I while ago I wrote a long series of blog software reviews here for performancing. Time has flown, as it does, and I was wondering if the same sorts of results would be found now as then.
Back then Drupal and WordPress came out strong. There were also a good number of well known and not-so well known names. Read the rest of this entry
Lately I have been getting back into the whole SEO thing and I have just been reading Khalids review of some very clever SEO software.
SheerSEO might have a funny name but it certainly seems to be very useful! :)
What it does is checks and reports your search positions for your most wanted keywords. Because it is automated (and currently free!) you can save a lot of time, time that you can put towards improving those rankings. Read the rest of this entry
Follow-Up to Great comment battle "for CMS suggestions"
But the valuable content is coming from the commenting crowd. Most of them are talking about real life experiences with the many different CMS.
That CMS discussion looks like a great pool of CMS knowledge exchange.
Paul Bradshaw from onlinejournalismblog.com also asks his readers what CMS to suggest.
I’ve been teaching my student journalists how to use the content management system for our new news website (more about that in a later post). We’re using Joomla - it does a lot, but it’s not exactly user-friendly, which ironically makes it a very good experience for anyone who’ll have to use newspaper CMS’s.
And this begs the question: what CMS do you use - and what does it do well or badly?
Well my answer on onlinejournalismblog.com was eaten by the WP comment system (no reason given) but here is my comment mirroring my actual point of view: Read the rest of this entry
Plug-Ins should work but if they have configuration menus in the admin GUI there might be issues because of the following: Regarding the admin-side plugins there are easy patches involved because "Plugin developers should note that using add_privs() for admin-side plugins is now required (used to be optional for publisher-only plugins)".
The extended version is available if you follow the forum link below.
The "Textpattern 4.0.6 Released" announcement from the mailing list sent on February 6:
We have fixed no less than six security issues. Because half of those
can be used from the public side, updating is strongly recommended.
Updates should be seamless for the vast majority of people, otherwise
make sure that all plugins are also updated to their most recent
version, especially admin-side plugins.
Textpattern 4.0.6 forum announcement: Further reading
Mary Fredborg
Looking for a multiple site software?
Do you want a 'post once publish many' feature?
Building a blog network with Pivot looks easy.
I recently stumbled across a blog software which has outstanding publishing options. Normally I am using Textpattern as my preferred CMS for single site projects and I am very convinced about it. But Textpattern is not able to handle multiple sites as are most of the other blog CMS.
Yes, automatic publishing to different domains by only posting once. Blog networking made easy. Read the rest of this entry
After five years of development PhpBB 3.0 is available.
Already about 500 extensions available.
For some blogs a forum can be an essential add-on!
PhpBB 3.0 'Olympus' comes with many new features and improved security. The new features include UTF8-Support, better treatment of search engines, temporary banning of users, multiple anti-spam features, better log and reporting functions, guidelines for user names and passwords, attachments, speed increases by using multiple caching mechanisms, and loads of other improvements. The number of available translations increased from 50 to 61, including languages written from right to left.
Let's check the PhpBB 3.0 news and see some other nine solutions... Read the rest of this entry
Google has made its desktop widgets available for insertion in Web pages. Stand by for a mixture of more cluttered and more useful sites.
We're entering an era of widgets. People have taken to building Web pages by piecing together chunks of functional code that come from all over. If you're interested in adding widgets to your pages, though, there are at the moment only a few good directors to grab them from. One of them is Widgetbox(http://www.widgetbox.com/), and now there's Google, which has made it possible for widgets written for its own Google Desktop application to be installed in your own Web pages.
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open
It can be pointed out that Google's widgets use JavaScript, which is blocked on many social network sites (such as MySpace). However, people who run their own blogs or sites should not have a problem using the widgets. MySpace and other social network users should check out the SpringBox(http://www.thespringbox.com/), MySpace's own entry into the widget space. Its widgets can be embedded almost anywhere.
I imagine it's just a matter of time until Yahoo figures out how to make its excellent Yahoo Widgets(http://widgets.yahoo.com/) gizmos insertable into Web pages.
Be prepared for a lot of cluttered, widget-drunk Web pages. On the other hand, there are very good and reasonable uses for widgets on business sites: maps with traffic information, shipping cost calculators, store cams, live chat windows and so on. Widgets can make Web pages both more useful and more cluttered. We're going to see both.
If you don't know Textpattern then you should have a look at textpattern.com.
From the official TXP 4.0.4 announcement:
After quite a while and lots of work from many, many people it’s finally here. Textpattern 4.0.4 is available as always on the download page.
Updates are are strongly recommended and should be seamless for the vast majority of people, otherwise make sure that all plugins are also updated to their most recent version. We’ve also added a couple entries to the FAQ specifically for 4.0.4 where questions may arise.
Some of the more notable news are: ...
Read on in the official TXP 4.0.4 announcement: Textpattern 4.0.4 Released
Technorati Tags: Textpattern, TXP, Update
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Internet Explorer 7.0 is available for download in its "post-beta" stage -- which means, basically, that it is not ready for the market, but ready to be tested on a larger audience. Or, more specifically, that it's a Microsoft product.
They would kill in the pharmaceutical market... literally. Read the rest of this entry
This weekend the Textpattern weblog announced the new version 4.0.4 for the coming week.
Last (Textpattern) pre-release: 4.0.4rc1The final/official release is scheduled for the first half of next week – unless unexpected problems/errors are detected.
The last version 4.0.3 was published 29 Dec 2005 (Txp Release History). I can't find the list with the actual changes but I expect TXP 4.0.4 to be a recommended update :-)
If you are using plugins it is for sure also recommended to check the homepages of the specific plugins for updates or isssues with the coming update. Nevertheless most plugins working fine with 4.0.3 should work fine with the TXP 4.0.4 update. The exception are plugins which integrate into the admin page.
Oh, and did I say that this is a good time to make a backup :-)
Technorati Tags: Textpattern, TXP, update
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Well, Christoph from 103bes.com made some 'new feature' announcements and Darren Rowse has already picked up the news.
But let's face it; You can't use every single counter and analytics tool.
I am using a lot of them but I want to reduce that bulk of client side executed Javascript code.
Now at the end of the summer it's time to say good bye to some of them ... Read the rest of this entry
I found two interesting caching extensions for Textpattern. I have not tested them yet but both developers got great reactions from the Textpattern forum crowd.
The main advantage is that caching reduces the database load and that the pages are delivered like static pages from the webserver instead of being assembled dynamically for every page impression.
As Chris pointed out in Fark Killed My Blog it is a good idea to take action before the surprise 'ooops, traffic ...' hits your site.
Full page caching: asy_jpcache
asy_jpcache is based on zem_cache, jpcache and some ideas from WP-Cache.asy_jpcache will only cache complete pages (including your feeds). If you want to cache partial pages to retain some dynamic parts take a look at zem_cache which is perfect for that kind of thing.
Only cache parts of a page: zem_cache
The second one is very interesting to create semi-static pages but the turbo performance booster (>10x) is the full page cache.
Another (small) step to reduce database load is to have the CSS as normal static file and not inside the database.
Technorati Tags: Textpattern, TXP cache, caching, performance
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Let me begin this by saying, "Wow."
After being introduced to Trailfire by fellow Performancing member, brettbum, I installed the gizmo and followed some trails he sent me in a comment to one of my posts.
And I can safely say that this, then, is the future of blogging. Read the rest of this entry
The Google Notifier is an application that shows you alerts in your menu bar, so you can see when you have new Gmail messages or upcoming Google Calendar events without having to open a web browser.
Just a short info for all GMail or Google calendar users on an Apple Macintosh with Mac OS X. The info was covered on lifehacker: "Download of the Day: Google Notifier"
Oh, I see, there is also some info about Google Notifier for Windows.
The links:
Technorati Tags: Google, Google notifier, Gmail, calendar, software, Mac OS X, windows, w2k, Windows XP
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