FYI, since I moved everything over to 1&1, all user accounts were deleted. Old comments are still there along with the author’s username. Feel free to register with your old username. Or a new one.
Archive for the 'The Site' Category
If you’re reading this, then my site was served to you by my new (old) hosting provider. The original DanPremo.com was hosted by 1&1. A few years in, Lewis turned me on to WordPress, which requires PHP and MySQL. At the time, my price slot had an option for PHP (by way of Linux), but I would have had to pay roughly twice as much to get a MySQL database.
For a smaller increase in price (about 50% less), I moved my hosting over to PowWeb, while keeping my registrar services at 1&1. I always felt that this was a compromise because PowWeb lacks the support, performance, and professionalism of 1&1. At some point in the recent past, I discovered that 1&1 had added features to its lowest price slots, including MySQL databases. For less than what PowWeb charges, I could get the features that forced my move in the first place.
But I was busy. It’s probably been more than a year since 1&1 improved its feature set, and now I’m finally switching. Back. It’s been easy because I’ve continued on as a customer these few years, so I was able to upgrade my package entirely though 1&1’s website. (Who wants to talk to a person?)
Comments are off until further notice.
I’ve gotten a ton of comment spam lately. One morning I woke up with something like 10 comment spam posts in the moderation queue. I may allow comments or new posts from now on, or I may allow comments temporarily, or I may allow comments only for select posts.
It sucks, but spammers are awful people.
WordPress theme K2 recently updated with version 0.9.1. I downloaded it. I installed it. I’m unhappy with it.
My number one gripe? The fonts changed from Beta Two to 0.9. Why? It’s an arbitrary change. I had been using Beta Two for months and now I’m supposed to deal with tweaky bulls***? This is the sort of thing I deal with when I’m evaluating a potential theme, not when I’m applying an incremental update.
My number two gripe? Although there is an extrememly useful tool — new in 0.9 — that allows me to change my header image without using an FTP client, there is no toggle to turn off the header text. This sounds to me like it should be simpler to implement than an image uploader, parser, selecter, and hell — randomizer! This means that if people want to disable the header text, we’ve got to edit CSS. Not unheard of, but again — this is the sort of thing I look at when I’m evaluating a theme, not when I’m applying an update.
The tipping point? K2’s forum is down, and although the post that tells me this says the problem “might take up to a day or two,” that very post is over a week old, and the forums still aren’t back up. So I can’t read the old forum post that told me how to eliminate the header text.
As a result of these gripes, I have rolled my site back to K2 Beta Two.
PS — As of 0.9, there are spelling errors in the K2 admin interface. This is the sort of thing that should lessen as a product nears final release — not increase. Boo K2, boo.
Added a comment to the Star Wars Discussion page. It’s about the unaltered DVDs of the Original Trilogy, due out in September.
I implemented K2 today. I will leave it in place for the forseeable future.
I still want to make some changes to the sidebar, but the code is a little bit different than Kubrick, the default WordPress theme and the one I used up until now.
[UPDATE] Sidebar is done. I left out the Newsvine feed. May or may not put that back in.
I added Newsvine to my sidebar and removed digg. Make your own conclusions.
What I want to talk about is the fact that there are not one but two Newsvine sections over there. They represent two feeds (out of a possible three). See, Newsvine presents news from the AP wire — the Wire — and news that registered users might find interesting and decide to seed to the site — the Vine. The third feed, which I don’t pull onto DP.com, has a lot of crap stories. This would lead one to the logical conclusion that the Vine & Wire feed would be roughly half crap. But somehow, the combined feed seems to be the best of the three. This confuses me, although I can sort of envision a fuzzy logic, neural network, popular is good thing going on here.
Right now both sections to the right are identical. I wonder about browser caches, though, and I’m going to check the site tomorrow to see what the headlines are. Hopefully within a few days I’ll have picked a favorite.
Feel free to comment on your preferred feed.
[UPDATE] Eh, they were always identical. I went with the Vine & Wire feed.
Trying out a new theme. It’s called K2. Thoughts?
[UPDATE] Yeah, I only had K2 on the site for like twenty minutes. I like it … but I haven’t done any investigation into customizing it. And … I’ve still got that red and black theme tucked away …
I haven’t posted in a while. It’s been about three weeks.
I mean, of course you’ve got the Christmas holiday — I went home for a week, and Mom and Pop still have dial-up in Chipmonk. Then there’s the busy-ness before the break, the stuff after. And don’t forget New Year’s.
So that only gets me to about January 3rd. I actually started a rather lengthy post. No, let me rephrase that: I wrote a lot for a post. And then I lost it all. PowWeb was having issues with MySQL that day, and I lost the post. Pfft. Gone. Up in smoke.
The post was about IM clients — Gaim and AIM Triton. I wrote a bunch of stuff about features, my experiences trying each out, and why I chose not to use either. I hadn’t gotten to the part about how the crap Triton put on my system has left me considering a format.
That post was also the first time I had tried out WordPress 2.0’s authoring interface. It’s a little bit different, and a little prettier, but I must point out that it doesn’t work well with the Google Toolbar Spellchecker. This leaves me feeling very melancholy. Hopefully I spelled “melancholy” right, because I sure as hell ain’t gonna spellcheck it.
So yes. There’s a post. Happy New Year. If the Colts had managed a miraculous come from behing win today, I would have made a post today with the words “holy crap” involved.