If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve decided to move the8thsign.com to Dreamhost from my current host so expect some weirdness for the next few days while I get everything transfered over.

With the start of Spring, I thought it was time for layout change. I’m not sure I’m completely happy with the current one but I’ll work with it some more. You may see some weird stuff with the site over the next week or so as I tweak stuff to my liking. If you read the RSS feed, stop by and tell me what you thing or if you don’t read the RSS feed, what are you waiting for? Subscribe Here

the8thsign.com is now Wii, PSP and DS friendly thanks to the WordPress Ultimate Gamer’s Pack.

The WordPress Ultimate Gamer�s Pack is an essential set of plugins that automatically renders an optimized version of your posts and pages when visitors come to your blog on a Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS-Lite, or Sony PSP. Each device is automatically detected, there is no configuration needed. The theme used by each plugin optimizes your blogs layout and fonts for each device. For example, the Wii Edition plugin uses the �Wii� font at sizes that provide for easy reading on TV screens

I unfortunately do not have a Wii or PSP to test this out on. While I do have a DS Lite, I do not have the Opera web browser for it.

If anyone has any of these devices, I would love to know how they work out for you.

Mint, the web site analytics program, recently was upgraded to version 2.0. You can check out the changes here.

With all the hype about the new upgrade, I decided to take a look at it again. I had passed over Mint for Google Analytics and Performancing due to Mint needing to be run locally and costing money. Well, Performancing is dead and Google Analytics just isn’t that good for tracking blog stats. This afternoon i downloaded the Mint Server Compatibility Suite and lo’ and behold, my server can handle Mint like a champ. So I took the plug and dropped my $30 for the package.

I didn’t want to wait until I got home so I ended up install the package from work. Only problem with work is, our proxy blocks port 21 so I couldn’t FTP the files onto my server. I ended up using the web-based file manager that my host provides. It wasn’t ideal but I did get it copied over and installed. The installation was a breeze. One of the easiest web packages I’ve every installed. Even easier than Wordpress was.

Instead of editing header files, I went the plugin route and installed WP Mint to take care of the javascript. After everything was up and running, I installed some Pepper(addon’s for Mint). I only ended up keeping User Agent 007 for now. Bird Feeder looks nice but I’m currently using Feedburner to track RSS subscriptions. If I can figure out how to properly setup Wordpress RSS feeds with Bird Feeder, I may switch. It would nice having everything all in one place. I did finally install the WP Feedburner Plugin tonight and removed all the hacky .htaccess stuff that I was using for Feedburner. WP Feedburner Plugin makes everything nice and neat and easy to deactivate if I decide to go with Bird Feeder in the future.

If anyone knows what I need to do to make Bird Feeder play nice with Wordpress, leave a comment.

This site, like many others, is powered by Wordpress. Today Wordpress 2.1 was finally released.

New features include:

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn�t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any �page� to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Unfortunately, I will not be upgrading to 2.1 anytime soon as my host is still running on MySQL 3.23 and has yet to upgrade to version 4.0 which is required. I’ve been happy with my host but I may look for a more high profile web-host that supports wordpress in the future so I can avoid stuff like this. So for the time being it looks like I’ll be stuck with 2.0.x.

[10 Things You should Know About WordPress 2.1]
[Download Wordpress 2.1]

If you visit the site you may notice something different and if you read via RSS stop by and pay a visit this month. Whats going on you may ask? Well…October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and to help raise awareness the8thsign.com is going Pink for October.

Help spread the word by stopping over at pinkforoctober.org and better yet, go Pink for October on your sites also.

Ok, I admit it, I’m a statistics whore. I use Google Analytics since I’m Google’s bitch and Measure Map is closed for new accounts. For as little traffic I get, I still check my metrics everyday. It usually involves logging into my Wordpress Admin page and checking my reports page that Tantans plugin provides. Enter Dashalytics, a Dashboard Widget that provides Google Analytics data from the comfort of your own Desktop.

Download Here