Over the holiday weekend I found the time to knock out several updates to the site that have been on my someday / maybe list for a while now.  The big one was moving the site to a new domain name, kenclark.me, in place of the old one, kenclarksblog.com.  (I know, I am not going to win any major creative points for that one!)

Why bother, you may ask?  It’s pretty simple.  Kenclarksblog.com started to feel dated; as if the site was permanently stuck in 2005, and it finally got to the point where it bothered me enough to make the change.

Changing domains on a pre-existing site can be tricky, but I have to say that it really couldn’t have gone any easier due to both the WordPress platform and great support from Bluehost, my hosting company.  On the day I made the switch, I spoke with three different Bluehost support reps, all of whom answered the phone on the first ring and were outstanding.  Additionally, their admin tool made setting up all of the 301 redirects quite simple.

Once I got the domain transfer worked out, I took some additional time to tack on the latest WordPress updates and add the Disqus comment engine as well, so I am feeling good that I’m entering 2010 with a minor tune-up complete and in the rear view mirror.

I believe everything is redirecting properly, but if you see anything funky going on with the site or the RSS feeds, please let me know.

P.S.  Here are a couple links that I found useful in the event you are considering anything similar:

• Configure WordPress for a New Domain / Temporary URL – this is a Bluehost KB document that explains how to configure WordPress for your hosting temporary URL, but the instructions are equally valid for changing from an old domain to a new domain.
• How to Backup the WordPress Database
• How to Backup WordPress Site / Files
• w3 Link Checker – this is a great tool that recursively checks your site for any broken links.
• 301 Redirect Checker – enter a URL and it will validate that it has / doesn’t have a proper 301 redirect

When I initially applied the WordPress 2.8.6 update, it failed and returned the following error message:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to
allocate 2355240 bytes) in directory_path/public_html/wp-includes/http.php
on line 1331

After some unsuccessful troubleshooting, I realized that the only significant changes I had made to WordPress since I had applied the prior update was I had added a number of new plugins.  I thought that might the source of the problem, so I went through the most recently installed plugins and deactivated them one-by-one.  After I deactivated each, I then attempted to re-run the 2.8.6 upgrade.

Eventually the upgrade script worked.   I had to deactivate four plugins however before it was successful. Then, after the upgrade was applied, I reactivated those four plugins and everything was back to normal.

I am not enough of a WordPress guru to know if the problem was related to the total memory used by all four of the plugins, or if it was just an issue with the final plugin that I deactivated (I can test that next time I suppose…), however if you are seeing a similar error message, hopefully this will work for you as well.

Earlier this week, David Sparks and Katie Floyd of the Mac Power Users podcast released Episode 11: Services and Macworld 2010.  This show featured a discussion about Mac OS X Services and Mac automation and included a mention of my blog post, Using Mac OS X Services to Import Files into Evernote.

Mac Power Users is a really informative show about getting the most out of your Mac, and I always look forward to listening to it every month.  Thanks to David and Katie for the call out.  I encourage you to check it out and subscribe to their podcast via iTunes.

Here's what the rssCloud element looks like in this blog's RSS feed.

The tech story of last weekend was probably that WordPress installations around the world got hit by a nasty worm, so it was nice to see today that WordPress bounced back with an announcement that wordpress.com now supports rssCloud, a real-time update feature of  RSS developed by Dave Winer.  That was quickly followed by Joseph Scott’s release of an rssCloud plug-in for self-hosted WordPress installations.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb summarizes today’s news in a recent post, and in the process has a great analogy of why rssCloud matters:

“This is like the difference between checking your email every once in awhile and using a Blackberry to get new emails pushed to you as soon as they arrive. The subscription method of RSSCloud works more like Instant Messaging than the old method of polling feeds for updates each time you fire up your feed reader.”

I installed the rssCloud plug-in on the blog tonight, and it couldn’t have been easier.  I’m looking forward to see how fast RSS readers adopt this protocol as well as the impact it has on the “real-time web”.

Well as of tonight, I am excited to say there is a mobile version of the blog that uses Apple’s web app API for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Here’s a screenshot of how it looks in mobile Safari:

I used Brave New Code’s WPTouch WordPress Plugin, which is just a great piece of software that is very easy to configure.  The plugin has no effect on how the regular web version of the site is rendered on your desktop or laptop  and allows you to configure a number of options for the mobile version (including a switch to let a viewer see the “desktop” version of the site if needed).

The next time you are using your iPhone or iPod Touch, please check it out!

You may have noticed that a number of older posts from this summer hit the blog and the RSS feed yesterday. After taking a temporary break from posting on this blog to experiment for the last month or so with Posterous, I decided to merge the majority of the content I had posted there into this site.

Posterous is a very cool service that is only getting better every day, but I’m still debating how I am going to use it on an ongoing basis.  Moving forward this site will be my primary location for content.

I am the process of testing out Posterous as my primary blogging platform. You probably won’t see much here as I give Posterous a test run. Please visit me on Posterous at http://kenclark.me or subscribe to my Posterous RSS feed: http://kenclark.me/rss.xml. Thanks!

Hey everyone!  As you may have noticed, I have been in a mini-hiatus over the last two months.  Personally, I fell short of my expectations for updating the site, and in the process I missed a lot of topics I like to think I could have had some good posts on: iLife ’09, the Twitterization of America, some personal productivity forays… wait… scratch that.  We definitely didn’t need any additional blog posts talking about Twitter!  Maybe my break was a good thing after all!

Put simply, I had a really crazy start to 2009 across all fronts and something had to give.  That said, I’m back — or at least I think I am. I am not sure that things have slowed down all that much, but over the last several weeks I have been focusing on getting my GTD processes tighter, and while I am far from becoming the next David Allen (I still have a tough time with those Weekly Reviews…), I have been able to clear the decks enough to get the blog back on the radar.

As a mini-kick-off, I just finished wrapping up some loose ends that were still hanging from my WordPress transition two months ago.  While the changes were nothing that you will notice, it was a relief to get the work out of the way so I can keep my focus on writing some good content as opposed to lingering open loops with the back-end of the blog.

I expect to get back on a regular posting schedule next week; which for me means two to four posts a month.  Thanks again for the patience, and I will see you all very soon!

Despite my best intentions, it has been exactly a month since my last real content-driven post (How to Name a File and Regain Control of your Documents).  That is not too good — particularly when I had set a New Year’s goal to get a post a week on the blog!

So I quickly just wanted to say thanks in advance for the patience and not unsubscribing from the RSS feed   I do have some fairly significant stuff happening right now in my work and personal life (in a good way!), but I still hope to get into a better groove of more regular updates in the upcoming weeks.  I have a good list of topics that I think will be of interest and intend to get some new posts up soon.

Thanks again!

Ken

Over the last week, I took a hiatus from writing my weekly post and have been preparing to migrate the blog platform from TypePad to WordPress.  I am very excited to say that the change went live about 45 minutes ago, and so far it looks like everything went to plan.

Even though this is a pretty small site, there were still a fair number of details to consider to ensure that all of the content got transferred over OK without breaking any links, affecting my search engine rankings, etc.  I still have a couple of minor loose ends to tie up, but all things considered I think it went pretty well.

Why did I make the move?  TypePad is a great platform, but I wanted more flexibility and customization and you really can’t beat what WordPress offers in that area.  So far I have to say that I think WordPress rocks, and I know I have barely scratched the surface.  I am really excited to see what else it can do.  (And as far as the blog’s content is concerned, I plan to write in more detail about the transition as well as my ongoing experiences using WordPress.)

So now that the heavy lifting is completed, my focus will get back to producing some new content for ya!  Barring any unforeseen issues, you should see a new post later this week.

Thanks!

Ken