Recently in Site Information Category

Several people have told me about problems they've been having leaving comments. Apparently sometimes people will log in, but when they hit "submit" to leave a comment they'll be told that they aren't logged in. I'm working with TypeKey to resolve the matter. For the time being, reloading the page generally fixes the issue and allows you to log in properly and leave a comment. Sorry for the inconvenience!

If you try this and it works (or doesn't) please let me know.

At least one reader has reported a problem leaving comments using OpenID. I left a test comment using TypeKey and it worked fine. If anyone else is having problems leaving comments please shoot me an email at plasticATgmailDOTcom. Be sure to include the system you're trying to use to sign in (OpenID, TypeKey, etc.). Thanks!

I rarely use Internet Explorer, but I'm forced to at this hotel and I see that two of the columns on the front page of the site appear to be overlapping. Does anyone else see this, or is it just a visual artifact caused by the hotel browser/connection/whatever?

"Hotlinking" an image is when a web designer embeds an image tag into his webpage that pulls an image from another site rather than making a copy of the image and hosting it himself. It's lazy, and it "steals" bandwidth that the person hosting the image is paying for. The image appears normal on the hotlinker's site, but it's being loaded from the host's site without any credit being given. That's not cool! And so, I've been forced to protect my images from hotlinking by modifying my .htaccess script.

The site seems a lot faster and cleaner to me since I changed hosts and it has been getting plenty of hits, but comments have completely flatlined. I've tested the TypeKey login and it works just fine, plus there are several other options now... and yet no one has anything to say. Is there a technical problem with the commenting system? Is it too hard to use? Should I enable anonymous comments?

Update:

It appears that MT won't send out the verification emails required for people to create accounts on my site. That's annoying. For now just use TypeKey, because I know it works.

Someone else please leave a comment so I know the site is working!

If anyone can tell me why the content in the left sidebar is pushed down on individual entry pages and on the most recent comments page but not on the main index, that would be great. Here's the stylesheet.

The individual pages have ad blocks that appear to be doing the pushing, so how can I avoid that? The ads are inside divs that hold content, and the other content in those divs don't push anything down. The recent comments page doesn't have any ads at all! Argh.

Update:

Fixed it. It helps if you close your div tags.

As my regular readers know, my website had grown absurdly slow on Yahoo's hosting service. So, I decided to ditch them and upgrade to Movable Type 4 at the same time. It's taken several hours to get everything working, and as you can see we've still got an off-the-shelf template. Fortunately I've got several days left of vacation to get all the details sorted out.

If you notice anything that doesn't work, please let me know.

I haven't been too impressed with Yahoo's hosting service. I'm considering switching away, but I before I do that I'm going to try to speed up load times a bit by removing some external loads. Let's see if this makes a difference.

Here's an advertising opportunity for someone: I get tons of drug-related spam for products such as viagra, prozac, cialis, propecia, soma, xanax, percocet, ephedra, tramadol, ultram, and hoards of others. I don't even know what most of these drugs do, but if someone wants to pay me I'll be happy to advertise them! I'll even let you use the proper spellings.

But I'll be back tonight and regular posting will resume. For security reasons I don't broadcast my vacations in advance. Your loyal patronage is appreciated!

Comments may have been broken for a little while, but they should be fixed now. Somehow MT's CGIPath got set to a wrong value. If you still have problems, clear your cache and reload the page.

I made some minor stylesheet and formatting changes earlier this morning. I added a category link to each post, and made the title of each post a link to the individual archive. The date-stamp has also been moved from the bottom to the top. The category archives (which I doubt anyone ever visits) have had post bodies removed in favor of titles only. Any opinions?

I hated it when I picked it, but for whatever reason I took it and now I'm stuck with it. Changing a domain name seems to cause Google to forget all about you. Sigh.

Not that many people are linking to me, but I shamelessly "borrowed" the button technique used by Newsbusters and applied to my posts.

Can someone with a blog try sending me a trackback? I'm not sure if they're working properly. Thanks!

Update for Mark: