Stuart Homfray The Weblog

WordPress 2.2 to 2.2.1 Upgrade

As I’m back in the UK until the 9th August, before finally going to live in Prague with my girl, I thought that I’d better just upgrade WordPress to v2.2.1 while I have the chance, as there are some bugfixes and security fixes addressed. As stated, this is a required upgrade, so if you haven’t already (and it WAS out on June 21st), get this one installed.

Stage 2 of the Blog Upgrade Complete

And so the blog has completed it’s transformation from a tired old WordPress 1.2.2-powered version, to a brand spanking new 2.2-powered version! Oh happy day!

I’ve decided to re-enable comments and trackbacks to see how well the Akismet anti-spam plugin copes with the levels of spam received on here - if there’s any problems, at least there’s one or two other WordPress anti-spam options…

Oh, I must just point out that the path from version 1.2.2 to 2.2 was easily traversed thanks to the following information:

• ‘Upgrading 1.2 to 1.5‘ and ‘Upgrade to WordPress 2.0‘, from The Tamba2 WordPress Guides
• ‘Upgrade 1.2 to 1.5‘ and Upgrading WordPress‘, from the WordPress Codex

Next up, time to kick the actual layout of this site into a bit more shape. One thing I must just point out at the moment, though: if you’re an IE7 user looking at this site, you will be having a few problems with the menu over on the left - this is because the IE-only stylesheet is targeting every version of Explorer rather than those below version 7. I could fix this, but as I would have to edit each of the old pages, I figured why bother?! If the site update takes TOO long, though, I will…

Stage 1 of The Blog Upgrade Complete

That’s the first part of the blog upgrade - I’ve moved from 1.2.2 to 1.5.1.3.

Next, it’s time to upgrade to the newest version (I won’t put a version number here, as it may be out of date by the time I get around to it! :-))

By the way, you may have noticed that comments are disabled - they will stay that way until the upgrade is complete (Spam!! Don’t talk to ME about spam…)

The Noble Art of Comment Spamming

I’ve noticed that some of the comment spam that I’m getting seems to be of a different quality to the usual Cialis/Viagra/Texas Hold ‘Em -style rubbish that I usually get. There’s elements of Confucious, Homer (stop sniggering over there, not Mr. Simpson), the Old Testament, Aristotle, and even Adam Smith.

Guys, I’m impressed! Would that these postings had but one small point, then I would surely approve of them. I am sorely tempted to do so, but alas, good sense wins out once again…

Sorry fellas :)

Why Am I Getting So Much Comment Spam?

I’ve been getting an absolute stack (techie term) of comment spam recently - I think there’s three reasons for this:

1. I’m not posting very often
2. I’m using ye olde WordPress 1.2.2
3. Someone is really, REALLY pissed off at me!

Number 3 is pretty much impossible, as I’m such a wonderfully friendly, happy-go-lucky chappie that everyone loves, so I think I have to address one and two. #1 seems to have a reasonably straightforward solution, and #2 is in the pipeline, with a complete website update due soon.