How many blogs does it take to answer my question about pingbacks? The correct answer is at least four, but three of them were mine and I ultimately answered my own question.

When I installed WordPress 2.5, my pingbacks broke. You may wonder what a pingback is or you may not be interested in the slightest. If you are not interested, this may be the post to skip, unless you enjoy watching a kitty chase her tail for hours and hours and hours before remembering she has one important blog, this one, and two test blogs. Normally I don’t have two test blogs, usually it is just one, however, a few weeks ago I was attempting to help a fellow knitting forum member with her pre-2.5 blog, so I installed the version she was running and before I broke my blog at the 2.5 install, I upgraded the test blog to be sure nothing would break. I failed to take into account my web host breaking the one-click install, lesson learned let me assure you. To attempt to head-off any further problems I set up an identical blog to this main one with the same posts and settings behind the scenes, as well as the same plugins also behind the scenes.

After spending a few hours combing the wordpress.org codex, then the “interwebs” at large, I decided my answer did not lay out there, it lay between my head and my three installs. I say it took at least four blogs to answer the question because wordpress.org is a blog and I found a few individuals attempting to be helpful on their blogs, but didn’t answer my question. I also checked WordPress.com to reassure myself that WordPress 2.5 did indeed know how to handle pingbacks. You may wonder what a pingback is, a pingback appears on my blog in the comment of a post when someone out in the wide “interwebs” writes something and links back to a specific blog post of mine.

Out of pure frustration of nothing to show for an afternoon’s worth of work, I set about digging through my theme’s code, hoping maybe the theme was broken, no such luck. I then decided to open the test blogs. I admit, I forgot about the second blog running a really old version of WordPress until I went looking for the password for the first test blog. That second install turned out to be a huge help to the investigative process. I worked to make both 2.5 versions mirror each other in code and active plugins. My main blog would catch one or two out of six actual pingbacks. The other two blogs found all the pingbacks I sent. Again, a bit stumped, I started to wonder if it was a versioning problem with a plugin, the test blog doesn’t have the newest versions of all the plugins I have installed. I only update them when I am using it to test something. It then occurred to me that I redirect this blog. The install folder is not at the root of my site, nor will it be again. That is part of what broke it the first time and made it more difficult to fix. One-click install from my dearest host likes to install to a completely empty folder, no other files or folders present. So when it broke and I reinstalled it, I was going to have to create a subfolder or delete all my photos, files, etc and start over from scratch. I was already deeply saddened by the loss of my blog and did not wish to lose anymore. WordPress 2.x has a setting that allows users to indicate where the blog source files are located while redirecting traffic to another location. In my case, my install is at http://proefrocks.net/blog/, while until today, you viewed it at http://proefrocks.net. My test blogs were not redirecting traffic like the main blog is/was. Once I change the setting to redirect it, the pingbacks broke there as well. Which was a huge relief. I blame my own troubleshooting skills becoming rusty. Ten months ago, this problem would have been solved in under an hour. I also discovered along the way I could force pingbacks if I consistently put a trackback url into each post. That’s not going to happen. I’m trying to retrain my brain to remember to put tags on my posts, about 50-50 there and I’ve always used categories but again, 75-25 there.

To summarize, you will notice a change in my domain layout. When you visit http://proefrocks.net you will now be greeted with a static (unchanging) page with links to several different areas of the domain, one of which will be this blog. I will probably link to Josh’s blog, my photo gallery and the photo gallery for BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area). The page will be updated as changes dictate.

Still to do, create a custom redirect script. June 13, 2008: I created the .htaccess file at the root directory per apache.org. Luckily for me, my permalink structure is simple, all posts from 2008 appear to be in a folder called 2008 and those from 2007 appear to be in folder called 2007. The simple addition of two lines directing requests for 2008 to now go to blog/2008 and 2007 to go to blog/2007 has rendered all links out there in the “interwebs” valid.

P.S. If you remember to move .htaccess and index.php from root back to the WordPress folder, be sure to edit everything and well, I had to empty .htaccess in the WordPress folder which then broke my entire site. I fiddled for another hour and then remembered that plugins cause 2.5 to become rather unruly. I deactivated my gallery plugin, WPG2, emptied the .htaccess again and reactivated the plugin. Then I allowed WPG2 to reconfigure itself, rewriting good things to the .htaccess file.

I should like to giggle a bit about this entry of mine, started earlier this month. After an upgrade to the blogging software, this entry was redated for August of 1969. (Interestingly enough, many others encountered this problem as well.) It would be interesting to note that at the time of this writing I am in my early thirties, making it impossible for me to write this because I did not know any Proefrocks while my mother was in high school and my father shipped by the Navy somewhere. While my parents knew of each other, they were not dating yet to my knowledge. A few more years would pass before their marriage and I arrived exactly a year and two months after that date. That being said, let’s move along to the intended topic.

I do not have the vocabulary of an English scholar, however, I find that it may be slightly larger than many. As I have listened to the audio books of The Dark is Rising sequence, I understand from whence my impetus occurred. I must have curled up with the books and the dictionary when first I read, though only if I borrowed them from the library during my primary years.

I remember retreating to my room to devour Boxcar Children while in first or second grade. I can close my eyes and picture the children’s section and picture the Science fiction and fantasy area. I know I borrowed my limit of 10 every week and chose only one new-to-me author at a time. Once I returned to the library after discovering a new author, I would inhale every word he or she wrote if I was able to find it. I remember Madeline L’Engle and tesseracts, though beyond her, I remember little of the authors I read, Encyclopedia Brown and my mother teaching me Jimminy Cricket’s song to spell e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a, but that part is the only thing I remember from her singing it to me. The author’s name never settled in my mind, Donald J. Sobol, though as an adult, I purchased one of the “two minute mystery” books that my fifth and sixth grade teachers would read to us.

The memories that escape me are from kindergarten. I attended a private religious school, too small to have a library at the time. Our grade levels were combined, k-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7 though beyond that I would have to dig for my yearbook. I remember recess, nap time, art, gym, the book mobile and phonics. I’m sure the memory is not completely accurate, but I envision the bookmobile not stopping in the school parking lot. Rather, it stopped at a near by corner store and we walked to it. Surely it came to us in our parking lot and I have combined an incorrect location with a fun memory. When I use the word phonics to define that particular memory, what I remember is saying the names and sounds of the letters of the alphabet by looking at the posters on the wall-I swear it didn’t make any sense to me why we were doing that. I understand now that the teachers were trying to teach me how to read with phonics, but someone somewhere didn’t explain that part to me, so I just memorized the words (made them all sight words)and set about guessing what words the letters were supposed to make. My confusion may have resulted from words like the, why, when, that, there and the like-all the words that cannot be sounded out with phonics decoding skills. I think I figured out how to apply phonics when I was in middle school or high school. I remember all the way along being amazed at other students who would read new words flawlessly, while I scrambled for a dictionary to try to figure it out or stare in wonder when I heard a word pronounced for the first time after seeing it in print but not understanding the sounds.

Should anyone remember a bookmobile from Fulton County in the early 1980′s, do drop me a line. I should like to know more about it, since my five year old self has long since left me.

I’ve updated this blog to WordPress 2.5. The upgrade is mostly behind the scenes on the admin panel and back-end clunkiness. It will take a little time to get used to where things have moved to back here where I type, but that will come. I have some concern about the plug-ins I use to show various and sundry coolie things in the sidebars. Time will bear out whether I lose functionality. So far, the only oddity I have noticed is one preexisting draft, an unpublished post. The date on it flipped from sometime this year to 1969. I don’t know what controls that or interacts with it. I could disable all the plug-ins and see if it rights itself.

On one of my favorite yarny sites, I have been hunting various groups that deal with the topic of blogging and found several new ones to lurk. Among the groups I joined today are an organizing your blog one, and three that deal with photography.

My blog is not disorganized nor is it organized. Each week I seem to blog a new topic, add a new category and reorder old posts to accommodate the new plan. I’m afraid that it will take me some time to figure out when I will stop changing it because it finally fits my purpose.

I do not fool myself into thinking that I am professional. I don’t have that unique sense that tells me when I see a perfect picture from the perfect angle. Instead, I take pictures of what strikes me from odd, often misunderstood angle. One group encourages each of us to take a photo a day, similar to the blog post a day. The other group sets a color palette over a two month span and encourages us to knit, draw, create, stumble upon and group photos that fit the palette. I am thinking that I can combine the two, take photos every day for a year, and group the photos by colors in the spectrum. The decision to make is put photographs here or start a new one. I will contemplate it until morning and decide tomorrow what to do. The last is an abc-along, take one picture every two weeks that represents the required letter of the alphabet. I cannot officially join as sign-up is over for 2008, but it may fit in to my schedule of one picture every day of a given color group and of a letter once every two weeks. At the end of every month, the 365ers put all the photos together in one graphic, or mosaic, which looks incredibly cool. If I can remember the self-imposed boundaries I will derive some enjoyment from this task. If I am unable to keep up, I will modify the requirements as I go.

I received my order of photos on Thursday or Friday from winkflash. I have to say that so far I am impressed with quality and service. That being said, I am ready to start our wedding scrapbook.