Posts tagged with "WordPress"

Just went to delete whiteside.wordpress.com.

Hit Yes I am really, really sure I want to delete this blog for eternity. Yes. I acknowledge I will never be able to access the blog again or reuse the name ever. Or, in vi terms, ':q!'.

Received an email from the WordPress Workflow Monitor Agent. Clicked the link to confirm I really, truly do know what I am doing and do indeed want to consign the blog to Room 101.

[ Wonder why some idiots people end up posting on the Support Forum 'HELP !!! I've deleted my blog by mistake' ]

Watch in horror as browser fleetingly accesses 'andyc.wordpress.com' instead and brings me to this dashboard. So, on second thoughts, I think I will leave things just as they are.

...not to bury them.

I have been unable to administer this blog for a couple of days. However, thanks to the unstinting efforts of Ryan and Donncha, I am pleased to say the problem is now resolved.

I was trapped inside a recursive, infinite, endless loop hell which severely tested my sense of humour after 28 minutes. In fact, I was positively irritated, frustrated and tending towards 'annoyed'.

I was aware there were a few issues at WordPress following recent changes. Initially, I assumed my problems were related and just waited. However, then I saw people merrily posting away on their WordPress blogs (and not just Scobleizer who has a custom template and a dedicated server farm).

I tried a few things myself (cleared cookies, different browsers, different computers) but all to no avail. I started a self-help group for affected bloggers. I scanned digg, reddit, tailrank memorandum, Google (and the BBC World Service) in vain for mention of this catastrophe in the blogosphere.

I posted a few rapid fire entries on my new shiny blog (the soon to be, sadly, departed 'whiteside.wordpress.com'). I thought up a fantastic new tag line - 'interminable bytestream'. I used the Performancing for Firefox blog editor which was excellent and was also impressed by the recently released Metrics.

However, I persisted reading and posting to the WordPress support forum and eventually got into an email dialog with Ryan. His email actually 'thanked me for my report' (as if I was somehow doing him a favour), apologised for 'breaking my blog' (as though I am a paying customer), described the progress so far (interesting) and assured me they were 'trying to put it right' (reassuring).

And within a short period, they did.

I am a fan of WordPress. I like their software. I like their humour.

I pay absolutely nothing for the service so I really can't complain when it breaks.

However, today is the second day I can't access my blog on WordPress.

Nothing on Technorati. Nothing on Digg. Nothing on tech.memeorandum. Nothing on TailRank. Nothing from those Wordpress 'A' listers, Scoble and Winer.

In fact, as I could see other people sporadically blogging on WordPress, my paranoia took hold and I started to wonder whether I was the only person in the entire blogosphere affected by this problem.

Then, finally, I read the following posting from Matt Mullenweg in the WordPress Support forum

We're shifting some things to address the problem, and there is new hardware and such coming online as soon as we can get it.

So, that's fine. An update from someone in the know although the phrase 'new hardware...when we can get it' makes me slightly uncomfortable and reaching for my Blogger details and the non-existent WordPress 'export' button.

Anyway, I am sure that when a spate of other high profile Web 2.0 companies (del.icio.us, Blogger, TypePad) had problems in December last year, the news was plastered all over Technorati and elsewhere.

So, are WordPress so fantastic and so powerful, that they are actually beyond reproach ?

Normally, when something isn't working, I get a little annoyed.

However, with WordPress, you just have to smile.

I had a beautifully crafted draft that said...

So MySpace has a staggering 55 million users (well 54 million angst ridden, teen blogs with garish colours, dodgy photos and flash animations galore) while the more recently launched WordPress.com has a mere 110,000 blogs but a far more discerning, perceptive, technically minded and intelligent user base. Quality not quantity.

...but now I see the most popular WordPress tag is 'LECTURES' so maybe WordPress also has 109,998 students, a Microsoft blogging evangelist and me.

'Fancy a drink after this lecture ? No thanks. I simply must go back to the library and blog about it.'

Thanks to AtariBoy, we now know what it takes to feature on Top WordPress.com blogs today.

11,706 hits (at least).

Hmm. Way to go. As our American friends say.

Just noticed that those nice people at WordPress.com have added aggregated statistics over 7 and 30 days.

A software company that actually listens to their users and eats their own dog food Interesting concept but I don't think it will ever take off.

Joomla, Chumbawamba, Oompa Loompa

I really like the presentation of Howard Rogers site (and the integration of Forums, Blog and now an Oracle Wiki) and have followed, with interest, the evolution of the site in different formats, and enjoyed Howard's thoughts on various content management technologies over recent months before he finally settled on Joomla.

I am also very impressed by the new look of Niall Litchfield's orawin.info site which also uses Joomla and is a marked contrast (and improvement) from its predecessor. In fact, I just find myself gazing at the desert landscape for minutes on end.

I now find myself struggling to resist a very strong temptation to install Apache, PHP, mySQL and then Joomla on my PC at home just because it would be an interesting exercise.

This activity would also satisfy all the necessary pre-requisites for installing and playing with WordPress.org which is also very tempting.

However, I must be strong and resist. I know what will happen. I will encounter a few problems, solve them by reading the documentation, FAQ, finally get it all working and enjoy a brief period of satisfaction.

Then, knowing that I was able to do it and it worked, I will almost immediately lose interest and fail to really experiment with Joomla and WordPress at all.

I know this because last year, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to get all my vinyl records out of the loft, transfer them to digital format and then dispose of them.

I bought a cable from Tandy to hook up my record player to the PC. I connected it incorrectly and nearly blew my tiny, tinny PC speakers. I then investigated what software packages I would need to convert the large WAV files to MP3 format and label each individual track in ID3 format.

I settled on Audacity which did the job perfectly well and was another high quality, free, OpenSource software package.

Then I converted just one side of one LP - The Wonderful and Frightening World by The Fall. In fact, I didn't even do one side. I just did one song (Lay of the Land) which took a few iterations but finally, I had an MP3 version of the song.

Then, as soon as I knew it could be done, despite investing all this time, I almost instantly lost complete interest in the whole exercise.

I never even converted another song, let alone attacked the pile of singles and LP's. I am slightly worried that this indicates a personality trait that is a cause for concern (i.e. I am a perpetual starter but not a finisher).

The downloads are underway...

You spend 3 months watching your WordPress statistics bumbling along the horizontal axis close to zero.

Some traffic dribbles in. The graph accelerates into 10s of hits daily. You feel better. You will persist with this blogging experiment for a little longer.

At this rate, it may soon be time to consider a proper blog using WordPress.org and Adsense to make the millions that eluded me during the dot com boom.

Then those pesky developers from WordPress.com alter the Y-axis dynamically, on the fly without even asking so the statistics now start at 40 and the graph looks just the same.

Life is cruel.

Those busy people at WordPress have opened up a couple of forums for support issues and feedback for users of WordPress.com

This is a brilliant idea as I currently have to use the 'Feedback' form for all my brilliant suggestions and reporting minor glitches which was a little lonely and uni-directional.