I had a little downtime a couple of days here. The culprit was a package upgrade on the host that snuck by the administrator, the upgrade overwrote some of the configuration files for the database server. So when the server had to bee rebooted, due to a system hang, the database server didn’t go back online. Hence the downtime. It happens.

New Wordpress version

If you havn’t noticed yet, Wordpress has had a major version upgrade to 2. This new release includes features such as a completely rewritten backend, faster administration due to Ajax, inline uploading and faster posting to name a few. The interesting part is the inline uploading and faster posting parts. “How can you upload files to a webhost through the webbrowser without having to reload the post?” you ask. Well, it’s all due to a ‘new’ way of programming websites. I put new in qutationmarks because in reality the technology isn’t new, it just hasn’t been used to any extent until now. You see, you can make a http request with javascript, and thusly you can have a form which uploads a file, but instead of calling the page via the usual form submit button you make javascript call the page for you. That way you don’t have to refresh your page and wait until you request has been handled. You simply go about your business. The same goes for the posts.

What does that mean for wordpress?

Alot of things probably, but the most noticeable ones must be that you can now upload files along your post, say images for instance, without having to jump around inside the administration interface. That is really nice. Also there is now a ‘Drag-and-drop’ feature that allows you to upload images with your post and then drag them into the new and improved WYSIWYG editor. Also posting is much smoother due to, as I wrote earlier, Ajax. Some people do alot of site pinging with their posts and that could drag post times down into the dirt. Since this is now done in the backend you don’t have to wait until it’s finished before you go on about your business.

What, there is more you say!?

Yes, lots more. But I’ll only bring up two more points here. There are now two plugins pre-packaged with WP that are well worth mentioning. One is the Akismet spam blocker for comments. The more you, and others, use it the better it gets at detecting spam. There is one glitch however, it seems as though you have to have a Wordpress.com account in order to get it working. But if you are fine with that just go ahead and get one.

The other new plugin is the Wordpress Database Backup which lets you backup your entire database to a single file if you wish, and the safely store it in case you ever need it. Great thing to do when upgrading, for example.

This site will be ported to Wordpress shortly, so expect some glitches.

I am not a fan of Microsofts Internet Explorer browser, I find it twitchy, buggy, insecure and feature-less. Thusly I rearely use it, but many others unfortunately do and so one has to cope with the situations that arise when such a user enters your site. This is not news, this applies to all sites and all browsers and is a fact you have to live with. It doesn’t make it more fun though. So, what to do then? Read the rest of this entry »