It is a real drag seeing my traffic plummit after a period of absence due to pneumonia. Ah well I am back that’s what’s important. I really missed scribbling up my ponderings here. So let’s get to it.

My new WordPress theme

I have been searching and testing so hard I almost (that’s the truth) forgot the first reason why I have this blog. And that is ofcourse writing stuff down. Shame, a real shame. Okay all over now. What do you think? Is this a usable theme? Is it okay to find your way in? I am real curious. I confess, got my inspiration from Veerle. She changed her styling only a month ago I think and it is gorgious as one commenter put it. Veerle is a professional designer from whom I learn a great deal. Mind you I still have to learn a lot. The thing that makes me drewl a bit at her site and quite a few others is the way they control Adobe Photoshop. Those sites are made with it. A real nice thing to look at.

Stuff I ran into…

Spam, spam and spam again. It is funny to ascertain the fact that as soon as you stop writing, and this is the case in my situation, that those guys start the attack. I don’t know why but I feel glad that I have a really good spam-filter to help me with. Ofcourse I am referring to Akismet. In this past month Akismet has caught 187 spam-comments. Unbelievable. Did you know that 83% of all blog comments is spam? I for sure didn’t. And they all (well nearly all) start with that sentence “probaly you should read this”. I find that intriguing. Were do those guys come from? What do they achieve by spamming? Is it a commercial reason? Or perhaps just a downright annoyance? From my previous websites I keep a (now closed) old guestbook. You know, the pre-blogging days ? Since I made an effort to get noticed on the web they (the spammers) found this guestbook a tasty bit to shoot at. Just idiotic. Dozens of spam I have deleted from this guestbook. Now I have locked the database for writing so they’ll stop I hope.

New stuff on the site

I have implemented, with some difficulty, gravatars by way of three steps. First you’ll have to get yourself a gravatar-picture. Secondly sign yourself up at Gravatar.com from Tom Werner. Thirdly a way to let your own gravatar, and those from other visitors on your site, show up. Tom Werner offers a simple and effective little script. But as always there are more advanced plugins available. First gravatar plugin to mention is the one from Skippy. It is a plugin with lots of possibilities through an admin panel. Secondly the one from Mark Jaquith. This one is quite a bit different. It allows you to extend your comments page with a direct sign-up feature.

That was my stuf after a period of silence. Rest assured, more to come. Ideas in my head tell me so. Bye.

Slow is a pain in the …. So I had to get things faster. I am not praised for my patience so I need things fast. Posts, pages, scripts, all faster. Huh. Am I losing it? No, stuff, pc’s and so on must work with lightning speed. I am a dutchie, so in Holland we say “You paid for it so I want it”. How many transactions per nano-/millisecond? Millions, trillions? Don’t know. But WP is sooooo damned slow I had to crank it by hand almost. Found a solution. One who isn’t strong must be smart, ain’t that so! I found Owen Winkler through (who else) Lorelle. Owen had it. A twin-turbo to boot WP into sixth gear, I hope. Take advantage of it, use it, drive a Ferrari or a Beetle? Your choice.

Update:

Yes ladies and boys, it certainly is faster. Testdrive came out at 200mph. Not bad for WordPress version 2.01 hey? Let’s hear it for WordPress.