Upgrades
Reading Jayne’s post made me decide that it really was time to finally upgrade to WP 2.3. I held off initially because it threatened to break lots of things, but now most plugins and themes have been updated to comply with the new structure.
Initially I wanted to use an automatic upgrade plugin, but it failed so I had to do everything manually, which took a bit more time. Still, it went without a hitch, and now here I am, all upgraded.
Even got around to installing a database manager so it’s nice and easy to back everything up.
All that’s left is to tinker with this theme (or, alternatively choose a different one) to use the new tagging features… but that can be a job for another day.
Edit: Ok, there were issues. Couldn’t post anything for a while there. Kept getting a weird issue. Turns out the Sitemaps plugin was conflicting, and needed to be updated. All should be fine now.
Comments?
Romi wrote me a concerning email - for some reason she can’t comment on my site - things don’t seem to be working right.
Anybody else having this problem?
Edit I think I’ve tracked it down - it looks like the Gravatar server went down/went very slow, and the Gravatar requests were timing out. So anything below a gravatar wouldn’t load - such as all the comments and the comment form.
I’ve disabled them, and things seem to be working a lot better, and a lot faster.
Let me know if things are going well or the problem keeps happening.
Sucks though, I like the gravatars.
pMetrics Stats
I’m a stats whore. I’ll admit it.
I love seeing how many people come visit my site, where they come from, what they do. I guess I’m just nosy.
For ages I’ve been looking for that perfect stats program.
Sure, the stats provided by Wordpress.com are pretty good (I can get them through a nifty plugin). But they don’t go into quite enough depth for me. I want something that I can waste a good amount of time looking at.
Google Analytics - it’s too big. I can’t figure it out. There’s too much stuff, and very little of what I want. That, and it takes several hours to update. I want real time, thank you very much.
For a while, I’ve been drooling over Mint. It looks nice. Seems like it’ll do everything I want it to. Only thing that’s been holding me back is that it costs $30 US. Feeling quite poor right now, splashing out for stats isn’t high on my list.
I almost did though.
Until I found pMetrics. I think these guys might be even better. A plugin integrates everything right into my Wordpress Dashboard. I can see all the usual stats stuff, like how many visitors, where they came from, etc etc.
But I can also see locations. Like, where in the world you all come from. Down to the city.
I can assign different IPs names, so it’s easier to see exactly who’s visiting and doing what. I currenty just assigned Shannon’s work PC, and Wendy. Could tell it was you guys because of your referrers 
It breaks the search hits you get down into search strings, keywords, and search engines. Better than a few others which only show the different search strings.
And the most fun feature for me is something called “Spy.”
Basically, it tracks in real time what’s happening on your site. You can leave the window open and it just updates everytime someone visits, showing where they come from, what they do, and where they go.
Cool huh?
Kinda scared now? I’m watching you….
It also integrates you feed stats from Feedburner, so you can keep track of everything all in the same place.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
Yup, theme has changed. Provisionally.
There were always problems with the other one. People often told me it was difficult to read. I knew it. I was just waiting to find something to change it to.
Giving this one a try.
Not sure yet… it’s readable, that’s for sure. And there’s no stupid thing down the bottom.
But, I dunno. Seems almost too simple.
I haven’t quite decided…
What do you think?
Google Reader vs Bloglines Beta, Revisited.
So I mentioned how I switched to Bloglines Beta when Google Reader again broke for Opera.
Things are again working perfectly - in fact, Google Reader has become a fully fledged application, no longer a Google Labs baby. Which means it should be stable. No more (hopefully) random stoppages for Opera users. As long as Opera remains an ‘unsupported’ browser who knows how long that’ll last…
Still, with all systems go, I now have to choose which site to use.
Both have basically the same features, nicely Web 2.0, you scroll though new articles and they’re automatically marked as read. They both autodetect feeds on websites.
So what makes them different?
Bloglines looks nicer. I know its superficial, but hey. If you’re going to be reading something on the net, it may as well look nice at the same time, right? Bloglines also gets bonus points for (so far) not discriminating against my browser.
Google appears to be slightly faster - especially at loading ‘new’ feeds. I follow a few small blogs which don’t have anyone already subscibed to them on Bloglines. Unless Bloglines has already cached the feed, it takes a few hours for it to load. Slightly annoying. Google loads it instantly (as would be expected of either).
The feature I like best about Bloglines, perhaps its defining feature, is the Start Page. Google has a similar page, where it lists recent updates. Bloglines goes a step further, allowing you to select which feeds you want profiled on your start page so that you’re always aware of updates to your favourite sites, they’re not buried beneath feeds such as the ‘Daily Show Videos.’ If you subscribe to a lot of feeds, but have a few core sites you want to keep on top of, this feature will save you much time.
But this is small in comparison to Google’s two other strong points. Firstly, in-built Google Search. A relatively new addition, and responsible for breaking Opera’s compatibility, Google Reader Search allows you to pinpoint old posts from any of your feeds, searching the entire post (that which the reader receives anyway, so the summary in some cases), and you can even narrow it down to starred posts, specific folders, or blogs.
You can also tag individual posts according to your own specifications, you don’t have to rely on the tags to author chose. So if you wanted you could tag everything you found interesting as ‘interesting’ (how original) and it will be automatically categorised for you - much like labels in gmail.
Being a stats-whore, I also really like the ‘Trends’ page showing you which blogs you read the most, which ones update the mosts, which ones you share the most, star the most, all in very nice graphs.
Basically-
Bloglines - Looks, Start Page functionality.
Google Reader - Speed, search, tags, stats.
Bloglines is still in beta though, and more features are still on their way.
So which one should I use? I still don’t know. Probably Google. Despite the bad blood and unappealing design. For now.
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