This is my first blog entry created with my new iPad. Pretty cool. I am still getting used to typing on this thing. One thing that is for sure, it is definitely easier to type on than an iPhone. It isn’t the fastest thing to use, but it is definitely easy enough to use. More to come.

I know these blog entries are exceedingly boring to you, but these are always a chance for me to test out the new software from WordPress to see if there are any noticeable changes.  So far I don’t see any changes.

There is one change I hope they have made.  I hope they have fixed the bug with the softare that doesn’t allow you to insert an image into the blog post and have the text wrap around the image.  You can move it to the left or the right, but the text insists on lining up at the bottom of the image.  Now, before you cry NOOB, I have been doing web stuff since 1998.  I have wrapped plenty of text in my time, and I am sure without much searching you can see that I have successfully wrapped some text in previous posts from the past.

I only complain because it would be so much simpler on me if I could just insert the image, have the text automatically wrap, and not have to monkey with the code.

It is patently obvious to you that there is an image at the beginning of this blog post.  As I am writing this entry, I haven’t actually added the image, but since you are in the future, and I am stuck here in the past, I can’t see its outcome.  If the text is wrapped, then my problems have been addressed. If however, the text begins at the bottom of the image, then well, my woes continue.

The problem may exist in how my template handles images.  I haven’t checked that, and honestly, I don’t know if I will be able to muster the energy to do that.  I may just change the look and feel.  I will have to check and see how long I have had this template up.  Is it getting tired?

Turbo = Super Fast Blogging…Maybe

WordPress has an update today that adds a new feature called Turbo. Turbo is WordPress’ brand name for its Google Gears integration. I just updated my software and noticed the new link in the top right-hand corner of my screen. When you click on Turbo, it opens a window that lets you know that you will need Google Gears in order to enable Turbo. I downloaded Gears and then enabled it.

The popup window also touted a speed increase after enabling Turbo. So far, I haven’t really noticed a speed increase, but to be fair I have only been using it for a few minutes.

Google Gears is Google’s app that allows users to take their computer offline and still be able to use their online apps. In other words, you can still get to your Gmail when you take your lappy on a plane with no wi-fi. Google Gears works in the background saving the necessary files to enable offline functionality.

Obviously, if a large portion of your page is pre-downloaded, you should see a speed boost. Again, so far… not so much, but it is still early.

Other Additions

A welcome addition to WordPress is the ability to see all the revisions that have been made to an entry. This is particularly handy if you share a blog with someone and you want to see what they have added to you entry.

Also, just under the Save and Publish buttons there is a new Word count feature that will let you know if you need to spend a little more time on your entry in order for it to get to an impressive, unreadable length that will convince your readers to skip your blog. Handy.

It is now possible to add a caption to images. This is an incredibly handy thing. Now if you have a somewhat cryptic image that needs a little explanation, you are in luck. Now you can put a caption at the bottom of the image and your readers will never be confused ever again…ever.

Another new feature of WordPress in 2.6 is a little, red speech bubble that now lives above the link to Plugins letting you know how many plugins you have installed. I have 13. Super.

It doesn’t just stop there, if you go into the plugins management area, it is now a lot easier to manage your plugins. The interface is now a lot more ajaxy and draggy and droppy which makes it much easier to manage the plugins that make your blog so special.

Since draggy and droppy is so cool, WordPress has updated its media gallery to allow drag and drop functionality allowing you to better manage the content uploaded to your blog.

And finally, keeping with the drag and drop theme I’ve got going, the Press it linklet has been updated to make quoting blogs and other websites much easier.

All in all, it isn’t quite the continental shift type of change that we saw with the release of 2.5, but this update does bring a lot of good functionality that will make your blogging a little easier.

The good news for me is that now it is a ton easier to post to my blog using my Samsung Blackjack. WordPress 2.5 has redesigned the blog entry screen so that it is much easier to get to typing posts. Before WordPress 2.5, I had to scroll past an extremely long list of Categories to get to the part of the page where you type your entry. Normally, when I log into my site I am on a full-sized computer that displays webpages correctly. On a big computer, my extraordinarily long list of Categories are hidden in a pull down menu. My phone’s browser isn’t powerful enough to display my dashboard correctly and just stacks each Category one on top of the other.

“What’s a Category?” Great question. If you look just under the title of each blog entry you will see some blue words that categorize that story. WordPress doesn’t limit how many categories I use and obediently remembers every one I have ever used. The list is crazy long.

Now, I don’t have to deal with that list when posting from my phone. Upgrade!

Now if I could just figure out how to type faster on this tiny keyboard…

– Update–

I am on my laptop now so I am kind of cheating, but I had to give a quick update about completing my entry.  After I typed up my blog entry, I clicked done which launched me back to my dashboard window.  I still had to scroll past the some 150+ categories except now it is not as bad because I am now seeing all these categories after I typed the entry.  With the blog article still fresh on my mind, I can categorize it more effectively.  So, I still have to scroll a lot, only now it is more profitable.

I just uploaded the backend of my blog to WordPress 2.5. It is a lot cleaner and makes writing posts easier by hiding a lot of the more technical stuff you don’t use often a little deeper in the site. I realize that this is a little inside baseball for most people who read this blog, but hey I can geek out a little every once in a while.

The interface is a lot cleaner and uses different shades of light blue for the different sections of the page. It is actually quite pleasant to look at. Obviously this is the first time I have used it so I can’t give a real review, but on first blush it is nice. I likes it a lot.

On another note, I am always a little scared when I upload a new version of WordPress to my server. You see, I no longer use a hosted blog service like blogger. If you use blogger, it is up to them to keep the backend working. If it screws up, you can relax knowing that there are Google engineers pulling their hair out trying to get everything fixed.

Now that I run my own blog software, if everything blows up, it is on me. To be honest it is kind of exhilarating, but it’s also scary. I have a lot of content that I have uploaded and written over the past 5 years. I would hate to lose it. Maybe I should back up more.

Cool New Features

One of the coolest new features is how this new version automates the updating of plugins.  In WordPress, you can augment the functionality of your blog by installing plugins.  I use one called Twitter Tools to post my tweets right here on my blog.  I have a ton of other plugins that I use to make it easier on me to use WordPress.  In this version of WordPress, updating out of date plugins is as simple as hitting a link on the dashboard.  Awesome.  To make it work, you have to put your FTP settings in a form that pops up the first time you click the update link.  After that it works.  Click the update link under the out of date plugin, then click the ‘Proceed’ button and boom it just works.  ROCK AND ROLL… I love it.

Bug Fixes?

There is one bug that annoys me and it hasn’t been addressed by WordPress. When you embed a video from Youtube or other video site, it works fine the first time you publish the post. If you go back to your post later and then republish, WordPress messes up the html and makes the video malfunction. I am about to test this new version of WordPress to see if it fixes that problem. I know I can’t be the only person to have experienced this problem.

—-Update—-

Hooray. It now works. The video embed bug is now dead! Hooray. Embed videos to your hearts content!!!

Hey everybody, here is my new look and feel. The best thing about having a personal site is the ability to change the look and feel at the drop of a hat. On a professional site, if you change your look a lot, you risk losing or confusing users. In my case, I only have around 40 hits a day so I feel pretty confident that everyone will be along for the ride.

There are a couple of things that I like about this theme. First, it appears that the main portion of the page is backlit with a soft blue light. Second, this theme is much cleaner than my last one. I think it will be easier to find old posts. Also, this theme is a two-column layout that is less confusing.

My blog is WordPress. WordPress makes it infinitely easy to change your look and feel. There are a ton of designers out there who put together layouts. There are literally thousands to choose from, but it is amazing how many suck. The real trick is to find one that looks pretty good.

This theme was pretty good right out of the box. I had to make some changes to the CSS to make the search area work correctly. Initially, the search button was too narrow to see the word ‘search’. I fixed that. I also created the banner up above and made some other CSS tweaks to get it just like I like it.

Let me know what you think, leave me a comment.

I have started using the new service from Google that allows you to “host” Google Apps on your domain. I started the process of getting it all hooked up on Thursday of this week and so far it has been pretty cool. It was pretty simple. I went to the Google Apps page and signed up. I filled out the online form and that was pretty much it. I had to post some HTML in a specific folder on my site, but doing that was trivially easy. The HTML let Google know with certainty that I was the owner of the domain.

The Killer Apps

Once you have Google Apps set up on your domain,iIt allows you to share a family calendar, or a shared calendar with all those using your domain which, right now, seems like the killer app. Keeping up with all the things your family is up to is a real chore, and having a simple powerful calendar that everyone shares for free is incredibly handy.

I set Megan up with an account, and she immediately filled the calendar up with all our family’s upcoming plans. Super handy.

In addition to a family calendar Google Apps also gives you Google docs. I haven’t found a killer use for this yet, but it allows you to create documents that are available for everyone in your family. I can see where this could be very handy for a business domain, but in the family world, it seems to be fairly limited in usefulness.

If that weren’t enough, it also includes a built in start page based on iGoogle. It lets you set up a personal start page with a ton of different widgets that connect you to the information you need. I don’t use a start page much now that I have started using Google reader to keep up with the news that I am interested in, but I still like it. All the users on your domain that you set up with Google Apps also get a start page of their own.

I was hoping that there would be the option of having a common iGoogle start page that everyone on the domain could use. It could be a great place to communicate, but so far I haven’t found that option if it exists.

My Email Dilemma

It also comes with integrated email which means that my MurDog.com email addresses can go through Google’s Gmail interface which is incredibly handy. Right now however, I can’t get that running. In order for it to work, you have to update the MX records on the DNS server to point towards Google’s mail servers. I know that is pretty technical, but it should be a pretty simple thing if you can get access to it. The Google site has great instructions that make it pretty simple to make the changes.

I have a problem. My hosting service provider, www.thehostgroup.com doesn’t give me access to the MX settings. Or, if it does, I can’t find them. It is enough for me to start thinking about finding better hosting for this site. Having a personal email address that leverages the power of Gmail is an exciting prospect. I have sent a message to my provider in hopes of getting this resolved, but so far I haven’t heard anything from them.

One of the bad parts of having a personal email address that I have to manage is spam. It is a huge problem. I turned off my personal email address years ago because of spam. If I could get this Google apps thing to work then I would have Google’s horsepower behind spam control. It would be a huge help.

If I can’t get the email thing resolved, I might have to look at another provider for my web site hosting.

MurDog.com is just a personal site, and I don’t get any revenue from it so low-cost hosting is a necessity. If I can find a provider that is inexpensive, and allows me to host this WordPress blog I might be interested in switching.

For now, I will wait and see what The Host Group does.

Other than that, it is a pretty cool option from Google that should only get better.

This is yet another test of writing a blog entry in an easier way on my cell phone. If I can get this to work then my phone with its new fancy schmancy high speed connection will be just that much more handy.

The high speed connection has already sped up my blog reading on the phone, a task that was laborious at best with the slower connection. Now, I can blast through my RSS feeds and comment on them anywhere if I can only get this posting thing sorted.

The problem is the WordPress interface is extremely clunky when I try to post from the phone. If I can make this new trick work, then I will be completely free from having to be at a computer to post.

I hope it works… So far I havn’t been successful. Here’s to hoping…

———–

It didn’t work, but since I went to the trouble of writing the post, I thought I would post it anyway. Still working out the kinks…

Hooray for my blog service provider, www.webbleyou.com. For a little over the past week, my site has been extremely slow due to some server problems. I was sent an email explaining the problem, and was promised that the problem would be sorted in about a week. And lo and behold, my site is back to its old zippy self.

I appreciate everyone being patient while my server problems were fixed. Well we are back to lightspeed, thank you Webbleyou.

If you are itching to have a delicious blog like mine, go to Webbleyou.com and they will hook you up for a very affordable price, $4.00 a month. Start blogging now.

Bravo Webbleyou.com on keeping us bloggers in the loop about why our sites have slowed down. I just received an email from my service provider with an exhaustive explanation as to why murdog.com is running slow at the moment.

Excerpt from email…

As soon as we are able to set up the new servers, we will start moving sites. We anticipate this taking about a week, which is much longer than we’d like, but is probably a realistic estimate given the steps that are involved.

In the meantime, the servers will continue to work, but with a delay of about 30 seconds between page loads. My sincerest apologies for this inconvenience. I understand how important it is to have your website up at all times, and I am working closely with our hardware specialists to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Again, if you would like a refund for this month, please ask and one will be issued. Thank you for your business and patience.

As you can see, in about a week, we should be back to our zippy selves. Again, I want to say bravo to webbleyou.com for caring enough for its customers to just let us know. Transparency goes a long way to making us feel good about your service. Slowdowns and hiccups are a part of the Internet and are to be expected. One thing that has seemed to diminish over the past few years is customer service. It’s nice to see that webbleyou.com hasn’t succombed to that.

If you want a full-on blog that is hosted by good people, I suggest going to webbleyou.com and letting them set up a word press blog for you. I haven’t missed blogger.com one bit.