01.07.05
Decent things and people
Some administrative points of note:
My, Wordpress is being easy to run. It needs PHP 4.1+ and MySQL 3.23.23+, but if you’ve got those it’s a snap. It’s also hilariously easy to install and administer plugins, which for me at least so often caused problems in Movable Type.
This means that finding and installing the necessary anti-spam plugins took me about 10 minutes, rather than the day or two of fiddling, troubleshooting and rolling back that MT always needed. That was a heavy burden because I don’t have the time for those fun and games (or more precisely, my fun and games don’t leave time for that), particularly as the last version of MT was in the end a sorry sufferer of comment spam overload:
In fact, we have found that there is a fairly major bug (in terms of effect, but not code size) which causes page rebuilding even in the case of a comment submission which would be moderated and hence should have no effect on the live page. This means that even if you are using comment moderation in Movable Type and even force moderation in MT-Blacklist, your server load is impacted just as if a comment had been posted to the live site. This bug has been fixed in development.
(Jay Allen, Six Apart)
For me, it got so bad across Rogue Semiotics and The Deep North that my host disabled the scripts. They were eating up too much CPU time.
I see that the latest version of MT (3.14) is aimed squarely at addressing this problem. Too late. I’ve switched, and I’m happy enough with WordPress to stay switched.
Other things:
I haven’t yet bothered to do anything to the default template for this site. When I first started this, the template was of course the very first thing I monkeyed about with. Now, a couple of years down the line, I realise that it is by far the least important thing. I’ll prettify when I have some free time; maybe even this weekend.
I’ll also add back in the sidebar, which is a just a listing out of my del.icio.us bookmarks.
Also this weekend, I’ll finally get round to posting the patiently awaited Decent People first XI. Thank you Jacky for the prompt.
Two comments on this.
First, it looks as though it will be an XI. Any hold-out hopes of a rugby team of either code look short of the mark.
Second, Professor Greer’s latest stunt has placed a serious question mark over her prior status as one of the first names on the team sheet. Any advice on this matter is welcome before the final team selection (set for the traditional matchday timing of Saturday afternoon).
Peter said,
January 7, 2005 at 2:09 pm
I fear that this may compromise Prof Greer’s status rather. However I would submit to the court a good few decades of the telling of unfashionable truths to be taken into account. The choice lies before the jury.
paul said,
January 7, 2005 at 3:20 pm
Like you, I’d rather switch than fight. Glad you found some spam repellent before it got to you.
For style and aesthetics, look no further that this. Let people choose their own. And I found the runners-up to be more appealing than the winners.
Cheers.
Andrew said,
January 7, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Do we have Richie Benaud up there yet? Just a thought…
Andrew C said,
January 8, 2005 at 8:36 am
It goes against the grain to propose a Yorkshireman, but Alan Bennett has always struck me as a decect bloke with whom one could have an interesting conversation if one happened to meet him on the train.
There’s not being bothered what other people think of you (good) and then there’s making a spectacle of yourself (bad) and I fear that Dr Greer has stepped over the line.