NeutralAxis

Just for my own entertainment, I’ve added a Top 10 Posts feature here that keeps track of the daily top 10 and overall top 10.  Naturally, the totals don’t include the prior 8 months of the site’s operation.

Here’s a problem I’ve run into recently and wish I had known about this solution.  I needed to move a WordPress site from one server to another using a different URL.  I copied the wordpress folders to the new site but found I couldn’t log in because the login attempted to use the old URL.  I went through all kind of gyrations trying to get everything working before finally succeeding.  It looks like there was an easier way. (continue reading…)

I’d been looking for a good way to embed PDFs and found the Google Document Embedder plugin. It doesn’t actually embed Google Documents, but simply uses the Google Documents viewer to display any compatible format file and provide a download link. PDF shown after the jump (continue reading…)

OK.  Here I sit in the US Midwest, minding my own business thinking “am I too old to bother with Twitter?”  But I’m a geek, so I sign up and follow a few bands I like.  Within 24 hrs; actually before I had even made my first tweet, I see that I’m being followed by hayleyjfoster in Australia.  Who?  Why?  I haven’t even tweeted yet.  Clever marketing, that’s why. (continue reading…)

I’ve been working with a construction organization, of which I’m a member, to “blogify” their website and I’ve been learning a few new WordPress tricks along the way.  They’re nothing earth shattering, but they were all things I hadn’t tried before.  The list of plugins and such are after the jump. (continue reading…)

Finally, I think I have my mail server working correctly so that I can send email notifications for system and blog events.  Up to this point, I never received any notification when comments were left on posts.  I used the procedure from this site for my exim4/Ubuntu setup.  Steps repeated after the jump.

[Update:  Yep, it works.  After a false alarm of it not working due to getting stuck in a spam filter, I now get an email to moderate posts from new users and when a comment is posted.] (continue reading…)

Thanks to Steve for helping me to get SSL installed and running.  After an unsuccessful attempt with his help last weekend, the problem dawned on me this morning as I was driving to work.  We had set the port 443 SSL virtualhost to the wrong DocumentRoot directory.  See previous posts about Virtualhost if you’re looking for more explanation.  Also, see the page here for part 1 of the SSL setup instructions followed for setting up a privately signed certificate,  and here for part 2, which we modified a bit for my purposes.  So far the only problem I’ve seen with SSL logins to WordPress is that the flash media uploader doesn’t work.  It reports an IO Error.

I got around to installing the WordPress 2.8 update and fail to understand why I have so many problems with normal one-click upgrades for this and plugins. (continue reading…)

The decoratr plugin for wordpress sounded interesting, so this is a test of it.  The plugin analyzes the content of a post and makes suggestions for photos to put along side the post.  Photos come from Flickr.  So after the jump, we’ll see what kind of suggestions it makes for a rambling post. (continue reading…)

Google hasn’t been indexing this blog for more than a couple of weeks and I’m fascinated by the attempts of spammers to leave comments.  So far the anti-spam solution is working perfectly.  I hesitate to say which one I’m using in case that would help a spammer defeat it.  But the interesting thing is the social engineering tactics they use.  The posts are all very generic but offer praise for the quality or helpfulness of the post.  They appeal to the users vanity.  I hold all posts from a user for moderation unless I’ve approved one of their previous posts and I presume the spammers recognize that and try to weasel their way into that first approval through flattery.  A new one was a bit different by asking “Can i take a one small picture from your site?”  That one would have been more believable if the post they were commenting on had contained any pictures.