Hey, I finally got around to testing and repackaging my latest theme for public consumption. I guess it’s not really as polished as it could be, but there’s always room for improvement, and I’ll probably never really be completely satisfied with it, so what the heck…
Go get Oasis 2 if you’re interested.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I updated my top commenters plugin to no include a link pulled from the “URL” field that was submitted with the comments.
The back story is that for a while now it was pulling a random URL, and the problem with that was for some people (specifically Dan) it was often getting an old URL. Initially, I thought about changing it to always get the URL from the most recent comment submitted by that person, but there were several issues with that approach, that I can go into in more detail if you’re wondering about them.
So, instead I decided to have the plugin check if there is a registered user with that name (by the “display name” property in their profile), and pull the URL in from their profile instead, which they can manage and change themselves at any time.
The one drawback to this approach is that most of the people (other than Dan, Nathan and Nate) haven’t registered. I could go in and create dummy accounts for those of you who don’t want to, and I probably eventually will (at least for those I have e-mail addresses for, so that you can reset your password later), but who knows when I’ll get around to that, so if you’re really itching to get your link back in that list, go ahead and register using the link in the sidebar below, or here.
I’m reconsidering my position I’ve had up until now regarding my blog arrangements.
I think I’m probably going to move fully into MU (which Martha’s site already runs on but mine does not), and separate out my blog into two separate ones. I’ll use jared.freepressblog.org as my personal blog, for everything non-tech related, and then keep freepressblog.org as the home of all the plugin work and tech / software development related posts I do, as well as being a base for any other friends who want their own Wordpress blog at whatever.freepressblog.org.
One of the main reasons is that I’d like to dive back into posting a lot more, but most of the stuff I see myself posting about is more tech related than most of the people who read this blog would be interested in, so it may be easier to split it out to make it easier for people to deal with. Of course, I haven’t been posting much at all recently anyway, but I think that will be changing shortly.
It should be working now; go ahead and give it a try. Let me know by commenting on this post if you run into any errors.
After a few days (or less if there’s more activity) of testing, I plan on realeasing it for everyone to use, so help me out here!
Well, I finally got around to moving Martha’s blog over to the new server, and I put together a new theme for her while I was at it. She actually picked one to use initially, but it was really image based and the fixed width was really annoying, so she just had me make up a new one using the same color scheme.
If you go to her blog and you still see the old theme (with comments disabled), your DNS servers probably just haven’t refreshed yet. I’m also experimenting with a few other things with her new site, so if you run into any technical issues, please let me know by posting a comment here on this post.
There are still a few lingering problems that I have to tie up with this new theme:
The first two show up properly for me, using Firefox 1.5 on XP and Linux, but have problems in FF 1.0 and Safari (thanks Nathan), so I believe that they are based on bugs in other browsers that have been fixed in FF 1.5, but I still need to work around them.
I knew I wasn’t that out of it last night when I changed everything…
Turns out the reason the blog reverted to the default theme last night (and again this morning) is explained here. Basically, it had to do with me having two web servers both referring to the same DB, from back when I did the migration to the new server. I never turned off the old one, and some indexing service was apparently still using the old address to crawl the pages, and since the new theme was not on that site, WordPress would revert it back to the default in the database that they both shared.
Long story short… the theme should stay the way it is now. At least that’s what I hope the problem was…
Just a quick post to say that I forgot to set my theme back last night after I made all the changes, so I imagine it wouldn’t have been looking good. Also, I forgot to disable the syndicated content portion on the single entry pages, which I have now done; it should only show up now if you are at the main page, not individual post pages.
So, in case you looked at some point between now and last night, just pretend you didn’t see that and take a fresh look now. 
Unless you’re reading this via RSS, you probably noticed a few changes here on the blog. It is much too late at night to elaborate on any of them in lengthy detail (as I am prone to do), but I will post a quick summary for now, and follow-up later with more details.
I’m pretty tired now, so that will have to do it for now. Like I said above, I’ll probably follow up later with individual posts that will go into more detail about each new plugin (including download links).
RSF (Reporters Without Borders) Handbook for bloggers and “cyber-dissidents”
Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicize it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.
This is a pretty good resource; it contains a collection of good articles on blogging by various authors, many aimed at those who are overcoming censorship via the self-publishing model that blogging brings to the world.