I was all waxing poetic about the purple plates yesterday, and got some interest that faded to nothingness pretty quickly. One kind soul Marie in Maine told me that the registration page was returning an error message.

Thanks, Marie. She is sending me a paypal payment and I will process the order directly. If you have had the same problem, you can paypal me directly at psychicgeek at gmail dot com. Be sure to include proper shipping.

I can see that I have my day weekend life cut out for me. I am php challenged, and the entire site is php. It was done as a school team project, and although the code was clunky and I couldn’t alter it without getting a saucy error message about php functions, it worked okay until the hosting server didn’t bill me for renewal, so the domain name and everything went bye-bye. I had some backup files on my blog server, the host of which is an awesome guy. If you want web hosting, Rob is the bestest evah! Ask Ree.The other guy? Not so much.

So, now I have to modify my files that exist on the blog server. That means if you are viewing it in IE6, it will look wonky, because I coded it for IE7 and Firefox. The defunct one with the working admin pages and database was coded for IE6.

I really wish I could code it so that you didn’t have to register and log in. That part of the school team project (read: total nightmare) was designed so the kids could create a forum, which I eliminated because it was promptly filled with p0rn spam.

If you don’t hear from me, it would be because I am tearing out my hair.

Conversation this afternoon:

Ass Burger Boy: Are you going out somewhere?

witchypoo: No. Why?

ABB: You hosed yourself off.

witchypoo: I smelled like ass.

ABB: Oh.

Eloquence. I owns it.

In other news, I’ve been tweaking my theme again. The very pregnant Revka of RS Designs made me a signature for my posts. I have subscribed to their newsletter, and get the scoop when they offer free stuff. Free is my favourite price. If you subscribe, she might just make one for you, too!

She even offered to help me install it. I have issues where images in my posts all have borders, (unless they’re a:links) and the code would have given me a border to the signature, so I just put the signature as a background image in the CSS for the div that I always use at the foot of each post anyway. Works a treat.

You may now uncross your eyes.

Is it a feature of WordPress that they automatically close comments on your post about ninety-nine-plus-one things? Because I checked, and they were enabled.
Or they don’t want numbers in the title?
Or has my site been hacked?
Because, seriously, I deleted the original post below because comments would not work.
I wrote a test post to see if comments worked. They did.
I deleted both posts and wrote another. Comments didn’t work. I changed the title, but it was infected with the error of doom. When I clicked on the permalink of the post with the changed title, the original showed up. And, no comments.
If you want to comment on that shall not be named post, do it here.
There is not enough coffee in the world to make me smart enough to fix this.
Has anyone else ever encountered this?

Edit: A search of WP forums provided me with a partial answer. The parsing of post titles is for strings, and numbers are not included. So it just doesn’t like to play nice when the parsing, it is confused. Dates are not considered numbers if that is how your post titles are configured to display, but actual numbers, you will be punished for.
And now, the comments in the post that should be titled “100 Things” but is called “This Title is Cursed” work now.

Sorry to be a pest, but I had a problem with my feed after the great plugin redesign.

If you subscribed since then, and are having trouble getting my feed, it’s because I’m an idiot.

Please unsub and resub if that is the case.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’m too embarrassed to even ask you to vote for me today.

Update: I only noticed the error in the header and in the email feed. I just tested the regular feed and it should be fixed now.

If you want to increase traffic on your site (and really, who doesn’t?) you might want to consider the mighty StumbleUpon. Most people who are signed up have installed the StumbleUpon toolbar in their browsers, and merrily hit thumbs up when they find a site or a post that they like.

One review I wrote got 7000 unique visitors from that review alone. The author was so impressed that she linked to my page as a mighty stumbler. I make it a policy to stumble a post that has a link to my site or to a post on my site in it. Everybody wins.

If someone else has already reviewed your site, then with the toolbar, your only option is a thumbs up if you like it. The review is much more powerful. It only takes a few words, and a click, and Bob’s your uncle.

To accommodate those who would like to write a short review of your post, (even if it’s already been reviewed) there is a lovely plugin called Slashdigglicious that puts a bunch of social networking icons at the foot of each post. If you have a page that you don’t want it to appear, like your contact page, just put the tag <!–noslashdigglicious–> in the page or post. (in code view)

Users just click the last icon on the right, and a review box will pop up. This will review the post itself, rather than the entire site. Write a sentence or two, add tags, and for pete’s sake, do not select yes for “adult content”. That will label it as porn.

If you would like me to invite you to StumbleUpon as a friend, just leave a comment or use my contact form stating that you would. It’s worth signing up for, and lots of fun to use the toolbar. I’ve spent hours stumbling and discovering new sites.

Okay, that will do it for some time. I just felt that the author of this plugin should get some recognition, since I’m so happily using it. Now I have all the WordPress stuff out of my system, there will be regular, goofy posts after this.

One more thing: This guy is having a link contest going on. He wants to see how many links to his site he can get in a few days. The winner will be randomly chosen. Minimum prize is $50, maximum is $1000, depending on the number of links. He’s upping the prize by $1 per link. Stick a paragraph in your post, and get in on it. This is the guy I won $20 from before, and he paid promptly.