As you can see, I’m back to the default WordPress theme right now. It sucks, and that is part of why I’m using it right now. You see, I’ve been unhappy with my old theme for a while now, and I’ve been wanting to get something new posted. Hopefully this will encourage me to get that done. Of course, before I do anything to my site I have to get the new forum skin finished for OverclockersClub.com, which I am more than a little late on wrapping up.
Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress’
Back To Basics
Monday, January 25th, 2010And I’m Back (Again)
Friday, December 19th, 2008I’m back again. Upgraded my site to the latest version of Wordpress. I must say, I’m really liking the changes to the dashboard! 
I’ll play around with the other features later. Now, I just need to figure out what I want my next theme to look like… I wish I was more artistic in that regard.
This Should Be Better
Friday, December 19th, 2008Sorry about the bit of downtime earlier today. I actually moved my site over to a new set of servers in an attempt to improve performance.
When you ask people about GoDaddy.com, most people either hate them or love them. Me? Well, I’m mostly on the love the side of the house. I’ve never had any kind of major problem with them. In fact, when my site was running e107, someone exploited an issue with the services trackback functions. A support rep from GoDaddy contacted me, and we worked to resolve the issue.
I’ve been hosted on GoDaddy now for several years, and like I said, no major problems. However, for the last few months, I’ve noticed a considerable slowdown that just shouldn’t be there considering I’m running a single instance of Wordpress. I upgraded PHP, MySQL, and removed plugins in an attempt to speed things up. Nothing had anything more than a marginal impact. So last night, I upgraded my hosting plan moving from GoDaddy’s Linux Shared Hosting package to their new Linux Grid Hosting (beta) package.
I’m really not sure what they mean by beta hosting, but so far it is certainly faster.
Now that the site is working, I’ll have another moment of downtime while I upgrade my WP install to v2.7. 
Wordpress 2.7
Thursday, December 11th, 2008The latest “major” version of Wordpress was released today. And though I’ve not actually used it yet, Wordpress 2.7 looks awesome. While there is a lot in the new version, two things I’m looking forward to are a much overhauled admin dashboard. The 2nd feature I’m looking forward to is actually two similar features. You can now install and update any plug in from the Wordpress repository without having to fool with downloading, unpacking, and uploading. The other part of this actually allows you to upgrade Wordpress itself.
I’ll be giving Wordpress 2.7 a go on my test site in a bit, with an actually upgrade to come (hopefully) soon after.
Whoops! Site updated.
Monday, November 3rd, 2008So, I decided that I’d upgrade my WordPress install to v2.6.3. It’s actually something that I had been wanting to do for a while, but haven’t had the time. Finally got around to doing it, and messed up big time.
You see, this is the first time I’ve done my WP updates from my Mac. When doing them from Windows, you’d just upload the files, and it was done. Files that are there would be left alone, unless they needed to be over written. Not the case with the FTP upload from OSX. OSX decides to delete the existing folder, and replace it with exactly what you uploaded. This means my theme, plugins, and other settings went buh-bye.
Thankfully, I had a backup copy of my theme… the plugins, well that’s another story. However, I think I’ve managed to remember everything I used, and those have hopefully been reinstalled. Let me know if anything breaks, and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.
Automattic Acquires PollDaddy
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008WordPress makers Automattic recently acquired commenting system IntenseDebate, and today they acquired PollDaddy. Looks like we are seeing WordPress transform from a blogging system to a full blown, powerful CMS.
No word from Automattic or the PollDaddy team yet if they plan on making the service completely free.
Source: PollDaddy Blog via Mashable
Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008The IntenseDebate Blog brings news that they have been acquired by Automattic, the developers of WordPress. This is sure to be good news for WordPress users, and it’ll meen better intigration among their other services Akismet and Gravitar.
I acyually used IntenseDebate briefly here on d3bruts1d.com as I was experimenting betwen it and similar service DISQUS. I opted to go with DISQUS because it felt a bit more polished around the edges. However, I was promised a sneak peek at a new (beta) version of IntenseDebate that was being developed… so far, I have yet to see this new version.
Woopra Wordpress Plugin 1.3
Sunday, August 31st, 2008Woopra recently released an update to their Wordpress plugin. Version 1.3 isn’t available in the Wordpress Plugin Repository yet, so if you want to update it, you’ll need to grab it directly from Woopra.
The new version includes the ability to visitors, see your stats right from the WP dashboard.
They keep trucking along with a very nice service, and in my opinion, Google should be worried. – While I still run both Google Analytics and Woopra, I don’t remember the last time I check stats via Google. Having the desktop application from Woopra is sweet, and being able to see stats from by WP dashboard while not at home will be even nicer.
IntenseDebate vs DISQUS
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Over the last few days I’ve played around with commenting services IntenseDebate and DISQUS. I’ve used both services lightly in the past to comment on various blogs. While both services are nice, for me IntenseDebate always felt a little rough around the edges. Perhaps more importantly, DISQUS appears to be more popular, which of course means more people likely to leave comments. And well, that’s what it is really all about. Reach.
One thing that has become obvious to me is that both companies are passionate about their product.
After leaving a comment on another blog that was discussing these two services, I was contacted by Michael Koenig from IntenseDebate. He gave me a heads up on a new IntenseDebate-WordPress plugin that is currently in beta. He’s also taken the time to stop by on here, and post a few comments. From what he said, it sounds like the new ID plugin is going to be pretty sweet and might actually polish off a few of those rough edges I mentioned.
On the flip side, I was contacted by Daniel Ha, CEO of DISQUS, concerning my decision to leave their service. As I’ve already mentioned, my sole reason for leaving DISQUS was the FUBAR import process that decided to take a trip around the world before importing my comments. Daniel sent a nice email, saying sorry to hear about my issue, that others experienced the same thing, and it has since been resolved.
Got to give both companies an A+ for their customer interaction!
So… the reason I left DISQUS is no longer an issue, and the things I disliked about ID may no longer be an issue. So that brings me back to a question I asked a few days ago. DISQUS or IntenseDebate. Which to use? Of course, I cannot exactly make a decision about ID until I see the new plugin.
Which service do you have experience with? Which service do you like better? Why? If you were to go with one for your site, which would you go with?
I’d really like some feedback on this! Thanks!
d3bruts1d.com Comments Powered by DISQUS
Sunday, August 24th, 2008I have switched my comment system from the default Wordpress system to DISQUS. This new system will allow me easier management of comments, threading of comments, as well as some additional features for users.
Right now the existing comments are in the process of being migrated into the DISQUS system. You will be able to post a comment without being registered with DISQUS, however there will be a moderation queue for such comments. Register for free, and you’re comment will appear automatically.
Additionally, once you register you’ll be able to comment on any other blog that uses this DISQUS system. Nice, eh? And for those of you that use FriendFeed, your comments will be available there as well.