Well, it's 2009 around the world now, so happy new year to everyone

I can't believe the christmas season is almost over! I feel like I've done nothing productive!! Well, I've had to reformat my computer and reinstall all of my software, so that has taken a little bit of time. About a month ago something happening, which I still don't have a clue what, and on the Sunday evening I shut my computer down as normal, and Monday morning it took about 25 minutes to boot up and log in. Despite my best efforts, and even increasing the RAM by 1GB (that was already planned, regardless of login speed!), nothing changed, so I've done a complete format and fresh install, and everything is running along speedily! I'm about halfway through installing software so I should be ready for work on Monday.

I also twisted my ankle pretty badly last week on Friday (Boxing Day / St Stephen's Day). I've spent most of the week with my ankle strapped up and me not being able to walk too far or do much at all. It's been a painful few days, and even now, although I can walk normally, if I twist my ankle slightly it's still very painful

I don't seem to have cleared much off my to do list over the past fortnight! The time off has flown by, which is great as we're both pretty relaxed, something I've not felt in a long time, but of course the anxiousness of pending work that I have to get done next week is weighing on my mind. However, for now I'll just put it out of my head for another day or two!

I've also decided to start creating a post for my posts that I write elsewhere, as they're usually technical or related to WordPress, and whilst I know I've got a page listing them, I'll most likely remove that once I've created a post for each post elsewhere. It's not to boost my post count, but more to ensure that even if I haven't had time to write a post on this site, then the site doesn't look too quiet, plus the posts may be of interest to regular subscribers anyway

Anyhow, I hope everyone's celebrated the new year in style and let's hope this year is a good 'un

WordPress 2.7 RC1 was released earlier this week, and this was the stage at which I was happy to upgrade this site to the new version. It's been a hard wait as I've had the beta version of 2.7 running on some smaller sites and also on my local install. Having to return back to 2.6.X version on my own site has been frustrating! However, finally I've upgraded, and uploaded my updated theme files to make use of the new features.

Most of it has gone pretty smoothly. I've not only updated to use the new comment pagination (after 25 comments, which is a rarity on my posts!), but I've also still kept my own comment styling and markup, using the comment callback function.

I have spotted a couple of issues or concerns however, but I'm not sure if this is down to the code I've used, so I'll be checking on these more in depth first.

The first is the comment count using the comments_number() tag. I noticed when I first added my updated theme files that one the post I happened to check, there was one comment displaying however the count said 2. On further investigation I did have a second comment on the post but it was unmoderated. Obviously not the outcome I'd prefer, as sometimes I just don't have a chance, or forget to moderate comments, so it would be confusing to some to see perhaps a heading of '4 Responses' yet only one displayed!

The second issue, or not really an issue but a strange finding, is that in the callback function you effectively rewrite your comment markup. You start with a list item so essentially you should finish with a list item. On the codex page for the wp_list_comments() tag, the callback function example has the closing list item tag, however, when you use this code in your theme, you actually get two closing list items. It looks like the template tag automatically adds the closing list item regardless of what you use. Obviously this is strange behaviour as it's assuming that you're using a list for your comments (which you should, but plenty of themes out there don't), and it leaves you with incomplete code in your function, which is not usually the case.

Hopefully the first issue mentioned will be fixed before the final release, and the second is more a case of whether it's considered normal behaviour or not. To me it isn't, and who ever wrote the codex page thought it wasn't either, but perhaps to the WordPress developers it's how it should be!

However, they're only minor issues, and the advantages and beauty of WordPress 2.7 far outweights those that's for sure.

All I'm now waiting for is the release of WordPress MU 2.7 for a couple of sites!

Just a brief update as it's been pretty mad round here lately. I'm now working about 60 hours a week trying to get all of my work cleared before Christmas, and people still want more done! I thought the UK, in fact half the world, was suffering a credit crunch, or maybe it's more a case of businesses now turning to their website and the Internet as a way to make more profit with less costs. Let's face it, if you do it right you can run a business straight off a site without the need for the overheads of a shop or premises. Still, it keeps us in business so whilst I'm exceptionally busy I know to be thankful that we have enough work coming in for both of us.

I have taken 5 minutes out however to redo my Blogging Tips Posts page, so that it's now split into the different subjects that I write on there. The latest two posts are also listed below my recent posts on my sidebar over there ->

I've set up a simple database table to hold this info in and when I have time I'll set this up as a plugin as it may be of use to others who write guest posts for various sites, or perhaps writes on a couple of other sites and wants to highlight those posts on their own blog.

So at present it's just work, work and more work. I will try and get back to getting on course with my WordPress CMS posts this week and try and grab an hour or two on Sunday to write a few for the forthcoming weeks.

I don't usually tend to post about competitions, but being a member of BloggingTips.com and the Blogging Tips forums is one main reason for mentioning this, along with the fact that the competition prizes are actually pretty good

Kevin's gone one step better in his competition with it lasting over 7 weeks with $1000 in cash being up for grabs for 50 forum users ($200 being the top prize) and then a competition a week giving away a further $500 worth of prizes. You can see the full list of prizes at the Blogging Tips Forum Competition.

To be in with a chance of winning either a cash prize for participating in the forums, or one of the many prizes available, you'll need to sign up to the forum. Besides the whole ongoing competition, the forum is a great place to discuss blogging in general, developing sites with WordPress (and other various blogging platforms), and general money making ideas and marketing methods.

So, if you fancy having a shot at winning a prize or two, pop over to Blogging Tips

After a fair bit of thought I'd decided to merge the two blogs on this domain back into one. I separated them a couple of years ago to allow me to focus on the subject of AIS (Automated Income Streams) and earning online, however due to work constraints and the frequency of posts that I have on this subject, I've decided to bring everything back into one blog.

I hope that there's content of use from my other blog to my AIS subscribers. A lot of it is technical and/or business oriented so it should be of interest. It also means I only have one blog to maintain with updates to plugins and the core WordPress files, which is always a bonus!

I've redirected all of the feed URLs to the correct URL so no changes need to be made by any current subscribers. Everything's been redirected URL wise so I'm hoping that nothing falls apart! Of course if you do spot anything please let me know