Wordpress 2.2 Upgrade Fun

ITF just got some Wordpress 2.2 “love”, and reacted badly.

Initially I couldn’t log in, and when I finally resolved that little problem all my sidebar widget content had disappeared. Which is, frankly, bloody annoying.

It’s great that Automattic released the Widget functionality way back when. It’s great that the Wordpress community decided to run with that, and create their own plugins. What’s not great, is that the latest Wordpress release essentially ignored all the Widget work I’d done, broke the key Widget plugin I used, and left me having to rebuild everything.

With 2.2, Wordpress bundles the Widget functionality in its “core”, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. But if a fundamental change like that is going to be made, you expect a slightly better upgrade path. Particularly as Automattic created the original Widget plugin themselves!

The 2.3 release promises to pull tagging into the Wordpress core. Which almost certainly means it will introduce a whole raft of similar upgrade problems. Has the time come to move ITF away from Wordpress? Maybe…

Quick Bite: Two Very Different Videos

1) New Transformers Trailer: Oh. My. God. See it here.
2) Ken Robinson talks about the future. See it here. Sir Ken is one of the best speakers I’ve seen in a long time.

Both very, very different. Both well worth watching.

Stuart Estell

I mentioned Stuart a while back (in the “New Bloggers” post), but I’m going to give him another plug; largely because he’s not really “blogging” over at his website, he’s using it to share his music. So a “New Bloggers” post doesn’t really do him justice.

There are two sites you need to have a look at: his MySpace page, and his personal site.

The MySpace page has samples of a few instrumental tracks from his new album Mother’s Thinking Bath: “The Ambassador”, “The God of Sleep”, “Will Beckett’s March”, and “Trip to Mars”. The album will be available soon, and I hope to feature a review on this site and Blogcritics once I’ve got a copy.

Stuart’s personal site contains much more music, and full recordings of a variety of tracks (both covers and Stuart’s original songs); a recent favourite of mine being Cuckoo’s Nest. Better still, the site’s RSS feed is now set up as a podcast, so if you subscribe you can have all of Stuart’s music delivered conveniently to your computer. Or, if podcasts aren’t your thing, subscribe to the feed anyway and manually download new music as he posts it.

I hope you enjoy Stuart’s work, and please post a comment here and on Stuart’s site letting us know what you think.

Web Host Fun (of MT and DH)

For the past week I’ve been trying to get Dreamhost to give me an account. I paid through Google Checkout, and - for some bizarre reason - they’ve not handed any money over to Dreamhost yet.

Dreamhost think it’s Google’s fault, Google think it’s Dreamhost’s fault. Dreamhost won’t cancel the whole process and let me start from scratch. Google keep saying they’ll talk to Dreamhost.

It’s an impossible position, and incredibly frustrating. I thought I’d give Dreamhost the benefit of the doubt (after reading many negative comments online, but also many positives), but I’m starting to think it was a bad idea.

Regarding Media Temple - or (MT) as they like to be called - I’m impressed with every single aspect of their Grid service bar one: GPU.

After a month of running my Wordpress blog (this Wordpress blog here, the humble Is There Food) which gets a very modest amount of traffic, I’d eaten half of my monthly GPU allowance. Combine that with the fact that I hadn’t yet moved Gary’s Menori across, and that I have some future projects that will consume even more CPU time, and I’m a bit worried that I’ll soon be sailing over my 1000 GPU limit.

The GPU section of (MT)’s control panel is currently offline. According to the site, they’re making it more accurate; which should resolve many of the concerns that customers have with the GPU system. They can’t find out what’s eating their precious CPU time, so it makes optimisation a very difficult task indeed.

So, we’ll see what happens. If Google and Dreamhost can resolve whatever crazy issue they’ve got, maybe I’ll be able to dip my toe in that pool. And if (MT) sort out their GPU panel, I might be able to stick around for a bit.

More news as and when I have it.

And if someone from either Google Checkout or Dreamhost should happen to read this (fat chance, eh?): “HELP!”

And if someone from (MT) reads it: “What’s the deal with the new GPU panel?”