Monthly Archive for January, 2007

WordPress 2.1 released

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/1/2007
in Blogging, Open Source and WordPress
. 1 Comment

WordPress 2.1 has been released.

The major features according to the WordPress.org site are:

* Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
* Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
* The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
* Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
* New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
* You can set any “page� to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
* Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
* Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
* Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
* More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
* Pages can now be drafts, or private.
* Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
* The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
* Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
* Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
* The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
* A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

2.1 also includes over 550 bug fixes.

Installation and upgrading instructions are provided. Follow them closely.

You can download it here .

WordPress 2.1 due out later today

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/1/2007
in Blogging, Open Source and WordPress
. 3 Comments

The next version of WordPress - version 2.1 is to be released later today and Aaron Brazell has a good post outlining 10 features of WordPress 2.1 you should be aware of.

One that I love is the AutoSave feature. I have lost several posts during writing which I wouldn’t have lost if I had this feature. Another is the upgrade tool - that’s right, WordPress 2.1 on installation will automatically upgrade your previous installation making the whole installation process that much easier, it seems.

Looking forward to giving 2.1 a whirl!

On the mend

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/1/2007
in Personal
. 7 Comments

Thanks to everyone who enquired after Enrique’s health (he was hospitalised last Wednesday week, the same day we buried my mother).

He had borderline bronchial pneumonia and the day after we got him home from the hospital he developed the Winter Vomiting Bug - presumably having been infected in the hospital. He’s in good company though, I see Shel Israel got this recently too!

The vomiting and diarrhea has cleared up. He is still quite chesty and on a nebuliser (which he hates) but he was well enough this morning to start back in the creche again.

It was hard leaving him there but when I rang the creche at lunchtime, they said he’s doing fine.

Here’s a photo I took of him yesterday and despite my questionable photographic skills, you can see he’s looking great.
On the mend

Just to clarify

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 21/1/2007
in blacknight, cix and hosting
. 0 Comments

I have heard it back that the reason for my recent posts about Blacknight is nothing to do with my poor customer service experience but rather because I am trying to bully Blacknight into becoming a customer of CIX!!!

In case anyone else has heard this ridiculous rumour and has put any stock in it let me address it quickly.

First off, anyone who knows Michele (MD of Blacknight), knows that any attempt to bully him into doing anything is definitely not going to work!

Secondly, how does this work anyway? Bully someone into buying something? Surely if I was chasing Michele as a customer for CIX, I would have been singing Blacknight and Michele’s praises on the blog. Not picking up on the failings of Blacknight’s customer service.

Finally, as far as I recall, I only spoke to Michele once about hosting in CIX. This was when I called him to inform him of our intention to build an N+1 data centre in Cork way back in July or August of last year. At the time Michele didn’t express much interest and said he wouldn’t commit to anything but that he may take a rack in the data centre when it had been in operation a year or so and had proven itself. I asked him to forward on any requirements he’d have from a data centre. He never did.

Not exactly a hot prospect so I didn’t think about him much more in relation to CIX as we had far larger prospects to chase.

Hosting 365 and customer service

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 21/1/2007
in customer service and hosting
. 13 Comments

I haven’t written about Hosting365’s customer service before now as I have no direct experience of it. I don’t host with Hosting365. However their reputation for customer service has been far from stellar. Almost as bad as Irish Broadband’s, I’m told.

Recently appointed marketing director of Hosting365, Ed Byrne is determined to change that.

In a comment on a recent post on this site, Paul Walsh of Segala said

Hosting 365 probably have the worst customer services I’ve come across. Not only are they ignorant, they’re technically crap.

Now, instead of attacking Paul, or throwing him off their servers, Ed contacted Paul privately by email and said:

I read your comment on Tom Raftery’s blog about Hosting365’s service.

First of all I am very sorry you have that opinion of us. 2005 was a tough year for Hosting365 - we’ll be putting up a long blog post about that soon - we went from 16 to over 30 staff and built 2 new support teams. I hope that customers now start seeing positive results from this.

I’m not going to try and pretend we had a perfect customer experience in 2005 - we didn’t - and we’re working to build back customer trust and deliver BETTER support - as we see it as our core driver of growth…

I would like to extend an invitation for you to come in and have a quick chat - show you around the facility. For our business - any business - reputation is absolutely key, so I’d really like to show you the investment we’ve made and get feedback as a customer, on what we should be focussing on.

When I spoke to Ed after my falling out with Blacknight, Ed very generously offered to help move all my sites and host them until I got sorted with a more permanent host, free of charge.

I told Ed that I really appreciated his offer but that if I did ask for his help I would insist on paying.

Now that is customer service - keep it up Ed.

UPDATE: - Just to clarify, I have no intention of moving to Hosting365, I just thought Ed’s attitude to customer service should be highlighted.

Sorry I missed BarCamp Ireland - SouthEast

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 21/1/2007
in barcamp
. 2 Comments

BarCamp Ireland - SouthEast went ahead yesterday and by all accounts was a great success.

I posted recently that I was going to be unable to attend for family reasons. In the comments of that post though, Elly Parker generously offered to conference me in for a period. That was great and I was really looking forward to it.

However, at the last minute, Elly felt obliged to withdraw the offer because her fiancé works for Blacknight (a company with whom I’m having a bit of a dispute currently!).

I’ll just have to be sure I make it to the next one.

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