Halffull.org

I’m going to start working on upgrading the site to Wordpress 1.5. I’ve made a lot of personal changes to the codebase that don’t particularly fit into a plugin, so I’m going to hope I can reasonably manage all the hand-merging. One thing I definitely do not want to do is leave the site in an unupgradeable state like old halffull because of ridiculous hand modifications. I had practically rewritten postnuke (which is awful to start with) and there was simply no way to upgrade when they made changes. It should be a lot better this time around with linux tools - Windows is not friendly towards this sort of work.

That said, I’m really excited about the new things Matt and friends have put in. Spam control is more advanced, the plugin architecture has leaped forward, the default interface (not that I use it) and the admin interface have been nicely cleaned up, and a lot more. Thanks guys.

[update] The site is now fully transferred to 1.5. A lot of modifications were needed, but the only real sticking point was with threaded comments. The plugin I use was designed for 1.2, and doesn’t look very compatible with 1.5 - keep in mind that I’m a stubborn bastard and will surely rewrite the whole thing anyway.

[update] I just realized that comments weren’t working at all. Quite sad. Turns out my old comment code wouldn’t work anymore and, basically, the submit button was broken. If anyone was plagued by that, I apologize; it works now.

For anyone running a Wordpress site, you might want to check out the prerender plugin by jens persson. Instead of fetching content and performing the rendering when a page is requested, it renders the page the first time it’s requested and stores the prerendered content in the database. From then on, it just has to grab the prerendered stuff, rather than reapplying markdown, acronyms, validation, whatever rendering tools you use. It can really cut down server processing time for your page loads, and I haven’t noticed any rendering bugs yet.

One important note, though - if you use any ` Continue Reading »

I’ve been working on importing all the articles and comments from old halffull. Trust me… it’s a huge job. I could probably write a script to magic the SQL over, but it’s a one-time job and I wanted to fix up some of the text anyway. I may skip a few posts, so if anything important is missing let me know.

This is for hulk:

Die, they must die. The pandas must die! All endangered species leave endangered feces. If we kill them all, we can have more parking lots; we can have small couches made of little ocelots.

p.s. I’d like to apologize on behalf of nature to all of southeastern Asia.

I’ve been working on different styles for halffull most of the day (along with importing a lot of the old posts). You can switch styles via the menu bar on the right. I like them all, though my least favorite is probably Rainy; I’ve made a lot of improvements to Default - “the first bite is with the eye,” as my wife would say. I wanted a clean and accessible standard. If anyone has any suggestions regarding the styles, comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Welcome to the new halffull.org. It’s a work in progress at the moment, but I hope it’ll be a lot more elegant and functional for everyone (not to mention standards-compliant).

In case you’re a new visitor, the idea behind Halffull is that anyone can feel free to post any opinions they like directly on our main page, barring spam of course, and have a lively discussion. Rants and sarcasm are not only encouraged, they are the raison d’etre.

It’s that time of year again when I have to fork over some cash to keep Halffull on the web. I don’t want to sound like PBS or a hobo, but this year, you can help. The Halffull store has always been available for you to buy swank goods, but I’ve set up a special deal for those of you who would like to donate to help keep Halffull online.

For a limited time, you can buy certain products to give an extra donation. If you want to donate a little, check out some round stickers. If you want to donate a little more, check out our classy halffull coasters. If you want to donate a little more than that, look into some adhesive halffull rectangles. Any way you go, you’ll be directly supporting our hosting costs, not to mention getting some exclusive halffull habiliments.

Prices have been reduced on a lot of other items, so it’s a good time to buy anyway. If you’ve never been, check it out - I promise you’ve never seen gear like this.

Thanks to a donation from hulk, Halffull can remain online another year. There is still some hosting cost left over, so feel free to donate by buying some Halffull goodies.