thing as soon as I found it in my feed today, but unfortunately it was a bit late at that point.
The plugin is definitely a good one, shame on me for not installing it right away. Procrastination strikes again.
Eugene,
I have had a similar “Triberr Debacle.”
A few months ago – Triberr & I both very new to each other – I was using Storify to create “tweet stories” to curate my tweets from Social Media Success Summit 2011…
I had wanted one collection to post automatically to my blog, so I checked the box to do that. Not knowing it would automatically keep that setting until changed. So, as I made collections of my tweets (for future study), these kept posting automatically to my blog. A few in a day I made.
When I figured this out, I deleted them from my blog, but posts were already made in Triberr. OHHHH – I felt like such an idiot!
And the Storify console would not let me change the setting – I had to beg and beg them to look under their hood to change it for me (another story another day).
I doubt a plug-in would have helped that situation. But I thought you would appreciate that someone else had experienced similar.
Thank you for sharing your insight. I’ll go get the plug-in now.
~Keri
Hi Keri, thanks for stopping by!
Yeah, don’t think this plugin would have helped in that instance.
And yes…I totally appreciated that story
. Thank you!
Not sure if this was bought up yet, but there is a feature in the Triberr dashboard where you can pause posts that Triberr has imported, but you don’t want being tweeted.
This will immediately stop all tweeting. You can choose to resume it later, or delete it all together.
Dino mentioned it in his comment, but unfortunately it was late at night and I had already gone to bed.
Woke up the following morning and saw it in my feed and deleted it, but the tweets had gone out already.
Excellent find. Sometimes you never know what you’re missing until it’s too late. I’ve also published posts that weren’t meant to be published yet (and that was on a contest site announcing the winner…). This could have come in handy big time. I’ve already installed it. Thanks for the tip.
Haha, hopefully the winner didn’t change after you accidentally posted?
Nope, they got their money… Just an hour early! With a post like that, you can’t take it back. Once it’s out there, it’s final.
Eugene: I’m going to go install the plugin, because I was looking for a plugin like that. I have done the same thing as you and accidentally hit the publish button on an article that wasn’t ready to be published.
Im happy you brought Tristan’s plugin to my attention. He really is doing some good things over at blogging bookshelf.
God bless,
William Veasley
That he is. He knows what he’s doing with this whole blogging thing doesn’t he.
I wish I would have installed the plugin sooner. But I guess better late than never.
I am not sure if this is what I really need…In fact, you gave me an idea about it…Thanks!!
Hi Eugene,
That’s why I never write inside the wordpress editor (especially when I’m tired)
I have seen the interesting plugin from Tristan, but I don’t need it (and I told him this), even though I agree that it’s a great plugin.
I always write my blog posts using WriteRoom (for Mac), and I only add it to wordpress when I’m finished writing it. I could continue to edit and look at the posts more, but no plugin is going to change that
Jens
Hi Eugene, This thing have not yet happened to me, But i think it doesn’t mean that it wont happen..Anyway, thanks a lot for letting us know about plugin..I think this is a useful tool when in place..
Didn’t think it would happen to me either…woops.
Very funny experience Eugene! I can’t really tell who exactly made the mistake
But it is good to hear that you have found a solution to your unforgettable experience 
Also, thanks for sharing this one. This is a big help to all triberr members out there!
Great work!
Completely my mistake Gary! But now that I have this plugin, hopefully it won’t happen again.
it is very interesting that a plugin is used for all of the members to a staff and they have to used it. really funny……..
I’ve done it, too. I make sure, now, to set a future scheduling date – before even writing the post.
That’s a good approach. Unfortunately I often find behind on the content writing and write posts the night before or even the morning of. So this is a great safety net.