If you’re seeing this, you’re at the new site. Please leave me a comment so I can see that it’s working!. As the banner, you should be seeing the Detroit skyline at sunset from Belle Isle (not Costa Rica during the day).

There’s probably some broken stuff: the sidebar, some images, who knows what else. It’s hard for me to check it until it’s actually done migrating, I’ve done the minimal basics to see once it kicks over, that it should be functioning on a basic level (main page, RSS and Atom feeds and commenting should be okay) and when I imply that the sidebar might be broken, I actually know that it’s broken; I’d be a little more OCD about it, but I’ve barely blogged in the last month so it’ll be okay until tomorrow…

When I’m done completely I’ll let you know (once the name propagates, I’ll be making adjustments that will break things along the way).

From a geeky standpoint: If telnet, tar or ssh are too geeky of terms, then DO NO read on…

I’m migrating from 1and1.com to Site5.com in this process, exporting and importing the basic way in WordPress looked to be to slow and I’d lose some settings. So I used SSH to connect to 1and1 (basically got a DOS prompt or a telnet session) told it to tar up my files and compress them (basically zipping them up) and then I used FTP to push the file from 1and1 to site5, which was very fast since they are both on fast connections (I didn’t download then upload, I just pushed from one to another).

Then I used the phpMyAdmin mySQL web interface at 1and1 to download the database with my 2000+ blog posts (and comments and settings) to my computer. Then I created a new database at Site5 and then used the phpMyAdmin mySQL at Site5 to import the same data. I should have done all this from the command line too and avoided downloading and uploading, but I’ll confess I downloaded it about 5 different ways with different programs just in case I had any problems.

I used a fake domain name to test out the site and overall, it looks like it will work.

Then I went to 1and1 and said “let Site5 control where the site GarySaid.com is at”. Then I went and told Site5, “you’re in charge of GarySaid.com”. And at some point in the next 2-24 hours people will start getting directed to the new location.

Please leave a comment or trackback about GarySaid WordPress Migration is mostly done (?), click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I mentioned the other day I’d be migrating my site soon. I’m moving from 1and1.com to Site5.com. I’m some ways I think 1and1 is a little more manageable, but I think Site5 might be a little faster. But GarySaid.com is my biggest site and has more widgets and things so that’ll really be the deciding factor. Then I plan to blog more, before the sites become too out of sync, so I can see if switching was a good idea or not…

Geeky info: I’m moving the site and just switching the DNS pointers, so in theory it should be a pretty smooth transition. But Site5 probably won’t let me put in the DNS until 1and1 releases it and that will be the problem (probably). Then your browsers need to grab the new pointer to the new server. We’ll see how it goes…?

Please leave a comment or trackback about GarySaid site migration starts today, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I’m here, I’m alive. I’ve just not been blogging. I’ll fix that soon.

Announcement: I’m migrating my web host so my site may completely disappear for a few days as it makes the transition. I’m not disappearing completely if you get errors, I’ll be back. If you get redirected to a temporary site don’t bookmark it, it’s just temporary. (I’m not moving the DNS host, jut the pointers, so hopefully it’ll be kind of seamless.)

Part of my blogging issue is I post a few things to Facebook and it gets the topic out of my head. I have a WordPress plug-in to post blogs to Facebook automatically (WordBooker) but I need a way to get my Facebook stuff into my blog. Any thoughts?

Please leave a comment or trackback about Been a Bad Blogger (or Facebook vs. WordPress), click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

It let’s me snap a photo, but doesnt seem so easy if I already took a great photo that I want to post.

(This is the wall and dresser in my bedroom. Why? Because I’m in bed.)

Later: Need a better way to adjust the photo size, it’s a little too big.

Please leave a comment or trackback about Testing the quick photo option in the new WordPress app, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

So the my blog host was acting up a few days ago, but it made me look around a little bit. Tried (again) to speed things up and make the pages load a little faster; I tried some stuff a month ago, but it might have slowed it down (but then I’ve been posting a lot more photos, so who knows?). I think it’s faster, but who knows.

So I removed some of the things from the sidebar, I never got the feeling a few of the things were being used. I changed the banner (it’s a snippet from the above photo) and shifted it way up, I don’t know why I never thought of moving it up before. It’s another sunset picture, but it fit well (with the title and search box), so it’s not a drastic change.

Please leave a comment or trackback about New look for the blog (sort of), click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I thought this was pretty cool. Something that it seems like you’d only see in a movie, but this kid has one in his room (play room?).

It’s a short post because I liked the video and I wanted to test the WordPress feature that just let’s you put in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTxmTTisThY and it builds the rest of the embed code for you.

I’ll put how it worked here below after I test it:
It worked! The one things I don’t like is that it doesn’t put the video in the RSS or Atom feeds, I thought it would put a thumbnail in the feed (I saw it on someone else’s blog) but it doesn’t appear to be happening. (Later) I see the video is embedded in my feed if I view it via Google Reader (but no thumbnail).

thumbnails

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This is just a test of MacJournal. I’ve tried it in the past, but I thought I’d give it another try since it just came in a bundle I purchased and they’re coming out with an iPhone app that you can sync your entries with it.

I had a few problems getting it to configure. I ended up manually doing the settings and using the MovableType protocol with a blog ID of “1”. Couldn’t get the atom protocol for posting to work (I’ve never gotten it to work with any blogging client). Actually, it just alerted me to version 5.2 with allowed me to use the WordPress protocol, but I still needed to use a blog ID of “1”. And when it pulls down my old entries, it pulls down my tags, but doesn’t seem to grab my categories.

As I write this, I see a way to set the tags, but I don’t see any way to set my categories. I see it pulled the categories down from the web site but I just don’t see how to choose them. When you submit the post (“Send to Blog”) is when it asks you to pick the category! That was not in the help section at all. Also, it’s kind of inconvenient, if you write an article off-line and wait until you are connected to the internet to post it you can’t just hit send, you need to pick the categories which might not seem like a big deal, but when you’ve got a 1/2 dozen posts you wrote off-line and you’ve only got a few minutes to post (and they might be charging you by the minute) it’d be nice to have done that part in advance.

Hmm… Trying to figure out how to wrap the text around this image. Can’t figure out how to edit the HTML (my preferred choice) to change it. Not so happy with this at this point, but maybe someone will offer some tips.

Later: It also auto capitalized my tags after I specifically typed them in lowercase, not happy with that. I’ve got a few other WordPress things: Not being able to edit custom fields and set the slug for the blog post name, but those are pretty specific things, but I wanted to mention them for those loooking for a client.

I’ll play with it a little more, but I think I’ll be sticking with Ecto which integrates with WordPress quite nicely. I’m not saying it’s bad, but it doesn’t let me do some of the things I want to do. Ecto handles the categories, tags, custom fields and the web URL (slug) for WordPress very well; plus it allows me to create some macros, makes it pretty to create Amazon links, has a nice preview and can switch between WYSIWYG and HTML quite easily.

FYI, this is MacJournal version 5.1.4 5.2 and a self-hosted WordPress 2.9.2 blog.

Please leave a comment or trackback about MacJournal blogging client for Macintosh (this is a test), click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

So it’s been six years since I started blogging. Sometimes I blog a lot and sometimes a little but I come really close to averaging one post a day (actually about 0.995 posts per day). I’ve really been slacking lately, all the vacation days when I’ve written more than a few help pick up the numbers, but I never like it when a week goes by that I haven’t posted. This year I only did a little over 200, so I’ll try and make up for it over the next year, if I could post five different days a week, I think I’d be happier about it…

This post is a bit of a mish-mash of tech details and thoughts of blogging.

I originally started using Movable Type for the blog in 2003, I had my blog in a subdirectory of GaryLaPointe.com and changed subdirectories a few timesand then in 2005 moved it to here at GarySaid.com and left it alone.

If had a tech suggestion for anyone blogging, it’s pick a domain name and stick to it so that you don’t lose readers (and search engine links); choose something vague/generic so if you change what you blog about your web address can stay the same if you want it to. While I call my blog the same name “Gary Said…” I could easily change the title to “Lone Geek Blogging” (or whatever) but still have the same easy to remember address.

I really enjoy blogging, it’s nice to reflect on parts of my life and have to think up semi-coherent paragraphs to describe whatever it is that I’m thinking about. I try to keep most of my blog positive and remember that I don’t blog about everything in my life, so sometimes it’s not always the easiest thing to come up with a topic.

I never knew who would come read and while I’ve met a few people I really have no idea how many people I know (or don’t know) actually read my blog. The one thing I know is that I really enjoy getting feedback from people (even when it’s something short like “I thought the same thing about that”) and it’s extra special getting a link back from someone when they just mention my site or even a specific article (even if it’s just one of my money saving tips). I hope that feeling never goes away!

Since I mentioned comments, here’s some comment info/stats and then I’m going to go (the day is almost over). On average, I actually get about 1.5 comments per post, but in actuality most posts don’t get comments. Of my 3,000+ comments I’d bet that 1,000 go to the same dozen posts over and over again (my bed has 454 comments, hacking iTunes has 91 and another ten have between 30 and 100).

I almost forgot: I switched to self-hosted WordPress last December (I played with it for a bit before the switch) and have really enjoyed using it since then. I feel I can do more with WordPress with less work than I did with Movable Type. I’ve mentioned things like this in a few posts: WordPress vs. Movable Type and Things I miss about MT.

FYI – Lisa’s book WordPress For Dummies is a great resource if you want to use WordPress.

Thank you for reading!!!

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So a few months ago I installed the A Year Ago Today plug-in it shows a list of posts that I’ve done on this day (date) in the past at the top of my blog. I’ve liked it a lot, it reminds me of things I’ve done in the past so I generally revisit the posts. Sometimes I barely even remember blogging it. And sometimes it generates new traffic to the posts (most times not).

I think today is the first day that not only has there been a post from each of the year’s that I’ve been blogging but there were exactly two (2) posts from each November 17 for the last five years.

This helps me clean up my blog too: I’ll occasionally fix some links or add some tags and categories or sometimes fix something minor. Some of the categories I use now, didn’t exist when I wrote some of the earlier posts and I use tags the first few years. This results in things getting reposted to Facebook (via WordBook), generally I’ll delete them but sometimes I’ll leave them (if it’s got a photo or isn’t time sensitive). Occasionally, I’ll read a sentence and think “that makes no sense” so I’ll fix it, I try not to do this too much, it’s really about what I was thinking/feeling/doing then, but if it’s not clear it needs fixing…

Please leave a comment or trackback about On November 17th I seem to blog more than usual., click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I love WordPress. I think I’ve expressed that many many times. The plug-ins that people supply are amazing too. But what I’m surprised about are some basics that some plug-ins don’t have. When going to the configuration page from a plug-in they neglect some basic information:

• the name of the plug-in
• the version number of the plug in
• the name of the programmer
• a related web site
• a link to where the plug-in is located on WordPress.org
• A few sentences with some very basic instructions would be nice too

How can I recommend your product to anyone else without a link? Or how can I donate to the author if I don’t know where (or who) they are? Or how to use it without any instructions?

Some of the plug-ins have great instructions, but if you can’t find the site with the information it’s not very helpful. Some of the plug-ins have the information in a read me file in the plug-in folder, but some of the folders don’t have names that match up with the name of the plug-in very clearly. And really, if you’re going to create a read me file with important information, just paste it into the plug-in page.

Some plug-ins are great and include all the above, but many leave out a thing or three.  Some go above and beyond: including a list of people who donated and a list of information to include when reporting bugs (WP, PHP, MySQL and more); please note in this example, that they don’t tell you collect the information, they actually have the list with all the version numbers (all you have to do is copy and paste).

I might be sounding fussy, but I’m not talking about user interface and minor confusing instructions, I’m talking relatively big things here. Things that could get the author recognition or donations. Things that could prevent people from using the plug-in that they bothered to create (they do want people to use them, don’t they?).

Please leave a comment or trackback about The problem with WordPress plug-ins…, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I think it’s safe to say at this point I’ve become a huge WordPress fan. But I was a huge MovableType fan for a long time and I miss a few things about it.

What I really miss (and would like) in WordPress is –

• A good search and replace in the administration interface (dashboard).
• An easy way to maintain multiple websites with one login interface (a dashboard deluxe). From Movable Type I could maintain several blogs and with blogging clients I only had to log in once to configure for multiple blogs.
• An easy way to maintain multiple websites with one login interface (a dashboard deluxe). From Movable Type I could maintain several blogs and with blogging clients I only had to log in once to configure for multiple blogs.

Maybe I can do do this with WordPress mu (multi-user)? I’m thinking the last few times I looked at it mu still didn’t handle things the way I wanted it to. Multiple blogs with different domain names still seemed to need plug-ins and I guess I’d feel better if it was integrated in the core. And I’m thinking not all plug-ins are WPmu compatible. I’m thinking when WordPress and WordPress mu becomes one product the plug-ins compatibility will change.

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I’ve found a new WordPress plug-in that I like. It’s called “A Year Before“.

It’s got options to show a year ago today (or months or days) what you were blogging about. I’m using “anniversary mode” which I think is taking the post from today for as many years back as it can find.

Don’t worry if you haven’t been blogging long it’s got a “range” to show posts near a year ago (or six months ago). I’m running it on WordPress 2.8.2 (as of this writing) and it seems to be fine.

On This Date 2008 Best fix for my Convertible Rear Windshield 2008 MacBook Rumors seem to be rising… 2007 The Future of Television is selling me individual custom episodes 2005 Google Moon 2005 Don’t Be Afraid… Be Ready! 2004 Photos! (London) 2004 Did we walk? Boy did we walk! 2004 Cowboy Junkies and Shawn Colvin

I’ve been using it the last few days at the bottom of my left sidebar, but since I’m blogging about it I moved it to the top of the left sidebar, so you can see what it really looks like. I copied the text here so the links actually work. I’m not sure where I’ll move it to later.

It’s interesting, maybe more to me than you, but they always say you should show links to older posts for newer readers. Without even reading them I’m reminded about a trip to London (and the concert I went to a few days before) and the slideshow viewer that never detected flash properly, a homeland security site (which now appears to be a FEMA site), Google maps adding the Moon, my dreams for a new MacBook and how $5 fixed my convertible roof saving me hundreds of dollars (and save multiple readers the same!).

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It’s 5:43 EST, if anything’s wonky it’s because I’m upgrading for the next few minutes. Unless I break something, then it’ll be longer…

I backed up everything yesterday, so I should be good

5 minutes later: Everything seems to be working fine!

Please leave a comment or trackback about Upgrading to WordPress 2.8, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

At WordCamp Chicago last weekend Darryl Markette kicked off the day playing a song called BlogStar, it was based on a song called RockStar. He finally recorded it as a video, so here I am sharing it with you!

Here’s the direct link to the HD video of BlogStar.

Please leave a comment or trackback about So You Wanna Be A BlogStar? #wcchicago, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

So you can now download WordPress 2.8, it’s named after Chet Baker; all WordPress releases are named after Jazz greats.

I’m not sure when it’s going to show up in our admin consoles for automatic upgrade though. It’s there now!

Watch the video for all the new 2.8 features.

Don’t worry, the video doesn’t cover all 180 new features.

Please leave a comment or trackback about WordPress 2.8 “Baker” is now available, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

So I’ve got a new theme. I figure I have to mention it because if you just read the RSS feed, you’ll never see it.

It’s pretty much the Simple Indy theme by India Fascinates. It really reminds me of a few other themes out there, but it handles my long categories, works well on Mac, was easy to modify, it’s zippy and it works really well.

I’ve modified it a bit here and there to fit my needs but it’s pretty close to the original code. I like titles on all my archive pages and added my header image. I also changed the way it marked posts with the tags and categories. I also like full posts, if it’s the main page, archive or search results. And I like error messages to come with a search box. So other than that a few other minor changes it’s 99% the original theme. I still need to integrate my old logo into it…

The photo will probably be changed soon, but it was one of the first ones I tried that fit okay. Currently it’s a view of the Pacific from Quepos, Costa Rica. I think maybe December of 2006 (New Years Eve,I think). If it’s not a picture of the coast with two tree trunks (like the thumbnail), then I changed it to something else

I liked my old theme but it just loaded too slow and it had been bugging me for a while.

Please leave a comment or trackback about I’ve finally got a new theme set up for my blog, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I’ve mentioned it a few times before but in less than 3 weeks (June 6-7, 2009) it’s time for WordCamp Chicago. It’s only $31 and it’s getting full (only 50 spots left) so sign up now. You can get more information at the WordCamp Chicago blog.

They’ve already got a bunch of speakers lined up including Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress. You can even see who’s already signed up to attend.

Please leave a comment or trackback about Last Reminder for WordCamp Chicago, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

Don’t forget to register for WordCamp Chicago! It’s only $30.99 for a weekend of WordPress fun. They want to pick a venue based on how many people register by March 1st so sign up now. As far as I know you can register later, but if you register now if helps to make sure they pick a large enough place to have it.

You can get more information at the WordCamp Chicago blog.

They’ve already got a bunch of speakers lined up including Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress.

You can even see who’s already signed up to attend.

If it’s not obvious, I’ll be going…

Please leave a comment or trackback about It’s time to Register for WordCamp Chicago – June 2009, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.71 today (from 2.7). It’s the just one click upgrade which almost worked (I think i have the bugs worked out for next time so it will work with one click).

The first thing I did with I back up my whole blog (which it will tell you to do) but it takes some while to back up the directories, SQL file and images.

When I finally clicked on the one click upgrade it didn’t work but it’s the same kind of pause/interruption I get I try to upgrade some plug-ins (it’s inconsistent, some plug-ins work fine). So i googled it and I find the Codex for the Core Update Host Compatibility page which lists all hosts that the automatic upgrade works with and it even explains that if you’re using my hosting provider (which is 1and1 web hosting) you need to be running PHP 5 for this to work properly. Plus, they had the one line of code you need to to make the change.

So I entered the line to my .htaccess file, I clicked upgrade again and it was done! Seconds later I was done upgrading the whole blog. So if you’re considering doing this upgrade I would definitely do it. I think I’ll be set for the one click next time I have do it.

By the way all my other plug-ins that I had that I couldn’t click to upgrade, now upgrade with a click! So it even solved an additional problem for me.

Please leave a comment or trackback about Upgrading to WordPress 2.71 – It’s easy!, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

WordPress.tv was announced. Lots of instructional video on how to do stuff with WordPress! And there is a feed for the blog and a separate video RSS feed. All appear to be available in HD. Very nice.

It also includes videos from various WordCamps.

Please leave a comment or trackback about WordPress TV is Here, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.