Place of Stuff

You may have noticed that for the past 2 days this site has been parked.  Thankfully, no one took the name while it was down.  To avoid unnecessary panic, here’s what happened:

On the 14th, the domain registration expired and should have been renewed - I didn’t receive a mail notification and so it went unnoticed.  It went unnoticed because at the same time, two other things happened - there were routing problems at my host (Brinkster) and my laptop went kaput.  So I was entirely off the net.

Thanks to Dominic for alerting me via Facebook and thanks to Justin at Brinkster for sorting things out - while I signed up for another two years he spotted that for some reason the name servers had been removed from the account.
Continue reading ‘An Enforced Break’ »

If you read this blog regularly (or even semi-regularly) you will know that I recommend upgrading

WordPress.org

Wordpress whenever the dashboard tells you to.  Quite apart from grabbing the latest features built into the latest releases, you also pick up any patches and security updates.  If internet history tells us nothing else, it tells us that sites that aren’t serious about security end up getting taken over.
Continue reading ‘Why You Should Upgrade’ »

When I dipped in to upgrade some plugins this evening, my dashboard kindly told me that I needed to upgrade from WordPress 2.6.2 to WordPress 2.6.3. Get the latest version here.

In short, it seems that the library used to fetch the dashboards feeds, named Snoopy, has a vulnerability and this upgrade fixes that.

So, if you are running WordPress 2.6.2 or earlier (especially if you are running an earlier version) then you should upgrade soonest.

Anyone who has commented on any of my posts will be aware that I have the CommentLuv plugin enabled on this site.  And lots of thanks to RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex for putting me onto this plugin.  You could do a lot worse than follow his advice on building SEO for your site.

For the uninitiated, how does CommentLuv work?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  By enabling CommentLuv on your blog, the plugin uses the feedreader associated with your commenter’s blog to list their last post.  So, by commenting on someone else’s post, you get to have your own post linked to.  No extra effort and no trouble.  In fact, if a lot of us use it, we will all end up with a nice little legitimate (very important) backlink - and we all do it for each other.  It’s probably not that clear, so here’s a picture to illustrate (click the pic for larger):

Continue reading ‘CommentLuv’ »

I have seen a variety of stories around the web extolling the virtues of the new browser from Google: Google Chrome.  At the moment, it is still a beta available only for Windows and Mac, but it seems to be an, erm, internet browser I suppose.

To be perfectly honest and frank, I find it incredibly difficult to get excited about a web browser.  To me, the browser is a tool, not a way of life.  For comparison, go now and find a carpenter - I’ll wait.  Got one?  Good.  Now explain to your carpenter that there is a new hammer available.  Gauge the carpenter’s reaction.  Now contrast and compare with all the hoopla over Google’s offering.  Now decide who the hammer should be used on.

Gosh, I sound grumpy, don’t I?  The fact is that Chrome looks like a decent offering.  It has tabbed browsing, which we all should now expect.  It has a way to import your bookmarks from your existing browsers, again, we should all expect that.  It displays pages from the internet.  The best thing, in my opinion, is that it is very minimal and there is little that is not functional about it:
Continue reading ‘Google Chrome for Linux’ »

Another quick heads up peeps.  WordPress 2.6.2 is out and you should update ASAP - especially if you

WordPress.org

allow registrations on your blog.
Continue reading ‘WordPress 2.6.2’ »