Soliciting Fame

I upgraded WordPress to 2.5.1. I didn’t feel like doing it manually so I used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

The plugin gave me errors the entire time I was running it but I just kept hitting next and now WP isn’t bugging me to upgrade. Yay!

On March 5th I purchased an account with DreamHost. I’d heard good things about them and they’re a fairly large name in the world of web hosting. Unfortunately our relationship was not meant to be.

The last two months have been pretty frustrating as DreamHost was constantly having problems and my blog was extremely slow. Even just navigating their control panel was a boring nightmare. And Wordpress! It’s slow enough as it is but when I have to wait a full minute to post something it’s not bearable.

So I switched to GoDaddy. My friend Rob and I pitched in for a Virtual Dedicated Server together and it’s only costing about $35/month total. So far it’s going well and I have a lot more options for customization with their full cPanel install that DreamHost’s dumbed down manager.

I am still well within the 90 day refund policy that DreamHost has so I emailed them today asking for a refund. Hopefully they don’t make up an excuse and just give it to me.

The computing science department here at the U of A has a bi-monthly podcast. This week they has Ken Gordon, Boris Wertz and Daniel Boulet talk about the trials and tribulations of starting your own IT company.

It was an interesting listen and I heard a few familiar voices. Check it out here:

Starting Your Own IT Company with Ken Gordon, Boris Wertz and Daniel Boulet

Wow, that was the simplest update I’ve done for a piece of software online before. Just copy a few files and go to the upgrade page, super simple.

I really like the new WordPress layout. It’s smart looking and a big improvement over the outdated layout they previously employed.

My favourite part is the write page: it’s a lot easier on the eyes and the options are grouped in a much my organized manner. All the common tasks are on the right while most of the extra junk you’ll never use is pushed below the post.

What really looks awesome is the new built in gallery part. You can upload multiple files at once and it will catalogue them in the nice gallery for you. Matt Wullenberg, WordPress’s founder, has a great example of a fully functioning gallery.

My biggest gripe with WordPress to date has been the speed and the stats. Right now my installation is pretty sluggish, and I don’t think it’s DreamHost. I’ve read a few comments and it’s one of the top ideas in the Most Popular Ideas section of WordPress Ideas. On that note I think it’s awesome how WordPress includes the highest rated ideas in their upcoming releases. Most community sites might do well to implement something along these lines

So far I haven’t been able to get my stats to work with WordPress, but that’s ok because I’m using Google Analytics as well and I think it’s a bit more accurate anyway.

Screencast of WordPress 2.5

You can grab the latest WordPress release here: http://wordpress.org/download/

/installs

Nexopia…

…haha, made you look