After many months analysing GIDBlog.com comment spam data, I am pleased to announce that we finally have this problem under control now. > more <

Recently, the good people at wordpress.org released an upgraded version of their WordPress MU script, and so I had to drop everything else that I was doing to install the upgrade here.

It took me 4 days but I installed the update today, and amazingly, everything seems to be still working! I am amazed because for the first time in my life, I updated the site by running a shell application, one that I wrote myself. It took me a while to write the PHP CLI SAPI shell application that completely automates the whole WPMU upgrade process, but I think it was worth all the effort, because from now on, I just need to run this one script and GIDBlog.com will be updated within minutes, and I don’t have to remember all the details or go through lines upon lines of upgrade instructions.

The automated upgrade script handles nearly everything, from downloading the WordPress MU (tar) file down into this web server, extracting the tar.gz file, creating the MySQL and file backups, moving (or deleting) the required files into (or out of) the wp-content folder, to even controlling (stopping and restarting) the httpd daemon while the upgrade is in progress!

Now I can’t wait for the next WordPress MU upgrade — I’ll just log into this server, type:

> upgrade_wpmu.php

on the command line, and within a few minutes, this web site will be upgraded. It’s just too cool! I don’t know why I never thought of doing this before!

Meanwhile, if you find something not working right, just leave a comment below.  I am good, but maybe not that good!

Early this morning, I moved this web site here (gidblog.com) after running it for a few days at gidhelp.com.

The reason for the test site is because I had to find out if the script that powers this web site, WordPress MU, is really what I assumed it to be — and it is!

The test site also allowed me to figure out a few things about making this site work better. Some of these include additional themes for you (blog owners) to personalise your blog sites, and maybe a couple of custom scripts, aka plugins, to simplify the things you can add to your sidebar. A sidebar widget plugin is discussed here.

A lot of things for me to add to this site over the next few days, weeks, and months. I look forward to this, as I hope you do too.

Today, I managed to get my first WordPress plugin installed and working. Introducing the popular WordPress Plugin: Sidebar Widgets.

What does Sidebar Widgets do? A quote from the plugin page: > more <