CafeChatNoir

Just got a news email that Gustav is now a Cat 5.

Still absorbing McCain’s VP pick. I know Palin is very well regarded among her constituents and it doesn’t appear that Alaska is about to fall into the ocean so I assume she’s not done too badly there. But, she’s pretty conservative and McCain didn’t really need that, cause the hard core conservatives weren’t going to be crossing over to the democrats anyway. Hate to think it was nothing more than a pandering move, but maybe it was.

Upgraded WP again and went ahead and blew away all my customizations and theme, which should take care of the disappearing posts issue, because it was something in the comment form, I just never figured out what – but now that I’ve got a shiny new untouched form, that should do it. Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time finding a theme that I like, so I’m going to give some of the theme generators a try and see if I can get things back to looking somewhat like they were before, if not better.

…

Many, many thanks to mendel for his help on this and providing a mod on ljxp to solve the post ID problem and the bit of code to put in the control panel to make it work.

Woohoo!!!!!!

I’ve almost got things the way I want them… I’ve finally gotten the ljxp crossposter to work – seems I had a bad/old version of it when I started out.

The comment count image is going in the posts…except that from what I can tell from what is displaying (-1) and reading the code, it seems to be deciding that the post ID is invalid and as such, tagging it w/the -1… I really like the idea of getting the comments on the site vs. LJ, especially since I found the “subscribe to comments” plugin so folks can get replies and I really want this to work.

There must be a way to fix it, just gotta figure it out…

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Fixed verbage on comment page.

Moved all RSS feeds & comms off LJ and over to Google Reader. LJ is now people only, and the reading format on the Google side works better for me for the comms & feeds.

Beading pages now in WP.

Culinary Note to Self page added

General Note to Self page added

And I do believe that should be the last of the things to be done.

About page updated.

Additional recipes added, check 1/1/07

Photo Gallery now embedded in WP Photography page

Races page now in WP

Compact Archives plug-in installed & working.

Digital Fingerprint plug-in installed, everything looks OK, except for the fact that it’s not actually functioning… Waiting to either hear back from the developer or another user who seems to have run into the same issue and has it working now. And has apparently decided to start working now…

Feed Control installed and operational.

The site migration is now complete – 2800+ posts brought over, set for security and tagged. I’m sure I’ll find some little things to fix in the near future, but I am quite pleased with the way things are at the moment. I know there’s a plugin that I can use to bring comments over, but

Now, if I could just fix everything else in the world as easily, we’d all be set.

Got all the posts ported over through April of 2005. Damn, I’ve written a lot the past 5 years.

Helped little bro w/ replacing light fixtures today and as a result of that, I’ll be calling an electrician to do the ones I need to have done at the townhouse – I’ve managed to really screw up my bad shoulder trying to hold things up while we got them attached into the ceiling.

Watching the President totally hose floor trading at the NYSE at the moment. The White House had repeatedly denied that he would be visiting the NYSE after his speech across the street at Federal Hall, but there you go. The Secret Service folks do not seem pleased with this turn of events. (I hope they are at least grateful that the NYSE floor is an exceptionally secure area to start with.)

I’ve got a friend that could be making a mistake and I’ve done my best to give warning. (Not “you’re an idiot” mistake but a “you’ve got bad information, PLEASE double check it” mistake.) I’ve done what I can and now all I can do is hope that things turn out OK. Frustrating to say the least.

Entry migration is still coming along. Everything that has been brought over so far has been tagged and checked for security. Once everything is in, then there will be some minor cleanup still to do, as anything without a subject is automatically assigned a # for the subject and that has to go. Minor, but mildly annoying. Need to figure out how to convert the archive list to a dropdown cause it’s just too long, and there will likely be some category cleanups as well.

It’s been really interested re-reading everything as I’ve been importing it. I’ve found that when things are going badly, I write a lot more. It’s a little disturbing how things are so different for me now than they were just two years ago. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be where I am today. Even with all the changes, there are a lot of good reminders of “don’t make that mistake again, dumbass” in the older entries.

The LJ crossposting seems to be working quite acceptably so far. The import function is a little squirrley at the moment, and I’m not sure if it’s just domain lag or something is actually wrong, as categories are updating instantly, but the posts on the backside are not – so I think it would be best if I stop attempting to import and tag things until I figure out what’s going on.

But – overall, not a bad migration so far.

Well, the site migration is finished, with only a very few minor glitches, for which I am quite grateful. I’m already very impressed with my new host, Laughing Squid – apparently this is how a real domain host is supposed to work – they actually have a decent control panel interface, actual tools that I can use to administer the database, real reports on traffic and such and well, damn, it’s nice.

Now that I’ve gotten the site migration done, I can finish with the LJ-to-WP history migration. That may take a little while, but at least I’ve got the working tools to do it now.

The DNS propagation still isn’t 100%, but by the morning it should all be there.

have been updated – just a waiting game now to see how long it takes to kick over.

OK, got the go ahead from the new host to start mirroring – downloading everything from the old host at the moment and then get to turn around and upload it to the new side.  If I can get it all done tonight, the domain pointers will be changed tonight.  Only other maintenance will be to create the new db on the new side, run the install and then migrate the handful of actual entries over.

Shouldn’t be too hard.  So, why am I hearing decidedly disastrous notes in the background?

Many thanks to Capital Computer Rentals for getting me hooked up with a laptop on very short notice.  As it turns out, got an email from the new domain host just before I left the house and the account is already up and ready for mirroring, so that lag time I was counting on while the other laptop is in the shop on doesn’t exactly exist – so, at least I can continue the migration.  At the rate things are going, the site migration could very well be done by mid-week – the biggest unknown at this point is how long it will take for the domain pointers to be moved overl, so there is going to be some time where it’s pointing nowhere…  Going to try and see if I can get it to happen overnight so there is as little upheaval as possible.

Well, the decision has been made. After spending a long night happily geeking out with a test instance of WordPress, I’ve decided I’m going to migrate to it for the site. I’ll still be crossposting over to LiveJournal, but I really like the idea of having the blog actually part of the site rather than being imported from elsewhere. Many thanks to Mortaine for letting me know about WordPress in the first place.

I’ll be switching over domain hosts to boot, since my host only works minimally with WordPress, and there are enough features that I want and will use, it’s worth it to go ahead and make the switch. I’d not been thrilled with my host for a while, but just didn’t have a compelling reason to move until now.

Additionally, it gives me a geek project to work on for a while, which I didn’t realize how much I needed until I was up until all hours last night trying to get the theme and layout the way I wanted. It’s also a great distraction from my ear infection. (As is the big honkin’ latte my brother just brought me. He’s good to have around.)

Eventually the older posts will all be transferred over and everything will be here.