Recently in Technical Stuff Category

This is the new home of Our Family Blog. This url is temporary. The old one will be back in use in a few days/weeks. You can comment or place entries here just like you did before, though.

I decided to make the move to a new server because the old server WAS our problem. The reason we were getting all of those internal server errors was because the server was simply not allowing the resources necessary to run this program. It would shut it down before the process was complete. This new server hasn't done that.

I have to change everyone's password back to what it was or to a new one. To import the entries from the old software, I had to give everyone the same password.

On those lines:

Please send me an email with what you want your password to be. The only one I have on record is Carol's. I'm just not sure about the rest of them. Thankfully, it's not a big ordeal for me to change them because I know what the password is now.

There are still a lot of files, particularly image files, on the old server. They will not be lost but it will take me some time to put them back here. It's a massive, time-consuming chore that I can only do on nights and weekends as time and energy permit. I didn't want to continue adding on to the old server with all of its problems any longer. Thankfully, I should only have to do this huge amount of work once.

Right now, all images are displaying because our entries are pointing at the old server but they won't when I tell the internet to point CrabAppleLane at the new one. I'll have to transfer them to the Flickr server ... again, as time and energy permit. This does not apply to any pictures posted since February 23, 2007. Those will be fine.

Everything that you see here should work. This new software has a lot of cool features but some of the add-ons that I had installed in the older one don't have updated versions to work with this one. One of the cool new features is "auto save". Most word processing programs like WordPerfect or Microsoft Word save your work at certain intervals. The blog is now periodically saving your entries, too. That's excellent for those times when you lose your internet connection, lose power at home, or whatever other nuisance that can come up occurs. I haven't had to see how this works yet but maybe it's like having a spare tire. You maybe won't get a flat if you have one. I love having a three-column layout. The older version could have had three columns if I could have figured out how to make it work. I also love the author archives there in the second column.

You'll also notice a few more tools at your disposal for your entries. Making large, large, large print is easy. You can also strikethrough, which is kinda fun, too. When you preview your entry, you will see it EXACTLY as it will appear on the blog.

The Birthday plug-in and the "On This Day in The Family Blog" plug-in don't work. Hopefully, their makers are hard at work updating their software because I liked them. "Recent Comments", which I also liked, is causing big problems here and I won't put that back until its resolved.

The road sign that was on the old blog might come back. Just not sure where I want to place it. I kinda like that red title bar at the top.

I'm not finished. There are more features to come. Again, it will be done as time and energy permit.

What do you think?

On the right sidebar below the Movable Type button is something called a FlickR Badge. I like it and it will find a permanent and more prominent spot on the blog page as soon as I can figure out why its not working properly in all browsers. It seems to work like I want it to in Internet Explorer but Firefox is placing it at the bottom of the page. Not sure what AOL users are seeing. Anyway, I'm going to keep working on it and I just thought it was neat.

Update (5:59PM): I figured out a workaround and moved it up a bit. If anyone is having trouble with it, please let me know.

We are advanced bloggers already according to this article. We have been on Movable Type since inception. Thanks to everyone for their participation and their contribution. You make it what it is. The connecting and re-connecting has been a real treat.

It has been my intention to let everyone find their way around here on their own but I thought I should point out a few things to make everyone’s reading, commenting, and posting experience that much more enjoyable. I know it’s easy to get lost in here or to lose track of where you are and this is still new to all of us, including me.

Only the last 10 days of posting and commenting are here on the “Main” page. I could set that number higher but it would take a longer time to load this page. Many of us are still on dial-up phone access to the internet.

If you make a comment on an entry, only the original author of the entry is notified. Those who previously commented on that entry are not notified. They can keep up by seeing if the number of comments has grown since they posted their comment.

If you do a search, or if you click on one of the “archive” links on the right, or if you click on a date on the calender, the blog may take you to an entry that is no longer on this main page. And that’s fine and wonderful. However, if you choose to comment on one of those entries that is older than 10 days and not on the main page, bear in mind that only the original author of the entry will be notified that you did. The people who commented on that entry will not know unless they happen to be looking at the older entries and notice that comments have been made.

I hope everyone will explore the archives periodically just to see if there is anything they might have missed and I will try to call attention to comments on older entries that people may not have seen like this one.

Happy Blogging!

When you make a new entry, remember to "save" before you exit.

Just tinkering with some of the features here. Supposedly, I can reference any blog who links to these blogs with the trackback feature. It works fine in two of the three blogs. Can't seem to get it to work in this one.

This is a test.

Can you guys think of anyone who would want and who should have a posting account here? I've emailed everyone in the family. Only a handful have taken me up on it and only one has posted anything. And that's fine because I expected it to be slow going in the beginning. This is new and quite daunting to some.

And now, I must go do the lawn.

Update: OK, it works now.