What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Posts tagged SEB
The SEB Podcast is finally happening.
Feb 4th
So the long-planned and consistently procrastinated SEB Podcast is going to happen this Saturday thanks to the very responsible ***Dave who’s been pestering me that we should actually do what we said we would do. This will be our first attempt and I fully expect it to be… interesting. Yeah, interesting is a good, positive sounding word. I just hope it’s interesting for the right reasons.
Here’s the thing: As most of you who follow both SEB and ***Dave Does the Blog already know, outside of him being a theist and me an atheist, we have more in common than not. My concern is that we’re going to ask each other questions about topical items and we’re going to agree with each other so much that the entire podcast will be similar to this:
Me: I think Pat Robertson is stone-cold crazy.
***Dave: I agree completely. And I think the Teabaggers are a wee bit deluded.
Me: I totally agree.
Which is going to make for a fairly boring podcast. So I’m opening this up for you guys to participate. Got a topic you’d like to hear us pontificate on? A question burning a hole in your brain? A query you’re curious if we can help you with? Leave it in the comments or alternatively drop me an email or drop ***Dave an email if you prefer. Topics can be anything you want – politics, religion, technology, pop culture – and we’ll do our damnedest to talk about them in an amusing manner.
Yes, I know I’ve made this plea previously only to have it go nowhere, but we’re really going to do it this time barring the world coming to an end. Remember, this is our first try at this and neither one of us has done it before. Which, if nothing else, should add an air of unintentional comedy to the proceedings.
Our move to the new server is complete.
Jan 17th
SEB’s migration is done and everything should be working properly though it may take some time for the IP address change to migrate it’s way through the net. Of course if you’re reading this then it’s made its way through your DNS servers.
We’re also trying out a slightly different theme to see if it works any better. One thing I like about it is that if you move your mouse to the upper right hand corner of the screen a couple of buttons will pop up allowing you to adjust the size of the text and or width of the layout.
As always if you spot anything that doesn’t seem to be working properly then drop me an email and let me know.
SEB will be going on a little walkabout this weekend.
Jan 15th
There’s been a few WP modules that weren’t working quite right and the documentation said they needed PHP5 which I thought we had on this server, but apparently we don’t. When I inquired I learned that SEB is still on one of EngineHosting’s PHP4 clusters, but they’d be happy to move me to one of the PHP5 clusters they have running. So I requested that they move us.
So sometime this weekend, and I’ll post an update when it’s due to happen, they’ll be bundling us up and shunting us over to the new server. As always any comments left during that period might not make it across depending on when you leave them, but the move shouldn’t take long so that should be kept to a minimum. It does include a change in the IP address which will have to propagate through the Internet so there may be a short period where you’ll be unable to reach SEB. Beyond that it should be relatively transparent.
SEB is now running on WordPress 2.9.
Dec 19th
Most of the changes are to the back end of the sight, there’s a new built-in image editor and deleted posts and comments go into a trash bin before being deleted, so if you only ever see the front end you shouldn’t notice much difference.
But, as always, there’s a chance for weirdness so let me know if you spot anything not working.
I missed my own Blogiversary.
Dec 10th
Holy crap! I’ve been so busy with life that I totally forgot that I started this little experiment in egocentric rambling back on December 2nd, 2001. Not that I did a lot with it that month, but that’s when it officially started which means Stupid Evil Bastard is now, officially, 8 years old.
Had you told me at the time that almost a decade later I’d still be finding stuff to write about I probably would’ve laughed. I’m ADD. I have a hard time finishing all the video games I own. Yet here I am still plugging away. Sure, I tend to go in phases where I’m not as active as I am at other times and what I blog about tends to also go in phases, but I’m still banging on the keyboard when something catches my attention.
What’s even more amazing to me is the fact that there are so many people that drop by daily to see what nonsense I’m carrying on about at the time. I’ve heard from a lot of people I’d never have imagined would find my rantings worth following and even been lucky enough to meet a few of you.
I did come close to giving it up a couple of times and there are periods when I haven’t been able to come up with something to write about that I revisit the possibility. Right about then I’ll read something that pisses me off and I am off and running once more. I can’t promise you that I’ll make it to the full 10 year mark, but we’re starting on our ninth year so it’s looking like a good possibility.
Thanks for checking in on me over the last eight years. It wouldn’t have been as much fun without you.
Preliminary SEB templates are in place.
Dec 2nd
As you can see, if you’ve stopped by the site instead of reading its RSS feed, I’ve got a half-assed port of the old SEB template moved over to WordPress. It’s missing a few things here and there, but it appears to be functional so I wanted to try it on the live site and see how well it holds up. I may yet try to make use of one of the frameworks instead of doing it this way, but for now this feels more like home.
One other advantage is that I’m able to incorporate plugins when and where I want them instead of hoping they work with the theme I was using. You’ll note, for example, that there is now a “preview” and “post” button on the Comment form. Try ‘em out and let me know what you think.
As always let me know if there’s any glitches or bits that don’t work.
I’ll be messing around with SEB’s theme soon.
Nov 19th
I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently using the Atahualpa theme for SEB because it’s the most configurable one I’ve found outside of Thesis. The latter of which costs money while the former does not, though they do accept donations. Athualpa has a few annoying quirks, but it is amazingly malleable so working with it is worth the effort. I’ve already made a major modification by reducing the layout from a three column format to a two column format as several folks seem to prefer that. I’ll be working on the color scheme as well in the days to come to get us back to a darker look. Alas, this means updating a lot of different sections one by one so as I do it the site will look somewhat funky during the process.
So this is just a note to say that if you stop by and the site looks a mess it’s because I’m working on getting it back to something a bit more familiar. Just so you know.
SEB makes the jump to WordPress.
Nov 7th
After many hours of work and some 22 export files with an average of 300 entries per file (highest was 500, lowest was 150), I have successfully migrated SEB from ExpressionEngine to WordPress. I will be writing a post about how I did this which will include the templates a I used and details on all the problems that cropped up along the way. It’s far from perfect, we’re currently missing approximately 323 entries and 4,471 comments that I’ll have add in later and there were all sorts of snags along the way, but it works so long as you’re dedicated to the process. This blog is eight years old and has now transitioned from MovableType to ExpressionEngine to WordPress and there was a fair amount of crap in the older entries that needed fixing along the way.
Expect the theme to change on you over the next few days as I look for something I feel good about to use until I can find the time to learn how to whip up my own WP theme. Also if you’ve ever submitted an entry when SEB was under ExpressionEngine then you already have an account created under WordPress. The trouble is that WP doesn’t seem to have bothered to import your email addresses into your account so I’ll have to go through and edit all 91 of you to put in your email address. The account was created using whatever your Screen Name under EE was, not what you used to login to EE. So DOF, for example, already has an account as decrepitoldfool. If you think you have an account already try using the recover password option with the email address you registered with as that’s what I’ll be putting in so you can recover your passwords.
Another thing you’ll have to do is resubscribe to any entries you want to receive comment notifications from. WP doesn’t have a native comment subscription option so I’ve added a plugin that gives that functionality. You do have the option of subscribing to an entries’ RSS feed as an alternative if you don’t want to have to leave a comment to subscribe.
I’ll probably be adding more plugins over the days to come as I figure out what other functionality would be useful. If you have suggestions on themes or plugins you think would make a good fit, let me know. Or if you have an account already and want me to put in a different email address, again, let me know.
SEB will be changing platforms once again.
Oct 28th
I’ve mentioned previously that I was thinking of moving SEB off of ExpressionEngine and onto some other platform, likely WordPress, and now I’ve finally made the decision to do so. Not everyone cares, but for those who are curious as to why I thought I should take a moment and explain.
We’ve been running on the ExpressionEngine platform for the last five years. Before that SEB, and the other blogs I host for friends and family, ran under MovableType up until the release of version 3.0. I originally made the switch to EE due to the licensing fiasco that accompanied the release of MT 3.0. By the time Six Apart came to their senses and made MT licenses reasonable again we were already running on ExpressionEngine and digging all the cool new goodies it had. It turned out to be a great move as EE had a lot of stuff in it that MT didn’t and continued to add lots of cool stuff as the years rolled by and the platform built up a market for itself.
As it turns out, however, the market that the folks at EllisLab found themselves supporting was slowly becoming less and less blogger-types and more and more web application developer types. It seems that ExpressionEngine not only made for a fantastic blogging platform, but for a pretty damned impressive website building tool at a cost far less than many other CMS platforms. Being smart people the folks at EllisLab took that ball and ran with it. This is most evident in the upcoming release of ExpressionEngine 2.0, which is currently in beta testing and which I got to play around with for a bit. One of the changes that drives the point home is the fact that you no longer define “weblogs” in the system, but “channels.” Which is, if you know how EE works, actually a much better way to describe things. ExpressionEngine now drives some of the bigger sites out there and people are using it to build all manner of cool web applications and, honestly, the fact of the matter is that EE has outgrown me.
Which is exactly how I worded it in the email I sent the EllisLab folks letting them know I was dropping out of the beta test and moving off the platform. From everything I’ve seen ExpressionEngine 2.0 is going to be pretty damned amazing for the people that have the skills to take advantage of it fully, which would be the professional web developers. That’s not to say that EE 2.0 wouldn’t be an excellent blogging platform, but that’s no longer the primary focus because it’s attracted a market for which that is only a small part of what they’re going to use it for. That means some of the features I’ve been hoping to see implemented probably won’t be anytime soon. Again, not because they’re bad features, but because they’re not what the overall EE marketplace is looking for. And that’s as it should be.
WordPress has made a lot of progress since I first considered it five years ago and it now has a lot of the things I switched to EE to get, plus some of the things I’ve been waiting for EE to add. It is, more than ever, squarely aimed at bloggers and it’s enjoying a huge popularity as a result. If I had the PHP and mySQL programming skills I could easily develop modules and extensions for EE that would do all the stuff I’ve been hoping for, but I don’t have those skills. WordPress already has a lot of that stuff anyway so the sensible thing is to switch the tool I’m using to the one that best fits my needs and desires.
The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not switching because I suddenly consider ExpressionEngine inadequate. I think it’s great. It still has one of the easiest templating systems I’ve ever used considering how powerful it is. I will still recommend EE to people who are looking for an excellent low-cost CMS package that is easily modifiable and extensible with an active and helpful community behind it, because that’s just what you’d get with EE. I’m switching because the direction I want to head in and the one EE is headed in are diverging enough that it’s the right move to make. I will still be keeping an eye on EE as time goes by just as I do with MovableType. I won’t rule out the possibility of switching yet again because you never know what another five years will bring.
All that said, the change won’t be happening over night. I have already developed templates that’ll make exporting everything from EE over to WP a relatively painless process, but we will lose a few things along the way. First off is the SEBpedia, which is powered by the built-in Wiki module of EE. It doesn’t seem like it gets used all that much anyway so it’s probably not a huge loss, but I may try to find a way to preserve the data it has.
Second thing we’ll lose is the vast majority of user accounts. WordPress will auto-create accounts for people who have had at least one entry that they’ve submitted, but it won’t auto-create accounts for commenters. Those of you who do get an auto-created account will have to use the password recovery option to reset the password so you can login so be sure you have a current email address in your user account before we make the switch.
The third thing that we’ll lose is cross-links within past entries until I can be bothered to go through and fix them all. The basic URL structure will be changing so there will be a lot of broken links in old entries that refer to other entries. It’ll also take awhile for Google to re-index the site and update its database to reflect the new links as well. It’s a bummer, but it can’t be avoided easily.
The last thing that we’ll lose is cross-site user accounts. With EE if you registered on SEB then your account would work on my mother’s blog, my sister’s blog, and so on because they were all part of the same system. With WP I’ll have to have a separate install for each site so if you want an account on all of them you’ll have to register at each one separately.
Beyond that I think most stuff should make the transition. I’ll probably start with one of the freely available themes out there and then once everything is up and running I’ll work on learning how the WP templating system works. As always your thoughts, comments, and suggestions are encouraged.
Peace
SEB is getting hammered with comment spam lately.
Feb 12th
Posted by Les in Blogging
20 comments
Here’s a graph showing all the spam SEB has received since the start of September of 2009:
It's like a SPAMQUAKE!
We jumped from a low of 23 last October to a record high this month of 2,056. I just cleaned out another 154 from the spam queue and there’s already 3 new ones back in there.
On the plus side, the WordPress implementation of Akismet is damned impressive. Almost all comment spam is caught by the filter with only a couple ever making it through and with only a handful of false positives. Even then the ones that make it past Akismet never see a live page as they get stuck in the moderation queue due to having an unknown email address. It works out to a 99.377% accuracy rate which is nothing to sneeze at.
On the negative side, it doesn’t look like the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin does jack shit in terms of stopping spam bots as most of it is clearly not being typed in by hand. Having said that I must admit that I’ve not turned it off yet to see if things get worse or not, but I’m tempted to try it and see. If things are about the same then there’s little point in using it as it just annoys non-registered commenters.
So while there are aspects of WordPress that annoy me – large number of plugins to recreate functionality found in other systems, annoyingly complicated template system – I have to give them big props for an excellent comment spam solution.