Movable Type Upgrades as of March 7, 2012

Just a chronicle for CrabAppleLane's records. If you'd like to comment or ask me something about anything you read here, click on the Contact Me page.

Version 4.38 - Did that March 4, 2012. Had quite a few problems. Signing in would hang. Had to re-install default templates and then re-install "Comment Detail" template from backups.
Times:
CrabAppleLane Blog - 11 minutes
Our Family Blog - 16 minutes 47 seconds
CrabAppleLane New Orleans Saints Blog - 72 seconds
Divasaurs - 59 seconds
Laurendine Blog - 104 seconds
Reunion Blog - 56 seconds
March 7, 2012

Solved a comment registration problem - mt.js template must publish statically
November 6, 2011

Re-Installed Version 4.37 - Clean Install - Was having problems I couldn't isolate. Still some problems I'm having trouble isolating. Renamed MT folder and uploaded entire archive. Uploaded in "Ascii" mode. Will start putting plugins back in later. Rebuild time log below:
CrabAppleLane Blog - 9 minutes 38 seconds
Our Family Blog - 16 minutes
CrabAppleLane New Orleans Saints Blog - 76 seconds
Divasaurs - 71 seconds
Laurendine Blog - 113 seconds
Reunion Blog - 22 seconds
November 5, 2011

Version 4.37 - Did that today. No problems so far. Uploaded in "Automatic" mode. Rebuild time log below:
CrabAppleLane Blog - 12 minutes 55 seconds
Our Family Blog - 28 minutes 27 seconds
CrabAppleLane New Orleans Saints Blog - 65 seconds
Divasaurs - 85 seconds
Laurendine Blog - 2 minutes 42 seconds
Reunion Blog - 61 seconds
September 11, 2011

Version 4.361 - Did that today. Once again, no problems other than the tedious upload. Adding a time log from this point forward, if I can remember. It will chronicle how long each blog took to rebuild completely.
CrabAppleLane Blog - 19 minutes 6 seconds
Our Family Blog - 29 minutes 25 seconds
CrabAppleLane New Orleans Saints Blog - 31 seconds
Divasaurs - 1 minute 59 seconds
Laurendine Blog - 2 minutes 34 seconds
Reunion Blog - 1 minute 35 seconds
June 18, 2011

Version 4.36 - Did that today. No problems so far. Tedious upload. All of the blogs rebuilt in 25 minutes or less, though. Awesome. - May 29, 2011

Installed MT-AutoBan - I actually did this a few weeks ago but didn't chronicle it. Now that the commenting system here is working more efficiently, more spam comments were being made. Defenses here stopped them from getting posted but they were using up resources nonetheless. If two spam comments from the same IP address hit the junk folder here, MT-AutoBan will ban it automatically. - May 21, 2011

Tweaks - Trimmed the archives index page. Enabled background tasks. Sped everything up considerably. Finally, changed to "High Priority Static Publishing" due to unforeseen circumstances (Internal Server Errors). - February 23-24, 2011

Disabled AutoSmileys - They were installed throughout the blog but I grew tired of them and the quirky time stamps they were causing. - January 22, 2011

Version 4.35 - Did that today. No problems so far except that one blog took over an hour to rebuild. - December 26, 2010

Version 4.34 - Did that today. Was having problems that led me to believe files were corrupt or mismatched. Turns out it might have been one of the plugins. After disabling the ones I don't use every day, all seems normal. Upgrade was for naught although I'm OK with having the bugfixes ... whatever they are. - September 19, 2010

Installed Mt-Akismet - Even after I closed comments on the blog for all but the last few entries, comment spam is still getting through on occasion. Just adding one more layer of defense (Probably useless). - August 7, 2010

Installed Forum Utilities Plugin - Have been looking off and on for a utility that would close comments on older entries. This one does it on 50 entries at a time but I still had to rebuild the whole blog. Spam had gotten so bad that I was reporting 10-15 per day and those were just the ones that were getting around the TypePad Plugin. No longer accept trackbacks, either. Typepad is reporting 19,600+ spam messages blocked. It was at 11,500 in March. 8000 in 5 months? - July 30, 2010

Renamed Script Files - I used to do this more often but spam protection here has gotten pretty good and rebuilding all of the blogs here in their entirety is tedious. Still, the spam being blocked here was getting out of hand. The dashboard was reporting about 2000 spam messages blocked a few weeks ago. Suddenly, it's up to 11,500+. It was just over 9000 yesterday. No idea what that kind of activity has on my website but figured I'd do something, anything. - March 17, 2010

Added AutoSmileys - They're installed throughout the blog. It makes for some interesting time stamps which will not happen in the future but I don't care to fix in older entries. I'll just enjoy them as is. :) - February 7, 2010 (Super Bowl Sunday)

Added Google Analytics - Works but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. The Google Analytics site provides some useful information for a true webmaster but a hobbyist like me doesn't need it for anything other than curiosity. I'm getting an occasional "Internal Server Error", too. I do NOT like those. - December 24, 2009

Added Comment Subscription Plugin - Seems to be showing on the comment form but can't tell, for certain, if its' working. I guess the readers will let me know (Update [12/19/2009] - Received a comment notification today. It works). - December 17, 2009

FastCGI - Not sure if I'm running MT this morning under "FastCGI" or not. I think I followed the instructions correctly but I'll just have to wait and see if the blogs are performing any faster. If it gets wonky today, I can go back to the previous working version fairly quickly. (Update: Seems to be a little different although my jury is still out) (Update to the Update: Still not noticing any difference) - August 12, 2009

Version 4.3 - So far, so good. The only issue this time was a tedious, tedious upload. I started this update much too late for a worknight. Have no idea what I might have done if there was a problem. As of this morning (July 31, 2009), I have not noticed any substantial improvement in performance or any new features. - July 30, 2009

Version 4.25 - Big problems with this upgrade. I think the main issue was that I downloaded MTOS-4.25-en instead of MT-4.25-en. I'm guessing the former must be a MAC version. After pounding my head against the wall for a few hours, I discovered and downloaded the correct version. All seems well now and I have deleted that MTOS zip file with extreme prejudice. - March 21, 2009

Version 4.24 - Did that today. So far, no noticeable problems here. Some of the other CrabAppleLane blogs have template issues with this upgrade. - March 14, 2009

Version 4.23 - Did that today. So far, no noticeable problems. Easily the smoothest upgrade ever. - December 21, 2008