Month: January 2005

Server Woes

Posted on by Dana

I swear, one of the first things I am going to do come March is move to a new server. I don’t know why my server has to be such a pain in the ass. On the one hand, I feel I shouldn’t complain, because my server hasn’t ever been down that I know of, and they generally try to help. On the other, they upgraded to new servers without giving me a reasonable warning (my “warning” went into my junk mail folder — I didn’t get it for a few days). They told me they had configured MIME type on the server to render CSS so it would properly render CSS in browsers besides IE, but they apparently still haven’t done that, because we had problems when 1) I tried to intall MT 3.14 and noticed the user interface was whacked, and 2) Steve tried to install a new style sheet on his true crime blog. By the way, if you have this problem, a very simple line of code exists to work around it. At the beginning of your style sheet, put the following text: <?php Header (“Content-type: text/css”);?>. That will enable all the smart Firefox users to see all your pretty CSS instead of plain text. By the way: I don’t know if that messes up validation or anything — frankly, I’ve given up on trying to make sure this site validates.

So why am I complaining now? My server has Perl 5.6 instead of 5.8. I don’t have Storable perl, so I can’t use a buttload of the coolest MT Plugins. I put in a help ticket with my server host, but considering they acted like they didn’t understand what I was talking about with the MIME type, I’m not holding my breath. DreamHost gets such praise…

What do I like about my server? Unlimited bandwidth. Very, very reasonable prices. You just can’t leave those two very important variables out of the equation.

I just wish they knew what they were doing all of the time.

Shoot. I feel bad even complaining, because I know they’re not native speakers of English. I’m sure a lot of the problem is the language barrier.

I guess I’ll wait and see what happens with the perl upgrade. I’m thinking if they can’t get that figured out, then it’s adios Maxipoint.

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Upgrade

Posted on by Dana

Okay, upgrade to Movable Type 3.14 seems to be successful. So far, I like the new features. An upgrade was necessary because I just couldn’t take advantage of the new plug-ins with 2.66. Also, 3.14 has more safeguards against comment spam. To that end, from now on, comments will be moderated. Unless you sign in with a TypeKey registration, your comments will not be automatically posted. However, you no longer need to type in the number “captcha” in order to sign the comments, which eliminates the need for JunkEater — seems like too many spam comments were getting past them, anyway.

I am indebted to Learning Movable Type: TypeKey Authentication for Comments, The Tweezer’s Edge: A Replacement for <MTCommentFields>, and AnziDesign: Migrate Your MT 2.x Blog To Movable Type 3 for valuable assistance in this conversion.

Soon, I will be implementing further spam-protection measures as described in MT’s Guide for Fighting Comment Spam.

Why am I telling you this? Things may be wonky around this site until I get it all fixed up, and also I thought you might like to know about the change in comment policy. I hope it doesn’t inconvenience anyone too much.

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Best of Blogs

Posted on by Dana

Awards go to the popular. There are a great many excellent blogs that will never be nominated for a Best of Blogs Award. That said, go check out the nominated blogs. Sometimes people are popular for a reason.

Big English department presentation at the faculty meeting tomorrow. I am a little nervous, but I also feel we have a good presentation lined up.

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