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Wordpress 2.5 was released last night which I promptly upgraded using the awesome Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Upgrade went great with no issues so far. I had been testing the RC’s on a test account for about a week so I was prepared for what was coming. I did have some minor issues with my theme, which makes no sense, but thanks to Rob, he fixed most of the issues. There still is one issue that I think I know what’s causing it but no idea how to fix it. Its small enough that you probably won’t notice it even tho you’re seeing it as you read this. I haven’t decided if I’ll just let it be or remove the CSS code totally. Time will tell.

I’ve also moved from my web host from Dreamhost to Media temple. I did this last week and it went very smoothly mostly due to learning from my last move. I got a lot of questions on why I decided to switch because I never had any issues with Dreamhost. Mostly was because media temple contacted me after a previous post and send me a t-shirt and note thanking me for mentioning them. That is the kinda company I want to give my money too. I’m also a sucker for any company with an iPhone interface. So far I’ve been very happy with the change and my blog does seem a little more snappy when loading.

To segue into the next thing, I was driving to work when I had a awesome idea for a domain name. I broke out the iPhone and loaded up media temple to buy a domain name. Of course, the site was already taken by a cybersquatter. This is the 2nd domain I want that is rotting away due to these cockgobblers. Dammit!

Wordpress 2.3 was released yesterday and using the Automatic Upgrade plugin, the upgrade was fast and painless. The only plugin I needed to upgrade was Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator. I’ve added tag support into the sites theme and I’m slowly moving categories and old technorati tags over to the new tagging system. So expect some weirdness for the next few days as I go through 400+ posts and tag them. I’ll be completely dropping categories in favor of tags as soon as I’m finished.

As of today, I will be dropping Technorati tags in my posts. They have become too much of a hassle with very little benefit. I’ve been planning on doing it for a while but a recent blog post on Skelliwag gave me the push I needed. In addition I’ve made a few other small changes that should help with navigation.

As you can see I have a new home, Dreamhost, and a new look (yes again). While I wasn’t unhappy with my old host, they were only running MySQL 3.x so I couldn’t run Wordpress 2.1.x. I looked around at a new host for a few days before I settled on Dreamhost. I’ve read good and I’ve read bad but it ultimately came down to features and price. I mean I paid $23 for a full year using one of the hundreds of promo codes floating around the web.

Database issues
The transfer could have been smoother but that was partly my fault. I switched over the DNS before being fully prepared. The biggest issue I ran into was import my SQL databases. Trying to import from a MySQL 3.x to a 4.x doesn’t really work that great. So I had to run the SQL queries manually. I would copy and paste the new tables followed by the inserts. One thing I wish I knew before was that wp_countries is part of Slimstats which I didn’t need to import. That table itself was well over 60% of my file size. My life got much easier after I figured out I didn’t need it.

Wordpress
Dreamhost offers 1 click installs and upgrades of Wordpress which I love. It was getting to be a chore manually upgrading my wordpress install everytime a new version was released. I can also now use the Mint Bird Feeder plugin so I don’t have to update my feed files each time. So overall Wordpress has gotten a lot more hands off for me which I love. Now I can spend more time blogging instead of doing behind the scenes work.

Mint
Getting Mint back up and running wasn’t too bad. I did move Mint to its own database where as I was sharing it last time. I took the time to upgrade to the latest Mint version along with a couple outdated Peppers. Only Pepper I had problems with was Bird Feeder. With the update to Wordpress 2.1, something didn’t take. So I replaced the RSS files with the originals and downloaded and installed the WP-birdfeed plugin which adds the code on the fly. Its been working great but I lost the last 4 months worth of subscriber data.

Domain Names
My last order of business is transferring all my domain names to GoDaddy. I just purchased alecpeden.com after reading Paul Stamatiou post about Online Presence, and loved how much control I had at Godaddy. So I’m in the middle of transferring over the last two i have with another registrar and I should be good. Right now I’m not sure what I will do with alecpeden.com but for now it redirects to here.

Dreamhost
So far I’m happy with my chose to do with Dreamhost. I’m digging having everything under one roof now. I now even have a alec @ the8thsign.com email. Shocking.

Also Dreamhost has a nice Rewards system for referrals. Someone made out of me when I used a code I found online so now you can help me out. I’ve created code “the8thsign” to use if want to sign up and get $97 off your order. This is a referral and I do make money on this somehow but $97 off is nice. My first year went from $120 down to $23.

New Design
I know I just changed designs a few weeks ago but I was never really happy with it. So now with moving to a new host, I got a new look with I’m loving. I’m still making changes and you may see some weird stuff for the new week while i mess around but overall I’m pretty happy with its current state. I still have some work to do but it shouldn’t take me long.

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.