I’ve been increasingly missing blogging, and I slowly started getting things together for a relaunch several months ago. I decided that if I was going to start blogging again, first I wanted to make some changes, as well as adapt to the changes in online trends from the past few years – like social networking. So there are a few things I wanted to point out.

First, and most obvious, I’ve upgraded most of the software – new version of WordPress, new plugins, etc. I also took the opportunity to create a new theme for the site, based on the ‘TwentyTen’ default theme. I know a number of readers disliked the old green-on-black look, so I hope the new minimalist look is more to everyone’s liking. I’ve also upgraded to a new caching system, W3 Total Cache, to improve performance, and I’ve installed WPTouch to provide a better mobile version of the site.

One of the more notable changes is that I’ve switched to using Disqus for commenting. I felt that it was a more powerful system, and it is used by large sites such as Engadget, but also smaller sites – like this one. But it gives you one place to manage your comments from multiple sites, track other users you want to follow, etc. A small tip – all of the old site comments were imported into Disqus. If you have a Disqus account I discovered you can ‘claim’ them by switching your Disqus account email to whatever email you used on the comments. Once linked they’ll stick with your account even if you change the email again.

Gizmo Lovers has also joined the modern world of social media, and is represented on Facebook and Twitter. (We need 16 more followers on Facebook before they’ll let me have a nice short link.) New posts made on the site will automatically be mirrored to both, if you prefer to follow the site that way. (The twitter feed at the bottom of the site is my personal account. Mirroring the site’s Tweets on the site seemed kind of redundant.) Of course, the RSS Feed is still around. You may also notice that Gizmo Lovers has a custom short link URL now too – giz.lv, supported by Bit.ly Pro. I registered that several months ago when I first got serious about relaunching, all the cool kids are doing it.

Since I stopped posting, the TiVo Lovers LiveJournal community has gotten pretty quiet. I used to manually cross-post TiVo-related posts to the community, but I won’t be doing that any more. Instead I’ll be letting the software do it for me! I only intend to cross-post TiVo-related posts to the LJ community though, not all posts, to remain within the intended purpose of the community. (I may cross-post administrative posts, like this one, from time to time.) If you’re one of the handful of people still using LJ, and you want to see all the posts, there is still the ‘tivolovers-blog’ RSS feed account. Yes, it dates back to when the blog was TiVoLovers.com, before the switch to GizmoLovers.com.

Of course, there always has to be a glitch. One of the changes that occurred during the hiatus was that I migrated my domains over to Google Apps. Which means I’ve basically retired my old Gmail.com personal address, and migrated all of the various Google services I use to my Google Apps account. One of the last things I did before making my first public post was to open a new AdSense account under my Google Apps account. Unfortunately Google doesn’t provide a simple way to migrate an AdSense account. It is a real grab bag depending on which service you want to migrate, and AdSense is probably the worst.

When I saw it was active I switched all of the ad blocks on the site over to the new account, and started posting. Of course, just a couple of days later Google disabled the new account because it duplicated the old account. So now the AdSense ads on the site aren’t working. I’ve jumped through more hoops, closing my old account completely and that is supposed to allow them to re-enable the new account, but I’m still waiting on that. So that’s why you may see weird yellow-ish boxes on the site right now – those are artifacts of the missing ads. (I’m not going to complain if you use an ad blocker, but it would be nice to have some return from the site…) Hopefully Google will re-enable the account soon.

Aside from that, I’d love some feedback on the new site. Especially if you have any problems with it. Use the contact form to drop me a line. And if you are having problems, please include as many details as you can – platform (Windows, Mac OS, Android, etc.) – including version, browser – also including version, the nature of the problem (any specific error messages would help), etc. There have been a lot of changes under the covers, so I expect there may be some kinks to work out.

I still have some work to do. I plan to overhaul a lot of the existing content. A number of the pages are stale, a lot changes in two years. I’ll be working on that bit by bit.

Oh, and I probably should say one thing – I don’t plan to post as much as I did before the hiatus. I expect to be posting fairly regularly, but a lot has changed in the past couple of years and I don’t expect to be able to spend the hours a day I used to on research and posting. I’ll cover that more in my ‘what happened’ post when I make it, but I will say that one of the big changes that happened during the hiatus is that I’m currently engaged to be married, the wedding is slated for February. So life is a bit different now, in a very good way.

To those of you who stuck it out, thanks for hanging in there. And for those of you who may be reading for the first time, welcome, and I hope you find the site worth your time.

As always, let me know if you spot a problem.

Example templates:

YouTube:
<div class=”video”>
<object data=”VIDEO-URL” width=”425″ height=”344″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”>
<param name=”movie” value=”VIDEO-URL” />
<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
</object>
</div>

BlipTV:
<div class=”video”>
<object data=”VIDEO-URL” width=”320″ height=”270″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”>
<param name=”movie” value=”VIDEO-URL” />
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” />
<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
</object>
</div>

Brightcove:
<div class=”video”>
<object data=”http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/452319854″ width=”486″ height=”412″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/452319854″ />
<param name=”FlashVars” value=”videoId=VIDEO-ID&playerId=452319854&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://services.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false” />
<param name=”base” value=”http://admin.brightcove.com” />
<param name=”seamlesstabbing” value=”false” />
<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” />
<param name=”swLiveConnect” value=”true” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
</object>
</div>

I also finally got around to switching to Firefox 3 yesterday. I’d kept using Firefox 2 because of some of the browser add-ons I prefer not yet being supported on FF3. But they flipped the switch to start prompting FF2 users to upgrade, and I decided enough of the add-ons were now available to make the jump.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
• BugMeNot 2.0
• ColorZilla 1.9
• FirefoxView 1.0
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.1.0.12
• FoxyTunes 3.0.4
• Google Gears 0.4.15.0
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.1.20080730W
• Html Validator 0.8.5.2
• IE View Lite 1.3.3
• Image Zoom 0.3.1
• InfoLister 0.10
• JavaScript Debugger 0.9.87.4
• Linkification 1.3.5
• Linky 2.7.1
• Live HTTP Headers 0.14
• MR Tech Link Wrapper 2.2.1
• Plain Text to Link 1.5.20080618
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7pre.080816
• Tweak Network 1.3
• View Cookies 1.7
• Web Developer 1.1.6

Unfortunately it looks like two of my favorite Firefox extensions are gone for good – Tabbrowser Preferences and Google Browser Sync. Tabbrowser Preferences was last updated in 2006 and it looks like development is dead and it won’t be updated for FF3. I’m trying out Tab Mix Plus as a replacement, and it seems to do a decent job, but if anyone has a suggestion for a better add-on to replace Tabbrowser Preferences I’d love to hear it.

And I was upset to find that Google has discontinued Google Browser Sync. If you currently have it installed you can continue using it through 2008, but you can no longer download the add-on and it wasn’t updated for FF3. This is the biggest loss for me, I made constant use of this. I loved being able to close FF and re-open it later with my existing session even moving from one machine to another. And keeping everything in sync – passwords, bookmarks, etc. I was thrilled back when it came out because it finally gave me something to match the old Roaming support in Netscape 4.7.

So far I haven’t found a replacement for it. I’m using Foxmarks for bookmark sync and backup, but it only does bookmarks. Tab Mix Plus has some session persistence, but only on the same machine. I checked out Mozilla Weave but it is in the very early stages, and right now they aren’t accepting any more users anyway. Google has turned over the code via Google Code so someone may resurrect it in a new form. But in the meantime I’d love to hear there is a good replacement out there.

This was an especially bad thing to find out because during the upgrade I lost my current bookmarks and they reverted to a set many months old. Back when FF3 was in beta I’d installed it alongside FF2 and it imported my bookmarks. I’d since removed the FF3 beta from my system. But apparently the imported bookmarks lingered, and when I upgraded from FF2 to FF3 yesterday instead of importing my FF2 bookmarks it just used the old FF3 set, yet it seems to have completely removed any trace of my FF2 bookmarks from my system. So I’ve lost any new bookmarks I’ve added since then, and, of course, just last week I’d finally gotten around to cleaning up my bookmarks to delete a bunch and file them, and now all the junk is back and messy. Sure there is a nice copy stored in Google Browser Sync, but now I can’t get to them. Even if I reinstalled FF2 the add-on download is gone. (If anyone knows where I can get the XPI to install it, that’d be great.)

In general FF3 is a nice upgrade, despite the troubles, though I’m really not seeing what is so awesome about the ‘awesome bar’ (as some call the URL/Location bar in FF3). Even in FF2 I disliked the way it’d suggest pages from the history and I always lock that down to just pages I’ve actually typed – as below. If there are any other add-ons or configuration tweaks you think I just have to check out, let me know. Share your Firefox tips for everyone to see.

Some of the settings I tweak in about:config in FF3 (definitely not a comprehensive list):

I’ll put this under a cut since it is long, and not interesting to most I suspect. Though I hope that this might encourage other WP users to try getting their hands dirty and tweaking things a bit.

Changing the editor buttons requires changes in two places:
wordpress/wp-includes/js/quicktags.js:

35a36
> // Modified by MegaZone / MZ
37c38
< new edButton('ed_strong'
---
> new edButton('ed_bold'
39,40c40,41
< ,'<strong>'
< ,'</strong>'
---
> ,'<b>'
> ,'</b>'
43a45
> // Modified by MegaZone / MZ
45c47
< new edButton('ed_em'
---
> new edButton('ed_italics'
47,48c49,50
< ,'<em>'
< ,'</em>'
---
> ,'<i>'
> ,'</i>'
51a54,89
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_underline'
> ,'u'
> ,'<u>'
> ,'</u>'
> ,''
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_strikethrough'
> ,'s'
> ,'<s>'
> ,'</s>'
> ,'s'
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_big'
> ,'big'
> ,'<big>'
> ,'</big>'
> ,''
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_small'
> ,'small'
> ,'<small>'
> ,'</small>'
> ,''
> );
>
68c106
<
---
> /* Commented out by MegaZone / MZ
83a122
> */
117a157,165
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_pre'
> ,'pre'
> ,'<pre>'
> ,'</pre>'
> ,''
> );
>
385a434,436
>                               + '" width="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageWidth, '')
>                               + '" height="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageHeight, '')
>                               + '" border="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageBorder, '') 

wordpress/wp-includes/script-loader.php:

27,28c27,31
<                       'enterImageDescription' => __('Enter a description of the image')
<               ) );
---
>                       'enterImageDescription' => __('Enter a description of the image'),
>                         'enterImageWidth' => __('Enter image width'),
>                         'enterImageHeight' => __('Enter image height'),
>                         'enterImageBorder' => __('Enter image border weight')
>                       ) ); // MegaZone / MZ added image attributes

Another thing that I tweak is WP’s formatting code. I like having it check the XHTML nesting, etc. But for a while it drove me crazy because it would ‘correct’ perfectly valid XHTML, and often would produce invalid XHTML in the process! In the end I found that commenting out just one line and editing one other in formatting.php solved nearly all of the issues I was having.

wordpress/wp-includes/formatting.php:

64c64
<       $pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);
---
>       //MegaZone / MZ Removed $pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);
65a66
>       $allblocks = '(?:table|thead|tfoot|caption|colgroup|tbody|tr|td|th|div|dl|dd|dt|ul|ol|li|pre|form|fieldset|map|area|blockquote|address|math|style|p|h[1-6]|hr)'; //MegaZone / MZ edited list

With those small tweaks, I find WP to be a lot more usable for me. Someday I may get around to writing a plug-in to allow changing the buttons on the basic editor (I haven’t seen one, but if there is one out there let me know), but for now it is easy enough to re-apply these tweaks when I upgrade.

Now, I also make tweaks to two of my plug-ins – reCAPTCHA and Sociable. First up, reCAPTCHA. I love this plug-in, and it does an amazing job of controlling the spam comments I receive. But it had one flaw that annoyed me – it produces invalid XHTML. I strive to keep things on the site valid, so having a plug-in that produced invalid XHTML just didn’t sit well with me. I found one patch in their support group, but it had a flaw, so I used that as a starting point and created a new patch that worked correctly. That was on 2.6, and I re-implemented it on 2.7. I’ve submitted both of them back to reCAPTCHA, but they haven’t incorporated them yet, as far as I know. Oh, and one small mistake – they forgot to rev the version number in the file from 2.6 to 2.7 when they released 2.7, so I did that.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recaptcha/recaptcha.php:

6c6
< Version: 2.6
---
> Version: 2.7
51a52
>                       document.getElementById('submit').style.display = 'inline'; // MegaZone added
57,58c58,59
<                <style type='text/css'>#submit {display:none;}</style>
<                <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit-alt" tabindex="6" value="Submit Comment"/>
---
>               <!-- MegaZone removed style element -->
>                <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit-alt" tabindex="6" value="Submit Comment" />
63a65,74
> /*
> MegaZone added this function.  This will insert the style to hide the
> reCAPTCHA submit button in the header instead of the body, where it is
> invalid XHTML.  Since this disables the button even when scripting is
> turned on, there is a line of JavaScript inserted above which makes the
> button visible when scripting is on.
> */
> function recaptcha_wp_head () {
>   echo "<style type='text/css'>#submit { display: none; }</style>\n";
> }
64a76
> add_action( 'wp_head', 'recaptcha_wp_head' ); // MegaZone added
66d77
< 

And I made two really, really inconsequential changes in the name of XHTML->HTML compatibility in older browsers. I added spaces in two elements. You can really just ignore this, I was being anal.
wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recaptcha/recaptchalib.php:

125c125
<               <iframe src="'. $server . '/noscript?k=' . $pubkey . $errorpart . '" height="300" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe><br/>
---
>               <iframe src="'. $server . '/noscript?k=' . $pubkey . $errorpart . '" height="300" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />
127c127
<               <input type="hidden" name="recaptcha_response_field" value="manual_challenge"/>
---
>               <input type="hidden" name="recaptcha_response_field" value="manual_challenge" />

With Sociable it was mainly an issue of appearance. I wanted to squeeze the icons into a small space, a single row at the bottom of the post. I fought with CSS for a while, but I never could quite get what I wanted, because of the underlaying XHTML. The plug-in normally creates the list of icons as an XHTML unordered list, with each icon within its own list item element. Trying to get it so the icons were in one solid row, with no gaps between them, just defeated me in CSS. But I knew I could make it work with small changes to the XHTML, to remove those unwanted list elements. In the process I also fixed one small bug in one of the site links in the plug-in.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.php:

97c97
<               'url' => 'http://bluedot.us/Authoring.aspx?>u=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
---
>               'url' => 'http://bluedot.us/Authoring.aspx?u=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
501c501
< );
---
> ); /* Blue Dot URL fixed - MegaZone / MZ  modded */
633c633,635
<       $html .= "\n</span>\n<ul>\n";
---
>
>       /* $html .= "\n</span>\n<ul>\n"; MegaZone / MZ  modded */
>       $html .= "\n</span>\n";
653,654c655,656
<               $link = "<li>";
<               $link .= "<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"$url\" title=\"$description\">";
---
>               /* $link = "<li>"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>               $link = "<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"$url\" title=\"$description\">"; /* MegaZone / MZ modded */
659c661,662
<               $link .= "</a></li>";
---
>               /* $link .= "</a></li>"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>                 $link .= "</a>";
661c664,665
<               $html .= "\t".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link)."\n";
---
>               /* $html .= "\t".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link)."\n"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>                 $html .= "".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link);
664c668,669
<       $html .= "</ul>\n</div>\n";
---
>       /* $html .= "</ul>\n</div>\n"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>         $html .= "\n</div>\n";

And I do make some changes to the CSS as well, though some of them are just me being anal and adding units.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.css:

1c1,2
< div.sociable { margin: 16px 0; }
---
> /* Modified by MegaZone */
> div.sociable { margin: 16px 0px; }
4c5
< span.sociable_tagline span { display: none; width: 14em; }
---
> span.sociable_tagline span { display: none; width: 28em; }
8,10c9,11
<       top: -5em;
<       background: #ffe;
<       border: 1px solid #ccc;
---
>       top: -3em;
>       background: #ffffee;
>       border: 1px solid #cccccc;
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<       margin: 0 !important;
<       padding: 0 !important;
---
>       margin: 0px !important;
>       padding: 0px !important;
26c27
<       margin: 0;
---
>       margin: 0px;
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<       border: 0;
<       margin: 0;
<       padding: 0;
---
>       border: 0px;
>       margin: 0px;
>       padding: 0px;
40,42c41,43
<       opacity: .4;
<       -moz-opacity: .4;
<       filter: alpha(opacity=40);
---
>       opacity: .6;
>       -moz-opacity: .6;
>       filter: alpha(opacity=60);

And that’s it. Just a handful of simple changes to make the platform work more to my liking. Very minor changes really. I know a lot of WP users are nervous about playing around in the code, but it isn’t that bad. Remember to make a backup of the files before you edit them, and if you have a problem just revert back. If you’re going to do anything major, backup your sites DB before trying the changes. You can always restore if you really blow things up – but that’s not easy to do.

PS. Don’t forget the Style Selector in the upper-right for those of you who dislike the green-on-black color scheme.

Anyway, I think I’ve managed to squash them all now. And everything seems to be working. I’m not too happy about some of the changes they made to the interface. The biggest complaint is moving ‘categories’ on the authoring page. It is used on every post, and it used to be right next to the editing box in a nice pull-down, now they’ve moved it down the page such that you have to scroll to get to it. Everything used to fit on one screen to write posts. That’s really annoying. I’d be a lot more annoyed by the new interface if not for the Admin Menus plug-in. The default navigation is far too obtuse. These are the plug-ins I use now.

If you experience any trouble with the site, let me know – either directly or leave a comment.

But the more useful additions you may notice are the ‘Print This Post’ or ‘Print This Page’ links, which open a printer friendly version of the post/page for better printing. I’ve also added reCAPTCHA to help control the comment spam. As this site gains readership it, unfortunately, also comes up on the radar for more spammers, so the volume of (attempted) spam has been increasing.

I finally added a contact page so you can email me directly. That’s linked in the top, bottom, and left navigation so it should be easy to find for new users. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.

This version of WordPress also adds tagging support, so I’ll be trying that on for size.