Data Circle

I’ve finally got around to upgrading the WordPress installation for Data Circle from version 1.5.2 to 2.0.4. I was surprised by how simple the whole process was, although I cut a few corners because I knew what I was doing for the most part and I had the advantage of being able to download WordPress directly to my server rather than saving it to my desktop and then uploading via FTP. For the most part it was just a matter of installing all the new files and then copying back my config file and .htaccess rules for mod_rewrite.

The Akismet plugin is great, all I had to do was enter my API key and click ‘activate’, and someone else takes care of the rest. Not only does it catch the majority of my comment spam, there’s also the option to train the filter so that if it mistakenly flags a legitimate comment as spam you can alert Akismet of this, and likewise if it misses an obvious spam (which it occasionally does, at least on Rogue Tory) you can flag this as well.

The dashboard has also been improved and everything seems easier to find. I’m not keen on the visual rich editor myself, but you can turn that off easily so it’s not too much of a problem. The fact that you can properly preview entries without having to publish a post is also a highly useful feature.

I remember the first time I tried WordPress, it was around version 1.2 and I was unimpressed to say the least, which resulted in me writing my own blogging software for my personal blog. It’s really come along since then though, and with the release of version 2 I think it beats all other software hands down if you just want a weblog (as opposed to the likes of Drupal as a CMS, which has more features but is overkill for something like Data Circle). Now I wouldn’t think of using anything else for any of my blogs, with the exception of perhaps my personal site where I like to write things myself for various reasons.

Theme wise, I’m still looking for a design that I’m happy with, so for the moment I’ve switched back to the WordPress default. I’ll have a play with the various themes offered by Wordpress.com over the weekend and see if any of them take my fancy. I’m looking for something fairly clean and minimalistic, preferably with a technology theme, so if anyone has any ideas of ones which would be good for the site please let me know.

Anyway, hopefully now that I’ve got all the backend stuff sorted and I’m not spending forever trying to keep up with comment spam (there were over 30,000 pending comments in the database when I upgraded, and more than 10,000 other comments which I’d previously marked as spam), I’ll be able to update the site on a more regular basis. I’ve already got one idea for an article that I hope to get written tonight, and I’m sure I’ll get another couple done by the middle of next week.

As always, if you’re interested in writing for Data Circle just give me a shout and I’ll get you set up.