Tag: blog

Some of you may have noticed that most of the images on my blog have been missing for some time.  Actually, if I’m honest, I very much doubt if anyone has noticed.  Let’s face it, who reads blog posts from last year?  Hmm?  Anyone?  No, I thought not.  Nonetheless, the images were missing, and it was only this evening that I managed to resolve the issue.

The problem started when I moved from my old hosting provider, PearTreeUK, to my new hosting provider, WebhostingUK.  I was determined to be clever, being a professional web developer, and decided to merge a load of old domains onto one master domain and host my blog there, so now you’ll find that www.minipix.co.uk, www.chapternine.co.uk and www.giftlistcentral.co.uk all redirect to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk.  Seamlessly.  Well, almost seamlessly.  The trouble was, despite all my cleverness, I forgot to download all the images on my blog before cancelling the old hosting.  Foolish fool.

So while everything worked, it looked rather bare.  For the most part it wasn’t a huge issue, but believe it or not there are actually some blog posts that Google quite likes, such as my demonstration of OpenTTD junctions, which is somewhat underwhelming without the images.

Thankfully, the folks at PearTreeUK have their heads screwed on.  I emailed them on the off-chance that they might have my old data lying around somewhere, half hoping that they didn’t (because that would be careless and unprofessional).  The reply came back positive, and thankfully it’s not unprofessional at all – they actually have a policy in place to hang onto expired accounts’ backups for several months before automatically deleting them.  Which is a very wise policy.  And it meant that they were able to provide me with a full backup of my blog, including images.  So I downloaded the images, put them in the right place, fiddled with my .htaccess file to make sure I didn’t get any straggling 404s, and hey-presto my images are back!  Feel free to take a wander through my archives if you like, to marvel at my newly-found old images.

As an extra bonus, I’m pleased to say that something else fairly significant was also recovered at the same time.  I had been writing a pregnancy diary during 2009, before Samuel’s birth, and I’d put it online (though hidden from public eyes) so that I could update it from wherever I happened to be.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Anyway, I kind of forgot it was there, so when I came to migrate all my websites from the old web host I completely forgot to take a backup of that diary.  Thankfully, the backup PearTree were able to send me included all that hard work.  One day I’ll finish off the last few weeks worth of entries (which are currently only in note form) and maybe make it public.  Might make an interesting read.  Maybe.

Yes, this is my second post today, and with the same title, but on a completely different topic.

Some time ago, as some of my faithful readers will know, I got a new job.  That meant getting rid of… I mean, encouraging my old clients to go elsewhere for their services.  Getting everyone’s web hosting moved to new providers was a bit of a challenge, and understandably there were some people who were none too pleased at having to move at all, and others who didn’t have the first idea what might be involved.  So I’ve helped as much as I can, given that I’m no longer actually working from home.

So the time is nearly upon me where all my clients will be migrated, and all that’s left is my own sites.  At that point, I’ll need to move my own sites to a new host too, as I can’t afford the reseller package I’d been using.  An upshot of that is that I can’t really afford to be running lots of personal sites for free, as I used to through my business.  What’s needed is a careful rationalisation of my online presence, to ensure continuity and sustainability.

So here’s what’s going to happen.  ChapterNine (www.chapternine.co.uk) will cease to exist, although I’ll keep the domain for now and just forward that on to another page on another website.  Minipix (www.minipix.co.uk) will also be shut down, again with the domain forwarding on elsewhere.  Now, before you all get cross and up in arms and worried that I’m shutting down my blog, I must stress that I have no intention of stopping blogging, nor of losing the last 10 years’ worth of personal history.  What’s actually going to happen is that my blog will be moved to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk, which will no longer serve as a business website but will be my personal website instead.  So everything you see here on minipix.co.uk will soon appear on matthewdawkins.co.uk instead.  Some of the stuff on ChapterNine will appear there too, as will some of the material currently on matthewdawkins.co.uk.  It’s all a bit confusing, but it’ll make sense once it’s done – basically it’ll all be in one place instead of on three separate sites.

I’m still in the process of building the new site (I’m a web designer after all, I can’t just move it and have done with it, I’ve got design myself a completely new theme to go with it!), but I’m hoping it’ll be sorted out at some point this month.  And, as I’ve said, I’ll keep the old domain names now, so all your old bookmarks and links should continue to work.  It’ll just all appear in one shiny new website over on matthewdawkins.co.uk.

Successful bloggers, and indeed writers in most fields, will tell you that the key to success is to pick your target market and stick to it.  No surprise, then, that the most read blogs are ones where their authors talk religiously about their chosen topic, whether that be a blog about programming methods or a blog about one man’s journey to become a vintage bus driver.

In spite of this well-acknowledged fact, you’ll notice that my blog is still littered with a whole plethora of categories, covering all sorts of topics and areas of life.  I have chosen not to focus on one target audience, but to write infrequently about everything instead.

Now, finally, I’ve got round to introducing a way for you, the reader, to take control of my blog and only show the articles you’re actually interested in.

(more…)

A while back my blog decided, in its infinite wisdom, that allowing access to the control panel was in fact not what I wanted to do, despite my many attempts to do so.  I would go to the login page, enter my details, hit the ‘go’ button, and be instantly redirected back to the login screen.  Helpful.  I did some digging around, and it appeared that as far as WordPress was concerned I was actually logged in, it just wouldn’t show me the control panel itself.  That meant I couldn’t approve or reject comments, I couldn’t add new posts, I couldn’t update the templates, I couldn’t add or remove any plugins, and I couldn’t spend time tinkering with my blog.  Maybe it thought it was doing me a favour.

In any case, it’s taken me until last night to resolve the matter.  I had previously tried copying new files across to upgrade to the latest version, but that didn’t work.  So last night I took a full backup of everything, deleted all the core files from the server, and uploaded a fresh load of files.  And as if by some deep and powerful magic, my command over my online presence was finally restored.  With that liberation still fresh, I jumped on the opportunity to make a few changes.

The most obvious change you’ll see is that I’m now importing my Twitter feed.  When I post a new tweet, it’ll get displayed here on my blog too, appearing like a little speech bubble.  This is actually a category in WordPress too, so I can non-Twitter mini-posts too.  Like for those times when I really feel the need to say something to the world, but Twitter doesn’t give me enough characters, and a full-on multi-paragraph post isn’t necessary.  Of course, I understand that you may not want my Twittering to come up in your RSS reader, so if you want to continue reading my blog by RSS but excluding these micro-posts you can now use this new RSS feed URL: www.minipix.co.uk/?feed=rss2&cat=-342.

Other changes I’m bringing in include a mobile-enabled view of my blog, so that you can read my posts from your phone.  I’ll hopefully also figure out a way of updating my blog from my mobile too, so that I can blog on the move.

I shall also be adding a new ‘Family’ category, as I seem to be writing an increasing amount about our son Samuel, and it feels appropriate to recognise his significance with his own category.

EDIT: If you’re seeing the Twitter micro-posts but they’re unformatted (i.e. not in funky speech bubbles) you probably need to refresh your browser to reload the stylesheet.  To refresh your browser, click the refresh button in the toolbar.  Or press F5.  Or press CTRL-R.  Or CMD-R if you’re on a Mac.  Or ALT-CTRL-SHIFT-TAB-R-X-N-SPACE if you happen to have that set up as a custom keyboard shortcut.

I remember when I first started blogging.  My friend Phill was responsible for starting me off, back when we were at uni together.  He had a blog, and said that I should have one too.  So I registered a free domain name – www.minipix.cjb.net – and pointed that at some free webspace that came with my Dad’s dial-up internet connection (with permission… I think), and wrote my first blog.  If memory serves, it said something along the lines of ‘hey, I’ve got a blog, not sure what to write here, but we’ll see how it goes’.  Once the bug had bitten, there was no stopping me.

That first blog was a straight HTML page.  I edited the HTML, probably in Notepad, put the latest post at the top of the page, and re-uploaded the file.  Simple but effective.  But over time it became a little unwieldy.  So Phill got me to beta-test his PHP-MySQL blogging system that he’d been tinkering with, and that opened up a lot more options.  Before long though I felt it necessary to migrate to something more substantial, made the move to WordPress (importing my old blog posts), and have been a blogging sensation ever since.  Well, maybe not the sensation bit.

But now, an ominous cloud hangs on the horizon.  A tiny ripple out at sea that has the potential to grow into a tidal wave that will rip through all that once was safe and secure.  My wife has a blog.

(more…)

Further to my previous post, I’m afraid to say that my blog is still feeling a little under the weather at the moment.  I’ve Googled, I’ve prodded and poked, I’ve FTPed and upgraded, and all to no avail.  So, for now at least, I’ve given up.  One day when I have time I’ll look into it again, but for now I’m going to rely on other ways to update my blog.  My previous post came courtesy of the built-in blog editor in Flock.  This one is being written in ScribeFire, a Firefox plugin.

And it’s high time for an update, I’m sure you’ll agree.  A certain person has been on my case for days, if not weeks, asking for a photo of a smiling baby that I’d promised her.  I had intended on putting it on my blog, but that wasn’t working, so I emailed it to her in the end.  But, for those of you who are not Sarah, a photo of my darling son is in this post – the first I managed to capture of him smiling.

(more…)

Just a quick note to say that my new blog design is finally live and kicking, with just a few technical bugs to sort out, most notably that comments aren’t working at the moment.  I’m trying to find a solution to that one, and then everything should be fine.  I also realise that the three latest comments have also been lost; I am aware of that, it’s because I’ve moved this site to a new server.  Hopefully I’ll figure out a way to reinstate those comments too.  So, sorry for the inconvenience of not being able to litter my blog with your own thoughts, but I’m working to resolve that!

In the meantime, please do enjoy the new look for the blog, in particular the header image which changes depending on the time of day, and time of year, so check back at different times during the day to see different images.  I’m also quite pleased with the comments post-it notes too, which work quite well.  The only caveat with that is that I have had to put a cap on the length of comments, otherwise it all started to look silly.

Once comments are up and running again, please feel free to let me know what you think.  In the meantime, twiddle your fingers, or if you really do want to tell me something send me a postcard, or a homing pigeon, or smoke signals, or something.