Solaris 10: tips and tricks for system administration - Serendipity

What I love Serendipity for

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 11:23:30 +0400

I've started working towards this blog upgrade to the latest version of Serendipity yesterday, and it was decided to go for the latest beta of Serendipity 1.1 rather than for the 1.0 release. This time around I'm doing the upgrade on my home server as it's getting to be more and more time consuming. I think it will take me two or three days more to complete the works and make the changes live here on the website.

So, with this in mind, I thought I'd mention here just a couple of truly unique features I simply love Serendipity for:

Central repository for all the plugins and design templates
Installing new plugins in s9y is simply the best and easiest I've seen in any blog engine to the moment. Before showing you the list of all the plugins, a new list of updated versions is downloaded from the repository. When you activate a new plugin or choose a new design template to be used, all the relevant files are automatically downloaded and installed into your blog directories.

Incredibly easy option of moving sidepanel plugins from lelf side to the right
What I mean is that practically every design template has the support for either side of the sidebar placement. You can simply specify where your plugins should appear - to the left or to the right. Other blog engines, like WordPress for instance, are not so elegant in doing this, you're generally required to fix some of your design template files by hand.

Serendipity 1.1 branch is the one where developers have down something incredible - they've finally implemented the Drag & Drop plugin management! So you have a table of all the plugins, which mimics the current plugins placement on your blog pages, and you can use your mouse to change plugins order in a sidepanel or simply move selected plugins to the panel on the other side of a page. If you haven't seen this live yet, I urge you to download the latest Serendipity build and try it out!

Serendipity 1.0 released!

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:36:02 +0400

After a long wait, the development team of the s9y blog engine has finally released Serendipity 1.0!

This means that I'll be upgrading to this version in the next few days. I just can't wait to see all the cool stuff in this new release!

I strongly advise you to read the Serendipity 1.0 release blog post from the author of s9y, Garvin himself.

Main menu

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:40:18 +0300

Today I've created the first version of the main menu for my blog - hopefully this will make your navigation more effective.

Any wishes or suggestions of yours are welcome!

On the right track

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:39:14 +0300

The last two days were spent in the final fix of all the navigation problems with the blog. In particular, I've fixed all the archives and categories navigation for both languages.

Now it will be possible to get going with the global reorganization of my site - I've got few ideas to work on, so you should see the results soon enough.

A little bit longer

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 02:02:17 +0300

I'd like to confirm that my blog update and improvement works are sadly not finished yet. New s9y version has too much stuff done differently (better), so lots of my old tricks and fixes don't work anymore.

Blog engine upgrade and re-design

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 03:19:20 +0300

Just like I was going to, I've upgraded my blog engine to the latest version of s9y today, and also did a re-design of it.

MOST changes are already made, but since s9y sources are quite dynamic, there are still few entry points where I have to make changes to make sure both blog languages work properly. Because of this, English part of my blog will have a Russian interface for some time, but entries will definitely be working properly and shown in English :)

Please accept my apologies, I will try and fix this in the next few days.

Comments should work now

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:32:47 +0300

I think I've finally fixed the commenting issue with my blog!

You are more than welcome to comment - I'm always glad to get some feedback on my blogging.

New permalinks style

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:44:50 +0300

As I had warned you before, I've started working on some improvements for this blog. Today, for instance, I've finally implemented the new permalinks style. From now on, I'll try giving every entry a somewhat meaningful name, like:

http://solaris.reys.net/2005/11/blog_upgrade

instead of

http://solaris.reys.net/archives/84-.html

All the old entries will be slowly converted, but old-style meaningless links should still work.

Upgrading my blog engine again

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:57:20 +0300

As some of you already know, a couple of weeks agon there's been a new version of Serendipity engine released - Serendipity - 0.9. I've already submitted a new Russian language file to the developers, and I'll be doing an upgrade of my blog engine in the next few days.

I'd like to apologies for any possible inconvenience, becase there is quite a number of changes planned:

1) Serendipity upgrade to 0.9
2) Final resolution of commenting problem (currently comments are fully disabled due to spam)
3) Change of permanent links for each entry
4) Change of permanent links for blog categories
5) A new design template

As you can see this isn't a very short list, so the implementation could take a few days.

Serendipity upgraded to 0.8.2

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 14:56:54 +0400

I couldn't delay upgrading the blog engine anymore - it's just too dangerous, seeing all them security fixes which came in lately. That's why I've just upgraded to Serendipity 0.8.2

At the moment, only the main page of English blog works properly, all the rest will be restored later today (if you access some old archives/entries at their English urls they WILL work even now, it's just the automatic switch to English for everything rest that I've yet to fix). Thanks for your patience!

At last!

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 18:54:22 +0300

Finally, I've got some time to spend on this blog. As promised, I've continued working on English version of the blog, and this is what I've done over the past two days:

- all the links to English versions of pages look like the original ones - clean and simple
- all the feeds are finally working
- archives in English are now usable
- interface language is switched automatically on all the English blog pages
- categories along with blog title and description are translated as well

I think this sums it up and it's time to rest now. If you just get to http://solaris.reys.net/english once, you don't have to switch anymore - all the links are changed automatically, so you should have no problems navigating the site. The interface is switched everywhere, so you can easily leave a comment or use the right panel menu.

I will continue the usual blogging tomorrow, but for today I'm done here. Have fun!

Working on English part of the blog

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:12:14 +0300

I've started working on English part of this blog yet again, and this time I won't stop till the RSS feeds are done. Can't really say how long it's gonna take me, but I'll do my best to finish it off quickly.

Entries in English 2

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:39:40 +0300

I've decided to spend next few days working on blog functionality, particularly its multilinugal support.

From now on, English version of this blog can be found here: http://solaris.reys.net/english

pS: at this stage only entries are shown in English, later I'll make sure the interface is switched into English as well so that you can navigate the blog.

ppS: if you have some ideas on multilingual support in my blog, please put them in comments - I'll see what I can do.

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:01:13 +0300

s9y upgrade

nospam@example.com (Gleb Reys) — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 19:54:28 +0300

I've just upgraded my blog engine to the latest beta version of s9y, so if you notice something not working properly, please let me know!
Thanks!