I have just finished upgrading everything to WordPress 2.6 as well as upgrading a few plugins. Sorry if you experienced any downtime. Anyway, I am excited to be be on 2.6 now. This video shows some of the new features:
I have just changed the settings on the (relatively few) ads on this site to allow image ads as well as text ads. I am just trying it out, so if you find it annoying, please leave your feedback here.
Today I published my 300th Linux news story! Having reached this landmark and approaching Linux Loop’s one year anniversary, I decided to share some stats and a quick look at the future of this site.
First, some stats (all stats are according to Google Analytics):
Now, a quick look at the future:
Currently, this site uses a combination of static HTML and WordPress. I like WordPress a lot, but it is not designed for sites that are more than just a blog and trying to manage a combination of static HTML and two WP installations is really, really annoying. My idea is to move to a more full-featured CMS (content management system) such as Drupal that could handle the whole site.
This would largely just mean a new look for the site, but it could also mean some change in content, since it would be much easier to publish non-news articles. If I decide to go ahead and move to Drupal, I will probably put up a poll about what type of content you are most interested in (news, tutorials, reviews, comedy, anything else you can think of.) If you have any thoughts, of course, I am happy to hear them now, too, though.
In short, the site is continuing to grow, though it is still relatively small, and the future looks great!
Hope you continue to enjoy the site and the content!
On an earlier post, I discussed the idea of doing a live, interactive distribution review. Well, we are doing it. Here are the details:
I will be using a live distro review. I will be installing and starting to use OpenSuse 11 and posting my thoughts - live. Hopefully others will join me and post their thoughts as well.
The event will be taking place on Friday, June 20 (the day after OpenSuse 11 is released) at 3:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (12:30 PM PDT.) To find out what time that is for you, click here.
You can find a link to the event at live.linuxloop.com or go directly to the event page.
Please let me know if you plan on coming!
We are doing a live group distro review of OpenSuse 11 on Friday June 20 at 3:30 PM EDT.
Most reviews work something like this: a reviewer plays with a product or piece of software and writes what they think of it. Particularly with something like a Linux distribution where the artwork can be a big piece of it and where one person can have some random issue with their hardware, the old method of reviews does not really work very well. That is why I am planning, if there is enough interest, to try a new type of review. I am planning to live blog an upcoming distro release (probably OpenSuse 11) and while I am installing and playing with the distro, viewers (hopefully you) can also install and play with the distro and give their comments, which can then be published into the live blog.
The idea is that the distro will not just be reviewed by one person, but by as many people as wish to contribute. Instead of publishing a review and then being told why I am wrong, I can be told why I am wrong, or right, in real time.
As I said before, though, this will only work if there is enough interest. If you would be interested in participating in a live, group review of OpenSuse 11 on June 19 or the day after, please vote below. You don’t have to commit, I just want a general idea of the interest level.
As some of you may have noticed, this site was down for a little while yesterday. Sorry. My web host, Lunarpages, had to shut down some servers temporarily, including the one this site was on. I have been a customer of Lunarpages for almost two years now and this is the first time I have seen any real down time, so I am not really concerned and certainly not planning on changing hosts or anything like that. I was also impressed with how they handled the outage. I received an e-mail the next day explaining what happened, which I was very happy to see.
Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope it does not happen again.
Yesterday this website reached 100,000 all-time unique visitors! I am very excited about what this site has been and what it will be in the future. Thanks to everyone who has visited this site and please keep coming back!
In the process of thinking about how to expand this site into new content areas, I started wondering how many regular visitors I really have. Yes, I use Google Analytics so I can see how many visits this site gets and how many times people come back and stuff, but statistics lie and anyway how many visits in what time period makes someone a regular visitor? Basically, it is very hard to use the stats provided by Google Analytics and decide I have x number of regular visitors. Because of this, I have decided to start a poll. The question is “Are you or do you plan to be a regular visitor to this site?” Answering the poll will help me get an idea of how many regular visitors I have. This, in turn, will help me expand and add content to this site.
I am now using WordPress 2.5 on this blog and the Linux News blog. All the reviews of it have been great, but there seems to be little new functionality wise. It is a little prettier and the dashboard has been improved, but I liked the old version of the dashboard, too. Anyway, I am happy that I upgraded.
Also, for other WordPress bloggers, if you have not already tried out the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, it is great! It made the upgrade to 2.5 totally painless.
