Peoria Pundit

Since you are reading this, you should know that the site upgrade went well.

I swore a couple dozen times at Comcast, since they seemed intent on giving me the lowest cable Internet connection known to mankind.

I’ve eyeballed a dozen member blogs, and all seems to be well.

Unless you are a registered and logged in member, you won’t notice many changes. Members will notice they can use Buddy Press to communicate in many ways with other Blog Peoria Project member. New plugins will allow then to easily pass along links to other member blogs, and keep track up new posts and comments all across the Blog Peoria site.

One of the new features is that is allows for captioning of photos, which I am going to attempt here:

Kevin Connolly is still recovering from the "trauma" of filming a love scene with Hollywood siren Scarlett Johansson, because he perspired so much preparing for his big moment.

Yeah, Kevin. I’d sweat too. But not over this upgrade.

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 NO ONE wants to muddle around with out-of-date code.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.