Archive for the ‘Site’ Category

Wordpress archives

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

I’ve been running my blog since late 2005 as such my archives had been getting a little bit unwieldy in the sidebar and stretching the page to extraordinary heights. I’ve reduced this clutter with some very small changes. First I dug around only to find out that Wordpress doesn’t support fetching the monthly archives for one year, so I had to apply some filter foomongery. I discovered somebody else has done something similar, not quite as nice personally but it works.
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Three Years Old

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

I know I started this blog in December 2005 but I wasn’t quite sure when, so I took a nose and it turns out it was December 7th which means this blog is three years old today. In three years I have written 316 entries (including this one) which is an average of 8 a month which is pretty good, and I’ve never missed a month. :)

New Home

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

My blog has a new home on a VPS hosted by Host Europe shared between me and a friend. It has a nice lean installation of Debian Lenny, running a variety of low profile or tuned applications to provide various services. We also have another 50MiB of free memory to play with.

Wordpress Upgrade

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

I am currently enjoying the visual refresh Wordpress has been given in version 2.5. Its quite cool.

Christmas

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

Merry humbug to everyone who believes that some bloke called Jesus was born 2007 years ago today, Merry Christmas to others who joins in the madness just because its ‘easier’ that way. Christmas is overly commercialised nowadays and has lost its religious meaning, boo-hoo. Any how it is two years since I started this little blog as a trash can for the crap that accumulates in my head, although apparently some of it is useful to others. Enjoy the festive period, as it means a lack of work and academia for some variable period, in my case 4 weeks. *grins*

Upgraded

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

I just upgraded this blog using a Subversion patch, seems to be working ok, will keep and eye out for any 404s see if I missed any new files and the like. I also started to burn my feed.

Disabled Akismet, comments held for moderation.

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

I have made the decision to disable Akismet, after reading some hype about the new Wordpress 2.3’s plugin version check API, which turned out to be negative but reveals something interesting with regards to Akismet. The following code is taken from the official Akismet plugin for Wordpres.

        $ignore = array( 'HTTP_COOKIE' );

        foreach ( $_SERVER as $key => $value )
                if ( !in_array( $key, $ignore ) )
                        $comment["$key"] = $value;

        $query_string = '';
        foreach ( $comment as $key => $data )
                $query_string .= $key . '=' . urlencode( stripslashes($data) ) . '&';

        $response = akismet_http_post($query_string, $akismet_api_host, '/1.1/comment-check', $akismet_api_port);

The bit that worries me is the use of $_SERVER, the only item from this array not sent is HTTP_COOKIE, fair enough. But why do you need to know the full paths to the files on my server and other server environment variables Akismet? I do not have a problem with sending data to Akismet, just not this data!

Source

Wordpress Upgraded

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

I have upgraded to Wordpress 2.2.2, again using a patch. I have put together a page on patches for the benefit of others.

AWOL

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

I have been away from my blog for quite a while, general laziness on my behalf. I’ve been fairly ‘busy’ by my own standards working part time, doing some project work, playing games, sleeping and socialising. My summer is panning out quite nicely, and I am now wanting to return to Exeter for my second year, the sooner the better. I am just about to apply the Wordpress upgrade that has been released in my absence, and reading the dumper truck load of e-mails that I have received. Fun.

Another Painless Upgrade

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

I don’t get people who moan about upgrading web software, I suspect these are all fairly dumb people who do not have or know how to use terminal access to their server. I just upgraded Wordpress from 2.2 to 2.2.1 in 5 minutes, patch for anyone else like me with brains.