. : : Marc Sez : : .

An Upgrade And Even More Blog Modifications

Wordpress Upgrade
I’d been putting off the Wordpress update for about two weeks now. I usually don’t upgrade unless they have some really good features. So I end up skipping a few versions and then upgrading when there is something substantial. But unlike George (who is still on Wordpress 2.0.3) I do upgrade eventually.

This time they made Wordpress widget ready and also said Wordpress would warn you if the blog would break when you were modifying themes and functions. I didn’t think much of Widgets. There was nothing wrong with HTML editing unless you’re a noob. But I could use the other feature, having broken my old theme by modifying a single line in the functions.php file.

So I did upgrade. It’s annoying since I had to backup my blog files. The database backup took seconds but the blog files took forever. Over 16 plugins and 13 themes take a long time when you’re forced to use a crap protocol like FTP. So I skipped all the themes manually for the backup and then upgraded.

I found that the widgets feature was right there and half my sidebar components were widgets already so I converted my entire sidebar to widget elements. The only useful thing was a GUI to edit them and easier rearrangement. I also found out that the shoutbox wouldn’t execute since it was a PHP function so I had to get a plugin that enables a PHP supporting widget. I was able to add the other links and the ads with the standard text widget.

Modifications
I added links to my feeds on the left side to make them more accessible. How do they look?

I joined Twitter too. Finally. The site is kind of primitive but I like the messenger and phone integration features. Since sending messages to the international Twitter number will run me into debt in seconds I’ll stick with the messenger feature.

Twitter Features
What is the messenger feature, you ask? Well you can add the Twitter bot to your buddy list in Gtalk. And you can send text to the bot and it will automatically update your Twitter account. Pretty cool.

What’s that I hear? You really want to update through your cell phone? Alright, there is a way. There’s always a way. Download some instant messenger software through your phone, get GPRS and then update through the Twitter bot. Sneaky eh?

Other News
Suren started a blog. Let’s see if he updates. http://suren.ampli5.org/

I dragged (Krish) Raghav along to buy a helmet yesterday. More info and photo of helmet in next post.

Edit:
Also added a favicon. It’s the minesweeper icon. However I think the browser cached another one I was trying out and refuses to refresh it.