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Month: July 2006

Hammertime Status – Here’s the latest on the Hammertime Release!

Hammertime Status – Here’s the latest on the Hammertime Release!

Entry 9 (08-01-2006 9:38PM Eastern):Ok folks here’s the deal… NG is still not back and we feel like crap launching without him here. So, it’s currently 9:38PM here, so we’re going to give him till 10PM to get here, otherwise we launch. So, if he shows up in 5 minutes, we go live in 5, otherwise, 10 PM max. So 22 more minutes tops!

Dan

Entry 8 (08-01-2006 8:37PM Eastern): Ok guys, Ehren is nowhere to be found yet, so we’re going to finish up these last few items and then we’re going live! Stay tuned cuz we’re very close now 🙂

Entry 7 (08-01-2006 3:57PM Eastern): Things are going pretty well and we’re just adding some additional items and sorting out some last minute bugs we found when not logged in. We’re also waiting for Ghost to get online (He’s in Australia and it’s currently like 6AM over there) so he can fix stuff he’s in charge of. We’re getting there! At least we know we’ll be able to deploy at some point today lol!

Entry 6 (08-01-2006 1:23PM Eastern): Database and everything else has been imported and running well! So now we’re just going through everything and correcting any weird errors and optimizing things, and double-checking admin processes. For those asking about time limits, I’d say you have at least 5 hours of play time till it’s live.

Entry 5 (08-01-2006 11:54AM Eastern): We’ve finished pruning files that were no longer needed and we did a general cleanup of the live folder.. we’re now copying over the dev files to the live domain and preparing the converters and all that stuff. So far, so good *knocks on wood*

Entry 4 (08-01-2006 11:18AM Eastern): Ok, the update has begun… we’ve taken the site down and start moving stuff around. Hope everyone likes the splash page lol!

Entry 3 (08-01-2006 11:07AM Eastern): We’re now running backups, so it’s almost time 🙂

Entry 2 (08-01-2006 10:11AM Eastern): Good morning everyone! We are in the process of adding some finishing touches to the site, and we expect the update to begin in the next hour or so! Once the update has started, you will no longer be able to access the site’s internal pages so don’t panic if you get some weird error messages at first. Once the update is complete (assuming all goes well with the live update) we’ll spend a little bit doing some final checks and then we’re good to go! So stay tuned and I’ll do my best to update everyone on our progress.

Entry 1 (08-01-2006 12:07AM Eastern): We’re currently still coding some final aspects of this project and we’re hoping to be able to start the transfer tonight before we go to bed. This means the site will go down tonight instead of during the day tomorrow. Then tomorrow we all get up and basically optimize and tweak until the evening or until we see nothing else that needs tweaking and we open the gates 🙂

There definitely will be a few items that we won’t have ready for tomorrow, but they are some minor functionality items and shouldn’t really be a big deal not to have right away. There should be enough to keep everyone happy until we finish everything completely.

So, I’ll get back to working with Chaos and NG and I’ll update everyone when I have something new to report!

MSN Cleanup!

MSN Cleanup!

Just a quick note that due to the CRAZY amount of IMs I get on MSN no matter what my status or personal message is, I’m restricting it to P2L Staff and business related contacts only. I try to tell people that when I’m at my PC, it’s because I’m working in one form or another and don’t really have 2 hours a night to shoot the breeze on MSN when I log on. So, I’ve cleaned up, so don’t be offended if you’ve been removed… you can still contact me via email or PM on P2L (My profile) and you’ll at least know that when I respond, you’ll have my full attention instead of me doing 20 things at once while trying to look at why your HTML layout stretches weird!

Thanks in advance for your understanding!
Dan

How to Stop SPAM on Your WordPress Blog Using the Akismet Spam Plugin

How to Stop SPAM on Your WordPress Blog Using the Akismet Spam Plugin

There is a Digg for this article HERE.

Now that I have installed the Akismet Spam plugin to help control the ridiculous amounts of Spam that was being thrown at my blog, the queries are pouring in about what Akismet is and how do they install it too! Turns out that Spam is just an insane issue right now on WordPress blogs, and it seems like Spam bots are out of control. The only real way I found right at first to control this was to force people to register in order to post comments and this cut down the spam quite a bit. Unfortunately I know that I lost a lost of feedback because most people don’t want to register just to post a hello or a one sentence comment.

Akismet

So how do you solve this Spam issue without forcing people to register? Well, you install the most popular and effective Span control plugin currently available online called Akismet! Did I also mention it’s 100% free for personal use? If you want to learn more about what Akismet actually does and how it works, check out their FAQ.

This tutorial will show you step by step how to install the plugin and get your free WordPress API key in order for it to work for your personally hosted blog. If you host your blog at WordPress, then you don’t need this because your blog is automatically protected by Akismet. If you host your own blog(s) like I do, you need to install the plugin manually. Click below to continue!

Read More Read More

Finally Installed Akismet so Registration is Now Off!

Finally Installed Akismet so Registration is Now Off!

For those of you that were too lazy to register to post because I was too lazy to get Akismet up and running, you are no longer a victim! You no longer have to register an account on here to post comments, so go ahead and speak up and enjoy the new found freedom. Just don’t be an ass 😉

Dan

Google Update, Fishing and Hammertime Sneak Peek!

Google Update, Fishing and Hammertime Sneak Peek!

My deepest apologies for the complete lack of updates on my blog folks, but the hammertime development has simply stolen ALL my free time and I am working non-stop on this with Chaos and NG on a daily and nightly basis. In fact, I am just taking a break now from hammertime to post this update, then I’m back at it for a couple more hours tonight before bed.

First up in tonight’s post is a very happy but somewhat confused update on the Google incident (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3). We seem to be back in action! Last Tuesday I did my usual daily checks of the Google system, and suddenly our info and cache pages are working AND we are now coming back up in search results with terms we normally placed quite high on. So I’m very pleased with this recent turn of events, but at this point, I have no idea why were were removed in the first place, nor do I know how we were re-included in the index. I’m always one to say it’s the end result that matters, but this little lesson in search engine drama has me more than a little nervous because I didn’t learn anything from it other than perhaps Google is a tad twitchy. I’ll continue to search into why this happened, but as it stands, things seem to be returning to normal.

Next up, I recently had the pleasure of dusting off my fishing tackle after a 12+ year angler absence and took my 3 year old daughter for her first fishing trip! For those that don’t know, I am a stay at home dad when not working on P2L or web business in general, so Corina and I spend LOTS of time together and I thought she’d get a kick out of fishing. There’s a spot that’s about a 10 minute walk from my house that’s perfect for kids, so it’s easy to get out there for an hour or two before lunch and see if the fish are nibbling. She loved it and we’ve been out a few times to try our luck and she’s managed to haul out a couple of decent Bass, a 7 pound Pike (I had to help out with that one) and some Sunfish. Here’s her first catch that broke the 1 pound mark:

Corina Fishing

She was damn proud of that fish! It’s been tough to find time to be with my daughter with all this hammertime dev lately, but she sure loves the fishing time we squeeze in!

The 1 week countdown for hammertime has begun as we are now 7 days away from our August 1st release date (yeah, I’m shittin kittens at this point) and I am extremely excited and nervous to finally get this out the door. We’re now tearing through it all adding the finishing touches and looking for bugs both in terms of functionality and cross browser performance, so it’s a race against the clock for us now. Chaos and NG assure me that our Aug 1st deadline isn’t a problem, so I’m just trying to stay out of the road and not sound too dumb when I make a suggestion that is about as achievable as sending a Coke can to Mars.

Hey how about a sneak peek for you guys that bother to check out my blog? It isn’t much, but here’s a little snippet of what’s coming in a week:

Hammertime Sneak Peek

Now didn’t that make visiting my blog site completely worth it? Good, I thought so too! 🙂

That’s about it… I’d better get back before the programmers realize I’m gone. Hope everyone tunes in August 1st for our big release!

Dan