I'm not dead yet - just busy, as usual =P I'll have a regular blog post ready sometime later this month.

Anyway, you might have noticed the blog looks different from what it was before - in fact, it bears a striking resemblance to my main site. That's because I finally got off my butt and worked on fixing it up =)

Here's what I did:

1. Backed up all files and database information regarding WordPress.
2. Created a fresh installation of WordPress locally, using XAMPP.
3. Compared the database fields between the fresh installation and the one I had on my site.
4. Dropped all of the tables in the fresh installation's database and imported the contents of my site's in its place; any field not originally present in the fresh installation was excluded.
5. Replaced a few links pointing to my site and blog in the database to point to the local copy of them instead; otherwise, entries would not show up or I would be redirected to my site's blog when viewing the administration pages.
6. Took a look at the local copy to ensure that everything was working properly.
7. Erased all WordPress files on my site and dropped all of its tables from my database.
8. Uploaded the WordPress files and imported the database information from my local copy, changing the site links in #5 back to what they originally were.
9. Downloaded a theme (Barecity) to replace the one I originally had (Steam), and tweaked it to match the layout of my site; I kept the font used earlier on my blog.
10. Reinstalled most of my plugins; I am no longer using a few of them, and one (Filosofo Comments Preview, which provided the "Preview" button) is giving a fatal error when trying to activate it.

Aside from that one plugin, everything is working again (even Spam Karma!), and its layout matches up with the rest of my site now, which is very nice =D

Also, to help protect against spam, old blog entries will have comments closed. This includes any entry which has been around for over one year without comments, or one month from the last posted comment (provided the entry is already a year old; otherwise it will remain open until the later of the two dates). Should you have the need to comment on one of those entries, feel free to let me know and I'll reopen comments on it for one month from the last posted comment after the entry was reopened.

For those of you reading this, I have a few questions:

1. Regarding "Filsofo Comments Preview", if anyone reading my blog uses it:
   1. Did you get a fatal error when trying to activate it?
   2. If so, is there a way to fix this - or something I should check - so I can get it working again?
   3. If not, or if you use a different plugin to provide a "Preview" button, could you tell me what you use? I know I have the "Preview Your Comment" field available (which shows what your comment looks like as you're editing it), but it requires JavaScript to run...and I prefer to have a backup if JavaScript is - for any reason - not available to the user.
2. Regarding the "Creative Commons" license in the footer: This might be a stupid question, but does that cover everything on my site, everything in my blog, or just the blog template? I'm not sure if this is something I should worry about resolving, or if I just misinterpreted it and am worrying about nothing...

That's all I can think of for this entry - just wanted to let all of you know I'm still here =P