Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-04-22
I haven't done this in a few days. My time was eaten up by the move from server to server, finding out that some things broke in the process, and then finally fixing all the corrupted characters from the database backup (a streak of laziness didn't help). I tried to do the export/import thing, but the server choked on it — it was more than the 2 MB file size limit. Oh, I could have messed with it and got it to work, but I figured the database backup would be okay. It was for the most part; it only took me 6 hours to clean up the posts. It wasn't just the bad characters that I worked on, but I found them while I was validating each page as XHTML.
As I stated I would in a previous post, I started from square one today. I only made it through half the blogs I normally visit. If they all didn't have such interesting stuff to hold my attention, it would have gone much faster! Anyway, since I plan to do this daily from here on out (barring unusual circumstances that I'm sure I'll post about), it's not a big deal that it took so long.
***
I was able to see the many faces of Claire at A little piece of me. I'm sorry, Claire, but some of those alterations are simply ghastly. Stay like you are, even when you're really, really old, okay?
Eileen at An Apple a Day spoke of her experience with ice skating. I have never even been near an ice skating rink, let alone try it out. I refuse to make a special trip anywhere for that anyway. I learned how to skate years ago on 4-wheeled roller skates. Then they came out with the "inline" skates and I refused to try those. Call me stubborn, if you wish.
Andy Beard always has a unique approach to solving problems. He found a way to save HOURS of time importing favorites from Technorati. Check it out.
Chris at Blog-Op started working with a new plugin that displays 16×16 pixel icons. If you look in the upper left corner of his page, you'll see some (including the "UV" of mine).
Paul posted a picture of an item in his bathroom. I didn't know blogpaul had such an issue with tissue.
Coach at Can't Coach That asked what we give up for our blogs. I answered that it was a full-time job for me since I'm actually retired. Blogging is my new career. Head on over and tell him what you give up for your blog. Maybe it's more than you usually think about.
Kelly at Catch a Falling Star found a unique way to manage her Google Reader feed subscriptions. I never thought of doing it that way or even part of the way. Folders? Hmmm…
Mick at CruftBucket pointed the way to an article at The Australian World Wide Weird where a man proposed to a woman within four minutes of meeting her face to face for the first time. Truly love at first site.
The Edge posted an article about The Great Bee Mystery. Of course, I pointed out that there isn't any mystery. Just view my Sweet Dreams post to see that the bees are just busy right now.
Hari at Hari's Corner wrote about moving his blog from the WordPress software to the TextPattern software, prompted by the annoying autosave feature in WordPress. The previous article I posted furnished the code to defeat it. I'd rather he use WordPress so that I can help him out from time to time. I don't know diddly about TextPattern.
The evil John Chow posted an evil way to get people to subscribe to your RSS feeds. It's in jest, but it highlights a good reason to subscribe to feeds: No advertising. That is, until Google AdSense for feeds comes out of beta.
Nirmal at -| Life Rocks ! 2.0 |- pointed the way to a Google Ajax Search plugin at Sizlopedia. I've wanted to change my search tool for some time, but I don't like the Google AdSense version. Perhaps this plugin will do what I want. I will have to test it soon. I trust Sizlopedia; my theme is a variation of the Tiga theme done by Sizlopedia (and further customized by me, of course).
Stine at Mother's Home gave credit to me and a few others for getting her Technorati exchange on the move. All I did was mention it and she ran with it. Good show, Stine!
Similar Posts:
Hi RT,
I'm definitely more familiar with WordPress than TextPattern myself. However, WP is a pain to theme. I created the theme I use on my blog myself and it's a powerful system all right and very customizable, but the PHP code makes the template quite unreadable at times.
However, the best part about WP is that I can edit theme in plain text files and not in a database and I definitely like to use my favourite PHP editor.
By the way, this reviews site of mine http://www.harishankar.org was built using my own CMS system. I created one which doesn't use MySQL and completely runs off text files. No admin panel, nothing…
I originally used WP on that site too, but I couldn't find a single CMS suitable for it, so I cooked up my own!
The point I guess I was making is that sometimes no pre-built script seems right for a particular job, so I guess WordPress is as close to perfection as it gets for me currently.
Some are too feature-rich, some too stripped down…
Hi Hari,
I looked at your text-based CMS. Very good. I want to do something similar in the future, but as a text-based blog. I don't like being tied to a database of any kind. I won't be making it for public consumption, just for me (or individuals that are interested in making it better). Kind of like "FlatPress" but without borrowing from WordPress.
I tested a few blog packages before settling with WordPress. In my opinion, WordPress can only get better with time, especially as they start putting popular plugins into the core.
I also added a commenting feature for it recently.
http://harishankar.org/index.php?comments
I agree with you. I've tested dozens of CMSes and blogging tools and while a few of them are promising, the problem is always that they're missing something or they don't have any converters from WordPress.
I also planned to write a text-based blogging system in the near future. But of course, it won't incorporate any admin panel or anything and obviously it would not be easy to add a built-in search facility for a text-based system.
However, if we can live with google search, then I think we can cook up a text blog quite easily.
By the way, if you want a text-based blog, take a look at this one:
http://www.simplephpblog.com/
Looked good. The only problem was – no importers available so you pretty much have to abandon your earlier posts or painfully repost them all over again.
Thanks for the link love!
I will try and stay the same forever! Thanks for the drive by.