A few changes have occurred here over the last few days in attempts to streamline the backend of things. What most folks may not realize when they visit my little corner of blogdom is that there is a heck of a lot of content that has gone into Justhinkin’ over the last year and 4 months and a rather large database that backs it up. Along with this are the several plugins that I installed and have been using to make the blog function as it does and it was time to clean house. So for those that are interested, here’s what the “Spring Cleaning” has brought about.
Tagging:
After many months (and successful hacks) of Christine Davis’s, Ultimate Tag Warrior I came to the point where I had to finally bid farewell to the venerable plugin in favor of the newer Simple Tagging plugin by Amaury Balmer. Since I used UTW for the Related Posts only, a function that tied similar posts together, I had been on the lookout for some time for a replacement that wasn’t quite so “industrial strength”. The plugin isn’t perfect and has it’s own set of problems (but so did UTW) but the overall function works just fine and it imported all of my UTW tags and assignments without a hitch. Continued development of the plugin is also happening which is a plus. It’s also less of a load on the blog overall so the loading time is bit faster.
For those of you wondering what’s going to happen when Wordpress 2.3 arrives and there is no option to import the tags from Simple Tagging into the new built in tagging system as there will be for UTW, fear not…there is a plugin already made for it. (only alpha builds at the moment).
Spamments:
I’ve dropped Bad Behavior finally and am just using Akismet backed up with Spam Karma 2.3 and the Simple Trackback Validation plugins to handle all my spam. The reason for this was to eliminate one more set of tables in my database. My database was getting rather large due to all the plugins that installed these additional tables and it was slowing things down to where it was noticeable. I could stand to lose at least one of my anti-spam plugins and Bad Behavior (which was occasionally blocked more than it should), was it. Nothing against this great anti-spam plugin, it just became rather redundant after awhile and since my host allots a huge amount of bandwidth per month, the extra bandwidth used by not having Bad Behavior installed is minor. So far, everything spammish is just fine and dandy and I’ve picked up even a bit more speed as well.
Text Link Ads:
And last but not least, I’ve removed the Text Link Ads: script and plugin from Just Thinkin as well. It never did produce anything since I installed it even though I have a PR 5 rating and an improving Alexa rank. Nothing against these guys but it eliminated yet another two tables from the database and things are breathing easier in all respects. Perhaps someone finding themselves with several hundred visitors a day will have better luck than I did.
Finally, I used my old WP-PhpMyAdmin plugin to bang into my database and cleaned things up by deleting these unused tables and optimizing all the ones that showed any overhead. The latter, like defragmenting your hard drive, never lasts but it never hurts either. The above plugin has been out of development for a while now it seems but it’s never failed to perform through the upgrades and beats the you-know-what out of having to go into my host’s Cpanel and getting to the database that way.
Anyway, the blog has a bit more breathing room now and it seems to have a much more solid feel to it much like your car does after a thorough tune up. And I have increased my level of experience in the ever changing world of WP blogging another notch.
That’s it for now. Because of the way I’ve been feeling of late it took me an unbelievable amount of time just to pound out this little blurb here. I intended to have three done while I was down and out today but it obviously didn’t happen. And I don’t see any improving on the health situation anywhere in the near future and I’m sure things here are going to suffer here because of it but until I and the good folks at the VA can get a handle on things, it’s just something I have to deal with. I’ll keep plugging along of course and there will be more of my amazing blurbs here for all to read but things are simply going to have to slow down for awhile.
Have a good night all.
Technorati tags: UTW, simple tagging, tagging, anti spam, wordpress, text link ads
Tags: bad behavior, ultimate tag warrior
Comments 2
KirkM, how long did you try out TLA? I find that you’ve got to wait about 2 months to see much activity.
Posted 31 May 2007 at 6:42 am ¶Hi Ryan,
I can’t remember the exact date but it was over two months ago I’m sure about that. I’m not really complaining any. I saw that there was a lot of emphasis put on BlogLines subscriptions which I don’t currently have and I may not be promoting that end of it correctly. I also emailed TLA about using the anti-Spam Bot plugin, “Bad Behavior” wondering if that might be keeping the TLA servers from properly monitoring my blog. I know I had to allow the “maintenance” bot from my host when I found out it was being blocked by the plugin. Unfortunately the only answer I received was that no one knew what “Bad Behavior” was.
I’m still willing but this is a personal type blog and as such I don’t figure on gaining much more in Rank and Rating than I have already. if you have any suggestions at all I’d be more than glad to listen.
Have a great day.
Posted 31 May 2007 at 9:26 am ¶Post a Comment