Time to stop using GoDaddy?

Got some interesting emails this morning. One was from Jetpack (an add-on service that provides a lot of great extra features for WordPress) telling me that it noticed the site was not responding. The other was from GoDaddy excitedly explaining that my hosting account was updated and now had a new IP.

Hmm… Coincidence that the IP was changed and the site no longer responded? I think not…

Fortunately, I was still able to connect to the database and access all of the WordPress files manually. After a frustrating hour or so of poking around, I managed to discover that the database hostname had changed. An update to the wp-config file to supply the new hostname and all was right with the site again.

This sort of frustrating thing isn’t the first time GoDaddy annoyed me. Once, they went and updated the version of php used on another site I had, which still used some deprecated php code that no longer worked with the new version. That was an even more frustrating problem to figure out, since there was no info whatsoever that the change had been made. At least this time, there was a clue that a change on their end could have been responsible and helped point me in the right direction.

I think that in this latest scenario, perhaps I’ve got my WordPress installed in a somewhat non-standard way for GoDaddy? (I can’t imagine they would have had a change like this break things for everyone that hosts a WordPress install on their system, but who knows…)

But still… Some advance notice on these sorts of things might be nice?

Still Alive!

Wow! It’s been far too long since posting anything here. I kept meaning to add some new content, but kept putting it off. Amidst the constant work of my day job, this site just hadn’t been a priority at all. But having recently been hit in a major layoff has freed up some time (how’s that for a silver lining?) Now I’m taking the chance to get caught up on a lot of photography projects, housework, reading, and video games before deciding what to do next, as well as figuring out how I’d like to handle this site for the future. I certainly know I want to keep it around, but also that doing constant blogging isn’t something I’m super interested in. Nor is this a great place for my daily photo project (that’s still handled on Flickr.)

In any case, it’s been nice to at least get logged back in, apply some patches, and write a new post!

And here’s a recent photograph for good measure:

On a recent trip to Hanford, CA for Thanksgiving, we met the “midnight rooster”. So called because he would start crowing at midnight. It was very annoying…

Yes, I’m still here!

It’s true, the blog hasn’t had photo of the day in a while, but that doesn’t mean it stopped. No, it’s just that while out of town for the weekend and then recovering from a cold, I’ve decided that perhaps having photo of the day both here and on Flickr is a bit of an annoying (and redundant) hassle.

So instead of posting to both Flickr and here every single day, I’ve decided to experiment with some changes. Photo of the day will continue to be on Flickr (just as it always has and has been for the past few days), but the blog will start to serve a different purpose and might not always be updated daily. Most likely, I’ll do some occasional “catch-up” posts that include photos of the day from the past week or so, or perhaps only just some highlights. Not quite sure about exact timing yet, but I’ll try a few things and see how it goes.

It’ll also be a place for writing more about photography when I get the chance and posting photo sets.

In any case, to check out the past few photos of the day, head on over to Flickr! At least until I have a chance to get this place caught up.

Cheers,

Brian

Comment Spam of the Week

One of the more “entertaining” aspects of having a blog is the comment spam. When I first launched the site, I left off any sort of spam catching system because I just wanted to see what happened and how soon spam might start appearing. At first, it was pretty clear. Last week, there was a slight trickle. But then, starting about this past Sunday, the deluge finally hit.

Enabling Next/Previous Post Links in WordPress

Hello! One of the major points of this blog will be to share some of the things I’m learning as I go through the process of creating and improving it. I just recently added a new feature — the ability for posts to have “Next Post” and “Previous Post” navigation links at the bottom — and I figured that it might be helpful to someone out there if I explained how it’s done. Plus, someone might even have a better way that they could share ;-)

www.brianjmatis.com launch! [2003]

View full size

Today was a big day: I launched my new website at www.brianjmatis.com!

Launch day!

I’m pleased to announce the official re-launch of www.brianjmatis.com!

“Re-launch? I didn’t even know there was a www.brianjmatis.com, or if I did know, I didn’t realize you still cared about it. I just thought your flickr was the place to see your photos.”

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Note from Brian: I suppose you’re supposed to remove this post, but I think it’s kinda fun to keep it around. At least for a little while :-)