Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I spent about four hours today working online because I installed Internet Explorer 9.

No, there were no problems with IE9. That time was spent fixing this web page.

IE9 installed smoothly and looks nice and sleek, seems to run fast and I’m told is much improved over older versions of IE. Microsoft would like to forget IE6, I’m sure.

But, as always, Microsoft’s vision of how HTML should work is slightly different from everyone elses’. Actually, all the major browsers vary in small ways. But as soon as I viewed this blog in it, I noticed the font I am using for the titles didn’t load and the default font was displayed. A minor annoyance, but I wanted to see why it didn’t, what it would take to fix, and if it was still working in the other browsers I have. Continue Reading…

I upgraded the software that runs this site again last week. It seemed like a minor change and should have been a simple job.

I did it first to another site and had experienced no problems. So I was feeling good about doing the same here and getting rid of the nagging notices that a newer version was available.

I did the upgrade by the book, including running all the backup scripts for the posts and data. Then let the script disable all the plugins I didn’t need for the upgrade. It upgraded the site and it all looked good. Until I tried to log in to the admin page. Continue Reading…

Well, I decided to live dangerously and upgrade the version of WordPress this runs on again, even though I was not at home and relying on the wifi at UPMC. The way things have been at home lately with my internet service, it’s probably just as reliable.

It seems to have worked, and I got through it without much trouble. I use a plugin, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, which does most of the heavy lifting for me, so it didn’t take long.

Ther plugin used to work really well, but the last time I used it, there were a few glitches with the database backup. That uses another plugin. I found out that by disabling all other plugins and changing to a default theme first, it all works and the upgrade proceeds smoothly.

The problem is, they do disable all the plugins during the upgrade process, they just do it automatically at a later point. If they would just move it up sooner, it would work without my intervention. They also put the site into a maintenance mode, which probably accomplishes what using a default theme does too.

But that’s all minor. The main thing the update seems to do is change the Admin interface, the part of the site nobody else sees except the privileged few. The screen shot shows part of the new Dashboard. They did clean it up and organize it really well. I like it, but there isn’t much for the user to see.

If you’ve been here before, you’ve noticed a new look. I found a theme I liked called Tigopedia Reloaded. It’s got a clean, three-column look and I think it makes the site a bit clearer. Hope you like it…