Posts in category "blogging"

WordPress versus Blogger versus TypePad (according to Google Trends).

Note the slight skew for news items about Blogger.

I dont know what I did wrong but I just upgraded to WordPress 2.2 and everything still works.

• Download WordPress 2.2 distribution and read instructions.
• Upload tar archive to Bluehost using pscp.
• Run manual database backup using AutoMySQLBackup.
• Deactivate all plugins.
• $ cp -rv blog blog-213
• $ rm -fr blog
• $ tar zxvf \~/wordpress-2.2.tar.gz
• $ mv wordpress blog
• Overlay contents of original wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes directories.
• Reactivate all plugins (apart from widgets) which is now in core.
• Check version number (2.2) from dashboard.
• Manually delete 143 spam comments that appeared during the 4 minutes Akismet's shields were down.
• Admire new full screen WYSIWYG preview post.

Please update your bookmarks and feeds with immediate effect.

Like most newly born WordPress.com bloggers, I keenly played with all the features and tirelessly experimented with the rich variety of horrendous 1, 2 and 3 column themes.

Then, I left home and bought a domain name from a geezer in the pub. The downward spiral continues into self-hosting and mixing with the wrong crowd. Inevitably, I stayed up late, dabbled in alcohol and drugs while installing every single plugin and widget ever created for WordPress.

You start taking ProPlus, pulling all-nighters and, unbelievably, start hacking PHP code.

Then, I grew up and became a man. I bought some slippers from M&S together with a pipe and grumbled away at the television ('You can't even hear what they are singing').

The stunning Barthelme theme was left unaltered. The platform was stable but you quickly run out of ready-made, cheap blogging material. Apart from a brief dalliance with pMetrics, Google Analytics silently continues to accumulate data, statistics, lies and damned statistics. You start to sleep in the afternoons and go to bed after the News.

Even the recent announcement of a WordPress statistics plugin for self-hosted blogs couldn't rouse me from my blissful slumber. Why bother with all that pesky download, upload, configuration and activation nonsense wasting valuable time and effort when Google Analytics will probably be revamped with colourful dashboards and a usable interface tomorrow ? And so it came pass. Yet another triumph for apathy.

Life was good. And then Scott Wallick had to spoil it by announcing a major overhaul of all his brilliant WordPress themes including V3.0 of the Barthelme theme. As the current version is an embryonic 1.2.2, you can't resist this temptation. After months of inactivity, you now simply have to act.

So you reluctantly risk RSI by typing on a keyboard again. You have to endure the tortuous download, upload and configuration process. Then you have to use the left side of your tiny brain to merge your changes only to discover that the blog looks exactly the same and only a CSS purist could tell the difference.

Everything that is apart from the 'Related Posts' widget which is now completely broken. You hesitate and consider conducting an exhaustive (and exhausting) search for a WordPress alternative that is compatible with Barthelme 3.0.

Then inertia holds sway, so you give up and reinstate the perfectly functional (if outdated and unfashionable) stunning Barthelme 1.2.2 and slump back in your chair.

Donncha showed me his so now I have to show him mine.

1. dixons duty free
2. andy c
3. dixons tax free
4. meaningful questions
5. virgin media v+ box
6. sky.com/anytime
7. heathrow duty free shopping
8. dixons duty free gatwick
9. duty free shopping heathrow
10. dbms_stats+siebel

Yahoo! kindly chose to close my Flickr! account because it was associated with an additional email and not my primary Yahoo Id. I contacted support in an effort to resurrect my Flickr account but to no avail.

So, goodbye Flickr and hello Picasa. To get things underway, I proudly present a couple of poor quality camera phone shots from my recent stays in anonymous and overpriced hotels in Cardiff and Oxford respectively.

Just 10 weeks after closing, Performancing Metrics has risen again, phoenix-like, from the ashes.

I didn't use the previous incarnation of this statistics package as I had a hosted WordPress blog which didn't support Javascript. When I migrated to my own WordPress blog, I used Google Analytics which is perfect for my purposes (and free) but I couldn't resist installing the new version of the new statistics package from Performancing Metrics.

The software was really easy to install (two lines of Javascript) in the footer template. I really liked the real-time updates (better than Google Analytics which has a 3 hour lag) which are pretty addictive.

The reporting interface is really smooth and polished (the icons look similar to Netvibes but I presume these are in the public domain).

I was expecting high demand as people rushed to download the new software on day one and sluggish performance. All the reports were very quick and the system was responsive although with my data volumes maybe that isn't so surprising.

In addition to the standard tracking metrics (country, browser, platform, referrer, search terms), Performancing Metrics also allows you to analyse the page views, outbound links and path of an individual visitor which is a nice feature.

The geographic distribution report is integrated with Google Maps which is a nice feature.

Google Analytics is a completely free service (loss leader) but as Performancing Metrics only charges for over 1,000 page views per day, this equates to the same thing for my humble blog.

The WordPress plugin for Google Analytics automatically filters all accesses from WordPress Administration screens. This is better than IP filtering as I might use 3 different computers to manage my blog. This would be a neat feature for a future release of Performancing Metrics.

Until 30 minutes ago, this blog was running Wordpress 2.1 courtesy of the Fantastico installation at Bluehost. The blog was fairly stable and worked fine.

However, I was investigating upgrading to WordPress 2.1.2 to plug a security issue. The Fantastico Installer currently only offers an upgrade to the flawed 2.1.1 release.

In any case, the Fantastico installer now refuses to upgrade my WordPress installation because I have installed new themes, configured additional plug-ins and even added database tables to the schema.

So without any prior planning or forethought, I have been forced (by that nagging voice in my head) to spontaneously install a brand new instance of WordPress 2.1.2 and migrate my existing blog.

Consequently, this blog will be completely broken for the foreseeable future. All comments will be lost. RSS feeds will stop refreshing. Most plug-ins will stop working. Any hosted images will return '404 - Not Found'. In fact, with my level of knowledge and incompetence, it is likely that the complete blog will be lost forever.

Worse, my proudest invention, the rotating tagline, doesn't work. This is completely unintentional but at least, it means my tiny brain can easily differentiate between the 'old' and 'new' blogs.

At last, I am now freed from the constraints of Fantastico and as The Clash memorably sang, I now assume 'Complete Control'.

From a posting in the Google Reader newsgroup

I have (approx) 383,240 feeds...

Dear Reader

My cruel owner got very excited last night when he went to play with his rotating tagline. Instead of his precious blog, much to his surprise, he was presented with this. His reaction to this mundane error was startling.

At last ! Look, blog, look at this. 18 months and I've finally done it. At last ! We've been dugg ! Why did it take them so long to catch on ? Look blog, look. Finally, we've been Slashdotted ! The poor old servers at Bluehost don't know what's hit them. Thousands of hits per second. Apache is on its knees begging for mercy and more swap space. Why, I bet Matt Eaton will be on the phone any second now. We've done it. Technorati Top 100. Blog, look, just look at that screen !

18 months, 3 different hosting providers, 500 articles, 4 readers, 6 comments and 2 self-inflicted disasters. And now, finally, it is all worthwhile. My life is complete. And you know what - I think it is very interesting how all this happened shortly after my brilliant idea to introduce the rotating tagline.

Of course, you know what this means, blog. We're going to have to move house (again). Prestigious, high traffic sites on the TailRank front page can't live on cheap, 5 dollar a month hosting.

We are going to have to move to MediaTemple with a powerful grid infrastructure. Of course, the hosting will be absolutely free because MediaTemple will be fighting off Google and Microsoft for the privilege of hosting us !

Now I need to go and powder my nose. I'm doing a podcast on the Scoble Show in 10 minutes.

My cruel owner was so excited and happy, I couldn't bear to tell him this was just a temporary glitch on the Bluehost monitoring agent and everything was back to normal now. Yours

The interminable bytestream that is 'Blog in isolation'