Version 1.0 of The Adventures of BrainyCat is now in production. Violating every rule of what blogs look like, it looks like what I like to see on my screen.

I've added many features. Let's see... post via email, post to bookmarking sites, rewrote the rendering inside the loop, new colorscheme.

I could not have done this without subversion. It's been a little challenging at times to get my head around it's way of doing things, but I've certainly gotten to a point where I feel comfortable navigating the repo as well as my workspace. I'd been having tremendous difficulty with trying to undo changes. While reading up on tags I found the directions for undoing changes. Oops.

If I wanted to start the svn configuration over from scratch, here's what I'd do:

1. install wordpress and all the plugins and themes to the dev site
2. create repo as normal
3. import the dev site into the rep, skipping the local configuration files
4. svn mkdir path/to/tags/version-0.1
5. cd path/to/dev/docroot
6. svn copy ./ path/to/tags/version-0.1
7. cd /path/to/prod/docroot
8. svn switch path/to/tags/version-0.1
9. login as admin to prod site and activate plugins, setup options, etc
10. test instalation.

Big things happening over on the dev site. I started the day with a total of 30 checkins to svn, and I ended the day with 114. I've got the sidebar setup, most of the bookmarking done and the 90% of the stylesheet done.

I still need to make sure the bookmarks are integrated, and that's probably going to require digging into the trunk to be able to run url_encode(the_permalink)). I may be able to skate if some kind soul has posted some docs. I need to update all the drilldown pages to reflect the new classes I installed in the style.  I'm going to let the header slide until the next release, because CSS positioning and I don't get along very well. The footer will be done in this release.

I really need to generate some scripts that will sync every table except options from the live site to the dev site.

And I need to remember to remove the static configuration file from svn before I update the live site.

I'd like to say I'm a lot more comfortable with svn now... but not really. I needed to undo some changes I'd checked in, and I had a lot of trouble trying to revert. I'll read up on that tomorrow. All in all, I only had to dig out the books once.

jdh358 posted a nearly 4 minute long video explaining how to get the cut and paste code from youtube to work for you. I had enough difficulty getting this job done that I had to consult the oracle. So I'll save you four minutes of your life listening to a poorly miked presentation and cut right to the chase:

1. Find a video that you want to post on your blog at youtube
2. Select the generated <object> tag
3. Login to wordpress and select "Profile"
4. Deselect the Visual Editor option, select "Update Profile"
5. Goto the Write page
6. Write and publish your post as normal, pasting the <object> tag as appropriate
7. Enjoy the oohs and aaaahs of millions of adoring fans

It's very important that the WYSIWYG editor never sees the <object> tag. It doesn't parse it properly, so the brackets that are supposed to denote a tag get translated into it's numeric entity. This means that your lovingly crafted tag is treated as literal text by WordPress.

It's monday, and I'm back at work. Training isn't so bad, except for the glacial pace. This is the first chance I've had to see the site on IE. It looks better on firefox, though it remains to be seen if that's a function of display settings. All the features seem to work ok, except for the known bugs. Hopefully I'll have the production site up and running while I wait for my wife to get off work, then I can start beating this site into shape.

TODO:

1. Get www up and running
2. install some plugins? Need to find an expert list of the must-have plugins.
3. Create my own theme.
4. Install gallery and gallery plugins. Upload pics.
5. Start working on some real projects.

I am posting this on the a.dev.brainycat.com site I got running. In order to do development on wordpress without fear of breaking something useful, I had to change the user that some of the files were hosted under, which broke the live site. That's ok. I also had to backup the db from the live site and copy it to a new db that I setup. Some of the dev work will include new tables and such, so I don't want to jeapordize the live db.

I also had a little bit of an issue with the database. Dreamhost's installer configures a random string in the /wp-config.php:$table_prefix variable. When I went through the installer, I pointed the a.dev installation at the same database, but none of the data came up. Bummer. A quick peek with phpMyAdmin and the problem was obvious. I configured the dev site with the same table prefix, and my site came up without a hitch. Damn I'm good!  I'm debating how often I need to sync the two dbs. I need to think through the logic, and if I'd be creating more problems than save time. I need to develop an offsite backup system, as well. I had another issue with passwords; when I installed to the dev site wordpress pointed me to the login and admin pword generation site. I could not get logged in, so I just reset the pword via phpMyAdmin and life was grand.

Now I really need to get on board the subversion bus and get this site into a repo, so I can push the live site.  I'll probably have some time tomorrow at work to go over the SVN commands. Firstly, I need to find the url svn url ;).

I'm really excited about this. I was recently shown what one can do with google's tracking utilities. I'll have to setup YAGA (Yet Another Google Account) and get one of the keys and whatnot.

With all these new pwords, I'm going to look for a spreadsheet app that runs under linux. M$ compatibility is nice, but everything I'd need to import I can export from M$ as a CSV.

Things are moving along nicely. At this rate, I should be able to work on some real projects within a couple of weeks. Let's see how long it takes to beat wordpress into shape.

TODO items:

1. find spreadsheet app for linux
2. determine SVN URL
3. import dev site to repo, publish to production site
4. offsite db backup

Note to self:

• ICE 1.0
• Blandy 1.0

Are the best templates, but neither are widget aware. Which is ok, because the widget aware themes don't want to play nice with the plugins. So we're back to the part where I need to get SVN setup. Which is new for me. I've used a couple of different SCM packages, and even scripted against one of them, but this is all new software for me. Hooray. My spidey sense pictures a trip to MegaBookLifestyleStore to procure one.

8 themes and many plugins are installed, now I need to do some real sysadminning and get SVN on board.

Lots to do before this is really ready for presentation:

1. setup trunk in svn
2. install plugins, configure
3. find better theme template (but this is the fun part so it will probably get done first)
4. build theme
5. work on some real projects