Paul’s blog

In the latest addition of Broadband and Internet Advisor magazine (issue 80), you may be interested to know that I am in it, abut as ‘Skinny’. This is under the ‘What is happening in the forum’. The answer to the question is ‘plus.net’.

You may not be aware but I have moved this site from one host to another. The process was not as bad as I thought it would be, the reason being I managed to install MyPhpAdmin on both hosts and transfer the database that way. I now should be able to create a better blog on my new host.

Envious of the bragging rights which a superfast connection brings we decided to change our broadband provider. We are currently with Wanadoo broadband chugging along at a steady 576kbps, We could upgrade to the 1Mb package but didn’t like some of the restrictions. However I heard through the grapevine, Andy Mason told us, that BT broadband now provides 2Mb in our area - joy of joys.

The next step is to switchover from Wanadoo to BT Broadband, however first one needs a migration authorisation code (MAC) from our present broadband provider. I managed to get through to the right department after speaking to four different people, being passed from pillar to post. The next day I received my MAC via an e-mail and went looking for a new ISP.

I have saw the plus.net broadband premier package and it seems perfect. I cannot believe the webspace allowance and support (not to mention support for PHP, MySQL, CGI & Shell Access
and even allows Cron jobs), it blows my web host out of the water (present webspace 35Mb, plus.net 250Mb). Hopefully I can transfer my domain name to them too. All this from an ISP.

We are now going through the transfer process, hopefully this will be a smooth procedure.

I have been trying to create a RSS feed from my Wordpress blog into my main index page. For this I have tried many different RSS feed applications with little success, mainly due to the lack of documention for a complete novice in this field. However last night I managed to achieve my aim after many hours of heartache. I am using RSS2HTML using

Option 2

2. Download free rss2html.php script on your webserver and edit its feed and template variables.

It took me a while to figure how to configure the php file but I got there in the end, and then change the template file so it displays the way I want. I am still in the testing stage at the moment, see the test page to see it in action. When I am happy with the results I will include it on my home page.

I am a member of a few forums, and it always suprises me how much information you can gleam from asking the right questions. For instance someone on indiamike asked a question on what the hotel Évi and I are staying at in Goa is like. From the replies I could gauge that the hotel is ideal and is in the perfect location. This is always reassuring when you are going to a new hotel in a new country.

I have also had a few problems when I converted this blog from Greymatter to Wordpress. Again, adding a post to their forum soon solved the problem.

Talking of Wordpress, I have been very impressed in what I can do using this powerful tool. I have also learnt more PHP code, which I can put to good use when I finally upgrade my main site to PHP. Trouble is I have so much to do at the moment. I also want to put a few photos up from the time Andi, Évi’s sister, stayed. I will get around to it!

Yesterday I received an e-mail informing me of a Hungarian restaurant in Aberdeen. I need to get some more info on the restaurant and add it to my site. It’s good to know that people are viewing these pages and feedback is always welcome.

Its been a while so a quick update first. I passed my IMLC last week, the course took three weeks but wasn’t too bad. It was even fun in some places!

I have now converted the blog from Greymatter to WordPress. However there is still one teething problem, as I need to update WP from 1.2 to 1.5. Why did you not just upgrade to 1.5 first of all I hear you ask. Well the answer lies in my old Greymatter blog, I did not want to lose the entries from this and I knew WP could convert into the new blog however this did not work when I tried the new WP 1.5 version, so after a bit of investigation and a forum post I found it would be prudent to go back to version 1.2 (which had a proven track record of converting GM to WP), then upload the GM blog and then upgrade to 1.5. At the moment I have uploaded my GM blog to 1.2 and I will upgrade to 1.5 tonight. Fingers crossed.