Yabfog

Part of the nightmare I went through while experimenting with WP-o-matic (no link) was that I accidentally deleted about 12 posts from my blog. Nothing earth-shattering, of course, but I just found an old database backup and recovered those posts. It was a real PITA, though, because the backup was from when I was running WordPress 2.2, and now under 2.3, the database has been changed. So, I had to actually install a dummy blog and "upgrade" it to 2.3.

The server move is done. I'm sure there will be problems, but so far so good. The new server is actually a home server -- very adequate machine, but I anticipate connection and traffic delays, as well as disruptions due to power outages (which are pretty frequent here). Eventually, I'll probably hook up a UPS, but in the meantime I'm willing to live with the issues because it's saving me the cost of renting a dedicated server.

This site (and Optimalbrowser.com) will be likely be intermittently available starting this evening (U.S. Eastern time) and lasting for a day or so while I move servers.

Finally have a bunch of my link blogs posted. A little explanation, though.

First, this is an OPML file, generated by NewsGator, filtered through sed, and displayed by Optimal.

Second, I maintain these link blogs in FeedDemon and my own aggregator built on the NewsGator API.

As of the latest version (ver. 2.5), FeedDemon automatically syncs your "News Bins" with your NewsGator "Clippings Folders" -- two terminologies for the same thing. They really ought to pick a name. In any event, now that I've set it up, these should self-maintain without any additional work on my part. That's what programming is all about!

I released a bugfix for Optimal today. The latest version is 0.4c. If you haven't experienced any weird problems with the 0.4 release, don't bother updating.

Thanks to Chris Pirillo for bringing the problem to my attention and working through it with me.

I've completed a major rewrite of my OPML browser, Optimal.

I didn't manage to document all of the changes, they were so numerous. Highlights are:

• Object-oriented reimplementation, making it more portable to other applications
• Same code may be used as a WordPress plugin -- replaces the OPML Renderer plugin for WordPress
• RSS items now include descriptions, so you can browse the feeds without subscribing or visiting the home page
• New widget generator to generate HTML to include Optimal on your web site

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I'm still working on a significant rewrite of my OPML browser, Optimal, but I've decided to release the current working version in the meantime because it addresses a couple of significant usability comments I've had.

Specifically:

1. There are now links to expand/collapse all nodes, and
2. There is a new query string parameter, depth, which allows you to specify the initial expansion state.

• Changes

I'll be migrating this site and the Optimal site to a new hosting service Friday, so there will be some down time and strangeness, no doubt.

Relatively minor updates to Optimal.

• Changes

UPDATE: We're back.

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