bucketFountain » bucket fountain

Ode to WordPress

ben — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:56:42 +0000

Upgrading WordPress to 2.8.5 was unbelievably fast. I use the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin and after clicking the “automatic update” link the site was upgraded in the time it took to reload the page. It seems too good to be true.

WordPress is a great system from my point of view – I’ve always found it reasonably easy to theme, it has a beautiful user interface, and does just what I need it to do which is allow me to talk shite.

New design for the old site

ben — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:35:45 +0000

At last a new design. I disliked the last redesign but am a little happier with this one. It remains a work in progress. It works in IE6 and the usual Firefox, Opera, Safari, but at the time of writing it is untested in Chrome, IE7 and IE8. Tomorrow is another day though. Then I really must upgrade!

Six years

ben — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:14:19 +0000

Tomorrow marks the 6th anniversary of bucketFountain. w00t.

Redesign

ben — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:10:43 +0000

After many years (maybe 4?) of using the same theme I thought it was time for a change. I’m still not really satisfied with it, but I’m hoping it will spur me on to keep working on it.

pwned!

ben — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:18:09 +0000

After nearly 6 years of trouble free interneting, bucketFountain was compromised by evil-doers. The exploit involved changing a theme file so that it called a javascript file that inserted all sorts of hidden spam links into the footer. While I confess many of the links looked highly interesting, they had to go. The worst thing is that bucketFountain has been blacklisted by the almighty Google.

Needless to say I immediately upgraded (which was long overdue) and replacing the offending file in the theme.

A number of good things have come out of this:

WordPress 2.5 is spiffing
This chap has a rather useful category on WordPress security
The WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WPAU) is excellent

If you run WordPress, check your blogs source now and go straight to the bottom, it will be obvious if there’s a problem.

Birthdays

ben — Mon, 28 May 2007 10:51:41 +0000

Yesterday marked the fifth birthday of bucketFountain. I find it pretty amazing, I have a shockingly bad memory but I can clearly remember the day I set the site up (a tiny desk; a Dell laptop with a series of keys that didn’t work; two very shifty aussie flatmates in a shite flat in London; a warm sunny day; it was late afternoon…). It doesn’t seem like yesterday, so I guess that’s what five years feels like.

Also, this time last year we were enjoying the weekend after Webstock 2006. That seems like much longer than 12 months ago!

BucketFountain search terms

wakeme — Thu, 03 May 2007 08:56:50 +0000

The most interesting part of looking at site stats are the search terms people have used to find the site. Sometimes they’re lewd, sometimes they’re slightly odd, and sometimes people just need a hand with something. Take, for example, this poor chap:

dsl-g604t not connecting with windows vista

Oh dear! Well, on this happy occasion I’m glad I can guide this reader to a solution.

WordPress upgrade

ben — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:24:39 +0000

Another painful upgrade, although I guess I’ll get used to them. What I hate is that the site is down and I’m never sure how long for. That’s mostly due to the slow FTP speed I get with Bluehost. It’s certainly something I don’t want to do regularly, but I was unlucky enough to upgrade to WordPress 2.1.1 which had been compromised by a cracker. 2.1.2 fixed that, but no upgrading for me unless necessary or highly beneficial.

We’re back

wakeme — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:48:48 +0000

After a hiatus, bucketFoutain is back!

A new post at last

wakeme — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 09:28:56 +0000

Oh momma it’s been a long time!! The site has been migrated to WordPress and is on a new host. I like WordPress so far, yet the stability of the host is yet to be determined.