Tag Archives: pings

Migration So Far… update 7

It seems to be going very well so far. I think I’ve got everything imported. Feel free to try a test comment (please).

Most entries and categories and dates should be redirecting. Date based pages are not redirecting (need a .htaccess rule or need to rewrite all those pages in MT with a redirect), but that’s okay, you’re only going to find that from a search and if you clock to comment it takes you to the correct page, just a weird interface change.

Categories still need to have hierarchies and descriptions.

All RSS feeds are redirected, so you’ll probably get a full reader by the time you get this post. And as of right now, they’re all redirected to an Atom feed. Does anyone really care/have a preference?

Not thrilled with this blog template but that’s easily changeable later. I’ll break down the steps of the whole migration later for anyone wanting to go from MT to WP.

Any .htaccess people who can help me with a rewrite rule?
I need date formats like /chapters/2008_12.php -> /2008/12/ and the same for /chapters/2008_12_16.php -> /2008/12/16/ . Actually the latter is really the only one that matters since the first was prevented by robots.txt and I don’t think I did any posts linking to a month (maybe a date).

Honestly, I’ve had harder version upgrades with Movable Type, but we’ll see once I start modifying templates for myself.

Disappointments: I wish the categories could have been in the root directory without having to be in another directory (my /topics/ directory). I wish I could have more easily moved the old files in with their old filenames so things didn’t have to be redirected.

I’ve still got to fix “About”, “FAQ”, etc. and I need the date archives to redirect.

Spam filter is working great! I really like the way the tags work, but they need some cleaning up. Ecto really helped me to turn my technorati tags into WP tags.

Fixed the search engine with a smart redirect. Needed that since I do searches in the middle of my posts (I should be tagging but I’ve have 3 years to go back and tag).

Updated the sitemap.xml files too.

These last few things should really help with the search engines reindexing me (I hope!)

Google has already been cruising through indexing pages….

It imported my pings/trackbacks as comments :( But at least they are still linked.

Some drafts became posts. This may have not been an import/export issue, this may have been something I did after the fact when I reposted posts to get my blogging client, Ecto, to convert my Technorati Tags to WordPress tags.

Why Put Your Life on The Internet ?!?

So the idea of putting your life on the internet came up at work today. It was really more about people putting inappropriate things on-line. But the question was asked and I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I had some answers but I didn’t think I could make someone understand if they didn’t get it just a little bit.

I remembered back into the days when Heather was trying to get me to understand blogging and I just didn’t get it. Partially because I always put my life out there so it wasn’t something new, but the (semi)regular posting and using special software to do it I just didn’t understand. Let alone when she tried to explain trackbacks and pings. And if a geek like me didn’t get it, how can I get other people to?

Now here I am 1800+ posts later (and a million spam comments) and I still don’t have a good answer. Continue reading

Too many trackbacks (update)

So the spam comments and pings/trackbacks have gone cRaZy again, they aren’t getting posted but they get shunted over for approval (in case they are real) so you haven’t seen them but I sure have. I had to make a few changes, I’m not sure if it’ll really help. If you have any problems leaving a comment please let me know via e-mail. The thing is it’s not really spam, it points to other sites (not generally spam sites) like they are just trying to annoy me or wear me down (or poison my filters)…

You know, I haven’t gotten many “real” comments at all lately so feel free to leave a comment on a recent post.

LATER: So I’ve changed the MovableType filenames for the CommentScript and TrackbackScript in mt.cfg and it didn’t see to put a dent in it at all. They’re still flooding me with comment spam (yesterday it was trackback spam). Any suggestions on some other file I should change the name of? I’m wondering if they’re routing it through some other procedure or are they just scraping it from my pages…?

S-x and Drugs

I’m glad I don’t feel the need to talk about sex or drugs much because I get so much spam (comments/pings/trackbacks) related to it I’ve had to block any words related to such topics and no one would be able to comment on such things. It’s gotten worse lately (the last 4 weeks) and I’m not sure why…

Where’s your head?!?

MygravatarSo I’ve Implemented Gravatars on my commenting. This means if you have one when you leave a comment it puts your gravatar (avavtar/icon) next to your comment. The best part is if you go get one it’ll appear on all the posts you’ve already made. And of course it’s FREE!

UPDATE (10pm): My head just got approved and I probably just popped up on hundreds of Gravatar enabled blogs around the world!!!

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Ignore this Movable Type dynamic cache test

Testing a slight problem concern with posts and dynamic templates in Movable Type 3.16. They don’t seem to be resetting the cache properly. Actually it’s working to some extent, but it does take a while (close to an hour) for some of the pages to update; see below for more information.

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My biggest blog screwup ever…

I was cleaning up one of my other web sites that I work on and I just accidently deleted all my pings/trackbacks back to this site. Fortunately there were only 23. The important this is that I noticed it just as I was about to delete all the comments for this site!!!!! That would have been hundreds of comments…

What is a Trackback?

Mell (of Divergent Poles) was trying to understand what a trackback is, so I’m making this post as an illustration.

While creating this message there was an empty spot (just like there is a place for the title) to add trackbacks, since I’m referencing this post (i.e. I’m talking about Mell) I’m adding his trackback information to that spot. When I post this message it’ll send a tiny message (called a trackback or sometimes referred to as a ping) to Mell’s message and now he’ll know I was talking about his post and get a better understanding of this (I hope). There is no indication on my site that I trackbacked him (other than me telling you), the main reason is to let him (and his readers) know I are talking about him and when others read his site they’ll know I’m talking about Mell so they might follow the link to see what I say (in this case, if they want to know what I think a trackback is).

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