WordPress 2.2 is available for download.
It looks like widgets are built more into the core of WordPress now instead of needing a plugin. They also made it possible to import posts and comments from the most recent version of Blogger. If you were on the fence about switching from Blogger to WordPress, that should help push you over the edge.
They also had over 200 bug fixes.
I had decided to skip 2.1.3 since I knew 2.2 would be coming out soon. I think I’ll wait a week or two before upgrading. I’m not really worried too much about problems. I just don’t see myself taking the time to do it for a little while which will work out well because if any real problems pop up with 2.2 there should be a 2.2.1 out soon.
Here is the official announcement with all the details.
My wife made me figure out something that will hopefully become one of my own good habits.
I asked her to write a series of posts on a topic on another one of my blogs. She saved them all as drafts.
I finally took the time to learn how to publish a post so that it does not show up until some time in the future.
For anybody that does not know, you go into the Post Timestamp group over on the right side of the screen when you are writing the post. Simply type the date and time you want the post to show up. Make sure you select the Edit timestamp check box and them publish like normal. The post will not show up until the date and time you selected.
I went ahead and wrote 7 posts for one of my blogs and set them each to publish at 8am daily for the next week. I am also trying to build up a similar queue of posts for each blog that I write. It seems like it would be easier to get in a grove and do a whole bunch of writing at once rather than trying to think up something everyday to write.
We’ll see.
I have a MySpace account that I login to about once a week. I frequently encounter this message when trying to go to just about anywhere.
Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.
This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group.
Is it really unexpected to the technical group at MySpace? It shouldn’t be. I expect to see it a few times everytime I login.
I’m thinking a more appropriate message might be:
Sorry! the usual error has occurred.
This error has not been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group because if we did that every time we got this error it would crash our email servers.
Cut us some slack. We are huge and cannot possibly have the capacity to handle all the requests that hit our servers.
Hit refresh and everything will probably be fine.
I have several blogs that I am working on these days. 5 fairly active ones. So, I decided that it was time to download one of the desktop blog editors. At the advice of some fellow bloggers over at b5media, I decided to try Ecto.
All but one of my blogs are using Wordpress software and getting Ecto to recognize them was effortless. I haven’t bothered trying the other yet because I’m not sure how much longer I plan on keeping that blog around without migrating it over to Wordpress.
It recognizes all of the categories that I have created in Wordpress but if you need to create a new category, you will have to log into your blog to add it. It easily lets you add Technorati tags to any post. The editor has a spell checker built in that seems to work as well as any other spell checker. It will save you Amazon Associate ID and let you easily add Amazon items to your blog. I have not written a post using it, but I did mock it up on a draft and it seemed too work exactly like you would expect.
It lets you save drafts.
Now this is a biggie for me. I am really bad about only having one thing that I am writing at a time. Something about using the browser makes working with drafts frustrating for me. I am already using the drafts and have created little stubs for about 20 posts that I plan on writing across my four blogs that I set up in Ecto. I’m planning on dropping notes and links in the drafts as I go and then when I am ready to publish the post, I will clean it up and post it.
Who knows, maybe I’ll even get into the whole future dating posts to have them magically appear while I am sleeping or busy at work.
Baby steps.
You can give Ecto a 21 day trial run for free, but I have a feeling that I’ll be buying a license before the trial runs out. It might be the best $17.95 I’ll spend for a while.
Do you have a favorite blogging software? Let me know and I might try it out before the Ecto trail period expires.
Technorati Tags: blogging, Ecto, Wordpress
I have been thinking about the more tag in blogs quite a bit recently since I want to switch to using a base theme for all of my blogs. I use the more tag from time to time and even have one blog whose template only displays previews of everything on the main page and automatically includes the more tag for each post.
I hate when people use them just hoping to drive up traffic. I am not really sure why I care, but for some reason it bugs me when I click on the more only to find two more sentences with the punchline.
I like when people use them to keep monster posts off of the front page. I hate scrolling through some 3000 word special post.
I also like when they are automated and leave the front page with consistantly sized blocks of story previews. It is a look that I enjoy seeing for whatever reason. Regular readers will not have to continuously click on posts since they will have been reading all along and will know which ones they have already read. Visitors from search engines or links from other posts will normally be sent to the full post and will never notice the previews on the main page anyway. People subscribed to the feeds also get the full post.
So, for now, I am planning on updating the templates of all of my blogs over the next couple weeks. They will contain the automated previews on the front page. They will all use the same base template at first and I will eventually customize them all. I’ll start with unique color schemes for each and then eventually get some unique banners for each.
What do you think about more tags? Good, bad, or indifferent?
I started blogging on Blogger about a year ago and quickly decided that I wanted to host my own rather than hope that Google did not accidentally delete my account. So, I bought a domain and hosting plan through www.GoDaddy.com 
and started looking for which blogging software to use. The GoDaddy hosting account came with the Serendipity blogging
software. I enjoyed using it and still think it is a fine option, but eventually tried WordPress on a different blog that I started. WordPress clicked with me right away. Now, I am stuck with a blog on software that I don’t want to use. Since I don’t post regularly to the couple blogs that I still have on Serendipity, I’ve considered just scrapping them entirely and not worrying about it. The other option is to try to recreate everything doing an import of the old posts into Wordpress.
For my main old blog, this isn’t really an option because I accepted the defaults when I installed it and it now points to http://…/serendipity. I don’t like the serendipity in the URL so it is going to have to just disappear at some point. I’ll probably just create a new blog on the root of that domain and leave the old one sitting there untouched. I might grab a few of my favorite old posts and move them to the new future WordPress blog. When deciding on a blogging platform, I would recommend
setting up as many different kinds of blogs as you think you might be interested in. Throw WordPress into the mix. Post regularly in each of them for a week or two and decide which software is your favorite. Then you can get rid of the other ones with minimal hassle. If you are currently sitting around with a Blogger or other freely hosted blog and looking to switch over to your own host, I can recommend GoDaddy. They’ve been great with answering all of my questions so far. Be careful
which blogging software you pick though. Converting from one to another still isn’t exactly easy or fun. If you are looking for some information about switching from Blogger to Wordpress, there is a lot of good advice in this post over at Quick Online Tips.