In the coming week, I am going to prune some of the blogs hosted here. I will back up and then remove blogs that have not been updated for more than a year — in this case I assume that the blog has been declared dead. Some of the blogs that will be purged are:

• http://apple.focuser.net/
• http://carmen.focuser.net/
• http://farelado.focuser.net/
• http://flo.focuser.net/
• http://jsut.focuser.net/
• http://lisawa.focuser.net/
• http://m3y.focuser.net/
• http://mariahzhong.focuser.net/
• http://timhu.focuser.net/
• http://umin.focuser.net/

I’ll keep the full backup of all the posts + comments so nothing is lost — I am just pulling them from my servers.

Also found that there are many “dead blogs” on FOCUSer.net, i.e. those who haven’t blogged for yonks. I might do a bit of “clean up” if blogs haven’t been updated for a few years.

• Auto-save your post while you are editing as draft.
• New WYSIWYG editor.
• New upload manager.
• … and more.

Currently all existing blogs on FOCUSer.net are running WordPress 2.0.7, and you don’t need to upgrade if you are happy with the older version. Otherwise comment here (or email me) if you wish to have your site upgraded.

Btw, does anyone have spam issue? Anyone else using Akismet here? Akismet is an automated comment spam defense system, which will help you eliminating majority of the comment spams. It is available in your plugin list, but you will also need a WordPress.com API key to activate it.

Again, ask me if you are getting way too many comment spams (say 10 a day).

• Two new blogs have been created. Mariah from MBF and Marcus from Pelita. In Marcus’ case — welcome back.

• A bit of shuffle around with the URLs. Recent updates are now on update.focuser.net, Recent comments are now on comment.focuser.net, and Net FTP are now on ftp.focuser.net. It cleans out the focuser.net for something bigger happening next.

• Managed to fix up the Recent comments to clean out some of WordPress’ mis-information. Also, as I have to add your site onto that list separately, please tell me if your site comments are not listed there. It only works with WordPress’ blogs, hosted here or elsewhere, but not other blog services.

• Something bigger is in planning and implementation stage. I am planning to transform focuser.net to something else that is yet to be defined. Something that is of “social networking” nature, open for registration for all FOCUSer and ex-FOCUSers. Something the old FOCUS website was implementing before the current information-only design took over last year…

The last point is out of frustration of keeping up contacts with the old ex-FOCUSers. Something interactive, like a forum, without the potential of getting into “ministry difficulties” like our previous attempts (thus on a separate domain).

Thoughts?

Blog Statistics

Still obsessed with checking your statistics? The blog stats have moved! It is now easier to access. Still update once a day at 11:55pm, still powered by AWstats, now you can check yours here:

http://stats.focuser.net/<your focuser.net host name>

For example, everyone loves Umin so we can check his popularity at stats.focuser.net/umin. Easy huh?!

Upload Files with Net2FTP

FTP programs too hard to use? Blocked behind firewall? I have installed net2ftp so you can now FTP into your blog account from the web. Moreover, it allows you to upload a ZIP file and unpack it automatically for you — perfect for unpacking WordPress theme files.

To access net2ftp, use the following link:

focuser.net/ftp

Cheers!

Dany’s Code

He signed up on Tuesday and already have two posts.

Also note that for those who have requested a blog here, which I have subsequently created, but then it has never been used, i.e. not a single entry created — I will be removing those to reclaim the resources.

If you would like to have an avatar displayed next to your entry (instead of a big question mark), here is what you need to do:

1. Register to the service Gravatar, the Globally Recognized Avatar with your existing email address. Upload a picture of yours.
2. Tell me the email address you use so I can put that into database next to your blog.
3. When the Gravatar people have finally approved your avatar, it will be shown against your entries!

If you already have a gravatar account, then skip step 1. There are other benefits signing up Gravatar like having your avatar displayed next to your comments on many gravatar powered blog sites (like this one :).

Upgrading Hard Disk

First of all, the hard disk outage is worse than I have originally anticipated. The integrity just degrades dramatically since last week. I have actually got the new hard disk and new power supply ready for replacement on Monday, but I left it running for another day. Hmm. Bad move.

Anyway. I had really hard time pulling data out from the old drive and moving to the new one — not just blog sites but all my stored files, emails, photos, videos, documents, etc. The process took too long, as the old disk had really struggled. It was around 30Gb to move, but from the look of it the process won’t finish for another week.

So I tried to move some essential files first (around 4Gb) to get the server started. A lot of applications are damaged that need to be rebuilt/re-install, which I am doing at the moment. At the same time, I am also running “badblocks” over the old disk so hopefully that can be recovered and I can retrieve the other files/photos/documents. Although the non-destructive mode of scanning the disk is very slow — took 5 hours to cover 5%.

Bad News

So the old server is rebuilding itself, which will take ages (very old computer). The bad news is, I have actually lost some FOCUSer.net data! I tried to copy those folders from the old disk, but just can’t get anything out from it. Here’s a list of casualties:

• Database lost: Sites starts with ‘J’, ‘U’ and ‘V’ (that is, you, you, you and you). All posts and comments are lost. Everything. Oh wait, I have backups — from 10 March at 11:45pm. So anything new added between 11 and 14 March disappears…
• Blog directory list: So far I can identify two total write-offs — these two sites (there was actually a third anonymous site). Everything in their folders is just gone. Which I don’t have backup for. So I can only dump a generic WordPress 2 install into their sites and plug the database in. Themes are gone. Plugins are gone. Uploaded pictures are gone. I might try to look for backups again after I have scanned my old hard disk. Finger crossed.
• Random files: I have no idea what files are corrupted. The only one I can identify is one of Tom’s plugins (because the site failed to load). Do tell me if you found some files are missing/corrupted.

Gotta do more backup more often now.

New Server

To get the FOCUSer site back up quickly, I have decided to move all sites elsewhere. Instead of trying to fix my half-corrupted installation (I haven’t got PHP to run), I chose to move everyone onto a new server. A new server I rented from unixshell#.

It is a new Gentoo 2006.0 server. Dual Opteron at 2Ghz (read: pretty fast), and I have installed PHP5.1, MySQL4.1, LigHTTPd 1.4.10 to quickly get all the sites back online. The server is in Atalanta (which is on the south eastern coast of United States) and about 200ms from Sydney. Not too bad.

I have not got the FTP to work so those who have lost files would not have a chance to replace them yet — it will be available in a day or two.

This setup is a bit more expensive than before but hopefully the fund I have collected from Google would be more than enough to cover this :)