I happened to be poking around in my database a while ago, particularly in the WordPress ‘options’ table for this blog. There’s an awful lot of cruft hanging around from old plugins that I don’t use anymore. I cleaned a few things out, but something hit me as I was perusing all those options: I can’t always tell which options belong(ed) to which plugins, themes, or to the WordPress core. In many cases, plugin authors … Continue reading
After much flailing about and gnashing of teeth, you should now be seeing this site served up by my new webhost. My original plan to use FastCGI + PHP CGI didn’t pan out (for some reason). But with other improvements to my configuration, I think that the new setup should work pretty well. After it’s had some time to burn in, and I have the chance to twiddle some more knobs, I’ll try to post … Continue reading
After a couple of failed attempts at switching to the new server setup, it seems I’m going to have to fall back and punt (at least on a portion of it). With the help of Frederick Townes, I have what should be a really screaming-fast web server setup. But for some reason, it seems that the Apache Worker MPM + FastCGI (mod_fcgid) + PHP CGI combination is not stable. At least, it’s not for me. … Continue reading
I’ve completed my migration to the new server, as mentioned in my previous post. I’m going to give it a little time for any problems to shake out before I do any heavy testing, but please let me know if you notice anything that doesn’t work correctly. Update, Dec 2: I’m trying again, after some server configuration help from Frederick Townes (W3 Total Cache author). So far, testing with ApacheBench has looked good.
This blog will be moving to a new server very soon. If all goes well, you shouldn’t notice a thing. But just in case, I figured I’d give a warning, so that if you try to visit and you get an error, or the site won’t come up, you’ll know to just come back again later instead of thinking that my site was an early victim of the 2012 apocalypse or something. I’m doing more … Continue reading
Dan Cedarholm, web design guru extraordinaire, has switched his SimpleBits blog to WordPress. Well, after 6+ years on an ancient and highly customized install of Movable Type 3.15, and 4+ years on various homegrown CMS solutions, I’ve finally upgraded the guts of this site. I chose WordPress. Sure, there are several other excellent options out there to power the blogs of 2010 and beyond, but the familarity of WP, its plugins, pricetag and other factors … Continue reading
As promised in my previous post on WordPress 2.9 features, this post will be a demonstration of the super easy media embeds coming in WordPress 2.9. What I find particularly interesting and useful about the new embedding feature, and oEmbed in particular, is that it is truly multimedia. It’s not just about embedding videos. You can embed images, audio, slideshows, or even HTML. Anything that could possibly be included in a web page can be … Continue reading
This site is now running on WordPress 2.9-rare (which is our “pre-alpha” designation, for those of you who don’t know). WP 2.9 is in “feature freeze”, which means no new features will be considered for this version, and the developers will concentrate on finishing up the existing new features and any outstanding bugs. So far, it appears that all of my plugins are working just fine. The main new features I’ve actually seen so far … Continue reading
This post is about two weeks late, but I still wanted to share my notes about WordCamp Birmingham 2009. Short version — it was awesome! As mentioned previously, I gave a presentation on Jumping into WordPress Plugin Development. When I arrived in Birmingham on Friday night, I still only had a little over half of my presentation notes done, and the rest was still just an outline. I stayed up all night finishing my notes … Continue reading
Despite an extreme lack of sleep, I managed to make it through my WordCamp Birmingham presentation this morning on Jumping into WordPress Plugin Programming. I didn’t feel as prepared as I wanted to be, but several people gave me some kind comments, so I guess it must have gone okay. Here is the slideshow I used, which I’ve uploaded to SlideShare (where you can also find my presentation from last year). Obviously, with the slideshow, … Continue reading