Please test it out if you have a chance and let me know if it works for you. I had trouble with this using my former software, but I am told this is quite stable in WordPress, and I would really like to allow people to do this.
Here’s hoping…
EDIT: just an update. The OpenID plugin seems to be working quite well. Feel free to use OpenID to make comments. 
12 comments April 18th, 2008
And frankly, I’m impressed. This was the easiest software migration I have ever had. To import my DotClear blog into WordPress, all I did was this:
1. Install WordPress, including a new MySQL database.
2. Browse to the admin dashboard and click Manage->Import->DotClear.
3. Input the details for the old database, eg. location, password, etc.
4. Wait a minute.
That was it. It imported all my posts, categories, comments, and even my images. All I had to do was put the posts into categories by hand. I still need to update the blogroll/links and re-theme the site, but that was expected, and I need to do that anyway.
A huge shoutout to WordPress. I am completely impressed!!
(PlanetUbuntu readers: I apologize if there is a flood of my posts on the feed…I had to change the feed url.)
3 comments April 18th, 2008
I have enjoyed using dotclear as my blog software. It is stable and an overall good product. Unfortunately, nearly all of the documentation and files use French. I have been translating into English for everything; plugins, captcha, site templates, and so on.
Well, dotclear just released a security update. That’s a good thing. However, it looks like an upgrade will require me to do more work translating files and so on than I am prepared to do at the moment. It will be just as easy to move to a new piece of software, one that will have an easier maintenance and upgrade path for me.
So, with a fondness in my heart, I am preparing to bid DotClear adieu.
Comments and trackbacks will be closed until after the migration, and no new posts will be made until then. Hopefully, you will see me again soon.
Add comment April 18th, 2008
I’ve had a recent rash of trackback spam, so I am considering turning the trackback feature off. In the last seven months, only spammers have used it anyway. However, I have installed a spam baysian filter that I want to play with and test before I just give up. So, if you see spam links, please know that I am watching, training my filter, and actively fighting them. Hopefully the new toy will work and I won’t have to remove the trackback feature…although I notice the plugin author has done so.
On the positive side, if this works well, I will remove the captcha requirement from posting, even though I wrote all the questions myself and think they are rather amusing.
3 comments April 18th, 2008
All the way back in October 2007 I made two posts about conky, a lightweight and highly configurable system monitor for your desktop.
I still use conky and love it. My configuration changes regularly, especially the colors, but you can get the basic idea from the config files I included in the earlier posts. There is one change I made recently that I would like to highlight because I think others will appreciate it.
Originally, and for many months, I had a line in the configuration that would query a specific website to get my public IP address. I appreciate whatismyip.org allowing people to do this. At the same time, the service has some limitations that I wanted to bypass. For example, you are limited to the number of queries per unit of time, and occasionally I would end up with a conky that included an ugly html page smeared over my desktop instead of a pretty set of IP numbers.
How to fix it?
I decided to do what any good geek would do and make my own IP query site. I won’t share the location, simply because I can’t afford to have 10,000 requests per hour hitting my web server. However, this is something that anyone with web hosting space can do. It is simple.
I just made an unbelievably short php file and uploaded it to my web server. Here is what it contains.
<? $remote = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]; echo $remote; ?>
Yep, that’s it. Put that in a file on your web server with a name like myip.php and test it out by pointing your browser there. If you get your IP address as the response, you are set. Add something like this to your conky file and you are good to go.
${color #FEB60D}Public IP ${color #FECE0D}${execi 360 curl ‘http://yourwebaddress_notmine.com/myip.php’}
4 comments April 16th, 2008
From the article:
The European Parliament’s IT department is testing the use of GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox and other Open Source applications, the British MEP James Nicholson explained last week in a letter to Italian MEP Marco Cappato.
According to Nicholson the tests show this Open Source configuration meets the Parliament’s office requirements. It does not mean that Ubuntu will immediate replace the currently used system, he added. “This depends on long-term developments and needs and functional requirements of the Parliament. The stability of our IT systems is crucial.”
I think this is pretty cool!
1 comment April 11th, 2008
I know he got it from someone else, but I first saw this on Jeff Waugh’s blog. So, my turn.
matthew@telecaster:~$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
166 sudo
63 cd
62 ls
41 clear
22 rm
10 ssh
9 fglrxinfo
8 tar
7 rsync
7 man
6 comments April 10th, 2008
There are lots of good ways to back up your computer. I’ve used several. Lately, I am enjoying the ease, convenience, and quality of rsync. In typical geek fashion, I was perusing the rsync man page the other day and found some nice options that I hadn’t known about, so I started to experiment.
I wanted to back up my laptop to a portable, external hard drive, starting with a full backup, then going to incremental backups after that. I also wanted to make sure the backup was kept in sync with my local hard drive, but without accidentally permanently deleting anything from the backup that I might want or need later. Here is what I came up with, posted here mainly for the sake of my memory, but you might find it interesting as well.
First, to back up the entire hard drive, I need to do this as root. Since I am using Ubuntu, and because I like sudo, I just add that to the beginning of the command and enter my password at the prompt. This reminds me to mention that it is important that your backup be kept in a secure location, just as with your computer. Anyone with physical access to the backup drive will eventually have access to all your data.
Here is the command I used, followed by an explanation of the options I am using.
sudo rsync --force --ignore-errors --delete --delete-excluded --exclude-from=/media/disk/matthew-exclude.txt --backup --backup-dir=`date +%Y-%m-%d` -av / /media/disk/backup/matthew-laptop
Options used:
–force: forces the deletion of directories on the backup drive, even if they are not empty
–ignore-errors: tells –delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O errors
–delete: deletes unnecessary or extra files from destination directories
–delete-excluded: deletes excluded files from destination directories
–exclude-from=/media/disk/matthew-exclude.txt: tells rsync not to backup files or directories listed in this file, which I include on the destination drive (my sample is below)
–backup: creates backups of files before deleting them
–backup-dir=`date +%Y-%m-%d`: creates a backup directory on the destination drive for those backups with today’s date as the directory name
-av: archive mode, which combines lots of great stuff together like preserving file permissions and ownership, and verbose output, which is nice for knowing what is going on
This is my exclude file.
home/lost+found/
home/.Trash-root/
home/matt/.thumbnails/
home/matt/.Trash/
lost+found/
media
mnt
proc
root/.thumbnails/
root/.Trash/
sys
tmp
That’s it. The first time I ran it, it took a long time. Of course, I have some 75 gigabites of data, so that isn’t surprising. After that, only things which have changed need to be transferred or deleted, so the process is quite fast.
17 comments April 8th, 2008
This is a pictorial synopsis of some of the highlights from the 2008 edition of the Ubuntu Forums’ April Fool’s Day celebration. We will see some of the obnoxious color schemes first. I apologize that my AWN launcher bar is visible in many of the shots…I didn’t notice that when I took them. Also, I had to resize them to make them a reasonable size for a blog post. I may upload the originals to the UF gallery later.
Next, you will see many (hopefully all) of the user titles and avatars of staff members who switched with other staff for the day. If I missed anyone, please forgive the unintentional oversight. Then, you will see an Easter egg that not everyone caught.
We will end with one user’s comment on the amusing and garish colors. There was a lot more going on, but this post is already going to include a lot of graphics, even after resizing. Enjoy!
5 comments April 1st, 2008
If you haven’t stopped in at ubuntuforums.org today, be sure you do. I won’t spoil the joke by telling you what it is. If I get some good screenshots, though, I may follow up tomorrow with pictures.
3 comments April 1st, 2008
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