Are you getting sick of these test posts? Me too. Have a look at SF Signals thoughts about Borders
Category: Blog Admin
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Testing a Third Time
All this testing is to see if my WordPress pings are reaching the various update services in a timely fashion.
Here’s an old picture of my cat.
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Testing Again
You can ignore this posting, too. Unless you want to discuss the death of Sunday Sales here in Georgia? Or how about an update to this morning’s posting about the Auburn Oak Trees? There’s been an arrest.
If not, then carry on.
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Testing testing. Is this thing on?
You are permitted to ignore this post.
Nothing to see here. These are not the droids you’re looking for.
Move along.
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New/Old Look to the Blog
Up until I made my server move, I’d been using the Seashore theme, tricked out with a few mods. For example, I had a quote plugin that would throw a random quotation or joke (of my own selection) up onto the header part of the page. Plus, I had some code I borrowed from my friend Chris Schierer that allowed for random header images to appear. There were other tweaks, too, but those were the main ones. It looked like this:
Now, with the move, I discover I borked the theme somehow. It won’t even turn on. So, we’re going with the standard basic WordPress theme of Twenty-Ten, which is actually quite nice. Its clean and easy on the eyes, with good text management and readability, something that my previous theme was disappointing me about (and I was trying to fix).
I had pretty much given up on the Seashore theme when I did this server move and discarding it was forced upon me. As it is, I like what I see now. I’m sure I’ll get in there and tweak stuff, at least to get my random header images back. Until then, you’ll just have to put up with the default.
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General Query for Server Savvy People
As noted in the last posting, I just moved this blog to a new server.
I believe that I’ve managed to make everything work out for the best internally, i.e. with significant help from Jim Cronen, I fixed the links that would have been directed back to the old site and everything else should be transparent1.
However, there are a lot of links out in the wild that all refer back to the old site. For example, any commenting I’ve done that might link to http://www.evileyebrow.com/2008/11/13/no-worse-person-to-lead/ is now being hosted at http://www.evileyebrow.com/2008/11/13/no-worse-person-to-lead/.
I still control the jbwr.net domain, so what I want to do is have some sort of file that sees these links coming in and automatically redirects them.
I know how to do this on an individual folder basis with an index.asp file, but I’m not sure how to do it in a blanket, domain-wide fashion so that every incoming link gets sent to the right spot.
Anyone want to help me out?
1: If you happen to find broken stuff, please let me know.
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Congratulations! You Made the Move to my New Site!
Congratulations! If you’re reading this post, that means that you’re already set up to transparently observe my server move for the Evil Eyebrow. If you’re reading this on or around February 14, you’re all set to go; you’re the first bullet point (12:45 edit: or the second) that is described temporarily over at the old site and quoted here:
For the entire life of this blog, The Evil Eyebrow, it has been hosted underneath the umbrella of our jbwr.net domain. You could access it through evileyebrow.com, but it redirected you to (oh, god, the URL length) http://www.jbwr.net/web/bp/billblog.
There were reasons for this, but none of them apply any longer.
Very shortly, there will be a move from http://www.jbwr.net/web/bp/billblog to http://www.evileyebrow.com. This will be transparent for some people, but unfortunately, not very many.
What this means:
- Anyone accessing the site with a bookmark to http://www.evileyebrow.com or http://evileyebrow.com, you’re good to go.
- Anyone accessing the site with a bookmark to http://www.jbwr.net/web/bp/billblog, you’re likely to see some interruption, but hopefully, I’ll write the redirect script correctly so that you get sent to http://www.evileyebrow.com. However, I highly recommend you update your bookmark
- Anyone accessing this site through a feed, you’re most likely accessing http://www.jbwr.net/web/bp/billblog/index.php/feed/. This feed will be dead, dead, dead in short order. It’s possible that I could keep it alive, but I don’t want to. Henceforth the feed address will be http://www.evileyebrow.com/index.php/feed/, although if your feedreader is smart, it should be able to grab that directly from the http://www.evileyebrow.com/ website.
I guess I’ll find out how many people really like to follow my blog.
There are still some growing pains right now, so if you find yourself clicking on links and ending up at a jbwr.net link, we’re working on that. If, a few days from now, that’s still happening, please let me know.
The www.jbwr.net/web/bp/billblog site is going to be positively deprecated by next weekend (i.e.,I’m axing the database so that legacy url problems are obvious) but I’ll put up a notice or two reminding people who haven’t changed their feed that the website is no longer operational.
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New Author! Exciting Trip!
You may have noticed a Hello World type message just now. I choose to leave it there rather than remove it because it does two things:
- It calls attention to my inability to spell. If I could spell, than that posting would be “Hello” rather than “Hello2”. The first one was rejected because I misentered my brother-in-law’s email address
- It begins the new postings by Mark Chapman during the Chapman Family Circumnavigation of Mississippi (state) and environs.
Mark, my Dad (Bill Sr.) and my two nephews via Mark are doing a boat journey from Tulsa, OK to the Gulf of Mexico, up the Tombigbee, back to the Mississippi and then home to Tulsa. I believe they are in Little Rock, AR right now.
But I’ll let Mark tell the story through his postings. Welcome everyone who are here to follow Mark, Bill, Tommy and Greg. Welcome to the Evil Eyebrow. I hope you’ll stay a while.
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WordPress Plugin Development looking for a Developer
Who wants to fix an issue with one of my favorite WordPress Plugins?
Postie is a plugin that allows email postings to self-maintained WordPress blogs (not WordPress.com blogs). It has lots of cool features and I like it. However, one of its features doesn’t work.
You are supposed to be able to append “:end” to an email and the plugin will strip off all text after it prior to placing the message in a blog post. It doesn’t work, as evidenced on my latest Blackberry posting:
Regarding my post yesterday about the TIGER awards, it’s amazing how much excitement can be caused by the Feds. :end Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
I find the automatic Blackberry attachments to my emails to be not only rude but a violation of my terms of service, but that’s not a fight I’m going to win. Regardless of people getting my emails with “Blackberry: ‘Cause we Can” attached to them, I refuse to have them appear in my blog postings. To date I’ve gone back and edited them out, but I’d prefer the “:end” tag to actually work.
I suppose that this could be my opportunity to earn the Open Source Nerd Merit Badge, but frankly I don’t have the time. Anyone want to do this for me? I can even throw in a little incentive: Whomever takes care of this will receive a hot-off-the-press brand new album by The Extraordinary Contraptions (“Scratch the Aether”) as soon as it’s released this spring.
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New! Subscribe to Comments!
I’ve (finally) installed a WordPress plugin that allows you to subscribe to the comments on my posts. No longer will you have to come back to the entry to find if there has been any comments after yours.
This has only taken me about three years to do. Total time involved was about five minutes. Go me!
It’s easy, just click the check box at the bottom of the comments window.
Yay! We’re more of a community now!