For champions of the open source blogging platform, the latest installment of Wordpress has just been released. Aiming more for polish and bug fixing, it’s surprising the number of features crammed into this release.
Nicknamed “Baker”, most of the changes to Wordpress 2.8 are behind the scenes. The overall back-end system being easier to use for the person in charge of the site, as well as having more customisation features on the Dashboard and post listing pages.
There are also improvements to the Theme selection page – with the ability to search online, according to tickboxes relating to style and colour, for hundred’s of available to download themes. Simply click on the Add New Themes item in the Appearance tab and you’ll be searching in seconds. The Themes also have the ability to install into your blog without you having to upload them manually. The widget management has also been polished up to make things a little clearer and straightforward.
The code editor, if you really like to get your hands dirty with Wordpress, now features syntax highlighting, making it easier to navigate and edit your php & css files. Something programmers have been crying out for!
There are also many bug fixes (790 in all) and an overall speed improvement. If you use Wordpress on your site, I suggest you upgrade immediately! Techsnake.com had no problems and was upgraded within minutes.
A section has opened up on Tech Snake this weekend – those of you eagle-eyed enough may have spotted it. On the menu at the top there is a "Retro" section, which is about old computer systems from back in the day.
The first addition to this section is the Sinclair Range of Computers – known and loved by lots of dedicated fans in the early 80’s, in the UK. A cheap introduction to BASIC programming, the Sinclair Spectrum was many people’s first insight into computing. From this humble computer many people were bitten by the computer bug early on (myself included!)
Just a quick note that the server is going through some updates & upgrades for the next couple of hours, so service may be interrupted – although I don’t expect any black spots for more than 5 minutes or so during this period up to 8pm UK Time (12pm Pacific, 3pm Eastern). Thanks for baring with us!
Don’t worry, you haven’t been shipped off to a dodgy site instead of examining your regular tech menu. Instead of monkeys we’re all about snakes now. The site, in case you didn’t notice (I won’t blame you) now resolves to “techsnake.com.” The reasoning for the interested (or bored) is below:
Firstly no-one really understood skymonkey. It’s an interesting name but doesn’t mean anything. TechSnake is obviously about technology, and a new character, “Harvey”, will be making his appearance known soon!
Secondly it appears domain squatters have decided that rather than read about tech news, the readers of skymonkey would rather gamble, or click on Google ads to do with Sky television. Skymonkey.com & .co.uk were stolen away and are now in the hands of the other side. I know that nobody (especially readers) wants confusion and I certainly don’t want to be associated with that stuff. So rather than compete, I thought I would move the traffic away from the name, and towards a new image – that of the Tech Snake. Snakes because they’re slippery, cunning and always hunting out their prey – kind of what I do on a daily basis trying to get the best news and interviews for you, the readers of the site.
So there we are – news over. Enjoy the tech. Also worth noting is a great post by Dazza today, about the different gaming engines available in the market today and what we can expect for the future. Plus why not check out the archives on the left? Some of the news is topical but it’s normally always interesting too! Enjoy!
Just a quick note to let everyone know, that due to some server work and hardware upgrades, the skymonkey.org website will be a little patchy from 9PM tonight until about 6AM tomorrow morning – that’s in British Summer Time (1PM-10PM PDT, 4PM-1AM EDT). Once done, everything should be good for a while! If you visit skymonkey.org during these times and you can’t get onto the website, please leave it for 10 minutes or so and give it another go. Thank you for your patience!
Don’t look now, but the site is going to change. Not a content change, just a boring “theme” change. I get bored easily, so I’ve just been working on the style of the website – since the latest “dark” theme.
I didn’t think the style fitted with what we’re all used to. I didn’t think it felt modern – it felt more like a forum (not to say forums are badly designed – just that there’s a place for them and us.) Because of this I’ve made some major design changes to skymonkey.org. When it happens (sometime this weekend) I think you’ll all like the change. Thanks for sticking with skymonkey.org
A quick post – while searching for a good “related posts” plugin for Wordpress, I stumbled upon this website that lists some very good and useful plugins resource for Wordpress users. And I found the plugin I was looking for too..[SHOW ME]
Just a short post to say that today I am moving. And although I don’t usually write personal posts, I thought I’d drop this one in as I’m probably not going to be blogging for a week or so with everything up in the air.
So please, don’t go away and hopefully I’ll be back sooner than I think!
Yeap, a quick post to let you know (if you care) that the ants are dead, therefore the antblog is dead. Oh well. It seems they only last a month or so before they “pop their clogs” to coin a phrase!
Well? I think it went pretty well. And yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, the website is ALL WORDPRESSED UP! Yeah! So the blog is now wordpress, and *hopefully* the XML feeds are working and everything is seamless! If you are having problems, comment or send me an email (about/contact section) so I can make changes, although the initial feeling is it >went well<
So, if you want to move your blog to a WordPress blog, take your time, do your research and send me an email if you need help. I've provided a few links below to hopefully help if you're having problems...
[Import Blogger to WP] – Move your posts to WP. Didn’t work for me, did it manually in the end!
[Moving WP] – How to move WP from one directory to another.
[Move the feed] – I think your host needs to be linux (apache) to do this, but works well. Just remember the .htaccess file they talk about goes in your blog directory! I’m pretty sure all is good…!
June 11, 2009 by Paul Godden
in 'Blogging, Geeky, Internet Technology, Software, Techsnake Dev, Wordpress'
Nicknamed “Baker”, most of the changes to Wordpress 2.8 are behind the scenes. The overall back-end system being easier to use for the person in charge of the site, as well as having more customisation features on the Dashboard and post listing pages.
A section has opened up on Tech Snake this weekend – those of you eagle-eyed enough may have spotted it. On the menu at the top there is a "Retro" section, which is about old computer systems from back in the day.
