The wurster, the better

I just completed the upgrade on all my blogs to version 2.6. Excellent job on the code. I only had a couple of minor problems with the “automatic plugin upgrade” on a couple of plugins. One plugin called Customizable Comment Listings actually linked to the wrong zip file called random-file. Once I realized what happened, I manually downloaded and activated. The other problem was with the Geo-Mashup plugin. When I clicked to automatically upgrade, the plugin disappeared from the plugin listing. Why? Because it was installed in a geo-mashup folder under the geo-mashup folder. Once I moved the files, the plugin was fine. I think this happened on a couple of other plugins but I’m not sure. Also, don’t forget to add the secret key.

I experienced not being able to login to 2 of my blogs last week. I could view all the posts and access everything outside of the admin. I then checked another blog in a subdomain and I was able to gain access to the admin area. Strange! I hadn’t changed anything. I did upgrade one site to 2.5.1 but the other site was still on 2.3.3.

Then I decided to look at error logs for clues. I saw errors but they have been there for several months. What could have happened. Was I hacked? No. All the files were intact.

So then I decided to compare the files on the site that was working with the site that was not. I found the culprit. It was an htaccess file in the wp-admin folder. Apparently, something changed on the host server that did not require this any more. Once I deleted it, I was fine.

As you have noticed, my blog has a new theme. It is a modification of the Christmas theme I found at hotscreensaver.com. It’s funny how people give attribution to others for using something they did. Hotscreensaver gives attribution to vanillmist.com from whom they got the theme on which they made modifications. In the style.css, I saw a url reference to a misty.jpg which was not included in the theme package. I remembered that I had used a theme called MistyLook that I got from Sadish at wpthemes.info. Sadish said his inspiration for the theme came from www.reorganize.ca and from an image he used for the header from www.sxc.hu.

So, this is the history of how a WP theme can get modified. Now, I have even added back the original Misty.jpg as the header image. Small world, isn’t it.

As you now have noticed, I am back to my old theme. Why? Because it resizes nicely. I’m going to work on trying to get the Christmas theme to resize. But this may take me some time to do.

I finally took the leap to WP 2.2.1. First I did my local install. All worked pretty well as in past upgrades, with one exception. I have a small problem with the CategoryAccess plugin. I even upgraded to the latest 0.8.0 but still have the problem. It’s not a big problem but I sent the author an email for help. I can live with the problem and since my blog is really only for me, that’s not a show-stopper. I then did my newest blog without a hitch. And then I did this blog.

So, I am happy at least with this.

Well, another year has gone by and not only is my daughter older, but so am I. Go figure!

Happy Birthday, Alicia

It seems to me that I am not finding the time to post except on weekends. This was not my original idea for a blog. I need to force myself to make posts on things I am currently thinking about. So, now some wordspew.

I have poison ivy again. This seems to be a yearly occurrence when I trim the bushes in our yard for the first time in the spring or when I first mow the lawn. I say now as I have said before “I need to find the poison ivy and get rid of it”. It is really a pain. I have bubbles of stuff on my arms. Yuck!

I used a tool this past week called ABC Amber Outlook Express Converter for exporting email into PDF files. We need to get some information to an education consultant and this seemed to be a better solution than to print each email. The pdf files are easy to navigate and you can print when you want to. I will have to check back with the consultant to see how useful this was.

Tabitha went to Johns Hopkins University for an interview for grad school. I hope she got in. Can’t wait until she gets home tomorrow.

For some reason, ideas present themselves to me in practically everything I do. Since I am online a lot and get a lot of email, I see a lot in my small whole.

• dreamlines
• minishowcase – another way to view photographs – and it is pretty cool
• kromofons – I saw in a daily email I get from ZDNet (Ziff-Davis), a blurb about this.

  I have been playing around with moods on a blog or forum. I have a list of mood words that I can search through blog posts. It would be cool if I could create an animated color picture of these mood words. So, how would I do this with that software?

  There is a way to change blog post titles in WordPress using a plugin to apply a font via a javascript to create an image of the title. It would be cool to change a title to your colors (with the letters in side the color sphere).

• 35mmv – another way to view photographs (haven’t played with this yet)
• help someone in England with Vanilla – Experimented with installing LAMPS on a flash stick. I actually did that a week or so ago but didn’t set up WP or Vanilla. WP installed and setup the easiest. Had a little difficulty with Vanilla, but finally got it last night. Problems with user name and password. But now I have a place to experiment on this project and others.

Then someone on the Vanilla forum asked about sorting the discussions alphabetically for a book site. I figured out how to do this in the DiscussionFilters add-on as an option. But then I created my own add-on to do this automatically. And then I went further thinking now that they are sorted, how can you access just those books with titles beginning with “M”, for example. I would like to display an alphabet which when you clicked on a letter, would take you to a page with just books beginning with that letter. So, another distraction. Partially working now.

And one more thing, someone on the Vanilla forum asked about Windows screen-capture utility. I think I had looked before but this time my search cam up with MWSnap. I downloaded and set it up. Painless. Although from 2002, it works just great. I’ll keep it around for the next time I want to do a scree-capture and email to someone. Right now I use the Windows hot key screen print and paste into Paint.NET a free paint program with a lot of capabilities.