Just did the nice and painless upgrade to 2.9.  Upgrade time:  15 seconds.  Not too shabby.

WordPress development keeps on chugging along, so now the site is on the latest and greatest release version of WordPress.  I also swapped themes for something a bit brighter and more legible.  Hope you enjoy!

Just trying out some of the new media options in the new WordPress.  Enjoy!

Plaxico Burress Buck Hunting

Well the WordPress site is back up.  And it’s now on 2.7.  I’d go into a lot of detail as to the who what why on how it went down, for how long, and the like but I’m too pissed to put it into words.  Maybe someday.

If you have old MovableType links here, they’re broken and probably won’t work ever again.  Update your links!

Now to look for a new theme or retrieve my customized code from the old one…

With the blog version of this site quickly approaching the 5 year anniversary mark, I’ve been trying to update / fix issues with moving to Movable Type 4 and it’s new theme structure.  You had to use the new structure to use the new features included, and the lack of published themes in conjunction with issues when adding features I had on the MT 3.3 version of the site not properly working forced me to rethink the delivery of this site.

So off I went, looking at everything from full-blown CMS to various blog platforms to SharePoint, since it pays my bills ; ).  I’m currently on a Unix hosting provider, so SharePoint is out.  CMS would be overkill for my needs, so those were soon eliminated as well.  WordPress seemed to fit all of my needs and more with extensible plugins, thousands of already free themes, and a simple interactive interface with spam filtering.  Maybe the MT side of the fence will improve, and this site spent a good 5 years on it, but for now WordPress fits the bill a bit better.

I hope you enjoy the new layout, and enjoy!

Over on GigaOM, Anne Zeleka talks about the next social network being WordPress, or blogs in general, and talks about the current DiSo project which is utilizing OpenID as a centralized identity, but allows any user to host his “home” anywhere.  Anne talks up WordPress as that is the first plugin architecture the DiSo project is working with, but with MovableType going Open Source, I’m sure WordPress is only the starting point.  It’s a solid idea, and brings back to the debate about all of these Social Networks, are they a good thing or due to the variety out there actually hinder both the social aspects with contacts you already have and the networking concepts that these sites are trying to provide?

Copyblogger argues on the side of blogs as a better venue / value proposition versus Social Networks, since you can ultimately control your content versus providing your content to grow the value of the network, which you have no monetary interest in.  The site obviously is looking at it from the profiteering perspective, which is valid, but everyone isn’t trying to live (or make money) on their blog.

They both have their place, but the groundswell is getting bigger that it’s too difficult / time consuming to update each social networking site / blog and social networking sites need to be open to help cross-pollenate updates to all of the networks / blogs you so choose.

I’m currently in the middle of my employer’s SharePoint migration from 2003 to 2007, and in the process we’re moving to new hardware, new farm structure, and new availability requirements.  Something that I’m trying to get a handle on is that Database Mirroring only supports up to 10 databases at a time, and this would be a bare MOSS implementation if you would mirror all databases and keep the out of the box SQL 2005 databases (3 SSP, 1 MySite ContentDB, 1 MOSS Content DB, 2 Central Admin DBs, 1 Index DB, 2 ReportServer DBs).  For those implementations that split out their content databases, this would be a significant problem.  Here are some links that help to address the debate on what scenarios you should use for your High Availability application.

• Joel Olson has two posts on Replication and High Availability, and where any SharePoint admin / architect should start:  Replication and High Availability, Mirroring, Log Shipping, and High Availability Resources
• On Technet, there is an article to plan for your availability requirements:  Plan for Availability (Office SharePoint Server)
• Mauro Cardarelli has a brief article on MOSS 2007 and High Availability, mentioning the modes of database mirroring implementation, as well as a link to a Microsoft Article outlining Database Mirroring with Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services:  MOSS 2007 and High Availability
• The last one is a sample high-level solution utilizing database mirroring provided by Scot Hiller:  Database Mirroring in SharePoint 2007 for Disaster Recovery

As for our implementation, we’re currently proceeding with the Database Mirroring approach, since our hardware is already purchased, but there are some other compelling ways to provide seamless high availability posted above.

Today when I was looking at the plethora of “social networking” sites that I already belong to or view posts on, I came to a question that I’m not sure has an answer:  Are several social networks really a good thing?  For the sake of being on the “right” platform for your friends / colleagues / acquaintances, are we diluting whatever message / content / item / link we post?  Let me know what you think either in the comments, or via email.

In the process of test upgrade runs for my company’s implementation of MOSS 2007, our MOSS server threw up a bunch of errors regarding memory being corrupt, etc.  Well the From the Field blog posted a solution that seems to be working in my case.  Basically it involves installing the Microsoft Hotfix 923028 for .NET 2.0, but then also re-entering the username and password for the SharePoint Timer Service.  You can read their post here.