The Mingle forum was also updated to version 1.0.29 and the Cartpauj Private Messaging plugin to version 1.0.09.

All appears to be working OK, contact admin if there are any problems.

We have recently been trialling the Stop Spammers Plugin from Keith Graham and [...]]]> Right from the start of this little project, Spam attempts on the forum have been a real pain. No great issue for the site, but it can just take a lot of time cleaning up the dodgy user registrations and notifications.

We have recently been trialling the Stop Spammers Plugin from Keith Graham and I must say that I’m pretty impressed. The occasional Spamming b***** gets through, but most are blocked at the registration stage. This makes things much more manageable.  It is  a great contribution from Kieth, who is not only a star web-citizen, but also a sci-fi writer and a bee-keeper as well!! Anyone who keeps bees scores top marks in my books – it’s a really important topic. Visit his West Nyack Honey website or Wandering Blog , his personal blog.

I’ve only been signed up with the new hosting company, Farbyte.com, for a couple of weeks and no problems up to now. They appear to give a much better [...]]]> The transfer to the new hosting server was completed yesterday. After a bit of fiddling with the WordPress database, everything seems to be working again.

I’ve only been signed up with the new hosting company, Farbyte.com, for a couple of weeks and no problems up to now. They appear to give a much better service than the last lot – the pages load fast, the database in particular is much quicker, and the support guys respond promptly (that’s a nice change!).

Of course, as soon as the new forum came back online with the correct web address, it got hit by dozens of attempted Spam logins!  Most of this batch came from Russian IP addresses. They are just a total pain and can be time consuming to clean up. However I’m trialling another WordPress plugin to filter them at the registration stage.

However there is some new activity. Most importantly, I am in the middle of changing web hosting provider, [...]]]> As you may know if you have visited these pages over the last few months, all development on this site has been put on hold recently. There has just been too many other things to do!

However there is some new activity. Most importantly, I am in the middle of changing web hosting provider, so this site is moving to a new server. The changeover process is fraught with several difficulties and will take some time to complete. Most of the issues are connected with the poor administration and support of the old provider.

The other significant change is that I have now abandoned the old forum entirely. It has been disabled most of the time, because it attracts a staggering number of Spammers, but hardly any real members. The software used was very good indeed, but technically quite tricky and too time consuming to administer. I have now installed an alternative forum, Mingle, which integrates fully with WordPress and is simpler to run.

The web page performance issues appear to be much improved. The hosting company have been well aware of the problems and although they have not provided details, they have taken some actions.  There are still odd occasions when a page times-out [...]]]> Not much has happened on the site recently – busy doing other things!

The web page performance issues appear to be much improved. The hosting company have been well aware of the problems and although they have not provided details, they have taken some actions.  There are still odd occasions when a page times-out or just fails to load, but also periods when response from the server is quite good.

Due to the high volume of attempted SPAM attacks on the forum, I have switched to a semi-manual sign-up checking process. Unfortunately this may lead to some delays in confirming registrations. This process is under review and may change in future.  If you have any problems registering then please send a follow-up message via the Contact form.

Website performance problems continue to be the major outstanding issue. This is caused by very slow access to the MySQL database server at various times. The issue is extremely erratic – during quiet times of the day performance is [...]]]> Some addtional content for the information pages has been done, but otherwise not many changes.

Website performance problems continue to be the major outstanding issue. This is caused by very slow access to the MySQL database server at various times. The issue is extremely erratic – during quiet times of the day performance is pretty good, but at other times it often so slow that the page display times-out. This causes either a blank page to to be shown or sometimes a connection error. The problem has been confirmed by the hosting company and they are working on a solution.

The WordPress Super Cache plugin has been installed and this helps a bit when showing pages that have not been changed. Unfortunately this will not help at all when writing a new post or accessing admin functions, in fact it might even make things worse!

This is one of the disadvantages of low cost shared hosting.  So it’s really a case of waiting until the hosting company improve the situation.

Settled on using the Atahualpa Wordress theme – easily the most configurable, without hacking the php code too much. Taking a while to find out how to use all the options, but that’s its strenghth -  a lot [...]]]> A few more changes done.  Gradually getting the hang of the various software components being used.

Settled on using the Atahualpa Wordress theme – easily the most configurable, without hacking the php code too much. Taking a while to find out how to use all the options, but that’s its strenghth -  a lot of things are possible!

Forum is now sitting better in the WordPress page, after a bit of php surgery.

Found some compatiblity issues between some WordPress plugins and WP-United.  Several problems solved by reading through the WP-United forum.  Contact form is now working. The WPU login widget is much better than the original Meta widget. Widget-Context plugin is really useful for managing sidebar content on specific pages.

scenic but difficult!

Didn’t see much help [...]]]> I’ve had enough of the cold winter and waiting for spring now! At last there are signs of the first sping bulbs.  This winter seems to have gone on for a long time. The snow was beautifull looking – buy oh what a pain all round.

scenic but difficult!

Didn’t see much help from the council with our side-roads. Thankfully many of the neighbours got stuck in and kept our road manageable throughout.  Well done to all.

Why? – well I wanted a ‘Web 2.0′ type framework and this gave the most immediately acceptable solution. A single general-purpose CMS would have been nice, but there were [...]]]> This total re-work of the Earley Residents website has been assembled using several open-source components. Most notably WordPress and phpBB, all hooked together with WP-United.

Why? – well I wanted a ‘Web 2.0′ type framework and this gave the most immediately acceptable solution. A single general-purpose CMS would have been nice, but there were a number of technical hosting issues.  WordPress and phpBB are very popular and mature platforms with lots of support from its developers and users.

Both are database driven, which means there are some performance problems, especially due to running on low-cost shared hosting.  Only time will tell if this outweighs the advantages over more simple methods.