Wordpress 2.8.4 release, a joke?

 14th August 2009 by Chris

I have been maintaining several Wordpress blogs (all currently running 2.8.3 as of the time of writing). I logged in earlier today, and found that there was a new release. Of course, I wanted to have them all updated at the soonest possible time.

By practice, I download the zipped file to apply them manually onto our source code repositories for update. Usually, I find this useful because I get to see what the changes really were for the new release. I was surprised to see that the new version I downloaded was a complete joke.

I got Wordpress 2.8.4 here. I downloaded the file also inside the server, for a quick copy of the latest version, in case it will be needed. Applying it to local copy of the repository, I found some big joke. Amusing, but also confusing.

Premium should be quality

 5th July 2009 by Chris

Aside from daily tinkering of Ruby on Rails application, both for work and play, I have to serve requests that involve other scripting languages such as PHP and Python. PHP is the least of my favorites, but since its still the most widely used scripting language, in which more and more non CS grads have been so boastful of knowing, then I still go ways to cater to such applications. Love of Python is another thing. Its as beautiful as Ruby is for me, and as strict as how I tend to live my life.

As of the moment, I have a project running in PHP which was built using Smarty, though is not yet deployed on client's public server. Aside from this, I am also happily supporting several Wordpress powered blogs. I don't choose the themes, but I do have an input on whether its a good choice or not. We have completed customization of two of these blogs and was working on the last one yesterday. The chosen theme was IndoMagz2. Of course, I immediately uploaded the theme for use. After that was the anticipation of other stuff to be removed or added.

I couldn't have reacted negatively if I didn't have to go through the codes themselves to make some tweeks. At first glance, it looked just like any other magazine type wordpress theme. Blocks of elements are organized in the left and right columns of the layout. Although, I quite believe that three columned layouts are far better in information exposure, I don't have anything against using two columned layouts. I even thought that the layout was neat looking and the default banner would have really suited the new blog we were fixing. It was called "Ugaling Pinoy" which translates to "Filipino Attitudes" or even "Filipino Characteristics".

Migrate to your Wordpress blog using Ruby and Atom

 31st May 2009 by Chris

Recently, I have encountered a dilemma regarding my personal blog. I have it hosted by a local blog host provider. It was great staying there and blogging there when there was still this very tight-knit community of bloggers. From time to time, we'd all meet up and just express our thoughts in person. The providers were really great with hearing out their users' thoughts, wishes including rants and raves. They were really good with what they were doing (up to some point in time).

...

Now, being the Ruby lover that I am, I decided to write a Ruby script that would scrape my content and push it onto my new Wordpress blog. There are a couple of assumptions/caveats for this script:

• You can scrape off content from only YOUR OWN BLOG. Please don't use this to steal other people's content. I am not liable for any online content theft from the use of this script.
• You must be able to understand the structure of the blog you are scraping. You should know where the "excerpt", "main body", "post date", "post author", etc. info are located from the markup/source of the blog you are scraping.
• You must have the credentials of the blog where you want to push the scraped content.
• If in case you need something else, or some more tweaking to this script, you must know Ruby, or maybe you can drop me a line and I'll see how I can help you.
• This script uses Atom tools, although there are other gems available, this is what I chose to use.
• Turn on Atom publishing in your Wordpress blog.

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