So I went to http://twitter.com/cnnbrk/statuses/17356428197 and …

Nicely done. This is why you have to watch out with URL shorteners, folks.

If you find this helpful, great! There’s a donate link to the right on my site, but personally I feel it’s more important people get the right information!

So you logged into your site and the admin side looked something like this:

The odds are that you’ve been hacked by the latest malware. Malware is short for “malicious software” and basically it’s someone screwing with you. Why? Because they can. I’m not going to get into why, it doesn’t matter. What matters are two things:

1. How can I fix it?
2. How can I stop it from happening again?

Before we go any further, though, go run this Sucuri Scan. That will tell you if you’ve really been hacked, or if it’s something else. For the rest of this post, I’m assuming you’ve been hacked.

How can I fix it?
Make a fresh backup of everything on your site. Download it all. Yes, it’s probably got the virus in it, but that’s okay. It won’t hurt your desktop. Also backup your database to your desktop computer. The hack doesn’t seem to have affected your database, but you should always make a good backup before you try this stuff. Make note of your theme name (and where you got it from), as well as all your plugins. You’ll need this in a moment.

Put a copy of the following files/folders in a safe place, separate from the rest of your backup:

/public_html/.htaccess
/public_html/wp-config.php
/public_html/wp-content/uploads (and ALL files and folders under this)


Now, delete everything from public_html on your server. Yeah, everything. This is why I said make a backup, folks!

Once the server is naked, change your passwords for FTP/SSH. If you’re using a non-Secure method of accessing your server, stop and get something like WinSCP or CyberDuck or anything that allows SECURE FTP access. SFTP should be the ONLY way you FTP to your site.

Download, from WordPress.org a new copy of the latest and greatest core WordPress files (at this posting, it’s 2.9.2, but 3.0 is in beta, so that may change shortly). Install from that, NOT from your site’s automated installer. You should be able to copy all the files up and then add those files I told you to put aside. Remember them? The .htaccess, the wp-config.php and the uploads folders all go back up.

Under no circumstance should you upload anything else from your backup at this time! Also don’t bother visiting your site, it’ll look weird.

Once your files are back, go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ and download all your plugins. One at a time.

Repeat with your themes, going to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ or wherever you got your theme from in the first place.

If you made your own theme, it’s a little harder, since you’ll need to go over every single PHP file in your theme and look for ‘weird’ code. Sucuri has a cleanup script, but pretty much open them all up, look for encoded information that will look something like this post from Sucuri. If you see that in a file, kill it with fire.

Finally, go into your /public_html/cgi-bin folder. If there’s a file called php.ini in there, delete it. There may not be, so don’t worry about it too much if not.

How can I stop it from happening again?

I’ve got some advice, but right now, if you’ve been told ‘Just upgrade WordPress’, well, that’s not enough. Yes, I know that GoDaddy was claiming for a LONG time that’s what you needed to do. I’m here to tell you this: GoDaddy is incorrect when they tell you ‘Just Upgrade.’

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t upgrade, in fact, you may note I said to get the latest and greatest WordPress version (again, 2.9.2 as I write this). That’s because it’s going to have every security fix they’ve come up with to date. It’s almost always best to use the latest version of software. For most of you, it’s always better.

You may want to look into something like WordPress File Monitor, which emails you if files are changed. Just turn it off when you plan on making a lot of changes!

By deleting your files, getting a secure FTP client and changing passwords, you’ve closed the biggest security hole: You. I hate to say it, but every time I’ve ever been hacked it’s been right after I opted not to follow security protocol that I know damn well. And here’s my protocol: Always use secure connections to your website when editing data or accessing sensitive areas.

And that’s really simple. If I use cPanel or WebHost Manager, I connect via HTTPS, which is secure. If I use shell, I’m using SSH (secure!). If I’m FTPing, I’m using SFTP. You see the trend? I’m also only using software I know and trust. My browsers of choice are Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The last time I used IE 8, I got hacked. My SSH terminal is the Mac Terminal or PuTTY for Windows (which I only download from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ – there are other, fake, PuTTY sites). My FTP clients are (for Macintosh) Transmit and CyberDuck. For Windows… Well I actually don’t FTP much from Windows. I have been known to use WinSCP, but I’m not comfortable recommending it, as I haven’t had time to really look into it’s security. In addition, I don’t connect to my site’s back end from non-secure WiFi. That means I don’t go in on my laptop in StarBucks. Anyone can jimmy my connection!

Now that you’re being secure, go to talk to your web host. Tell them what happened. Since you have a backup of your files, you can even show them the hack! Any decent web host will sit up and pay attention. Sometimes they’ll be a bit shady, but pay attention. If they say ‘We’re going to look into this, but in the meantime, please upgrade and change passwords.’ then they’re okay. If they just say ‘Yeah, its’ your fault, upgrade.’ then you’re in trouble. When I was hacked, my host helped me sort out what it was, admonished me appropriately where I’d screwed up, and pointed out ‘Here’s when and where it happened.’ To which I said ‘Shoot! That was all on me!’ But they took the time to work with me.

If you’re on GoDaddy, LEAVE. GoDaddy Doesn’t Give A Damn, or at least they’re acting like they don’t. A user found the code used to inject malware and it’s not a WordPress specific file. In fact, this annoyance is attacking multiple servers, multiple hosts, and multiple PHP based apps.

Besides, Go Daddy is telling people to upgrade to fix the issue, but they’re running an old version of WordPress on http://community.godaddy.com (which is where they happen to be telling people to upgrade).

It’s 2010, and apps like WordPress are here to stay. Mark Jaquith wrote a deft admonishment to web hosts, telling them to adapt:

WordPress is the number one user-installed web app, and its growth is showing no signs of slowing. If you are a web host, and you don’t have a specific strategy for WordPress, you’re likely operating your service inefficiently, and may be opening yourself up to security issues. This is the year to adapt, or be left behind by nimbler upstarts.

As a side note, GoDaddy has contacted Sucuri, saying they are looking into it, but they’ve taken weeks from when this issue first sprung, Athenaesque, into the spotlight. The full-grown goddess has a spear, guys. Pay attention. If they had said, from the get go, “Gosh, this is weird, we’re looking into it!” or asked for information, or not dismissed willing technical users, they might not be on my shit-list right now. As it stands, I cannot recommend them as a host.

GoDaddy has a special contact form just for these security issues. If you were infected, use it.

Me? I use LiquidWeb

So you still need help?

Ask your host for help. If they can’t (or won’t), try to get them to do a restore from backup. But some hosts are better than others about this.

Your next step is to open your wallet:

• Plugged In Consulting
• Kim Woodbridge
• WP TurnKey

Those are three people I ‘know’ (as much as you can know anyone on the net). Plugged In is the only one who, up front, says she’ll remove malware, but the other two are savvy enough that I suspect they may as well. If not, they’ll tell me. Kim Woodbridge assured me that she does indeed remove malware (thanks, Kim!). and I’m fairly sure WP Turnkey might, but if not, based on his services listed, he can get you up on a new server that isn’t GoDaddy. Chip, of WP-Turnkey also said he does this, so there you have it! Ask them, and please feel free to tell them ‘Ipstenu sent me!’

And yes, these are going to cost you money. Well, running a website costs money. Welcome to the costs. I’ve paid out the nose to bail myself out of these situations before, which is why I’ve learned what to do. And even then, I pay a good host a lot of money a month to help when I’m in over my head.

So when someone asked me on the train “Do I need to buy this book about WordPress?” I had to stop and think about that.

The first answer I had was ‘Of course not!’ and I still stand by that. You don’t need the book. I didn’t need the HTML book I had back in 1997, but in the pre-Google days, it was great to have a handy resource. Even today, I have a set of these one-sheet PDFs with the basics of RegEx because I’m always forgetting this stuff. But there, in and of itself, is my problem.

Added Byte’s Cheat Sheets are invaluable. And they’re online. I download them and put them on my DropBox account so I can have them at work, at home and everywhere else. Even my flippin’ iPhone! So right away I realized pretty much everything is digital. I no longer bring pen and paper to meetings (I take notes on my iPhone, yeah, I’m bad-ass). I go to classes and make a list of URLs where I can get information on the various products I’m learning from.

The part that bothers me is not that I’ve gone digital, it’s that I feel bad about it. See, I make heavy use of people’s websites and online documentation. If they made a book, I’d buy the book, they’d get some money, and I’d never feel guilty about abusing their brains. I am a huge proponent of Open-Source and Share-and-Share-Alike (but remember to credit!), so the idea of giving away knowledge for free, just because someone asked me a question, is a natural, happy feeling. I want to make the world smarter, and nothing’s gained by me hoarding secrets about CSS formatting and PHP calls all to myself.

Perishable Press is one of my favorite sites. They’re on my RSS feed and I refer to this site regularly. This is where I learned how to redirect my WordPress feeds to FeedBurner without a plugin, I picked up some stupid .htaccess tricks, and I suddenly master bits of server security. When something I do regularly (review my error_log every Sunday) is mentioned as a good habit, I feel proud. Jeff Starr, who runs the site, recently made a book Digging into WordPress. I’ve skimmed it (a friend bought it after asking me if this Jeff guy knew his shit – I said hell yes he did), but I’m glad I didn’t buy it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book, but I’m not about to pay for it since it’s not what I need.

I had to sit and think about why I didn’t want to buy the book. It’s not because I’m the best WP guru out there. I’m a happy kludgy amateur who enjoys playing around. I know enough to get my job done, and I know how to look up what I don’t know. That’s my strength, I feel. I know not only how to look things up, but where, and when to ask for help, and from whom. I’ve rarely had a problem that lasted more than a day, and I always take time to pay it forward and help out other people. Sure, sometimes I get cranky and tell them “Did you try Google?” but usually I’ll help.

Now that I’ve determined I don’t not-want the books because I’m smart, I had to think if it was the money. And again, no. I have NO problem paying for services I feel are useful. A reasonable fee is no one’s enemy! Look at Justin Tadlock’s Theme Hybrid! I can download his stuff for free (and I did), but if you want support, you pay per year. After a month of fiddling, I said ‘$25 isn’t that much, I’ll pay.’ I’ve never regretted it. Justin’s amazing, nice, and he can explain things for the thick-headed. On the other hand, there’s WPMU Dev, which has some of the best WPMU plugins I’ve ever seen, and yet I won’t pay for the site. They’ve pitched their prices at the big guys, and I’m not one of them. They would cost me more a month than I spend on hosting four domains, which is just insane. Plus some of their plugins cost extra, on top of their fee.

It’s not the money directly, it’s the money-to-product ratio. Justin’s Theme Hybrid is cheap at cost. I’d pay him $50 a year and still feel like I was getting more than my money’s worth. But if Justin wrote a book, I realized that I wouldn’t buy it either.

That was a revelation moment for me. There’s only one ‘code’ book on my desk, and it’s “UNIX in a Nutshell.” The old copy, revised in 1994. The only other book is a pocket dictionary which I actually use when spell check fails me. But that’s it. I have a “Unix For Dummies” reference guide (and I think a C++ ones as well) at home, and I use them often enough to justify them. But these are reference books. They’re also references for solid, baked, never changing systems.

And that’s the problem with books on things like WordPress, or even your OS or phone! Everything changes too fast. The technology moves faster than a book can be written, so you get a book just in time for the next version, where everything’s changed. Suddenly your book isn’t worth the cost anymore, and by the way, I’m just going to Google it anyway.

Going back to Digging into WordPress (which is $27 for a downloadable PDF that you can copy/past from), while I suspect some of the technical parts might phase out in a few years, if not months (WordPress 3.0 is on the horizon, and objects in your mirror are always closer than they appear), the authors went into more than just ‘How to make a perfect loop’ and integrating with Twitter. They talk about the basics on how to set things up, how to make things secure, how to run a site, and the mentality you’ll need to get through the day.

So should you buy that WordPress book? I can’t say yes or no. Never buy it sight-unseen. Skim it in the store, or read the previews on the website, and see if it’s more than just code. If it takes the time to explain things, then yes. Make sure it’s the book you need for your situation. If you’re really good with normal WordPress, but you want to step into WPMU (Multi-Site) and BuddyPress, you may not need a book since they’re all grounded on the same principles. That said, you may be more comfortable reading a book than relying on forums.

Could you get all that information for free? Sure. But sometimes it’s better to pay for ‘support’, even if you rarely use it. It’s also a good idea to ‘reward’ people who help you. I’m not saying you should toss me money via PayPal for helping you on a forum, but if you get all your tech support by coming here (or emailing me), a cup of coffee wouldn’t go amiss. Nor would just a tweet or a blog post to say ‘Hey, Ipstenu rocks!’ But more than that, if you’re making money off your blog, and someone bails you out, thank them. Publicly. Loudly. Everywhere. If they accept donations, toss them $5. Come on, it’s the cost of one extra-large, whipped fluffy Starbucks mocha-chino-latte-frappe.

After all, you’d pay more for their book.

Or: How I learned to Stop Worrying And Love Open Source

I actually deleted this entire post on Tuesday because I am an idiot and spent a lot of time recovering it, only to realize it needed to be totally re-done anyway. And in the end, they did what I needed!

WordPress 3.0 is the big merge with WPMU (WordPress Multi User) and regular old WordPress. What this means is that new blogs will have the chance, from day one, to make a blog with ‘sub blogs’. Kind of.

With a traditional WordPress install, you get one blog. Sure, you can customize it, but it remains one blog. WordPressMU takes that to the next level, with the idea that sometimes you want to give yourself, your spouse and your kids a blog, but not with multiple installs of WordPress. It’s actually a great idea, and I’m very happy that the codebases are being merged so you don’t have to feel like the proverbial red-headed stepchild when you need support.

But I have needs and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s worried that the merge won’t help me. See, I have a site with two blogs and, had I been thinking about it at the time, I would have started with MU. The problem was that it grew organically.

Blog #1 – The Main Blog

The main blog, as it were, is where I post news updates, discussion topics, etc. It’s the hub of the site, though not the ‘meat’. The wiki and gallery (both locked down to admin editors only) are the big parts of the site, containing 12+ years of documentation, data and images. Those aspects of the site I’m happy with as is. Oh, sure, MediaWiki is insane, and updating plugins is a crime (you have to go check manually, and by the way, not every plugin correctly lists it’s version), but it does it’s job and with over 700 pages, all cross-linked and organized, it’s something that’s just a little too big and hairy to consider moving to a WordPress run CMS. I firmly believe in using the right tool for the right job. MediaWiki is correct for an encyclopedia. Zenphoto’s right for a gallery. WordPress is right for a blog.

I did not get derailed. This is all part of the process of how I ended up with WordPress. When I started, I wanted a place where I could do the following:

1. Post news
2. Allow for discussion on said news

See? It’s really simple. I needed a blog! What I do with it is, most of the time, link back to the gallery (ZenPhotoPress! for easy integration) or wiki (just link like I’ve been doing to all these other sites – why reinvent the wheel?). Happy.

Then I thought ‘You know, a blog is great where I control the topics etc. But what if my visitors want to make their OWN topics?’ So I added a forum (back) on, using bbPress, because of it’s so-called easy integration with WordPress. I must admit, the integration was not easy, but once I got it working, it was simple. Currently they’re discussing making bbPress a WordPress plugin, which, seeing as a lot of the bbPress code is lifted from WordPress, I’m not opposed to. That will probably happen after WordPress makes 3.0, however.

Blog #2 – Video Blog

The short story is that I wanted to make a video site, and all the ones out there were so hard to theme, I thought ‘Damn it, people make Video Blogs all the ding dang time. Why not co-opt that?’ So I make a no-comment ‘blog’ for my videos. Done.

How I want my MU to Work

Here’s where I get hinky.

Blog #1 is the main blog. This will be the wp_1 blog site, where all new users are signed up. The users here will be ‘integrated’ with bbPress and 99.999% of them will be ‘subscribers’ who can only read and comment. The hardest part is that the user base must be ported over with their extant passwords, and bbPress integration must remain intact. Otherwise what’s the point? While WordPress has an export/import feature, I can’t use it becuase it will only bring over posts. Also, I’ve been storing my

Blog #2 remains read only, no one is a ‘user’ but me and my admin accounts, and no one can sign up for it. This one can be best done as an export/import.

The nice thing about WordPress is that they use subversion, and so do I. So my server has a nice spare folder where I have a wp 3.0 trunk build (trunk means it’s the latest and greatest version) which I update by running this command:

svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/ .

I run it once every few days, rough-test an import and an upgrade, and back out my changes. Over and over again. I’ll probably end up writing a how-to for myself in the end (and sharing here, of course!).

So at the end of this, where am I? A little worried. While I know I’m capable of sorting out the move from Regular WordPress to the MultiSite, I think that it’s important that WordPress build in a conversion tool. I’m not the only person who’s going to look at this and want a one-click solution to turn a WP one-blog-site into a multi-blog-site. I waffle back and forth about being nervous and confident about it. As of today, they claim it’s ‘easy’ to switch from solo to multi. There’s a Mormon joke in there somewhere.

From the last Developer Chat:

Ryan updated on the status of the merge which is now complete in its first form. The upgrade from single to multi works well switching back and forth is easily done by copying wp-config files. A large amount of the code cleanup is but there are still outstanding areas. It will be ready for people to start testing an early preview release in a week or two.

Now the only thing I have left to worry about is my custom locations for uploaded files! Instead of storing my uploads in the ‘normal’ place (~/blog/wp-content/uploads/YYYY/MM/DD/file.foo) I have them ‘offloaded’ to another server. Kind of. They’re on ~/content/blog and ~/content/video/wp-uploads (long story, I may re-do that later). But I can work around that I’m sure.

This week I was chatting with a fellow about CPU usage and his site. He runs a rather large WordPress blog and the database is about 500 megs. As a comparison, this site, with about 500 posts, is under 5 megs, and my big site, with thousands of posts, comments, and a forum, is 10 megs. The biggest site I run on my server is 850 megs (just down from 910 after some clean up). The difference between his site and mine is that his is slow and he knows it. As we discussed ways to speed it up, I had some thoughts on WordPress and how, at a certain point, you’re going to need to dig into the guts of your server and learn TOP.

The ‘problem’ with most ‘How do I make my WordPress site run faster?’ tutorials, as I’ve seen it, is they address surviving the digg effect. That is, they talk about how to deal with having a high volume of traffic on your site and, for the most part, you can make it with just adding caching plugins.

Once your site gets ‘big’ or ‘popular’ you’re going to have to move off shared/cloud hosting and over to your own server. For most of us, the first step is a VPS (Virtual Private Server). Shared Hosting means ‘You have an account on a server with a hundred other people.’ It’s great for small sites, inexpensive and easy to use. The problem is you could have terrible neighbors, who use up all the CPU. Think of it like those old New York apartments where someone’s a jerk at 5am and uses up the hot water so you, at 7am, have none. Yeah, it’s kind of like that. That’s the day you think ‘I want a house!’

Only, well, we’re not all up for houses just yet. A house would be a dedicated server, where it’s just you. Cloud hosting, which I touched on earlier, would be the college dorms of webhosting. It has a lot of benefits for the really small sites, and actually some for large sites, but I’m not sold of their overall usefullness yet, so I’ll talk about them some other time. What I want to talk about are Virtual Private Servers, the condo-sub-leasing (or rent-to-own maybe) of website hosting, and how the new VPS user should really get on TOP of things (sorry, bad pun) to make their lives easier.

TOP. Well ‘top’ really. Unix commands are generally all lower case like that.

The top command is a system monitor tool that outputs a list of processes. Have you ever seen Task Manager in Windows? It’s kind of like that tab for ‘Processes’ that you look at and run away from. The default view of top is by percentage of CPU usage and the “top” CPU users are listed. See? The name made sense. You can also see how much processing power is being used, memory hogs and other cool things. Most modern Unix-systems let you sort the list, colorize it, etc, though you have to be command line savvy.

Here’s what top looked like for me about an hour ago.

top - 12:44:44 up 126 days, 23:13,  1 user,  load average: 0.12, 0.17, 0.17
Tasks:  91 total,   1 running,  90 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0% us,  0.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 100.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    524288k total,   358248k used,   166040k free,        0k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,        0k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
15616 nobody    15   0 94540  65m  20m S  1.0 12.8   0:00.27 httpd
12261 ipstenu   16   0  1908 1012  780 R  0.4  0.2   0:00.30 top
[...]
28630 root      16   0  107m  86m 1096 S  0.0 16.8   1:06.30 /usr/sbin/clamd

I wanted to point out clamd, which has been the bane of my existance. Thing won’t DIE. I ended up going in to

/etc/exim.conf

and manually commended out the clamd line (and restarted the service) to finally get it gone.

But top, as you can see, has a freakishly large amount of information. My server is doing fine, at this point, so I don’t have a whole lot to show you. What you can see right away is that I can tell, with a glance, what’s going on. I could see, though and at this point I have a ‘nobody’ process. That just means someone’s accessing my website. No, really! That’s good! The CPU and memory usage seem high, but they vanish in a second. Basically, someone rang my doorbell and for that brief moment, electricity was used. The next thing I see is the top command, which is run by me (hi!) and down the line is that idiot, clamd.

I actually scan top a lot at work these days, trying to understand what’s causing issues. It’s good for ‘right now!’ things, but not so much if I want to see what started a strange spike a couple hours (weeks) ago. For that you need a whole mess of tools.

Maybe I’ll talk about optimizing servers for WordPress next. Or maybe I’ll talk about TV. Who knows!

My commute is close to (2.5 miles + 1.3 miles) x 2 a day. That’s 7.6 miles a day, for those of you who can’t remember addition is commutative, right. By default, the distance filter (sets the distance between location checks on the GPS) and accuracy filter (how accurate, right, you got this one) are set to about 10 miles. My total for the day isn’t that much so I cranked it down to 1 mile for each. This eats my battery faster, of course, but it’s the only way I can really check accuracy on a short ride.

That should have been my first clue that this app just wasn’t for me. The second clue was the map. The line in red is the actual route I took. The line in blue is the one EveryTrail decided I took.

Now, if I could bike as the crow flies, my commute would be a lot faster, but given the zig-zagging required to take the safest bike-friendly (or at least bike laned) roads, keep dry in poor weather (certain streets are worse that others), and find the best crossing places (one block north is harder to make the double-cross, for some reason), I end up clocking in at 2 miles and change — it’s between 2.3 and 2.5 according to Google. Instead, EveryTrail/REI thinks I did the straight 1.5 miles in 10 minutes, and that means I biked at 9mph instead of the 10mph I knew I did. And yes, you know the difference.

My goal is 9.5mph as an average, though with red-lights being what they are, I don’t always make it. The REI app seems more concerned with proving their Eco-Friendly and showing you how much money you save vs driving, then actually accurately mapping out your drive, as it were. For a short to medium length bicycle commuter, this app is a failure. It’s just not baked enough for people who average trips of under 5 miles, and it’s not accurate enough for people who ride through a city. Now for long trips along trails, this is probably perfect, but for ‘biking my drive’, it’s just not going to happen. I didn’t expect much of it, and since I know my route and can draw it on a map myself, and time myself easily with the iPhone’s stopwatch app, I can calculate the MPH, calories burned and gas saved myself.

Result: App deleted from iPhone.

Enjoy the picture of my brother.

I really do like the Gallery project. I do! I learned a great deal about photography from it, and I’m thankful for it. But. I needed to move on as a user, a developer and a photographer. On that last one, I’m not a profession one, I’m just a goofy girl with a camera who likes to remember where she’s been. As a user, Gallery2 did the job well and without major issues. As a developer, it made me want to cry. Many times. Once I had to log into my friend’s server to fix his install. That just whomps.

Even the developers admit that Gallery2 suffered from bloat:

The code base is too complex and over-engineered because it was designed to fix every single thing that was wrong with Gallery 1 (Second System Effect) leaving its scope hazy and broad.

The whole idea of it was “Your photos, your website.” And personally I love that. I hate having flikr or picasa in charge of MY photos. Let alone FaceBook. I have a blog on my domain for that same reason. But Gallery2 was too much. I never used half of it and it was 16+megs at its slimmest install. That the developers agreed with my feelings delighted me. And the Feature List was also exciting. As soon as G3 popped out, I grabbed a copy and started playing.

With each version of Gallery3′s beta releases, I would get excited and then disappointed. Excited for the new toys and disappointed for how the overall effect felt. It just felt wrong for me. It wasn’t really Web2.0, even though it was, and the usage felt off. It didn’t make intuitively as much sense as G2, though it was still far better than Coppermine (which frankly I hate, and I know more people who argue with it than anything). At first I thought it was because I was so used to G1 and G2, but then I realized that over the last 10 years, I’ve used so many different systems that I’m fine with subtle differences. I’m savvy, I’m smart, I can code, so why did G3 feel wrong to me?

It was too hard. Too much was built in and not plugable. Too much was hard coded in itself. Theming was impossible in the first release, and way too hard in the third. Understanding the theme system in G2 was easy, though implementing it was hard. Understanding it in G3 was hard and implementing was horrific. And before someone reminds me, AGAIN, that this isn’t even a beta product but an alpha, quite frankly that’s not an excuse. The basic things you need to be able to do with a first public release (be it beta, alpha or whatever) is to use it: Upload photos, change options, theme. That’s it. Those are the three things at it’s most basic that photo gallery software has to have, or you may as well be using an off-site solution.

And while I may sound like I’m ranting, I’m not. I’m sad and frustrated and … You know, I really like Gallery! I really do. But it was starting to feel like Movable Type. They made a big shift and suddenly I wanted to know who peed in my coffee. The code felt wrong, it felt klunky, it felt raw. It was like starting over, and I didn’t like where it was going. And I realized the fact was that I was going to say goodbye to an old friend.

Personally I’m all about the simplest, best, tool for the job. I wanted a way to update news on JFO and, when that was ALL I needed, I used CuteNews. When I realized the site was going to need something more, I weighed my options, tested software, and decided that while WordPress was a bit of overkill, I knew how to support it and customize it to be what I needed. In the end, that proved to be a perfect choice. When I had a forum (the first time around), it was IPB, which I liked, but it always felt too big. Now I use the very basic bbPress and it’s what I need and nothing more.

If WordPress had PhotoPress, I’d probably have snagged that. Instead, I shopped around. I installed Coppermine, again, to test. I put up G3-alpha3 and then 4. I went to WikiPedia and dug out the compares and ended up in a head to head battle between ZenPhoto and Gallery3.

ZenPhoto won by feeling better.

Seriously, it’s asthetics at this point. There are only two features I miss: Being able to re-upload a picture and keep it’s MetaData, and having ‘new’ images show up with a different background color. But I can live without those.

It looks weird. I like the look, but it’s different enough to make me go ‘augh.’ There’s a new ‘stack’ ability, which lists what’s in a folder. This is good for Downloads and Documents folders, which have returned to my Dock, now that I can click on them, see what’s in, and click on a content to open that. Very nice.

The apple menu bar is transparent, which is cool but creepy. I haven’t yet found a good background image, but that’s be being picky. The Doc is also a little transparent, but now you can see what apps are open thanks to baby spotlights under the app.

I love how it handles upgrades! You open up Software Updater, it downloads, and then it disconnects you from the GUI to upgrade while you can’t accidentally fuck it all up by doing other things. This is like Windows XP, and I actually like it. On the other side of the ‘Like Windows’ coin, the window focus seems to be like Windows, and I’m mad. In the old Mac Days, you’d open an app, let’s say Mail, let it load, click back on an open app, Safari, and Mail would do it’s thing and leave you alone. Now? I have Safari open, I open Mail, go to type in a long snide post to a forum in Safari, and suddenly MAIL is in the foreground and I’ve typed something in the wrong place! HULK ANGRY! This doesn’t happen ALL the time, so I may have run into some bizzare sequencing, but if this keeps up, there will be death. Seems to ONLY happen when I’m running installs at the moment.

Booting up took longer until I uninstalled a couple older non-Leopard savvy apps (my RSS reader, Vienna). Right now my startup is Microsoft Daemon, iTunesHelper, HimmelBar, Scanner Program, Adobe Sync, Growl and Airport. Which is a lot and I’m going to see if I need all that! Still, the fewer non-Leopard apps in your startup, the faster it goes. I’m taking the scanner out, so that’ll leave me with Microsoft and HimmelBar that aren’t Leopardish.

HimmelBar (http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/) puts an icon in your menu bar so you can click and open any app. I’m quite fond of it. Works okay, though the only ‘bug’ is the image, which is white and not … er … transparent. JavaApps (Civ IV and Pirates) run a little faster, though Civ IV still crashes randomly. Known issue. Needs more memory. Speaking of, 1G is fine for RAM. There’s a minor hiccup with some things, but that’s to be expected. Nothing worth bitching about.

Boot Camp is official now, so my XP side is happier. The Leopard DVD had the new drivers and it was a damn easy install. Boot to XP, insert DVD, and BAM. Love you, Mac!

TextEdit now works like a lightweight word processor. It’s not up to the glam of Pages (which I adore), but it’s got some sweetness I’m enjoying. Like it reads .DOC files and .RTF and pops open a damn sight faster than Office. Office. Haven’t tried it yet! I tend not to use it anymore, since I got a copy of Pages. Mmm. Pages and Numbers are good.

I use RSS feeds to keep tabs on peoples blogs and such. I found that Mail has an RSS reader (I know, I know, Safari does, but for whatever reason I like to separate my RSS and Web browser). Mail’s RSS is okay, I miss a couple things (like clicking on the title to go to the page), and it took me a while to grok the smart folder to make unread messages show up in the Dock icon, but all told, I like it better than Vienna on a Mac.

No, really, I was going to wait on 10.5.1 before buying it, since I’m sure there are little ‘things’ that get missed in in-house testing. That’s just the way the world works. I’m okay with it, really. Also I hate major upgrades. They annoy me to no end, and I have three computers. Well … two. Ipstenit’s Mac is making bad noises. Really bad. It doesn’t turn on sometimes, and you have to unplug it and plug it back in. Now, that may be the monitor, but I doubt it. And her computer was made in August 2002, and I bought it the year after for her, so … it’s old.

Four years, though, man, that’s cool. It was the 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processor too, the first cheesegrater G5s rolled out in June 03, so I must have picked up the G4 right around that time. Actually, based on this Blog, I bought it in 04 … which surprises me, now that I know it’s only three years old, and then unsurprises, cause I bought an open model … which means it was probably closer to 5 by use. No wonder it was on sale ($1000) and anyway, she didn’t need the G5 (which also doesn’t fit in our desks – I had to move my keyboard and mouse trays, which I determined I hated anyway). Tangentally, I learned I used my cmoputer MORE with the keyboard on the desk than I ever did with it on the tray, so I may move the mouse up too and just forget the tray shit.

Her new one is a Mini with an 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which is faster than the laptop, slower than my desktop, and should be just fine for her for email, interweaving, and word processing. Me? I run iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and all those things. I have NEEDS. Her software is ‘What comes with a Mac, Office, Adobe Photoshop (which she never uses anymore), Atlantis, and some Games.’

Which was a long way to saying Mrs. is getting a new computer. With Leopard. And she’d want me to support her on it. So I have to have Leopard too.

I don’t like upgrades. I just don’t. They take hours and I have to re-learn everything. Plus last time I upgraded it was a trick and a half. Their directions were wrong, and I had to write up my own and just ick. (I just went to look for those directions and can’t find them … which means I’m probably thinking of the Puma upgrade and not Tiger). I don’t remember upgrading to Tiger, but it came on my new Mac so that may be why.

After I had Leopard for a day, played with it for about 5 hours, I started writing this. It’s different, and that’s really all I can say right now. The shock of my 20″ monitor is dulling the full effect right now, I think, but really it’s not that different. Everything feels ‘off’ and I’m not sure why. I suspect when the Mrs. computer gets here today or tomorrow. Based on past experiences, I predict it will be here Friday, but since I have Friday off I should be able to set it up for her just in time for Shabbat.

Irony, thy name is Apple.

I’ll try and organize my thoughts into something other than ‘Ohh, shiney!’