Bluehost have upgraded WordPress to 2.0.5 so I ignored this warning and clicked Upgrade
Click on Upgrade only if - no files, languages, themes have been modified - you haven't added mods to this installation of WordPress
After all, the whole point of hosting a blog is to add plugins and modify themes.
I find it slightly odd that Bluehost have no blog or other means of communicating the availability of these upgrades.
Let's see if posting still works.
Feedburner - WordPress.com provides users with statistics about feed subscriptions. At best, these metrics were questionable and I used to provide two RSS feeds (WordPress and Feedburner) so the metrics didn't capture all feed activity anyway. As there is no equivalent functionality in WordPress 2.0.4 out of the box, I resurrected my Feedburner account and installed this WordPress plugin which automatically routes any subscribers to the WordPress RSS feed through Feedburner.
Sitemap - I started from zero when I created this site so I could try my hand at organic gardening. The only search engine I submitted to was Google. When I was trying to encourage Google to index the new site, I discovered that a sitemap could accelerate the process. This WordPress plugin generates a sitemap which tells the Google crawler about the site structure and recently updated pages. The sitemap automatically gets updated after each post and helps to reduce network traffic.
After my recent move from the community of WordPress.com, once again I truly feel like a Blog in Isolation. There are a few features I missed from WordPress.com:
The Barthelme theme for WordPress is close to absolute perfection.
My only minor reservation is that elements of the sidebar (Pages, Categories, Recent Comments) and the title of the Next/Previous posts appear in UPPER case.
This is one of my pet hates as it looks like SHOUTING which is RUDE and, IMHO (sic), is completely at odds with the minimalist, understated feel of the theme.
However, a quick edit in 'style.css' to change two occurrences of 'text-transform: none;' to 'text-uppercase: none;' fixed that.
My life is now complete. All that remains is to add 'CSS' to my CV.
After two months and two days, the music has stopped, the theme rotation carousel has travelled full circle and finally come to a halt.
WordPress.com offers a total of 40 themes (37 when I started) and I have experimented and laboriously captured screenshots of every single one.
I have tried out all the WP themes as they became available but it was interesting to live with each theme for a day or so.
My personal favourites were:
Andreas04 - I don't normally like three column themes but this was an notable exception. Light - simple, effective theme. If only it was a little wider.
Regulus - still probably my favourite (just) which rather negates the point of the whole pointless exercise. The header image clinches it. You never forget your first love.
Rubric - great looking theme with focus on the text but I feel Lorelle has made this theme her own.
Sandbox - a building block for DIY enthusiasts.
White As Milk - clean, minimalist look but narrow text.
And my hall of shame:
Banana Smoothie - not for everyone but undeniably very distinctive. Flower Power - not sure why this theme only uses half the screen.
Sweet Blossoms - too much colour, not enough screen.
I guess my perfect theme would be a two column, minimalist theme with an emphasis on the article text. In fact, Scott's Wallick's plaintxt theme is pretty close to perfection.
I guess I always could shell out 15 USD and build it myself on WordPress using the recently launched custom CSS.
Alternatively, I could just pay up and get my own hosted WordPress blog with complete control over everything.
So, review the Flickr set and cast your vote now.
RSS readers - don't sneer from the sidelines but tell us all what RSS reader you use and why.
The Sandbox theme recently added to WordPress is pleasant enough but the original themes developed by Scott Wallick from plaintxt.org are absolutely superb.
Clean, white, minimalist, striking, understated and refreshingly different from the thousands of themes out there.
Maybe a fraction too late for Doug Burns (whose Blogger blog has been recently hijacked) but WordPress have just announced the availability of XML import/export utilities, primarily for switching between self-hosted and WordPress.com blogs but may also be useful for backing up your blog and facilitating other platform migrations.
Tempting, very tempting
My mailbox is bulging with letters from recent and occasional visitors worried that they may have missed some WordPress themes in the recent blitzkrieg of posts during the ongoing and exciting Theme rotation policy.
Worry ye not. I am meticulously capturing screen dumps of each theme in a Flickr photoset so the poll will be absolutely fair and equitable (and Regulus will win).
The current theme is Banana Smoothie. I wonder if coffee enthusiast and cocktail maker, Jon Emmons, might be voting for this one.
WordPress has a total of 37 themes. I have recently fallen out with my long standing favourite and top scorer, Regulus 2.1.3, after he blatantly deceived me over the state of his CSS injury.
Consequently, I will be implementing a rotation policy (with immediate effect) to give each squad member a fair and equitable chance to stake his claim (hand in glove).
Then I will conduct a poll of all my loyal readers (both of them) to determine the winner.
Then I will reinstate Regulus 2.1.3.
You are currently admiring Solipsus 1.5 (aka Cartoon Network ).
Maybe Dougs right. Perhaps WordPress isnt a suitable blogging platform for serious technical Web journals (with 473 lines of 10046 trace) after all.
The latest theme (Solipsus 1.5) announced for WordPress is described thus:
Black & Brown design, inspired by Adult Swim of Cartoon Network.
That's all folks !