I’ll be upgrading to WordPress 2.5 tonight, hopefully it will all go well (it should - I did it on my local server with zero issues).

I’m still chugging away at finishing up my custom custom content management system. Here’s a quick summary of what will happen to Nusuni Dot Com when I start the transfer:

• The site may go down for a few hours - possibly a day - during the switch. I am working on my local server to help minimize any problems, but as any developer knows it is possible for a script to work perfectly on server A and completely crap out on server B. I will keep WordPress installed for a few days after the switch just in case something goes wrong.
• The interface of the site, on your end at least, shouldn’t change at all. Certain things like comment subscription via e-mail may not be available for a few days/weeks after the switch ( I need to remember to add it in!).
• Until I do a complete optimization of the CMS, it may not run as fast as WordPress. Hopefully in the following weeks/months I can go through and speed up critical parts of it.
• Graphical smilies will no longer work. I’m still trying to figure out how I want to go about adding in smilies… if you know of a service that has free smilies please let me know!

The switch will hopefully be happening within a month. Remember, I’m writing the darn thing from scratch - be patient.

If you are wondering, I am dumping WordPress for a few reasons: speed, security, and expandability (is that even a word?). WordPress is very limited in what it can and cannot do - so I decided to write a custom content management system to fit my needs. It will let me do a whole lot more with this site than I could do before without installing 700 different plugins.

After a fairly hectic week I finally got around to installing a test version of WordPress 2.5. As far as I can tell with WordPress 2.5 you can change the feed url for incoming links to point to Technorati, and it’ll work perfectly without my plugin:

http://feeds.technorati.com/cosmos/rss/?url=YOUR_BLOG_URL_HERE

A few days ago I asked Mohsin about trying it out and he said it reported some sort of error about the feed not existing, I’m not sure if there was a glitch or something, because it seems to be working fine now.

Just my feelings on 2.5 really quickly - RC1 seems to be running much slower than 2.3.3 on my test server, and while the new admin page is cool in that it is customizable - I really dislike the new look. It’s just fugly.

Update: While testing a plugin I’m working on for someone, I tried fiddling with some of my settings for the 2.5 install and found out one of my changes to the code was causing a little slowdown in the admin panel. It seems to be running at full speed now. Still not as fast as 2.3.3, but it’s close enough.

The US Copyright Registry is a company that sends spammy e-mails to webmasters asking if they want their content copyrighted. The prices are extremely high, about ten times the cost of the actual copyright, and they do very little work. While “Scam” may not be the best way to describe the US Copyright Registry, I think we can all agree charging $350 for a $30 copyright is far past the land of sanity and is way into ridiculous-territory.

The thing to remember is the second you write a post on your blog or create a new web page you hold the copyright on it thanks to a lovely creation called the Berne Convention. The only thing registering in the US gets you is the ability to bring forth a lawsuit over copyright infringement. For most blogs and websites in general this is unneeded. I think the only time registration is helpful is for something like an e-book, a chunk of software, a rare photo, etc. Think about it, if you had to sue someone over a stolen blog post would you? What if they stole a program you sell for $30 a pop. Which would make it easier for you to prove you lost profit? Which would be worth missing work over?

Ah yes, and let’s not forget if you can write your name and address you can register your copyright with the U.S. govt. If I remember correctly registration is only about $40.

For a more in depth look at the US Copyright Registry be sure to check out Plagiarism Today.

I’m going to make some slight changes to the posting schedule I posted about yesterday, and redo a few things with this blog.

Main Sections

The PHP scripts and Programs section will be combined. The webmaster tools section hasn’t been updated in a while, so hopefully in a month or two I can do some changes there. I’ll rewrite the about and contact pages when I switch over to my custom content management system.

CMS

I have been bashing away at the keyboard for the past few weeks trying to finish up the CMS. Unfortunately it looks like I won’t be able to make the intended release date of middle/late March. I need another 3-4 weeks of solid coding time to finish it, and about a week to switch this blog over to it. Hopefully Nusuni Dot Com will only experience a few hours of downtime during that period. The biggest slowdown with the switchover (besides coding) will be changing every img tag in every post to reflect the new locations of all of the images used here. The new system should be up and running by early/mid April at the latest. Whether or not I release the source code for the content system is still up in the air.

Posting Schedule

This is a general guideline of when certain topics will be posted:

Monday - Web 2.0 trends and news, and some ideas about the next generation Internet environment.
Wednesday - Weekly Marketing and SEO news recap, maybe toss in a few tips if I’ve figured out a new or more efficient way of doing something.
Friday - overall Internet security news and opinion.

As you can see I’m not going to blog about blogging too much. The more I think about it the more I realize just how overcrowded the arena is, and I don’t like the idea of fighting with dozens of well established blogs in the niche. I’ll still talk about it a bit, but it will no longer be a main focus.

So, enough talk about planning. The regular posts will return tomorrow, so I hope you stay tuned and enjoy them. Oh, and please share them, it really helps