My theme now supports sidebar widgets and I’ve updated the site to use widgets for the sidebar. In the next few days I’ll package the updated theme for public consumption.
Web
Dreamhost's recent troubles
DreamHost posted this item explaining the problems they’ve been having in recent weeks. Unlike other web hosts I’ve dealt with, they’ve been very open about what was going on and kept us updated continuously about the situation.
The recent downtime, which affected all of my sites, was the result of events outside of their control, namely L.A.’s heatwave & power outages and a failed UPS.
Final version of the logo
I now have the final version of the MacMegasite logo, using a nicer font & background images representing linux, osx & darwin.
MacMegasite Logo
There was a copyright problem with the old logo I used for MacMegasite, which combined an Apple & Universal logo. I’ve made a new text-only logo:
I may use this alternate version, which features Hexley & Tux:
SpamBouncer
I find that DreamHost’s SpamAssassin is pretty much useless, since lots of spam gets past it. I ended up installing SpamBouncer, which seems to be much better at identifying spam.
PSP section at MacMegasite
I’ve eliminated the WordPress installation at psp.macmegasite.com and moved that content to the main site. I added a PSP category & redirected psp.macmegasite.com to http://www.macmegasite.com/psp which will display the same content as the old PSP site. This will make it easier to add content and allow PSP content to be searched as part of the main site.
I’ve also been trying out Drupal 4.7 & looking at some new themes. The meta theme looks really nice, but it doesn’t have room for the google search box. Also, the amazon items module doesn’t work. I’ll probably update the condo site first, since it’s a pretty standard Drupal installation with few extra modules.
Procmail screw-up
I added a Procmail rule which accidentally deleted *ALL* of my incoming email since late Friday. I was attempting to block any spam with a From: address of [%from%] which I’ve been seeing from some spammers with misconfigured software. So any email I received since Friday went straight to /dev/null.
New look for MacMegasite
I cleaned up MacMegasite’s theme a bit, getting rid of the blue story headings and eliminated the tables.
New GP2X & PSP Blogs
I wanted a convenient place to share my GP2X Tools, so I set up a new GP2X blog at gp2x.macmegasite.com. I also set up a PSP blog at psp.macmegasite.com.
I love Procmail
The spam I receive has become more obnoxious and more of it is getting past Dreamhost’s spam filter. Thankfully Procmail is also available, so I’ve added lots of filters to reject mail containing certain text in their bodies. In particular, any email containing geocities URLs will be rejected, as well as any which contain text that matches many variations of the names of certain medications.
It might reject a few legitimate emails, but I’ll live with that if it’ll cut down on the amount of spam I receive.