Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
I have been busy moving a good friends blog and a customer of my file-house hosting to her own domain name that matches her blog Brain Foggles. It was quite a learning experience for me as I had never done it before. First off I did a little research on the web and said to myself that shouldn’t be too much trouble. Well I underestimated the difficulty and the little knowledge I had gained as it was not quite enough. First thing I ran into was the plugin I had found to expidite moving a blog from site to site would not work as the database is too large. I had attempted to move it using the Velvet Blues Update URL’s plugin, but ran into a snag right away as I was limited to a 2mb file and this one was just short of 4mb’s. Plus I was creating a new database as we did not want the old site to go down at all until we had the new site up and running. So I exported the Mysql database onto my computer and uploaded it as the new database for the new site. That was pretty straight forward but where I had trouble was renaming all instances of the old domain to the new domain. I found a great blog site that helped me a ton. My Digital Life had the information I needed to work with the Mysql database. It made life so much easier and I can’t thank them enough. Alright now I have I said to myself but once more my hopes were dashed like a ship against the rocks. I had an error with the php code. It was Warning: array_keys(): The first argument should be an array in */wp-includes/widgets.php on line 676, (*= your root directory). This I found out was a common occurence when moving blogs and was caused byt the text widgets. So back to the Msql database into the options table hunting the text widgets line. Once there you remove everyting in the table and woooo hoooo its working minus the text widgets. So I am back off to the old site to get the text widgets text. It all goes in one at a time making sure none of them break the instal and we are done. I feel confident now that I can move pretty much any WordPress blog onto my hosting server as long as I have access to the old blogsite. Now I find out she has a contest running and wants to hold off the move for 3 more days. Oh well I know what I am doing now so it shouldn’t be the big deal it was when I started.
A new bill, co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI),and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) would make ISPs who fail to provide service in a non-discriminatory manner subject to anti-trust violations. The legislation requires Internet service providers to connect with the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis. It also requires them to operate their networks in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner so that all content, applications and services are treated the same and have an equal opportunity to reach consumers. Any ISPs that do not follow these net neutrality rules would be subject to antitrust enforcement. The legislation has been praised by on line and consumer rights groups. “Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone,” Conyers said. “The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available.” You may say we do not need any legislation to insure that the internet remains open as it is mostly today, but large providers are already wanting to charge big providers a fee so their content flows fast and is not hampered or restricted. Right now the internet is neutral with your blog content available to everyone at the same speeds. What would happen to your blog and its readers if the large ISP’s slowed down access to your blog to others simply because you did not have the money to fork over for premium service. I can understand tiered service levels for your access but not to the content on the web. If yahoo took forever to load and google zipped right along you soon would quit using yahoo’s services. Small content providers such as bloggers could not afford premium access so their pages could be intentionally slowed down in favor of larger sites. That is what net neutrality is all about.
Those of you fellow bloggers who use WordPress for their blogs may already know that on Saturday they released the newest version, WordPress 2.5. There has been a lot of comments and complaints on the message and help boards at wordpress. It seems there are a lot of people having troubles with their upgrades. I myself did not have much trouble at all. The very first thing I did was make backups of all the files on my blog. I then went into my blog and deactivated all?plugins. There is a button that will deactivate all plugins towards the bottom of your plugins page. After that it all went rather smoothly, except for me not following directions to the letter. But thats me as I usually go by the adage, “When all else fails read the directions”. Well I then decided perhaps reading the instructions might be a good idea when I got an error and it only showed one line of error code for my entire blog. When I had tried to simply overwrite files it caused an error. Good thing I had backed up first. I always back up anything before making changes to it. This way you have a fail safe fall back and can restore at least to what you had before. What I had done was go into my root directory (the main folder your blog resides in) and overwrote the wp-includes and wp-admin directories (folders) DO NOT OVERWRITE YOUR WP-CONTENT FOLDER ever when updating. You only have one file in there that needs updating and that is the index.php file. If you do you will lose all the changes you have made to your blog and the themes you have added. Well anyhow I had overwritten the files in the root directory (make sure you do not delete your wp-config.php file) Then I had overwritten the index.php file inside of wp-content. That worked ok but what would not work was overwriting the wp-includes and wp-admin directories (folders). So as soon as I saw I had an error I started deleting those files getting ready to ftp my old files back onto my site. I then decided to attempt it one more time after having read the instructions finally and everything worked. So basicly here it is I overwrote all the files in my root directory, overwrote the index.php file in my wp-content directory, then deleted the two folders/directories wp-admin and wp-includes. Once you do that ftp the new folders intact onto your site and if succesful you will get a message saying that you need to update your database files. Don’t be alarmed all you need to do is check through the ok buttons and you will be ok and ready to go. You will find some changes to the dashboard that I am not crazy about but I can live with them. I am hoping that someone will fix the widgets.php file soon so you can have more text widgets on your site. Before I upgraded I had 20 available but feel I will have them again soon. Either ?I will finally wade through the code and find the correct entries to change or hopefully someone more knowledgable than I will fix it and share with us all. Other than that I see nothing wrong with it. Hopefully we will start to enjoy the fruits of their labor and enjoy this version better than the old ones.
I thought by now that I would be up and running with all my links and sources readily available to me by now. But alas the parts to rebuild my computer finally came in on Tuesday at which time I discovered I would need a new power supply for 24 pin ATX style. Well after a trip to town and obtaining the new power supply the motherboard would not boot up much to my disappointment. So it means that I have to survive without my computer and the ability to span my desktop across two monitors for a minimum of a week or more. What really stinks about the deal is they held me up for an additional 20 bucks for prompt RMA service. Otherwise it could take up to 21 days according to the information they sent me. So you can imagine that I am not very pleased with Bzboyz.com and am not recommending them to anyone.
I have had problems with my fibro acting up at the same time as this but am not going to blame me not posting all these days on it. My routine has been broken and I was reluctant to do it any other way. What I would normally do was to write my posts in Nvu and then paste the results in here. That allowed me to more easily insert links and text changes to my posts. I am going to try and insure that I post more regularly even though my computer is not working still and not let you, my readers, down.
I know many of you may have missed me not posting anything since Saturday but we had torrential rain and severe lightning. Lightning hit our place here in South Carolina. I was away but according to my brother we got a direct hit. What I do know is that even with a surge protector power strip it still fried my mother board to my computer. At the same time it also got my sister in laws laptop. Double whammy here on the hill. Not sure if or when she will be able to get hers fixed but the good Lord willing I will have mine back up and running with a newer faster board and processor. I ordered a combo off of Ebay. I have ordered a Athlon X2 4200+ CPU. With motherboard and 2 gigabytes of DDR2 PC 4200 ram. That should have me moving again. It has onboard video but still has pci express slot so I can use my radeon video card and maintain my twin monitor set up. It is killing me to go back to a single monitor like I am doing right now. Hopefully I can keep this old junker running long enough to post tomorrow and the next days. I should be up and running for real again by the end of the week or first of next week depending upon the speed of the U.S Mail.
??? First off I am apologizing to my regular readers who have grown to expect new material by me daily. As you may know I have fibromyalgia? and it has really been digging its spurs into me these past few days. It is hard to deal with a disease that causes chronic fatigue and pain and there is no cure for it. These past few days have been especially rough on me. With me barely even feeling up to getting out of bed. Plus it is an invisible illness so people will look at you and say there is nothing wrong with you short of laziness.
??? It has now been 9 weeks without smoking for me. This week has been one of the worst since the first days though. With me feeling bad and so sore you barely can stand wearing clothes that you begin to feel sorry for yourself and start to reach for that cigarette. I have weathered the storm so far with the smoking. It was tough though especially with smokers all around me. I have had maintain my will power. I hope that those of you that are also quiting smoking with me are able to maintain and not start back to smoking. I know how hard it is not to fall back into that trap.
I have a couple of dear friends who have talked me into signing up for a bloggers service called Pay Per Post. How was I to know that you can actually get paid to blog. What an exciting concept. I am thrilled that they have accepted me into Pay Per Post. I think the idea is great as long as it does not denigrate the integrity of my blog. The idea of making money with my blog sounds really great as long as you, my readers know that occasionally it is a paid post and also know that I will never rant and rave about a product or service unless I feel they are worthwhile.
I have became rather excited and passionate about my blog and am thrilled that I am getting even more readers. I also have started to make new friends in the blogging world and have several blogs that I must read every day. I try to always tell the truth the way I see it. I am excited also about the opportunity to write and be paid for it as well. I believe I can balance wanting to make money – it will help with bills such as web hosting – while maintaining my line of balance with my blog. Hopefully this will help out financially. I sure could use it, being disabled and not able to work doesn’t leave much money left at the end of the month. Any how if you are a blogger and are interested in blog advertising you should check into Pay Per Post. There is a link on my sidebar to the right in the widgets you can follow to sign up yourself. But believe me I will not subjugate you to a steady diet of ads with no real meat to the postings.
My apologies to my readers for not posting yesterday. I took a spill and was banged up and feeling too sore to walk down here and sit at the desk pounding these keys. Plus it is easier on me not smoking if I am in the house as no smoking is allowed in the house but it is here in my office. I would always come down here to do my smoking. I wasn’t intending to quit smoking but after one day of seeing how long I could go without smoking ending up to be the whole day. I then said to myself how long can I go? Am I really an addict or not. It has been challenging at times but not so much that I gave in to the urges and am on my 6th day without a smoke. I still have two packs of opened cigarettes in my pockets, just in case. I feel if I can only go without smoking because I have no access to them then it is not really quiting. You can’t quit anything that you are craving. Myself I find that I don’t really crave them but look for them when I have a moment to wait on something or if I have to drive far. I’ve only been smoking cigarettes this time about 5 years. I had gone 20 years between cigarettes as it is not my first time to smoke or relapse either one. Hopefully I won’t follow some of my prior moves while not smoking cigarettes as I would smoke a pipe or cigars sometimes.
I was taught to smoke the same way I was taught to drink as a child. I had my first drinks while still in diapers and was watering down my parents liquor and stealing drinks before my teenager years. By time I was a teen I was smoking cigarettes and cigars as well as drinking every chance I could get. I wish that I could start all over on those years but I can’t. I did insure my son and daughter were not brought up the same as I was. If they were influenced to drink and smoke it wasn’t from me.
Here I have gotten way off subject. I was intending to write on another topic all together. I have found another site that helps feed the hungry and should have it written for tomorrows post. I don’t know if any of you realize this but there are over 1 billion hungry people in the world. It is a travesty that so many people go hungry. What is spent on the military worldwide in less than a week would feed all the hungry people in the world for a year.
Today was a stressful day for me. No real work but working on web pages for a friend. An hour or so later we had the pages looking like she wanted. Then she talked me into signing up for Sqidoo. I am still not sure what all I did with it and if I have it right or wrong. I do have the page up and working. It is supposed to help send potential customers to my file hosting business. I host images for auctions or web pages there. I have hosted voice files for a girl that was doing voice descriptions which worked out very nicely for her. She had a very pleasing voice and sold a number of very nice items, even selling some on commission. Next- on to finally password protecting some of my files that are for customers use only. I have free auction templates and a neat little image gallery that will accept up to ten images that works like the ones you see that ebay sells to sellers but this one you can insert for free.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be in full swing and up on my soap box speaking my mind about current events and the jerks we have either in office or attempting to be elected into office. And South Carolina has more than her share here stumping for our votes. I guess we will find out who is ahead next week after the votes are counted. I am not sure who I will vote for, I feel like it is no longer who is most qualified for office but who is the one who is least likely to screw over the American people. Who genuinely wants to help the people instead of lining their pockets with money from special interest groups and lobbyists. So take the promises with a grain of salt. They can promise anything they want but they can not write laws only sign them. So when you look at the current president and think how poorly he has done and all the rights and laws signed were not done alone. He had accomplice’s in the House and Senate. Remember that when you vote on whomever you decide is the best candidate. All the House seats are up for grabs this November and part of the Senates seats. So remember whomever is elected president can not do anything without the help of Congress.
Christmas has past and we rang in the new year last night. I hope each and everyone of you had a great time last night and have a happy and prosperous 2008. I know many have to celebrate with spirits and hope those that did don’t feel too rotten today. I know I have over indulged myself on past near years celebrations. But nothing like that for me no more, doctors orders, with my medications it isn’t a good idea to mix with? alcohol. Its supposed to really intensify the effects . One drink feeling like a half a dozen they say. Which might be a good thing if I still wanted to let the world slip by me as I?partied away. Its not the product itself that is bad but the manner in which you use it.
I haven’t sat down and wrote a list of resolutions as I am not that organized anyhow. Perhaps that would make a good one for the top of the list. That and lose a few pounds as I am getting “too big for my britches” as they used to tell me when i was a youngster. I further resolve that I will try to be more helpful to my fellow man. I have tried to live by that rule all my life as we were taught from early on the blessings of sharing and helping others. Things like giving away a free month of hosting on my file-house hosting service. I hope I can keep that up as it is a great feeling helping others. I am a mentor for the DOUA (Disabled Online Users Association) and am very proud to be a member of such a giving group of people.
Check them out if you want to help people who are trying to help themselves as well as others. It is giving a hand up not a hand out.
I do intend to keep this blog up and running giving you a glimpse of the world going on around you through my eyes and their perspective. I look forward to comments, good or bad, or any other critique that you may have. Thanks to all my visitors for reading and visiting my site. May you be blessed in the years to come.