Archive for the ‘This Site’ Category

Midnight tonight is the deadline for the big contest. Sign up if you haven’t already.

Hey, ad sales on Murdoc Online are down by a significant percentage.

Where do I go to apply for my bailout?

There are apparently some problems with the clock somewhere on MO. I noticed that a scheduled post went up at the wrong time but said the right time. Other posts are off by an hour, too. Not sure where the problem lies.

UPDATE: Yeah, I didn’t realize that you had to manually adjust for DST in WordPress. I was thinking it was on my server somewhere. Should be fixed now. Some existing posts and comments are stamped with the wrong time, but I’m not going to worry about updating them.

I just accidentally deleted a bunch of comments on recent posts. I will get them back soon.

Also, I turned off the “refresh” thing. It was more annoying than anything else, and a number of readers complained about it.

All of today’s reading and posting will be done via Google’s new Chrome browser.

At first glance, it appears a bit sluggish (okay, a lot sluggish), but I mostly want to verify that my sites display and function correctly. In the early going, all appears fine.

UPDATE: Hmmm. It appears that each tab you open is actually a separate process with its own discrete resources. Makes each tab its own little island, but memory usage grows quickly that way. Ouch.

UPDATE 2: End of experiment. Performance was a 1 out of 10. Until the first production release is out, I will not try Chrome again other than to check my site design for compatibility.

If you’re reading this, you are on the new site.

Things are still under construction, but I’m expecting greatly increased performance (on both your end and mine) and working comments.

There is currently a fair amount of IE weirdness. (What else is new?) I will be working on that and much more in the coming days.

But why take chances? Make the switch to Firefox!

Yes, I’m aware of the ongoing issues posting comments. It seems to be a bit on-again, off-again. But mostly “on-again.”

About a month ago I decided that drastic action with the site needed to be taken, but I haven’t been able to commit any amount of time to it until this week.

I’ve got two options that I’m investigating right now, and if testing tonight goes well on option #1 I’m hopeful that I can have the site migrated to a new set-up by the end of this coming weekend.

Again, I apologize for all of the problems you guys are having. If it makes you feel any better, I have just as much trouble posting as you do commenting. My recommendation is that no one upgrade to Movable Type 4 if they’re on version 3.x. At least not if they host at JaguarPC.

UPDATE: Holy crap! This post went through on the first try. I don’t think I’ve had that level of success for at least two months.

UPDATE 2: Predictably, the update celebrating success…failed.

I must say that about the biggest mistake I’ve made running this site was the decision to upgrade from Movable Type 3.x to MT4. If you’re running MT 3.x and things are okay, I would strongly recommend against MT4.

I can’t say how much of my trouble is truly MT’s fault and how much is JaguarPC’s fault. MT4 (usually) ran okay at first. Only a few hiccups. Initially the biggest downside was that my antispam plugin wasn’t MT4 compatible, but beyond that I’d hit a few errors that I hadn’t seen before and that was about it. But it got progressively worse and in one day in May it all went to Hades.

Today I hit multiple errors every time I try to publish something. If you try to post comments, you’re also probably hitting errors. If you try to open a page on MO, you’re generating errors. The process I have to go through just to get a post online is quite a joy. And if I want it to show up on the front page there’s another process I have to go through.

An older MT3 installation on the same server runs just fine.

Stick with MT3.

I suspect that my host made some changes to something that don’t play well with MT4. Fortunately, everyone tells me that everything isn’t their fault.

Unfortunately, I’m swamped right now with some other (non-blog) projects and the error-ridden MO is going to have to limp on for the time being.

This will be a surprise to no one, but I’ve been suffering from some rather major technical difficulties over the past several months. I’m not sure where the blame lies, but I suspect that it’s split equally between my software platform Movable Type and my host JaguarPC.

Movable Type has been quite good to Murdoc, but the move from version 3.x to 4.x has been a near total disaster.

JaguarPC worked nearly flawlessly for about a year after a number of hops between various hosts, and I thought that I had finally found what Murdoc Online needed. Then, on May 13-14, everything went to hell. When I ask what happened on May 13-14, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that the same problems started on the same day on two different installations on two different domains that have been moved to two different boxes, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that I’ve upgraded one of my installations to a newer version and still have the same problems, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that no one I can find seems to be suffering from the same issues that I am and will someone please tell me if anything changed on May 13-14, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs.

Yesterday they decided to hose my nameserver settings. When I contacted tech support and told them all of my sites were down, they fixed one and told me “everything is fine now.” Except that they only fixed one of my domains. Once I spelled out to them which domains were on my account, they fixed them too and “everything is fine now.”

So I’ve got a couple of questions for the blogging/technically inclined:

1. Does anyone else use MT on JaguarPC and have you had any issues?
2. Does anyone have any experience rolling MT 4 sites back to MT 3?
3. Is setting up my own server and ditching hosting worth the trouble?

I’m removing all the remaining JaguarPC links from my sites. First, they weren’t making me any cash. Secondly, and more importantly, I cannot possibly recommend them to anyone any longer.

It’s too bad. Three months ago I was planning to upgrade to JaguarPC’s next level of hosting. Today I’m considering running my own server.

Finally, I apologize once again for all of the technical difficulties you have been encountering here. Believe me, it isn’t for a lack of effort on my part. I don’t claim to be any sort of tech-head, but I’m not completely unskilled in this stuff. Regardless, I’ve been barely able to keep the site online and have been spending more time working on problems than I have been writing. I’ve got a number of big non-blog project deadlines coming up, and I’m not going to be able to do much in the way of overhauls for the next month or so, so hang in there.

Are you guys voting for me? Send Gun Pundit to three days of training at Blackwater USA with Todd Jarrett and Para USA.

Enter yourself to be the 11th man.