Domain Transfer Completed, At Last!

SORRY FOR THE RECENT INACTIVITY here in the last few days folks, it’s been a bit of a struggle to get things sorted.

I was in the middle of moving from my current hosting provider to a new one, and the domain transfer took a lot longer than expected and seemed to do lots of weird things in the interim.

As far as I can tell the website is now up and running again but I will need to do a little more testing before I move on to the next stage of the plan. I’ve also got a bunch of emails to migrate, folders to populate and many more levels of hell to go through before I’m done.

I couldn’t post any content or respond to any emails in the interim due to the “limbo” I found myself in, but that seems to be resolved at this point.

Over the next week I intend to complete the final checks on the site to make sure everything is where it should be and then I’ll be launching the new look Avalon5.com for all to see.

As ever – if you find any weird problems, missing links or issues with the site please do let me know and I’ll sort them out ASAP. Thanks.

Technical Issues

SORRY FOR THE MESS folks, but we’re experiencing some technical issues at the mo. To kick things off I had to go through a process of elimination to resolve some LCP synchronisation issues with my broadband (which eventually turned out to be dodgy cabling producing lousy Signal to Noise (SNR) ratios) and this took a few days to correct and stabilise.

At least now I’ve got a decent connection going which should enable me to take advantage of the ADSL2+ upgrades due in my areas later this year.

Then to make things worse – in a fit of what I can only assume was temporary insanity – I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress on my site instead of waiting a few weeks after the initial release for everyone else (read: guinea pigs) to test it on my behalf.

I can only blame it on the drugs; I’ve been sick as a pig all weekend and doped up to the tits on various kinds of good stuff trying to get over it.

Anyhoo – bottom line is that I’ve still got some technical issues I’m trying to resolve with this latest upgrade, most notably the fact that none of my ‘pages’ of content are displaying correctly. Posts are ok, but pages do not load, even though they are all there in the database as normal.

So folks, if you notice anything else out of whack please do let me know and I’ll try to get everything back in working order ASAP.

New Design In The Works…

SORRY for the lack of content and attention around here lately folks. I’ve been using this week to work behind the scenes on a new design for Howl @ The Moon! and it’s approximately 70% complete at this point. I hope to finalise this before or during the weekend and then port over the site to the new layout. I’m still taking suggestions for any improvements you would like to see. The new layout will be a lot faster than the current one (less graphics, less front page content) so that should address any speed concerns.

Right now I’m going through the usual CSS and PHP hell as well as trying to work with new template tags in WordPress V2.1, but of course I’m no genius when it comes to these things so it’s purely the ‘trial and error‘ approach which gets me through. Unfortunately this takes a lot of time as I discover what works and what breaks the site.

Anhyoo – be patient and I shall resume normal service with a renewed sense of insanity and political incorrectnesss soon. Oh yeah, if you want to check out the work-in-progress and let me know what you think (comment back here on the live site please as the test site has commenting turned off)… by all means please do so, but remember it’s still being ‘tweaked‘ so depending on what time you look at it, it may look great or a complete mess as I do the ‘trial and error’ stuff.

Later.

Software Upgrade Complete…

OK. WORDPRESS V2.1 is officially installed and sorted on the site and for the most part it was pretty painless, but for those of you considering this leap be warned, it’s not without it’s kinks and twists.

I guess the one item that caused the most hassle was the decision by the WP developers to change the way categories and links / blogrolls are handled. Once the upgrade completes your default call (from pre V2.1) will no longer work. It’s worth checking the official documentation for this because there are other tags which have been deprecated as well in 2.1, which means that while they may work for you now, when the next release hits they probably won’t.

The answer is to use the new function call – details of which you can find either on the WordPress Codex or at the support site, but for those of you too lazy to look here is the new code you need to replace in your template file. Simply replace

php get_links_list();

with

php wp_list_bookmarks();

The other thing you need to watch out for is the change in the “writing” options. In 2.1 the visual rich editor is ‘off’ by default, and can only be enabled again via the user ‘profile’ area. It’s worth doing too because now you have a nice tabbed switch between the editor and the code, as well as a nice new shiny spell checker. The implementation of AJAX menu options makes things a lot sweeter too, so now you can drag and organise your favourite menu blocks around the screen.

Anyhoo – it was also a good opportunity to take a gander at all my plugins and update them to the latest releases. It’s also made me think seriously about updating the presentation layer of the site (time for a new look ‘n feel I reckon!). I’ll give it some thought and see if I can come up with a new style, but if you have any suggestions about how I can improve things around here please let me know.

Right so – that’s it for now. The software upgrade is done, but I’ve got a nagging hardware issue I need to resolve so it’s off to the PC stores to get some components

Spam Wars

IT LOOKS LIKE a new battle has commenced in the spam wars if the volume of attempted spam-related comments and trackbacks on this site in the last few days is anything to go by. I get regular attempts every week, but the volume has risen to unprecedented heights in the last few days and I understand this is happening in a general sense. It just seems to be spewing forth from my Internet connection in an endless stream.

Lucky for me I use a combination of two great products to trap, identify and dispose of the spam attempts, otherwise I’d be driven insane at this point trying to work through it all manually.

For anyone interested the two products are Spam Karma and Bad Behaviour. Individually they are excellent (and free) products, but together they make a fantastic combination and I would highly recommend them.

Weekly Featured Site: RockyJay

IT MUST BE THAT TIME OF THE WEEK again becuase I’ve had a bunch of bidders emailing me to rent out some space on my site. First on the list however is this week’s featured site RockyJay.Com – a madcap site with plenty to read and comment on. Given certain leanings towards couch potato heaven myself, I particularly liked the tag line “I get enough exercise just pushing my luck”

It’s a pretty wild site with very definitive opinions on things, regular commenting and is certainly orientated towards the adult variety; Some readers may enjoy the regular “Ass of the Day” and “Daily Stare” features of RockyJay.com – Enough said!

Give it a lash and see what you think.

Site Layout Issues Today

THE SITE seems to be experiencing some layout issues today (thanks for the heads up Fletch) and I will address this when I get home this evening. An initial look into things suggests that it’s the google adverts which is causing me the problem, however I can’t do much about that from where I’m at now, so I’ll deal with these issues later.

In the interim, please excuse the mess and be assured we will get the site back to it’s normal state of dissaffection as soon as possible

Update: It seems the issue is Internet Explorer related only. The site can be viewed correctly in FireFox, but not Internet Explorer… we are working to correct this but it’s proving to be a bitch to track down. If anyone has any suggestions I’d greatly welcome them at this point.