ISO50

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WordPress 2.7 = Success

Posted by Scott

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I just successfully upgraded the WordPress install for ISO50 to the new 2.7 version. I must say, this new version is incredible. I was running 2.1 for the longest time as a result of some early edits I made to the core files when I first installed WP (not recommended, but I didn’t really know what I was doing back then). There is a detailed guide on how to upgrade at the WP codex, but I decided to use a plugin that does everything automatically. It literally took 1 minute and I didn’t have to really do anything. The plugin, Instant Upgrade, is available here. If you’re running an older version of WordPress, you really should upgrade simply for security reasons alone, but the new admin interface and features are definitely worth it on their own.

Anyways, let me know if you notice anything weird on the site, I will be trying to flush out the bugs this afternoon.

You probably won’t notice any big differences now, but this is the first step on the path to the new redesign which I posted on a couple days ago. I want to say thanks to everyone who commented, it was a huge help to get such great feedback from all of you. I will be working through all the suggestions and deciding which will benefit the blog the most. As many of you pointed out though, most read the blog via the RSS feed so they rarely even visit the page. With this in mind, I try to make the page sort of the anti-RSS reader version, not stripped down, and not super clean. This isn’t Engaget or something, people come here for more than just the content I think, that is why I’ve never focused too much on things like the inverted contrast, Sifr titles, etc. I still want the blog to maintain a unique visual aesthetic, especially considering 99.9% of all blogs out there essentially look exactly the same. That’s not to say that I won’t be taking steps to make it faster and cleaner in the redesign, I definitely will, I’m just going to try to find a happy medium between form and function. Because those looking for pure function will always opt for an RSS reader.

As for the multiple authors issue a lot of you brought up, this is something I will really focus on clarifying. But to make one initial clarification, a few of you mentioned that you felt I was simply “letting my friends post” on the blog. This really isn’t the case. First of all, Jakub is an A&R, a label owner, and a DJ. I count him as a friend now, but this is from working together (he handles a lot of the day to day stuff for my Tycho music project and ISO50). Besides, he is who I look to when I want to find new music, we have similar tastes, and he is well qualified. This isn’t simply a case of me putting on my childhood friend or something. If I had the time to find new music and put as much effort into it as he does, I would most likely be posting the exact same stuff as him, so I’ve sort handed off a lot of the music posting duties to him and I think he does a superb job (my iPhone is pretty much just a big playlist of everything he has posted on the blog). Beamer is a friend of mine, but he also happens to be the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to early electronic music and he has a very large collection of rare electronic / ital-disco vinyl. Alex Cornell is a student and my intern here at the studio, his posts are meant to bring a student perspective to the mix. I have been in design for way too long to really see it from that early, super-objective point of view. The point is that I put these guys on the blog because I truly respect and value their opinions and tastes. I am very lucky that they are willing to participate in the blog and I think they are a big part of what makes it what it is. If it was just me posting here you’d all be inundated by a never ending stream of me ranting about what the best version of Windows is for swap disk latencies and MP3s of late nineties IDM. At any rate, I will definitely be making author pages for each of them to make things clearer.

Finally, here’s a tentative list of fixes/upgrades based on your suggestions, there are some other, larger features that will be added but that list is still secret!

coffee-and-lists2

31 Comments Leave A Comment

3

Scott says:

January 4, 2009 at 5:25 pm

yes, loving 2.7 …. and I finally get to ditch Ecto! The new image uploading system fixes the major issue I had before, and the whole reason I was using ecto.

5

Stephen Coles says:

January 4, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Congrats on the upgrade, Scott. I am enjoying 2.7 too, and especially appreciate the tip on the upgrade plugin.

May I ask what image uploading issue you were having? If it was just the UI in general, I concur. Which is why I always upload to Flickr instead and simply embed from there.

I use Ecto for other reasons, including drafting offline, tag shortcuts, and the stability of an app outside the browser.

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Scott says:

January 4, 2009 at 7:55 pm

thanks stephen, what platform are you running on?
the new version has the ability to upload the original image, plus a thumbnail that links to it. I used ecto to do this, but I hate ecto since it’s so buggy. So now I can do all the posts from the web based panel, very nice.

matthew-
that screenshot is from my development machine that runs win 2008 server…. it’s lean and mean, ALL eyecabdy turned off. but I got the macbook pro for all the gui goodness.

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Scott says:

January 4, 2009 at 10:55 pm

stephen-
really? OS X is the only place I use ecto too, it’s just a weird app, always has been for me. double posts, not adding categories and just posting as “uncategorized” even when one was created and assigned, losing entire posts randomly when publishing, etc. etc. It’s somewhat rare (although for some reason started getting more frequent recently) but it just scares me, letting a third party app designed to work with many platforms modify my WP database, if possible I prefer to use the native web-based editor. and now that it has all the features I want I’m happy to ditch ecto.

oh and when I asked what platform I was referring to the blog itself, I am assuming WP?

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marcel says:

January 4, 2009 at 11:19 pm

scott man, i’m loving your daily posts but you really have to post a photoshop/design tutorial soon… it’s starting to get kinda mundane..
cheers,
m

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Stephen says:

January 5, 2009 at 1:16 am

Sorry to hear that, Scott. I assume youre using the latest version?

I use Ecto with Movable Type, WordPress and TypePad — several blogs each.

13

Keith says:

January 5, 2009 at 3:15 am

Scott: you don’t have to justify your decisions on authors! Iso is one of the best graphic blogs out there, and certainly the best source of new music. Just keep doing it.
The design & layout is superb – and if you ever change it, please release the old (current) version as a template for me!
Thanks for all you do.

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Bas says:

January 5, 2009 at 3:44 am

I agree with you a 100% on the anti-RSS thinking. I think your blog doesnt have to be clean, but the opposite: you have to show of your skills a bit more. Not merely on your portfolio, but also on this blog.
Of course it has to be lightweight, just like every site should be, but you will stil be able to make a neat design. Still liking this design, but an redesign would be nice nevertheless.

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Harley Turan says:

January 5, 2009 at 8:21 am

Yeah, I much prefer reading a post on the actual site rather than in a reader, so that would give the best of both worlds. Also, whilst I’m usually against landing pages, having one with links to the blog, the portfolio and maybe Tychomusic would work well. All in all, I can’t wait to see what you come up with! I’m currently trying to design my own site and it’s taking a while and many iterations to get right.

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Ryan says:

January 5, 2009 at 8:23 am

Hey Scott, what kind of plugins are you using on the backend? I find the following quite useful:

AdSense Manager
Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
Broken Link Checker
Contact Form 7
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps
My Page Order
OpenID
Optimize DB
Ping.fm
PingPressFM
Smart Youtube
Sociable
Subscribe To Comments
WordPress.com Stats
WordPress Database Backup
WP-reCAPTCHA
WP Ajax Edit Comments
WP Security Scan
WP Super Cache

17

empty says:

January 5, 2009 at 7:05 pm

looking forward to seeing the changes Scott. i really enjoy this blog and i thank you guys.

i check out anything that Jakub posts music-wise and i have never been disappointed. ‘school of seven bells’ is by far some of the best music ive heard in a long time and i dont think i wouldve heard it if it wasnt for this site.

i am getting into furniture design and i attribute a big part of that to this blog. ideas are starting to go from paper to tangible objects, slowly but surely.

/end rambling

thanks!

20

Justin Meyers says:

January 5, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Do you guys know if the singer of School of Seven Bells is in any other projects? She sounds so familiar… Almost thought it was the singer from Stars.

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Scott says:

January 5, 2009 at 8:44 pm

ryan-
thanks for the list! I see a couple familiar ones in there but I’ll have to dig deeper on the rest. I don’t use a ton of plugins, just because I haven”t searched around much for good ones. I do use the audio player plug, and better feed. I don’t use feed burner just because I am not super comfortable with the idea of some company essentially owning my feed. is there a way to use them but have it run through like a localized proxy feed?

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empty says:

January 5, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Justin-

there are actually 2 female singers in school of seven bells: Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, who are identical twins. they were formally in a band called ‘On! Air! Library!’ and the other member is Benjamin Curtis, formerly of ‘Secret Machines.’ ‘Secret Machines’ are still a band, but w/o Curtis.

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Richard Alan Roberts says:

January 8, 2009 at 5:01 am

I have recently upgraded my wordpress blog (after putting it off for a while!) and I have to agree with you, itis now a much, much better experience!

Keep up the good blogging!

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Daniel Carvalho says:

January 8, 2009 at 12:19 pm

It sadens me to find out a few people just read this blog via RSS feed. It’s like, I’ve been living a lie.

I just subscribe to this blog using Firefox’s live bookmarks and always end up getting routed back here, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know I’m fussy this way but I prefer consuming content in its own atmostphere.

When you do update your portfolio, please create larger thumbnails. Right now they incredibly evil. Searching photography is particularly more of a nightmare. I lose sleep at night.

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Renzo says:

January 14, 2009 at 1:09 am

Ok I admit I’ve been quite late with it, but eventually I did it… I did also successfully updated to wordpress 2.7 (for the time only the dummy site, but it’s just a matter of minutes before I put my hands on the “real thing”). Well the admin panel in 2.7 it’s just too sweet to resist… And to me it wasn’t all that easy at the beginning because I decided to update following “the silly old way”, but it was really worthwhile and up to now, no regrets.

Thanks for the encouragement to take the needed big breath and then jump to version 2.7. Long live WordPress, he, he, he!
Renzo

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Brandon says:

March 31, 2009 at 10:51 am

i was wondering what plugin you use for your simple and clean “social networking” links? i like them a lot more as simple text links opposed to the icons everyone else uses.

thanks.