Archive for the 'Blog' category

If you are one of the fastest typing commentators on this web site, you may find yourself interested in the newest little widget on Roumazeilles.net. The most prolific commentators are now highlighted on each and every page (in the side bars).

If you have correctly filled your web site affiliation, this will count as a link back to your own web site too.

But don’t even think about spamming. Akismet and me are actively removing anything looking remotely like a spam comment.

Congratulations for Jeff’s participation.

Looking into the search terms used by people on the Roumazeilles.net, I had some fun recently. Let’s quickly browse some of the most representative surprising ones:

• chasseur francais poussiere reflex (in English: French hunter SLR dust): I did not have in mind that we had so many readers interested in photo hunting in the most basic technological meaning: hunting the dust on the SLR sensor;
• nero burner 8 dovnlod free: I am surprised this reached any target with such a typo;
• appareil photo nicon 8 mega: Some people are unsure about the name of famous photo brands (Nikon or Nicon?)
• microsoft office for mac for free illegal: This one really is looking for the illegal version of MS-Word. Not even thinking a minute about getting it free legally
• w.w.w.roumazeilles.net.: so many dots!
• rechercher thepiratebay.org (in English: Search for thepiratebay.org): This guy is looking for one great web site. He has the exact address and is directed onto my web site. I would advise him never to press the “I’m feeling lucky!” button of Google search…

Thank you, Xtian.

If you want to build a web site, or a better web site, I am starting a series of short small ideas about how to improve a web site or a blog with small tasks. One idea, one improvement per week. This is in the “easy idea” category of my other web site: Y Want Visits.

This is time to start your own blog in order to earn some revenue protecting you against the current recession.

This is what I told myself when uncovering a little PHP code fragment that stopped working on one of my web sites. So, this is a reminder for those of you inattentive programmers like me: $DOCUMENT_ROOT = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; is deprecated and works no longer. You must now use the newest form: $DOCUMENT_ROOT = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];.

Be warned.

If you have the heart of an adventurer, you may be interested to know that Ijust put in beta-test some new websites that I am working on.

• YLovePhoto.com (site specializing in digital photography)
• YLoveBigCats.com (about felines and other big cats)
• YLoveIllusions.com (optical illusions)
• YWantVisits.com (SEO, traffic optimisation and web site revenue maximization)

Your opinion will be welcome, but -remember- this is beta-test. So, it is full of bugs, problems, issues and don’t come back and complain if your significant other dumps you because of it.

Note: Most (if not all) of the photo-related news here will be applied to YLovePhoto.com as soon as I feel free with this new web site.

I migrated this web site to the latest version of WordPress (version 2.6). Since this is a significant jump from the old v2.3.3 that I was still using (because it was stable and without known bugs), I feel that it could be interesting to summarize the observations I made during this migration.

Good

• Somehow, the performance is the same, but the administration panel has been improved with a logic more task-oriented (important and common things are more immediately accessible).

Bad

• Unfortunately, in the administration panel, I lost most of the direct visibility onto the posts scheduled in the future (I prepare a lot of articles in advance to free myself from the tyrany of web site updates).
• The “Write Post” page is organised differently, but I lack the flexibility of re-organisation that was in version 2.3 (dragging the elements where I wanted them to be). But, maybe it’s because I still don’t know how to do it… Apparently, people think it was a regression in v2.5.x, but what the heck? It was working fine before.

Conclusion

I have no difficulty working with WordPress 2.6 now. Even if a few things keep annoying me and I feel that it was not all change-for-the-best, I would easily recommend it (even the newest v2.6.1).

Minor information about using WordPress v2.6 (the latest revison of this great blog/web-site-wrinting tool).

I had a few difficulties to ensure that images where correctly aligned and displayed after the improvements in their presentation in WP2.6. For those really interested, I ended up adding the following to my CSS file:

Thanks to the support of the WordPress.org forum.

When you have a web site, it becomes quite common that some people feel so easy to just borrow your images that they do not even take the time to make a copy on their own web site. Not only do they use your artwork, but they also use the bandwidth you paid for.

Normally, there is a solution. You can modify slightly your website to ensure that if this happens, the image served is not the original one, but a modified one (either a big red X, or a message to the reader). But it is a little difficult to do by hand. A wbe site tool comes handy for this: HTMLbasix – Htaccess Disable Hotlinking Code Generator.

Some people have been telling me: “You blog! That must take a lot of time and you must be there each and every day”.

Don’t worry, I may post something on Roumazeilles.net every day, but it does not mean that I am in front of the keyboard every day. Far from it. I am using one small advantage of WordPress (the software package supporting my web site). I can write posts and schedule them for future publication.

That way, I have no limit to my inspiration. For example, I have currently scheduled weekly posts about optical illusions for the coming 6 months, a full week of feline-related news (daily posts next week), a full week of daily videos titled “when XXXXX get bored” in a couple of months.

Pour ceux qui souhaitent le savoir, chaque utilisateur sur le site Rouamzeilles.net peut avoir des droits différents selon le rôle qui lui est attribué (par mes soins). Les droits attachés ne sont pas toujours évidents, même pour un habitué de WordPress. C’est pourquoi j’ai produit le tableau ci-dessous pour expliquer.

Cliquer sur le tableau pour le voir en plus grand.

I wanted to thank 2007 readers and visitors, so here are the 2008 Roumazeilles.net awards:

Best Guest Post Thanks to xo-fashi0n-x0 for her post of “La Cigarette“. A welcome poetic distraction from the routine of this web site.

Best Commenter This one was easy since ted is a persistent commenter with interesting insight and providing detailed information and feedback (both for the author and the readers). By the way, his web site is quite interesting too.

Best Linker Delphine Dumont, while staying attentive to what is happening on my web site, has been providing some significant and meaningful links and trackbacks. And all french-reading people should try and stop to read her blog.

Thanks to all readers, linkers and posters who made it possible. 2008 is certainly going to be even better and this will be reflected in the 2009 Roumazeilles.net awards.

As you may have noticed (because of the unusually long time it took me to do the upgrade), I upgraded Roumazeilles.net to the newest version of WordPress 2.3.2.

You should see no significant impact (except some security improvements and in the administration part, if you want to propose an article). But if there is something, feel free to tell me.

While installing the new forums software on Roumazeilles.net (bbPress) [it was only an evaluation that will not be followed immediately by a full implementation], I noted a few of the details I needed to do in order to reach a conveniently installed package. Since bbPress is only lightly documented, it may be helpful for other.

Aim

The first objective was to install two sets of forums (in French and in English, as for the news blogs) in their respective URLs.

• English forums
• French forums

The locations have an influence on the rest since I still wanted to have a good integration with the wordpress blogs. You are expected to install the forums inside the blog.

So, here is how I did it.

(more…)

Thanks to all visitors! This year 2007 saw a near-doubling of the number of visits and the start of new article categories. Arguably, you were pleased, but we’ll try to make it even better. I start immediately.

Happy new year 2008.

As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.

Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.

The design of a web site is notoriously opposed to the use of rich and varied fonts: You are strongly invited to stick to the small list of common fonts. Unfortunately, this is not always enough. If you already started exploring alternatives like text-in-GIF-images, have a look at this hackzine article: HOWTO – Use rich fonts in your web design.