WordPress problems on Yahoo
February 17th, 2006 // 1:02 pm @ Amar
I am back to my original blog settings after undoing all I did for the permalink and tags. Seems like, Yahoo is not liking me to edit my .htaccess file using wordpress. It keeps reverting it back to blank. So I am unable to set a url rewrite for category pages, and yahoo gives a page not found error if I choose any format of permalink except the default one. So for now I have rolled back to the default permalink structure which I am not very happy about.
Ultimate Tag warrior is also not working properly. On a force reinstall, it gives Access denied for user ‘
Maybe it is just a wordpress bug or something else. But will wait a bit till I decide what to do. Will send another mail to Yahoo Hosting now.
Category : General
Configuring WordPress – Templates, Plugins, Themes, Services – Part 2
February 16th, 2006 // 8:02 pm @ Amar
One of the first things I needed was to get my blog indexed properly with search engines. I generally write a lot of workarounds, and tips and tricks to overcome various bugs or tough situations in software. I plan to write more helpful tutorials and articles on this blog, but still the majority of my readers from referred from google. So anything that will index my pages better is very welcome. One of the first rule is to have better urls. The current method of wordpress ?p=1 to indentify posts, will not suffice.
WordPress does support a lot of options for formatting your permalinks. None of the out of box options served my purpose. On my Yahoo account, I found a plugin called Customizable Permalinks already activated. I could access the options from Options -> Permalinks menu. The date and name based, came very close to what I wanted, but still not very user friendly as it has a lot of sub folders. Again it was Emily Robbins to my rescue with her article on configuring wordpress to create search engine friendly links. It was exactly what I wanted. The custom format of /%postname%.htm worked very well. But then it instructed that I have to edit my .htaccess file and add a bit of code to make sure everything works properly. Here I came across a snag with Yahoo. Their file manager did not show the .htaccess file, now did it let me create or upload one as the filename begain with a “.”. So I was stuck. Having paid for the yahoo account just yesterday understanding that it was the best option for advanced wordpress configurations, I was a bit taken aback with this limitations. Have mailed Yahoo support regarding it, but unfortunately as the mail id they provide is yahoo based, it is blocked from the network here. Will have to check from home to see what they say.
However I think I found a way to overcome that limitation. I cannot loging to my account using direct ftp from this place due to firewall issues, so cannot confirm if it will work or not. Yahoo online help pages say that they currently do not allow .htaccess files to be uploaded.
Will write about how I overcame this limitation a bit later. At least I think I did, but that only time will tell.
Previous article : Configuring WordPress – Templates, Plugins, Themes, Services – Part 1
Category : Blogging
Configuring WordPress – Templates, Plugins, Themes, Services – Part 1
February 16th, 2006 // 8:02 pm @ Amar
As I sit and try to configure my blog, I am getting a reintroduction to blogging. A lot has changed since I created the DotNetJunkies blog on September 13, 2004. So I am re-educating myself to blogging and finding everything very fascinating and confusing. I have decided to write about my blog configuration as I carry on experimenting, trying to get my blog exactly as I want. So here goes.
Till so far, I installed WordPress 2.0 blog on Yahoo hosting. Installation was painless and really very simple. I did not keep the blog mapped to my root site, but close a folder, amargalla.com/blog hence keeping my main site free for other development in the future.
One of the first things I did was set the blog’s name and tagline. Well, not very happy about it, but will change it soon to suit the theme of this blog. Next I tried on various templates, but did not like any of the ones which come with WordPress. A quick search on Google revealed lots of themes. ( On a site note, just realised while typing google, I need a plugin or a setting if it exists, to automatically turn some keywords to links on my posts ). Anyways, so I have kept the theme selection for later as it can be changed anytime. I did like Bloxpress a lot as it is very similar to SharePoint which is my main area of work as of now. It is in beta and still has some bugs, so I intend to hold on for a bit before trying it out.
Category : Blogging
The Journey So Far
February 16th, 2006 // 7:02 pm @ Amar
After setting up my Yahoo account and installing my wordpress blog with their one click setup, I was starting to configure my wordpress 2.0 blog to my needs. It was then that I started researching the net about Technorati tags and better search indexing, url rewriting and tons of various other things which you can do with blogs.
I was never an advanced blog user. Was more a moody poster, who did not care about cutting edge blogging and tagging posts, and search engine crawlers. Was blogging till now on a .TEXT based services ( DotNetJunkies ) and then on Community Server when they upgraded their service. It was in that transition phase that I got tired of crashes and page not found errors that I started to look into alternate blogging tools / networks. It was then that I realised how much I enjoy blogging and I should be a bit serious about it.
After that I tried the free wordpress.com account and did like wordpress very much. But got frustrated trying to get a image displayed in my header and faced a lot of limitations to what I could do with it. Hence my search for a better blogging network started again.
It was then that I found this excellent article by Emily Robbins about getting a domain if you are serious about blogging. What she said made sense. I was always afraid of loosing my readers when moving to a different service. I had already chosen WordPress as my choice of a blogging platform, but now I needed a good Host. On the WordPress.com site I found a list of 3 hosts which were good. Yahoo was the most expensive. I liked the offer by BlueHost very much, but due to various reasons ( which can make a nice blog entry ), I chose Yahoo Hosting for my WordPress account, and as of now, I am really happy about it. It has its own demerits, but it does solve my purpose nicely so can’t complain.
So this is how amargalla.com came into existence. Not a very imaginative name, but hey, it’s all about me 
Category : Blogging
Hello World!
February 16th, 2006 // 7:00 pm @ Amar
Hello everyone. As this is my first post on this site, I will just give a short introduction for a start. I am a geek who loves computers, books, photography, and travelling. I have a blog at www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/amar for a long time now. Been deciding to make the move to a different blogging service or host my own blog for sometime and started to evaluate various blogging systems. After looking at various options, I did find WordPress to be the best overall blogging software, and to my joy, WordPress was accepting invitations to create a blog on this site, but I found that experience very restrictive. I did find WordPress very good and hence decided that it was time I moved on to my own domain. So here we are.
Hope all of you will find my blog and writing interesting. Now I am off to setting up and configuring this blog Will migrate some of my good posts in the coming days.
Category : General