Upgrading to WordPress

One of the biggest dangers associated with having as many websites as I do — a good half-dozen, at the last count, including this one, this one and this one — is that it’s hard to keep generating content for all of them. And, while I’ve been busy writing about all manner of other things, I’ve been sadly neglecting my very own site. I looked at it recently and realised that I hadn’t updated the content in over a year and a half.

My website, before rebuilding in WordPress

The irony, of course, was that I’ve been working on plenty of other sites about, and for, other people and other things. I’ve been using WordPress as my new primary web-design tool; it’s gone way beyond the blogging engine it used to be and has become a fully-featured and quite mature content-management system. I’ve been taking advantage of its flexibility for my other concerns and clients, so I decided it was time to rebuild my own site in WordPress.

The problem was, I built my site a couple of years ago in DreamWeaver, and I quite liked the look of it. It wasn’t, I’ll admit, the absolute last word in design — I’m much more the writer and technician; the lovely and talented Mrs. McCabe is very much the designer of the operation — but I was fond of it. The challenge was how to re-purpose the design I’d created in DreamWeaver as a WordPress theme.

In the end, it turned out to be quite remarkably easy. I’ll post a complete blow-by-blow one of these days; for the time being, here are the basic steps:

• Install WordPress on my hosting service. This was quite straightforward — my hosting service use Fantastico De Luxe, a very simple couple-of-clicks installation system. Once it was set up, it was time to
• Create a new theme. This basically required two files in a folder in the Themes directory of my WordPress installation. Despite what I’ve read elsewhere, it looks like all that’s required is a basic template file, index.php, and a stylesheet, stylesheet.css — so long as those two are there, you’re in business. The next step was to
• Upload the stylesheet. A little bit of tweaking of the .css file and it was ready to upload to the server. This contained all the designy goodness of the site; all that was left, now, was to
• Replace verbiage in the home page to WordPress .php code. This was the tricky bit, but, with a fair old bit of trying, reloading, re-trying, re-reloading and so forth, it turned out to be a fairly straightforward process.

So there it is. SteveMcCabe.net is now live again. It’s all but indistinguishable from the old version. I did make a couple of very small adjustments that I’ve been meaning to make for a while, but otherwise the site’s where I wanted it to be.

Tags: CMS, Me, Software, web, website, WordPress

Bing lacks bling

Steve’s TechBlog is back following a hiatus brought about by a relocation from Florida to the southern hemisphere; Three Lions Technologies‘ southern headquarters is now operational in Auckland, at the pointy end of New Zealand, and I find myself rethinking much of what I have, heretofore, taken for granted in the north.

I’ve been playing around with Bing. No, i’ve not been rehearsing White Christmas, even though it’s cold enough down here lately for a good, solid snowfall to feel quite likely. No, I’ve been taking a look at Microsoft’s latest slightly embarrassing attempt at catch-up.

I’m usually a charitable kind of chap, but when it comes to Microsoft all semblance of charity pretty much goes up the chimney with the flames of the quite magnificent wood fire that’s heating Three Lions’ southern HQ. This is the company, after all, that inflicted an animated paper clip on the world, and the world still hasn’t quite forgiven it. This is, after all, the company which has built a hegemony that would put the Roman Empire at its most hegemonous to shame, on the basis not that its products are actually any bloody good, but that they’re inescapable. Microsoft’s logic, were we back in the middle ages, would be comparable to people trying to persuade their mates to catch bubonic plague simply because everyone else had it.

But things are starting to change, and the change is most clearly illustrated by the iPod and Microsoft’s supposed iPod killer, the Zune. (As an aside, one of the great failings of plain text is that it’s pretty much impossible to convey the contempt, the derision, the utter scorn, that I usually manage to put into my pronunciation of the word Zune. Simple ASCII code cannot, just cannot, do justice to the Zooooon.) Microsoft were, clearly, gutted when they realised that someone else — not just anyone, but Apple, of all people — had not only managed to completely own a market, but had, in fact, first of all defined that market, then taken total control of it. Innovation, as we’re all no doubt aware, isn’t Microsoft’s strongest suit; instead of trying, then, to define their own new market, they introduced a “rival” (as though it came even close) to the iPod.

I’ve seen a Zune. One. It was on the plane that took me from Los Angeles to Auckland in April. I suspect that its owner had been kicked out of the US. I also suspect that, as soon as NZ customs found it, they destroyed it on the spot. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? The Zune has failed, woefully and extensively, even to disturb the sleep of the iPod’s creators.

And now we see Microsoft trying to do the same thing with The Google. Once again, a Silicon Valley company have defined, and then owned, a market. And, once again, Microsoft are mightily pissed off about it. But, rather than actually trying to do something new, they are, once again, playing Johnny Come Very, Very Lately. The Google own the search market. To Google has become a very, very widespread verb. I simply don’t see to Bing catching on. I’ve looked around, I’ve played with it, but I really don’t see Bing bringing anything new to the search-engine table.

Others have tried. Recently. Wolfram Alpha, the much-vaunted intelligent search engine, failed quite extensively to do any real damage to The Google’s stranglehold on the search market. I’m sure it will, in its maturity, come to have a small but very clearly defined user base who will relish its cross-referencing splendidness. But even The Google have failed to expand on the simplicity of the Google Search Experience. Google Squared, their latest attempt to move beyond themselves, has yet to set the public’s imagination aflame. And if even The Google can’t improve on Google, why would Microsoft?

Let’s face it — Bing is the new Zune.

iLife ’09 review

After not inconsiderable (and, at the time of writing, ongoing) grief, I’ve finally received my copy of iLife ’09, the latest iteration of Apple’s lifestyle-app suite. It’s slimmed down in interesting ways — the packaging, typical of just about all Apple’s consumer-level software (including Mac OS X, server edition included), is a small, slightly-larger-than-a-CD-sized box, with, intriguingly, a list of all four applications in the suite on the back.

Yes, all four. And they would be, in the order listed, iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iWeb, all of ’09 vintage. iDVD appears to have become Apple’s latest red-headed stepchild, consigned to the software naughty corner along with AppleWorks, OpenDoc and the late, sadly lamented HyperCard. (iTunes, of course, isn’t part of iLife any more; it’s been quietly spun off as an adjunct of Apple’s iPortable line.)

There is, increasingly, a degree of integration between the various members of the ever-shrinking iLife family, but, in the end, they’re four different, individual, stand-along programmes, each with its own focus and purpose. It seems only fitting, then, that Steve’s TechBlog gives each programme its very own review.

iPhoto ’09 Rating:

GarageBand ’09 Rating:

iMovie ’09 Rating:

iWeb ’09 Rating:

Tags: Apple, iLife, review, Software