Sabre 2/3rd Tiger v3

After procrastinating for some time, I’ve followed the step by step instructions and now on latest stable WordPress. I’ll credit my analog AF list for finally prodding me to action.

Ah, I’ve finally moved from the trustee old limited space website sharing with 47 other domains to gigsgigs of space website sharing with 77 other domains. Mmm … Hope it’s not too crowded. ;-}

Now I’ve moved into my new gigsgigs hosting, time to upgrade my venerable WordPress 1.5 to 2.5. Seems to have nice new features. I also look forward to install blog and comment spams protection plugins.

• WordPress 2.5 new features – 29mar08 – … culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community … multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing …
• Upgrading WordPress « WordPress Codex – Three step upgrade and also more detailed upgrade instructions.
• How to Upgrade to WordPress 2.5 from 2.3.3 or Earlier – by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com.
• WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist – 7mar08 – By Lorelle VanFossen

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I’ll agree with 5xMoM’s 10 blogging no-no …

1) No to black background because it is overused …
2) No to lengthy post …
3) No to digress too much …
4) No to leaving the blog not updated for several days or even weeks …
5) No to attention seeking title every day …
6) No to sticking to only one topic …
7) No to under-estimating your blog …
No to extreme characteristics …
9) No to boring titles …
10) No to the statement – I am blogging for myself …

… even though my blog is more of a weekend update type rather than in daily update category. Now to the yes-yes part. Shel Israel’s and Robet Scoble’s The Red Couch has a series of blogs on “Corporate Blog Tip” that are certainly worthy reading even for non-corporate bloggers …

1. Corporate Blog Tip #1 (improving the title tag) – 23 Feb 2005, about the blog title itself. «… what’s the likelihood that you’ll click on somebody with the name “joe’s average blog?” … how likely you’ll be to click on something that says “Joe Wikert’s book authoring and publishing blog.” … »
2. Corporate Blog Tip #2 (read a bunch of blogs before you start) – 2 Mar 2005. “… we recommend you get an RSS News Aggregator … If you read 50 blogs for two weeks and you don’t have something to write on your blog to start it off you probably aren’t gonna be a good blogger …“
3. Corporate Blog Tip #3 (write in a granular style) – 20 Mar 2005. “… You want people to talk about you, right? And pass around your information, right? So, make it easy for them. Make one post contain one idea, or set of links …“
4. Corporate Blog Tip #4 and #5 (demonstrate your passion and authority) – 26 Mar 2005. “… A good corporate blog is both passionate and authoritative … How do you show your passion? Post often … Which brings us to tip #5: demonstrate your authority …“
5. Corporate Blog Tip #6 (add comments) – 26 Mar 2005. “… A good blog is a conversation, not a one-way PR channel … If you don’t have comments your corporate blog will be seen as a PR channel …“
6. Corporate Blog Tip #7 (make yourself accessible) – 14 Apr 2005. “… make it easy to get ahold of you … On my blog I put my cell phone number so people can get ahold of me … you never know who wants to get ahold of you … But you’ll never know if you don’t have at least an email address on your blog …“
7. Corporate blogging rules – 27 Mar 2005, about Thomas NelsonPublishers’ first and second draft of their “Corporate Blogging Rules”.
8. Stonyfield Farms Interview – 13 Apr 2005, about interview with Christine Halvorson, Stonyfield’s chief blogger, and their corporate blog strategy.

Since I discovered Bloglines on 19 Mar 2005, my public bloglines subscription has grown to 50+ feeds. It was certainly to my horror I found I couldn’t login into my Bloglines account today and my public bloglines sub giving error “You have entered an incorrect user name“.

Slightly less disconcerting is the error message “There is a problem with the database. Please try again later” when I tried to create/register a new account. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the database to be restored and hope my 50+ feeds are still intact.

Another week has gone by, another weekend to blog by.

Update: 17 April 2005, 0835h.
Just got an email reply from Blogslines at 0520h MYT saying, “We believe the problem has been fixed regret any inconvenience“. Tested, great my bloglines is fixed.

Is what I thought of when reading the EFF article (that Jon Choo post led me to) on How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) published on 6 April 2005 …

Blogs are like personal telephone calls crossed with newspapers. They’re the perfect tool for sharing your favorite chocolate mousse recipe with friends–or for upholding the basic tenets of democracy by letting the public know that a corrupt government official has been paying off your boss … Here we offer a few simple precautions to help you maintain control of your personal privacy so that you can express yourself without facing unjust retaliation … The best way to blog and still preserve some privacy is to do it anonymously. But being anonymous isn’t as easy as you might think … One way to make sure your blog doesn’t earn you a pink slip is to make sure that you write about certain protected topics. Most states have laws designed to prevent employers from firing people who talk openly about their politics outside of work, for example … As long as you blog anonymously and in a work-safe way, what you say online is far less likely to come back to hurt you.

What I really want to know is “How to Blog Safely Unanonymously“. I’m certainly not anonymous to those who really wants to know more about me such as; my name, employer or work place. So far, I’ve been holding on to the tenet, “Only write what you don’t mind everybody knowing” that I hope have limited me to writing only safe stuff.

• Dumbster plus how to blog safely – by Jon Choo, 8 April 2005. “I disagree with them that one should be anonymous when posting a blog but to each his own.“
• Your Guide to Blogging Safely – by David Deschenes, 8 March 2005. Refers to CNet article.
• CNet New.com – FAQ: Blogging on the job – by Declan McCullagh, 8 March 2005. Good round up on issues around blogging at work or impacting work. “Delta Air Lines last year fired flight attendant Ellen Simonetti because of her blog. Friendster, Google and Microsoft also have waved goodbye to employees or contractors who, in the opinion of a corporate manager, were unacceptably indiscreet in their online scribblings.“

A weekend blogger is certainly what I’m becoming. Especially with my new assignment and my workplace change to an 8-to-5 five-day week. Woo, looks like I’m with good companies …

• WeekendBlogger – One way to find a random one of us.
• Office work kills the blogger – Alwin Hawkins, 8 April 2005. “Okay, not killed. Just made him extremely anxious.” Another new IT support guy.
• Confessions of a deliquent weekend blogger – Kevin McCullough, 13 March 2005, “a radio talk show host“, confesses too.
• Are you a weekend blogger? – Deb, 13 February 2005. Points to Joe’s list of weekenders.
• Link me … WeekendBlogger – Joe Jennet, 12 February 2005. Earlier blog, 6 Mar 2004. His list of us weekday challenged bloggers.
• Weekend Blogger – Jeremy Hedley, 29 October 2004. Another one pressured by weekday work.
• Weekend Blogger – Misterblue, 13 July 2003. Tired out by daily computer work, weekend play.

I just found out about this “Wordpress SEO Scandal” and Matt’s responses from blewtooth’s visa blog …

Finally Matt (the creator of Wordpress) had a chance to make a response to the recent WordPress SEO scandal.

… that seems to me about “ads” and “google spamming”, not that it changed my view of how useful free WordPress is to me.

• A Response to the Noise – 1 April 2005, Matt.
• Wordpress Spam “Scandal” – The Run Down – 1 April 2005, Michael.
• Waxy.org: WordPress Followup – 1 April 2005, Andrew Baio. “things are settling down from a very busy day yesterday. eWeek, MSNBC, The Register, Slashdot, Ars Technica, and Metafilter all posted articles about it. After deleting the offending articles, Google added Wordpress.org back into their search results and reinstated the 8/10 pagerank.“

Yep, this “favicon.ico” is one of the next thing I’ll do. In fact, I’m imagining a 16×16 icon of stylized yellow “S” on violet background. I’d have lo learn/find an editor that will create it next. The favourite icon will certainly look nice in bookmarks, address bar and in my Bloglines public subscription list.

• Icon Beside URL address – EKLim, 23 Mar 2005, gives two good method to use the favourite icon. ” Have you ever wonder, why some of the website that you visit has an icon beside it’s URL?“
• Favicon.com – provides FAQ, Icon Forge download, free beta online icon editor and icon creation service.
• Favicon.co.uk – another free online java-based icon editor.

I’ve just used the last link to create the first draft of my favourite icon.

Visa blog regarding “Project Wiki Public Directory”(Startwiki) that is intended to be “the most complete yellow pages or public directory in Malaysia” prompted me to look for existing wikis focussing on Malaysia content. What I found, are sorted below, roughly by creation date and/or total articles:

1. Wikipedia Malaysia – about 970 articles on Malaysia. Not exclusively about Malaysia, total 502,266 articles, 215,171 registered users. About 20 are listed as Malaysian Wikipedians.
2. WikiTravel Malaysia – about 180 articles on Malaysia. Not exclusively about Malaysia, total 10,305 articles, 1596 registered users.
3. Startwiki – totals 12 articles content of 980 pages, 7 registered users, oldest article from 3 Mar 2005.
4. My Chess – Malaysian Chess Wiki – totals 12 articles content of 760 pages, 11 registered users, oldest article from 6 Oct 2004.
5. Malaysia Encyclopaedia – totals 5 articles content of 927 pages, 1 registered user, oldest article from 18 Dec 2004.
6. Jeff Ooi Screenshots Wiki – totals 1 article content of 732 pages, 7 registered users, oldest article from 10 Jan 2005.
7. Stanford Malaysia Forum Wiki Repository – under reconstruction.