Failure is the Key to Success

I upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1 on one of my test blogs a few days ago using the new automatic upgrade feature. The upgrade went quickly and smoothly and everything worked afterwards, so that was good.

Tonight, I got round to upgrading my other test blogs and they didn’t go well at all.

Initially on 2 of them I got as far as “Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7.1.zip” and that was all; it just sat there doing nothing. OK, so I looked on the forums and saw a suggestion that it might be plugin related, so I disabled all the plugins on one of the blogs, this then got to the next stage “Unpacking the core update” and sat there doing nothing. Hmm, this was strange it worked on the first blog. I tried the update on my last test blog and this worked automatically in seconds. The mystery deepens!

Then I had a thought, back in July, when I was working on the problem with Firestats, I found a resolution by adding a line to my .htaccess file:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

Continue reading » Upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1

Tags:.htaccess file,FireStats,PHP 5,upgrading Wordpress,wordpress 2.7.1

It’s been a long time coming and at the end of last week I finally got around to revamping my family tree website. It used to be static pages that I hand-coded and hadn’t been updated for months. I have now converted it to a WordPress blog (just like this one), which means I can add entries there when I’m researching one branch or other of the family tree.

In addition to re-launching this site, I had to add code on all my sites this morning when I found a Russian site that had basically taken and translated every post on my blog into Russian and was presenting it complete with all my (hotlinked) images and style sheet. I have now added code in my sites’ .htaccess file preventing hotlinking of images and my stylesheets from other sites. I checked David Airey’s blog post How to stop image hotlinking and bandwidth theft before adding the code.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ianhedges.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ijhedges.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?ijhedges.co.uk/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z\.\-]+)?cre8Buzz.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|png|css)$ - [F]

I’ve allowed cre8Buzz, as I hotlink my profile images from my gallery.

Tags:.htaccess file,family tree,preventing hotlinking

After looking at the list of categories in my blog, I decided that I needed to add a few more. I have gone back through the posts and added them to the new categories where appropriate. This in theory, would reduce my use of my miscellaneous category ‘General’, but just to prove a point my post about the 900 years of Dunstable is in General. Oh well, never mind.

Tags:Blog-design,categories

I was added to the Technorati Fave Train yesterday by Ilker at The Thinking Blog. This is a link and favorite train started by Gary Lee a couple of weeks ago. I’ve just spent the last couple of hours working my way down the original list and reading the blogs. I didn’t want to just Favourite them without looking and so, anyway, now I have another 22 blogs to try to check regularly.

***Start Copying Here***

Here are the rules:

1. Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2. COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3. Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.

4. Add at least 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?add=http://www.yourdomain.com)

5. Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” (Please FAVE EVERYONE on the List prior to posting the list or a Kitten will Die Alone in a Dark Alley Tonight). Those who want good karma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

Tech Bold – Fave the Site
Six Degrees of Inspiration – Fave the Site
Randa Clay Design – Fave the Site

The Original Faves

Gary Lee – Fave the Site *
Dosh Dosh – Fave the Site
Nate Whitehill – Fave the Site
Ms. Danielle – Fave the Site
Jeff Kee – Fave the Site
Scribble on the Wall – Fave the Site
Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave the Site
Jon Lee – Fave the Site
Samanathon – Fave the Site
Eat Drink & Be Merry – Fave the Site
The Man of Silver – Fave the Site
Hannes Johnson – Fave the Site
My Dandelion Patch – Fave the Site
Nathan Drach – Fave the Site
SiteLogic – Fave the Site
Julies Journal – Fave the Site
Tea & Slippers – Fave the Site
Pencil Thin – Fave the Site
Garry Conn – Fave the Site
Stephen Fung – Fave the Site
Ed Lau – Fave the Site
QMusings – Fave the Site
The Thinking Blog – Fave the Site
Google Tutor – Fave the Site
TV Cells – Fave the Site
eWritings – Fave the Site
Mommy’s Getaway – Fave the Site
GR8 Egypt – Fave the Site
Divya Uttam – Fave the Site
Sean Dinner – Fave the Site
O Salepito – Fave the Site
Kyle Beabo – Fave the Site
Failure is the key to success – Fave the Site**
* – Train Engineer
** – Last Wagon
***End Copying Here***

Wow, that took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Tags:technorati favorite

I had noticed about a week ago that my posts were not updating on Technorati although it was showing that my site had been updated. The problem seemed to be about the same time that I changed to using Feedburner and after searching on Google this seemed to be a known problem that Technorati had been made aware of, but were not responding to.

So, I placed a Support ticket with Technorati this evening not really expecting to get a response. While I was reading the automated acknowledgement, I got an email from Tonette Wong at Customer Services with the resolution.

It turns out that when I was making changes to the blog’s layout, I had made the entry title into a link and this was different to the link in the feed.

I have made the two links the same and now Technorati like me again. So, unlike many other people, it seems I got a very quick accurate response, Thank you.

Tags:feedburner,technorati,technorati support

I have spent some time over the past week working on a new layout for my blog.

Some of the changes include:

The header image has been replaced with a wider image.

The RSS button has been increased in size and an email subcription added.

The add comments page has been modified to also include the entry on the page.

It works fine in Firefox and Opera, and after a bit of hassle, also in Internet Explorer.

If you have any comments please let me know through the comments.