I’m also liking this cPanel software that’s used to administrate sites at Host Gator (and many other hosting companies). Really useful and easy to use. Used that to install this WordPress installation.

I’m currently in the process of moving content from the old site. The looks is still that of a default WordPress installation, but I’ll probably get around fixing that later.

Old layout

New layout

I’m well aware of the fact that I’m missing that gene you need in order to be a good designer. I can’t pick a colour and then instantly know three or four colours that would match that one perfectly. And when it comes to creating images, well, lets just say that there’s a reason I’m not a well paid computer artist.

Yesterday I got enough tired of my old layout (top right image) to make a effort and try to improve it. Because of this “missing gene”, the only way I’m ever gonna be able to come up with a decent colour scheme is by stealing being inspired by others.

After visiting a dozen designer websites, you’re looking at the result (also bottom right image). Hopefully my gathering of ideas from all around the place didn’t just result in a big mishmash. But if it did and you get sick when looking at my site, please let me know.

While I were at it, I took the opportunity to restructure the contents in my css file, applying some tips from Monday by noon’s write better css article. Don’t know yet if I like having all properties for one selector on the same row. The advantage is that you don’t have to scroll as much when jumping between selectors, but it’s a bit messier than one-selector-per-line method. I’ll leave it this way for a while, seeing if I get used to it. Maybe it’ll be the-one-and-only way in the not to distant future.

For those of you that are interested, I’ve prepared a diff between 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. This is a breeze when using the method I outlined in a previous post. Just a question of issuing the command

# svn diff https://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/erik/src/ejohansson.se/wordpress/2.0.1 \\

https://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/erik/src/ejohansson.se/wordpress/2.0.2

Since I have my site together with a pristine copy of the wordpress version I’m currently using in subversion, updating it is painless.

First, download the new version and unpack it

# tar zxvf latest.tar.gz

Import the new version to wordpress/current (handling new, renamed and deleted files) and tag it as version 2.0.1

# svn_load_dirs -t 2.0.1 https://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/erik/src/ejohansson.se/wordpress current wordpress/

Merge the changes between version 2.0 and 2.0.1 to my main development branch trunk

# svn merge https://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/erik/src/ejohansson.se/wordpress/2.0/ https://svn.ejohansson.se/repos/erik/src/ejohansson.se/wordpress/2.0.1/ ejohansson.se/trunk

In case of conflicts, handle them and then commit the updated site

# svn ci ejohansson.se/trunk -m "Updated wordpress to 2.0.1"

Update the live site

# svn export ejohansson.se/trunk /home/www/ejohansson.se --force

Surf to http://ejohansson.se/wp-admin/upgrade.php to upgrade the wordpress database.

Done!

Disclaimer: You should of course backup your database and deactivate all plugins before performing the last two steps. Just to be safe. I didn’t, and so far, nothing is broken. But your milage may vary!

More information

• Upgrading WordPress
• Subversion vendor branches

At the same time I moved my domain from gate9 (or neno as they are called now) to my own server and made ejohansson.se the main address instead of www.ejohansson.se. This effectively makes this site a class B site. If you have bookmarks pointing to www.ejohansson.se, please update them to point to ejohansson.se.

• Search Hilite – Marks the search terms used to find this page. See for yourself.
• StatTraq – Blog stats.
• Text Replace – Use shortcuts instead of often enter texts (in posts).
• Click Counter – Counts the number of clicks on links used in blog posts.

• CJD Spam Nuke – To get control over all comments I’ve marked as spam.
• Auto-Close Comments – To disable comments and ping-backs after 21 days.

Note to self: Add Spam Karma when WordPress 1.5.1 is released.

76% good

It looks like I’m a owner of a good site

See Gunnar Wolf’s blog for the goodness of different linux dists. Only SuSE is more good than Debian. Wonder how that can be?