I used to use a wordpress theme called DarkPad, i have taken this theme and essentially made the inverse (and called it LightPad) plus some other tweeks.
Tell me what you think… I am always open to suggestions.
Posted by mb under Mods, Server Stuff | Comments (0)
Well with the new year changes to this (seemingly static) blog have come. While it may not look like anything has changed, believe me it has.
At the beginning of this month Dreamhost had a promo code for 90% off a two year hosting package, so rather than pay $214US for 2 years, i paid $21.40… that is the kind of deal i can’t pass up, especially since i have been looking for a host for a while but had been to cheap/lazy to do anything about it. As an added bonus, with the DNS tools build in, i no longer need my paid DynDNS account.
So after getting the DNS pointed correctly (who knew if you typed ‘.org’ instead of ‘.com’ it wouldn’t work?) i had the unenviable task of migrating this blog from my home server to Dreamhost. During the migration i upgraded from Wordpress 2.0 to 2.7, i thought there might be some issues since it is a large version jump. All in all it went smoothly, i did the one-click WP install, imported my DB, crossed my fingers, and…. BAM it worked.
I did not migrate Kyran’s blog since neither Jori nor I have the energy to update it regularly… it was a good idea poorly executed. Also lost in the migration is the photo gallery, I used to run Gallery 2 on the home server, it worked well, but again… not overly useful if it isnt used. If you are interested in seeing pics of me and the family, i may post a few here, and we (irregularly) post some up on facebook. (some of my older posts refer to images from the gallery… obviously those images are missing… and i dont care)
The offical link to this blog is: http://matt.b8s.ca
The official domain home page is www.b8s.ca (check it out… it is lame.)
Why did i migrate from a Home Server to a Hosted solution, there were 2 main reasons.
1. MS VirtualPC (yes i know they have VirtualServer) was not as reliable as i hoped, it seems like every time the power went off the virtual machine wouldn’t boot… i believe it corrupted the virtual C drive… thankfully the server components and data were on a different virtual drive.)
2. Security, While i am careful with my firewall settings, i dont have the time needed to keep my XAMPP stack fully up to date, in fact, i dont think i have updated it at all since it went live.
And one last note about dreamHost, so far i have been impressed with the flexability and ease of use, but they have this annoying habit of sending passwords in emails… its 2009 lets find a way to do better.
Posted by mb under Server Stuff | Comments (0)
What goes better with a new camera than a new photo gallery? The gallery is running beside this blog on my home server. The software i decided to use is called Gallery2. It is quite easy to install and super customizable. The gallery comes with 6 themes and has 56 modules. Almost every theme and module can be configured, this leads to an almost overwhelming level of customization. I like how i have it configured… for now.
I have also changed the default logo to one I created…. if you can call a bunch of fading dots a logo.
Check out the new Gallery.
Posted by mb under Photos, Server Stuff | Comments (0)
The folks at lifehacker.com had an excellent tutorial on running your own wordpress blog on your personal computer… not that the steps are that hard (it is really quite easy), I just had not realized how easy it is to go from boring XP to full on server with useful web applications.
The article suggests using wamp as the base server, but i decided to use xampp. I have toyed with it in the past, and have wanted something useful to do with it…. this is my opportunity. (there is more addons for my new server to come too.)
Since I am never satisfied with normal, the server is being run from inside a virtual machine. The biggest advantage of doing it this way is the ability to backup the virtual hard files regularly. If at some point down the road I mess up the install, i can easily recover from a backup without having to re-install any thing. It also lets me move the virtual machine between physical machines without having to do any reconfiguration. Lastly I believe it is a little safer to compartmentalize the public server which should keep the host machine away from the prying eyes of the evilweb.
Posted by mb under Server Stuff | Comments (0)
