[rmfo-blogs.com]: About

It was time to clear out some old blogs. I can always bring them back if you decide to get to blogging again …

Just a reminder to everyone; if you go more than a year without posting, we’ll shut down the blog, just to minimize the amount of administrative time required to keep everything up-to-date. Of course, we lovingly save everything in mothballs, waiting for your return.

[Yes, I'm clearing out accounts today. Why do you ask?]

Several of our blogs hadn’t seen new posts in over a year. That leads me to believe that their owners have abandoned them. To limit my administrative overhead—it was about a third of the overall blogs, and the amount of weekly administrative overhead I have clearing out the spam traps does add up after a while—I have applied the process I use for the shutdown policy and cleared out 21 old blogs. They are:

• april
• botter
• brian
• colleen
• exodus16_36
• gravygirl
• harmon
• jaymcpherson
• jgreen
• jim
• jonesie
• kizer
• la
• lauren
• leetaft
• lovejungle
• luke
• mike
• ross
• whitey
• zach

If this included you and you still want to blog, please be in touch.

I’m experimenting with subdomains, and I’m using this blog to do it, so … things could break.

As you may have noticed, the fine folks at WordPress have released WP v2.2.2 into the (deuces) wild. I have taken the unusual step of upgrading RMFO-Blogs users first, rather than RMFO-Pro users. Why? Simply put, RMFO-Blogs has been getting hammered because of some Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerabilities in themes. As a result of these vulnerabilities, I made use of the WordPress scanner at BlogSecurity.net to check all activated themes as I did the upgrades. If your theme was vulnerable, I moved you to the WordPress Default theme for the time being.

There is a discussion topic on the Rumor Forum on how to fix your themes. I’m happy to help you do it, but I didn’t have time to do the fixes while trying to secure the server. Having a secure server was far more important to me than having everyone’s theme look pretty today.

2117 CDT: All RMFO-Pro users are now up-to-date.

As I noted last night, RMFO-Blogs’s WordPress installations are the reason that the server has been compromised of late. Starting in the next 15 minutes, I’ll be making upgrades to RMFO-Blogs installations. If you’ve bookmarked your WordPress admin pages, those URLs are going to change. Why? If all of WordPress’s files are in /wordpress/, things get far, far, far easier to update. That hard-to-update nature is why your installs are all out-of-date. I’ve got to fix this, and it’ll just take time tonight, but that’s why they pay me the big bu— … wait, no.

Anyhow. I appreciate your patience, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Update, 23 Jun: All re-architecting and upgrades are complete. Let me know if you have any problems.

A day late, and a dollar short, but we’re open for new business again. Please see the new FAQ on how to get an RMFO-Blog.

The upgrade to WP 2.0.2 will be finished by tomorrow (Sunday) night. I’ll re-open signups come Monday.

With the release of WordPress 2.0, I’ve got a ton of upgrades to do … 82, in fact. RMFO-Pro bloggers get priority [they'll be done in the next week], and after that, everyone else will get done. My no-later-than date is 30 days from today, 26 Jan 2006. I hope to be done well before that.

If you’re curious as to where your install lies in the priority chain, leave a comment or contact me otherwise.

As a result, signups are suspended until further notice.

Given the bugs that have shown up in the 2.0 builds presently available and the likelihood that 2.0.1 [or some other numbering scheme] will come out, upgrades have been suspended until further notice.

While I wasn’t paying attention, Rich Manalang updated his WP-Amazon plugin. I have taken the time tonight to roll out that plugin to all [rmfo-blogs] users.

I have inputted the old [caedmonscall.net] Associates ID on everyone’s installs. If you use this plugin to grab images or add links to books you’ve read or music you’re listening to and people check out those links and then buy stuff on Amazon, we get a cut of the sale. As you know, [rocksmyfaceoff.net] is a non-profit, so this is another way you can help us out.

I have taken the time today to install Mint on [rmfo-blogs.com], and I’ll very soon [within an hour] have the WP-Mint plugin rolled out on everyone’s installations.

Check out the glory of Mint as it analyzes the visitors to [rmfo-blogs.com].

After some testing, I’m rolling out Bad Behavior protection here on [rmfo-blogs.com] yet again. If you or your users are, for some reason, blocked, please contact me: there are ways to find out why people are blocked, and we can always unblock them.

Two notes, if you change themes:

1. You’ll remove all Referrer Karma blocking and Refer logging, unless you put the hooks in for each. If you can’t figure out how to do that, send me a PM and let me know A) what theme you were using and B) what theme you’re going to so that I can show you how to get the hooks put in the appropriate places.
2. You will want to go to Spam Karma [Options --> Spam Karma 2] and run the compatibility checks on your new comment form. I was doing my usual comment spam rounds just now, and I found one case where a new theme’s comments-posting form was very outdated and didn’t have the programmatic hooks that let SK2 do its job. [b]That will, at the end of the day, largely keep people from being able to leave comments on your Weblog.[/b] The checks are automatic, and they’ll give you reasssurance if everything’s kosher, and directions on how to fix it if not.

As always, let me know if you have questions.

The signup suspension is over. As always, please read the FAQ before making your request.

Signups for [rmfo-blogs.com] are suspended while I prepare to upgrade all Weblogs to WordPress 1.5.1.

As an experiment—but also because I think it’s worth doing—users will now be required to register before they’re allowed to leave comments.

I suggest that all rmfo-blogs users sign up for an account at their earliest convenience. [Like, um, now, since you're reading this.]

As many RMFO-Bloggers know, WordPress version 1.5 has hit the streets. I’m testing it out here on the About log; this is my first 1.5 install, so I’m going to poke around with it for a little bit. Everyone will get an update before I start rolling out WP 1.2 –> 1.5 upgrades.

Notice: Beginning 2300 CDT 09/17/2004, all [rmfo-blogs.com] Weblogs will be unavailable. We are tranisitioning to our new server, and all logs must be disabled during the move so that entries and comments are not lost in the shuffle. The move should take approximately one hour and the DNS propogation could take anywhere from 12-24 hours.

Okay, so WordPress 1.2 has been released for months, but I finally got everyone [save for Peter, Bryan, and Joe] upgraded to it today.

Phew.

I knew that we had a large number of Weblogs hosted at this service, but I did not know that we had 50 of them. Count them up, though, and we do.

Yes, it’s a feat only because our nature causes us to think that numbers divisible by ten are cool—I guess it’s that whole fingers thing—but this is far beyond what I thought the initial experiment would have seen us approach.

Wow.

All RMFO-Bloggers, Pro and not, active and inactive, are now in the sidebar.

Look through the list and see if you’re missing someone!

It makes no sense to run a system of community Weblogs and not have a log about the system itself.

I hope that this log will be of use to someone as I develop it.