I just realized that a number of posts that were imported to this site from my old blog are missing backslash characters. After doing some investigation, I found out that there's an associated WordPress bug (Ticket #21007) against the importer utility. Apparently, backslashes aren't preserved as they should be.

I'm working to fix all of the relevant posts and comments. When I've completed this task, I'll update this post.

Update: I believe I have fixed all of the relevant posts. If you spot a problem somewhere, let me know!

If you use WordPress, I advise against upgrading to version 2.8. I attempted to do so to this site this evening (via Subversion), and everything appeared to go smoothly. Unfortunately, upon logging in to my admin panel, I noted that everything was broken. The external site still performed as expected, but I couldn't get around in the admin area.

Zero steps forward, twenty steps back.

Maybe others will have better luck than I did. I have since reverted back to 2.7.1 for the time being, though my database may now be corrupt. If you notice anything funky around this site, please, please, please let me know.

I have just updated my various WordPress installations to the new 2.7 release. I really like the new admin interface. It's sleek, simple, and doesn't get in the way. The new dashboard is much cleaner as well, and provides some nice new options. I particularly like the ability to hide certain screen elements that you aren't interested in (this is particularly useful on the "Write Post" page).

Version 2.7 now includes an auto-updating feature, which is interesting. I still think that updating via Subversion is super easy, though an auto-update feature is a great step forward for this platform. WordPress is becoming more and more robust, and I'm oh-so-glad I chose to use it.

I just stumbled on a preview of a super-cool new feature coming to WordPress 2.7. The write post screen will be fully customizable, something I've been wanting for some time now. Based on the short preview movie, the interface looks super slick and very non-intrusive. I'm really looking forward to the changes coming in 2.7; only 4 more days until release!

I've updated the Netflix queue listing here at the site to show what I'm currently watching. The handy Wordpress Netflix Plugin made the change very easy, and I again recommend it.

I've also fixed a validation problem here at the site. My last post included the first YouTube video ever embedded at Year of the Code Monkey. It turns out that XHTML strict, which happens to be the doctype I use, doesn't like the embed element. YouTube gave me this:

<object width="425" height="344">
  <param name="movie"
    value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y_P6yBJEW38&hl=en&fs=1"></param>
  <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
  <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y_P6yBJEW38&hl=en&fs=1"
    type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"
    width="425" height="344"></embed>
</object>

And I had to change it to this:

<object width="425" height="344"
  data="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y_P6yBJEW38&hl=en&fs=1">
  <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y_P6yBJEW38&hl=en&fs=1" />
  <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
</object>

Not only is it now compliant, it looks better too. I'll just have to remember to make this kind of change each time I post a video.

I signed up for Netflix today, and I'm starting to populate my queue with stuff I've been meaning to either see for the first time, or rewatch becaues it's been such a long time. Thanks to the very handy Wordpress Netflix Plugin, I'm able to share my latest queue picks here on this site. Over in the sidebar are the cover images for the next 6 titles in my queue. Each one is a link to the movie listing, and if you hover over the image, you'll see the movie title. I'm really looking forward to catching up on all the stuff I've missed over the years. So long cable TV!

There's an interesting article offering a preview of the next major release of the WordPress blogging platform. It looks like the old administration look and feel will be returning, especially on the write panel. I'm looking forward to having more vertical screen space when writing, but these changes will (yet again) take some getting used to. There's lots more changes in store, so 2.7 should be an interesting release.

I have added a new section to the sidebar of this site, showing the most recent comments posted here. Hopefully, this will help foster further discussion on older topics (which occasionally get comments). This new feature comes via the aptly named Recent Comments WordPress plug-in. I'm quite impressed with the customization options available, and installation was a snap.

Does anyone have any recommendations for how the recent comments list should appear? Plenty of options are available, including an excerpt preview of each comment. I tried several options out, but I'm not sure what visitors would find most useful.

Your suggestions would be appreciated.

I am now an official WordPress contributor! While converting Born Geek to WordPress, I noted that the Movable Type importer did not obey the WordPress database case constraints. Movable Type posts export themselves as "Published" while WordPress expects the value to be lower case ("published"). After finding and verifying this bug, I wrote it up and submitted a simple patch, which was then accepted. The fix will be included in 2.5.1!

I have now migrated this website to WordPress 2.5. Better yet, my installs are now managed with Subversion, which will make future updates as easy as issuing a single command from my web-server command line. This all comes thanks to a handy article in the WordPress Codex that gives step-by-step instructions.

This new install was done in a virgin folder (for subversion's sake), and I had to copy existing files over to the new location. If you spot any breakage, please let me know and I'll fix it.

The latest release of WordPress is now available. I've installed it in a sandbox, and I have to admit that I really like the new look of the admin area, courtesy of the folks at Happy Cog (Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico specifically). Thankfully, my theme still works in the new version, as does Spam Karma and Official Comments.

I want to spend a little more time with the sandbox, but I'll probably migrate this site to 2.5 in the next few days.

Matt Cutts has posted three security tips for WordPress users. Here's a quick overview:

1. Protect your wp-admin directory with an .htaccess file
2. Protect your wp-content/plugins folder with either a blank index.html or an .htaccess file
3. Keep your WordPress install up to date by keeping tabs on the WordPress development blog

I was already doing item 1, though I don't currently handle IP white-listing (that's an appealing idea). Item 2 was something I didn't even know to do. When I checked to see if my plugins were listed, they did indeed show up. I have since corrected this issue. Item 3 is a no-brainer.

Matt also suggests removing the WordPress meta tag from your theme's header.php file (which I have also done). This particular "bonus" tip doesn't add a whole lot, but it at leasts cuts down on your broadcasting what version of WordPress you have installed.

It appears that WordPress 2.3 has been feature frozen, and has now entered the bug hunting and fixing phase. The listing of what's new seems pretty bare bones, but I guess that is to be expected on a shorter release schedule. One of the big new features coming is tagging, something I've neither been impressed with nor interested in. Does anyone here make use of that on any other website? I don't see too much difference between tags and categories, so why include them? What I really wish they'd get around to adding is an automated updating feature; migrating to a new version is really painful.

I've come across a few articles on how to optimize WordPress performance (all of the following links come from the first linked story in the list below):

• Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours
• Optimize WP Loading Times
• Optimizing Wordpress Performance
• Optimizing Wordpress for High Volume Traffic
• High Performance Wordpress
• Diggproof & Speed up Your Wordpress Blog

WordPress is by far my favorite content management system, but I opted to use Movable Type over at Born Geek, mainly because it uses static HTML pages (which load faster). Considering the content in the above guides, I may eventually switch from Movable Type to WordPress.

Matt Mullenweg has an interesting post on security in WordPress. He points out that, as a product becomes more popular, its security issues garner more attention:

When a product is popular, not only does it have more eyes from security professionals on it, but any problems garner a level of attention which is not quite warranted by the frequency of the general event, like Angelina Jolie having a baby. There are certainly things intrinsic to coding that can make software more or less secure, but all things being equal the software with the most eyes on it, which usually means Open Source, will be the most robust in the long term.

I have updated the WordPress install that powers this website to version 2.2. A number of theme-related API calls were deprecated in 2.1, so I had to make some changes to my custom theme. If you spot any broken links or weird SQL errors, please let me know about it so I can correct the issue.

Version 2.2 of WordPress has been released. One of the changes in this release is the reinclusion of the Preview and Edit links on the Write Post page (although it sounds like the preview now appears in a pop-up window instead of an iframe). This fixes a bug I griped about when 2.1 was released.

I will probably update this blog to 2.2 at some point, though updating WordPress is always a colossal bother. Seeing as I skipped over 2.1, it's probably time to move to the latest version.

I have upgraded this website to WordPress 2.0.10, so let me know if anything is broken.

I'm avoiding upgrading to WordPress 2.1, based on a single point raised by Matt Cutts in a recent blog post. The oh-so-handy "Preview" and "Edit" links on the write post page have been removed, which really stinks. There's apparently a plugin to put back what the developers have taken away, but that seems like such a hack. I've heard of a few other problems with 2.1 as well, so I'm going to spend more time on the 2.0.x branch for a while. Maybe 2.2 will fix some of these issues; I guess we'll see later this month.

Last year at this time, I was thinking about various content management systems for user over at Born Geek (sister site to this blog). I never made a decision, mostly because so many of the available options seemed weak to me. One year later, very little has changed and I'm still looking to migrate the site from the hand-built system I use today to a database driven solution.

Currently, I'm leaning towards using WordPress, the same package I use here at this blog. I like the interface that it offers, its documentation is top notch, and I'm already quite familiar with it. The only real downside I can see with the package is that pages are built on the fly. Every month, Born Geek averages 1.56 GB of data transferred, 542,818 hits, and 17,955 unique users. With this much activity on the site, I'm a little concerned about database accesses and the subsequent processor time needed to generate each page. A caching plug-in is available for WordPress, and I hear decent things about it. But will it be enough?

I'm seriously thinking about giving it a try later this winter (converting the site will take some time). So keep your eyes peeled. In the mean time, if you have suggestions for CMS-like systems that might fit the bill, let me know. I'm certainly open to suggestions.

I recently "discovered" the Optional Excerpt feature in WordPress, which is sad considering that it's been in plain view the entire time. From here on out, readers of my RSS feed will get a summary of each post instead of the first N characters. This should help make each post's intent more understandable. The only problem is whether or not I'll remember to create an excerpt with each post. I've clearly got to train myself to take this extra step before posting.

One other interesting feature that I recently learned about is the "post slug" field. This allows the author to specify what text to use when creating the permanent link for the post. How awesome is that? No more awkward contractions in the permalink URL's!