Peoria Pundit

I’ve been under the weather. In fact, I had to go to the doctor. I spent 2 hours 45 minutes at St. Francis Prompt Care. The doctor was in the same room for me for a grand total of five minutes (thanks crappy PPO!). And isn’t there a rule about sticking a patient into a windowless exam room and not checking their well-being for 45 minutes? And I would like to thank the OSF employee who cooked his/her lunch in a microwave while I was waiting. I fasted in anticipation of tests that never happened (thanks crappy PPO!) and the hunger pangs were quite an interesting experience.

I’ve been treated with more compassion about my well-being by jail guards. But then, jail guards face consequences when people they are watching keel over and die.

Anyway, I still feel like crap. I am insufficiently medicated (thanks crappy PPO!) and I really don’t feel like blogging and I probably won’t tomorrow either.

Thanks commenters for making the site so lively today.

For those so inclined, please click on the PayPal button on the right and contribute to The Blog Peoria Project. Your donation helps defray the not-inconsequential costs of dedicated virtual private server hosting, technical support and and Internet access.

The following is an update I sent out via email to Blog Peoria members:

If you’re getting this update, it’s because you have signed up for a blog, make frequent comments on or have registered with the Blog Peoria Project.

Sometime this evening, I’m going to be upgrading the software that operates the Blog Peoria Project. During the upgrade, the site — including member blogs — might be down.

Once the upgrade, readers won’t notice much difference right off the bat. Those who operate blogs will notice the dashboard is very different. It has all the functionality of the current version of Word Press Multi-User (WPMu) software we’re using now, but the layout of the pages are different and might take some getting used to. I recommend watching some of the videos at WordPress.tv to see what I mean.

The upgrade is necessary because, as we’ve learned from experience, the longer you put off scheduled upgrades, the harder it is to get technical support. NO ONE wants to muddle around with out-of-date code.

And there are other benefits. This new version will let users add captions to photographs. There’s going to be a “turbo” button that might speed up page loads for regular users. There’s an integrated admin bar across the top of the pages, and it’s much prettier than the one I had hacked together some months ago.

And it will allow us to use the nifty new Buddy Press social networking plugins that will let Blog Peoria members communicate with each other. Trust me, you will like it.

If you have any questions or concerns, let me know.

On this days (actually yesterday) in 2003, the notion of the blogging platform that would become Word Press was conceived. Congratulations Matt.

I started thinking about the Blogoversaries of Peoria-area bloggers, so I brought back the page that listed the dates. I look a look at it and realized how out fo date it was. I went through by blogroll and started adding dates that I could find. I’m no where near complete, of course, and I am hampered by the fact that many blogs (myself included) don’t have archive listings. I strongly recommend them, even if it’s on a page separate from your main site.

I went through my mail and added the dates that have already been sent to me. I’ll continue to go through my blogroll as time permits and ads those dates that I find. But If you are a blogger and want your blog birthdate listed, be sure to contact me to ensure your site gets listed.

I am coming up on a serious deadline for for freelancing work, so blogging will be light this coming week. If any of my regular contributors have anything to say or share, now would be a good time.

Out of necessity, I have gone back to the previous theme, and tweaked out almost all of the plugins that I have been using. I needed this page and the Blog Peoria Project home page to load faster and reduce the number of database queries. I’ll pick up where I left off after the first of February and upgrade to WordPress Mu 2.7 and finally (maybe) install the BuddyPress networking software.

Folks, moments ago, I put in motion a move to yet another server.

The current host was not working out.

The move also should resolve the several important technical difficulties.

So, the site may go dark, perhaps for as long as a day or two. Or it might not go dark at all.

And this will affect all Blog Peoria Blogs.

It was unavoidable. And rather than try to make the change piecemeal I thought it best to pull the Band Aid off with one tug.

Ouch.

I’m doing the overtime thing at work on Saturday and Sunday, and I spent most of my free time writing an article. So, blogging will be light.

If you follow Peoria blogs, you probably recognize David P. Jordan. He’s an expert on transportation issues, and posts comments here and at Peoria Chronicle quite frequently. He’s written several guest posts at the former Peoria Pundit site and also ran a blog here.

He’s decided to start blogging here at the Blog Peoria Network. His new site is called “Peoria Station,” and he has two posts up already. He’s going to be at Peoria Railfair 2008 all weekend, so stop by and say “hello.”