Ernies Tech Thoughts

I am a better back end programmer (php, mysql etc.), but I like to play around with CSS and XHTML. So I decided to put together my own WordPress theme for this blog. It is not going to win any design awards, but I am happy with what I quickly put together. The theme is very lightweight with only 1 graphic currently being used. The colour choice comes from the m o d e r n . a r t palette.

This is just a first draft, and it will be refined over time. My old buddy IE6 shows a few differences, and only Firefox and Safari get the rounded corners from their versions of the CSS3 border-radius property.

But hey I like it.

A new version of Wordpress has been released. It is a minor security release related to the Snoopy class, and can be upgraded with just 2 files. Now just waiting for inbuilt threaded comments in WP 2.7.

The other day I had a whinge about WP security updates & releases. This post was written after I had just spent valuable time updated a number of WP sites I maintain.
Now I have that out of my system here are the reasons I use WP more and more:

• Not just a blog tool, but a legitimate small-medium CMS
• Large and knowledgeable support community
• A huge and vibrant community of themes and plugins
• FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) all the way

I have recently moved 2 more sites to WP, and both are better for it:

• Girraween Athletics from Joomla
• devReview from custom code

When I next need to put together a site with content management type capabilities I will likely use WP again over alternatives I have tried.

Wordpress has released version 2.2.1. This means another round of updates for sites running older versions that I maintain. This one has security fixes so is a must.
These Wordpress updates are starting to get to me. There have been too many in the last 12 months and security fixes have been in most.
And it seems Wordpress themes are now a bigger part of the problem.

Ok, whinge over.

Often I read about the evils of duplicate content in a site, and the wrath Google will supposedly bring on your site if you don’t go to great lengths to prevent it. So it was interesting to read a post by Vanessa Fox on the subject at the Google WebMaster Central blog.
To summarise the 3 main points:

• Google will work out unique content on a site
• having duplicate content on a site does not incur a penalty, but 1 version will be considered primary
• You will not automatically be banished to supplemental hell

Duplicate content is a natural occurrence with blog systems such as Wordpress, and I think Google is smart enough to understand this.

Now if you steal all your content from other sites you will be in trouble.