Spam – everyone hates it, but on a blog install it’s best not to just ignore it and let it mount up. The other day I had to go through a database and delete over 12000 spam comments for somebody who had no anti spam plugins and was running an old version of WP. It wasn’t a pretty sight (site?). Akismet is your friend! As is Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma 2. I’ve only lately installed the last two here, Akismet has been doing a very good job but it does fail to catch the odd one or two. Extra fortification can’t be a bad thing. I’m not sure on the best settings though so I’ve left everything at default for now, if you have trouble leaving a comment send me an email via the contact page.

Scuttle has been upgraded. I love it, though there are a few bugs I’ve noticed. Namely that the RSS feed seems to display in reverse order, as do the links on the main page when not logged in. Haven’t managed to find a fix that works for either issue on the Sourceforge page. It’s not a biggie for me, I tend to use the tags or search when looking for a link anyway, and as it’s only me that uses it it’s not a huge problem. Shame about the RSS feed though.

As you will notice, I’m also tinkering with the theme again, using the excellent Simpla theme as a base this time. I’ll continue to tinker over time, think I’ll be sticking with this one for a while, it’s nice and clean looking and very easy to work with.

Oh no.

It’s now on my very own dedicated server, w00t!

I’ll admit things did get a little wobbly for me at first, but once I called in the cavalry to actually run the thing for me, I sat back and enjoyed the ride. For the curious, here’s the specs of the server -

Processor: P4 3.4GHZ Dual Core
Memory: 2GB PC3200
Hd1: 160GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
Hd2: 160GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
OS: Linux – CentOS 4
ControlPanel: CPanel / Web Host Manager

Definately not the cheaper option, but oooooh, a nice shiny sparkly server of my own! :)

There’s still lots of fiddly things I want to tweak, but it’s at least something different to look at.

So, welcome to the new look (for those of you who actually do still look here and don’t think I’ve disappeared off the face of the earth, anyway).

The theme has also been upgraded, don’t know if I’ll keep K2 or not yet so I’ll just be playing for a while.  If things don’t work or look out of place, sorry but that’s the joys of doing a live revamp!

I’ve also had an idea for another site. More on the personal side and nothing that I want to advertise as such, but still, I struggle to update this one these days. Must resist….m-u-s-t r-e-s-i-s-t….I have more domain names than I know what to do with as it is. Plus I’ve promised to help a couple of people out with their sites and I’m way overdue on those promises. There just aren’t enough hours in the day lately!

Me either – time to get the proverbial feather duster out! By Friday I hope to have upgraded this and that, and have a new theme in place. Even I’m fed up of looking at black (and generally I like dark themes). It’s time to let the sun shine through a bit methinks!

While I’m there I think I might get rid of the tagging system too, it’s getting on my nerves and doesn’t really serve a useful purpose for me (other than having a pretty tag cloud to look at).

In other news – because of pressing personal stuff going on I took the decision to leave the Freshly Pressed team. Quite a sad decision (it’s a great team!) but a necessary one for me. On a brighter note though, my counselling has finally finished! Doesn’t mean that my depression has been completely lifted, but it does mean that I’ve made progress. Progress = good. :)

As you will see, I’m back on WordPress and decided to go ahead with the domain name change. There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I think it’s a more fitting name for a blog, and secondly I was getting a little tired of designing themes with cats in them! For now I’m using a slightly customised version of Vader for K2. I’m not sure how long it will stay, but I’m happy with it for the time being.

Not everything is in place yet – guestblock is there but needs a redesign, scuttle links need to be transferred over, and a few other bits and pieces need finishing off. I’ve done away with the gallery for now as it wasn’t getting used all that much anyway. Instead there are thumbnails to my latest Flickr photos in the sidebar.

So, that’s about it, I’m going to go get some sleep now.

PS Don’t forget to update your bookmarks/links to the new domain.

Due to my time constraints I’m still using TXP Rin with yet another of my own slants on it. As you can see I decided to go the whole hog with the cat (kat) theme this time around!

It’s been fun, I think I’ll take part in the next one too. Only on the next round I’ll make sure I plan ahead so I have plenty of time to come up with a design. A timescale of 24 hours wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.

And now I’m off to see who else has rebooted and relax for a while.

Update

Seems I was a little premature, and the official time is 12pm GMT on 1 Nov, not as I thought, 12:01am. Ooops. Oh well, it’s done now, what’s a few hours between rebooters. :)

If you happen to visit in the middle of it all, please excuse the paint pots and brushes lying around the place.

Normal service (whatever that is) will be resumed shortly.

I’ve no idea why really, these group things usually turn me right off, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I’ve been thinking about redesigning for a while anyway, in the hopes that it will freshen things up and prize some more regular postings out of me.

No idea yet what the design will be, I will most likely sit down on a couple of nights beforehand and figure it all out then knowing me.