Wordpress Blog Software

Just in time for the holidays, Wordpress releases a new upgrade – Version 2.9, named “Carmen” in honor of jazz vocalist Carmen McRae.

The upgrade process is fairly easy if you have any of the later versions of Wordpress (you have been upgrading haven’t you?).  Just go to Tools then Upgrade or you can download a copy directly from http://www.wordpress.org

So what’s different?  A number of things, but most it is in the back end and you’ll never get to play with it.  There are a few things that were changed, so pay attention:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

Some SEO enhancements with the “rel=canonical” now included. The WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE was also upgraded. And more than 500 tickets, bugs and enhancements have been addressed in this release.

There’s even a hint, or blatant statement, that Wordpress 3.0 will be gearing up soon. They’re looking at a possible release some time in Spring 2010.

It’s Christmas time.  It’s one of the busiest times of the year for online shopping.  It’s 4am and someone trips over the power cord! – TWICE

Ok, so it’s not just a power cord, it’s a BIG power cord!  Two power components at one of Amazon’s data centers resulted in some of the EC2 operations going offline on December 9th for up to 44 minutes.  According to an Amazon spokesman, “a single component of the redundant power distribution system failed.  Prior to completing the repair of this unit, a second component, used to assure redundant power paths, failed as well, resulting in a portion of the servers in that availability zone losing power.”

Again we see the power of “Cloud Hosting” and just how redundant the system really is.  For weeks, if not months, we have heard about how wonderful “The Cloud” is and how in coming months or years we’ll see ALL hosting companies go the route of hosting on “The Cloud”.  Personally, I don’t have much faith in it.  T-Mobile, Microsoft, RackSpace, Amazon, and other giants have had a number of issues in recent months that while they may not have been CLOUD related, they were all hosting on The Cloud and touting how redundant the system is.

It reminds me of a ship almost 100 years ago in which people claimed it was too big to sink.  There’s so many redundant parts to the ship that even God himself couldn’t sink it.  Yet, in just a few hours, the massive ship, The Titanic, went from floating to sunk, along with those responsible for the design of the ship.

I don’t believe in a 100% redundant system, there’s always a chance of failure, but somehow those in the media (and hosts too) claim the web is secure, stable and redundant, and just ignore the other facts presented to them.

Google has entered the realm of making URLs shorter! Google claims that the new URL service that they are offering is more secure than others because it warns the user of malware before clicking the link. I welcome this. How often are we viewing a page or posting via Twitter or FaceBook where a user links off to another location but it’s up in the air if you really should click the link – who knows where they are sending you to!

RackSpace goes offline, AGAIN, and takes part of the web with it. For the second time in two months, RackSpace has taken a hit in the face with outages. This time it wasn’t a power outage, but the result was still the same; no websites for a lot of companies that depend on the web as their sole source of income. The outage affected hundreds, if not thousands of web hosting companies that resell RackSpace’s service to their customers also. A lot of money lost in SLA’s and the 100% uptime guarantee!

cPanel is a very popular control panel software operated by web hosting companies and loved by web hosting customers. A new report of phishing attacks have been reported by Trusteer, the makers of Rapport, which is designed to harvest FTP login information of site owners using a cPanel-oriented message.

cpanel web hosting is more than just a WHM interface. Experienced hosts know how to optimize the software and create a safe and secure environment for customers. Hands-on Web Hosting has been committed to cPanel web hosting for almost a decade! We know what we’re doing!

Have you ever wondered why so many IT departments ban the use of P2P Networks?  There’s really a simple answer – SECURITY.  Well there’s that, and then there’s the exploit of copyrights as people share music and videos with other people who they don’t know.  What happens when one of those users is a government [...]