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

As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.

If you run a WordPress blog, you’ll want to update.

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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”.

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