To be honest, I’ve not really tried BlogRush so I’m not really in a position to offer an opinion about it. All I know about it is from what the email ‘newsletters’ that arrive in a special part of my inbox say and from what a few others, whose opinions count for more than those sending those special ‘newsletters’, have written about it.
From the description of the features and benefits that others have provided (not their opinion of it, but what it actually does), I’m not in any sort of a rush (no pun intended) to try it nor to be cheated by others bent on exploiting it.
What I am keen to try out is Sarah’s new What Others Are Saying (WOAS) WordPress plugin that offers similar functionality, but without any of what puts me off BR i.e. it’s a PHP plugin that reads RSS feeds and displays them on my blog, but it only takes the feeds from websites I specify, websites which I am fairly certain won’t be making inappropriate posts.
Nicer and more useful than a blogroll, WOAS offers readers of my blog the offerings of other blogs I read myself, but most of the benefit goes to the other blogs as it generates real, direct links to them and introduces their blog posts to a wider audience.
Should I include your blog?
I’d like to add a few more blogs to my WOAS list. If you think posts from your blog might be suitable, drop a comment or message and I’ll check your blog out.
It seems like it’s the season for website theme changes as not only have a few of my regular reads (e.g. Sarah, Jon, Stu, Jason) changed their blog themes, but The Register and Amazon.co.uk have rounded some of their corners out (Amazon.co.uk now seems to have reverted to their previous look since I last checked earlier today) and now my blog!
The theme I’m currently using is a pre-release version that was XHTML compliant on a test installation, but that soon changed after I added my content into the mix together with a variety of third party gadgetry. It’s a CSS-based design with no tables used for layout.
I thought it was a good time to upgrade to WordPress v2.3 (with post preview), housekeep a few redundant plugins and move away from the JavaScript heavy K2 theme I was previously using. I’ve also installed Sarah’s BlogRush alternative, but having a few issues getting it to work with FeedBurner feeds [edit: later found the issues were caused by not RTFM].
If you spot any gremlins at work, please let me know!
As FTP clients go, FileZilla offers all of the basic functionality wrapped up in a no-nonsense user interface. It’s a mature application, well supported and best of all completely free. You can get the source code too, if you’re so inclined.
I’ve been using FileZilla v2 for years and now it’s been rewritten as version 3. The new version stores its site profiles in a different way and the built-in import feature doesn’t allow you to import all of the settings from v2 e.g. folder destinations can’t be imported into v3 using an export from v2. This is a royal pain in the ass as I’ve got dozens of site profiles all nicely set-up with their local and destination folders.
Fortunately, some kind soul known as Nyro, has developed a neat little translation script that will take the v2 export XML file and convert it into a v3 format profiles file. You can use the script directly from their website or download the source code for use on your own server.
Technorati Tags: FileZilla upgrade
You may recall that I wrote about some of NuSphere’s products and how I used them to develop (secure) PHP desktop applications such as Keyword Permutator. Well, there’s currently a sale on PhpED, their PHP IDE, starting at just $79 for the standard version. Before I knew better, I developed all of my code using just UltraEdit. Whilst I still use UltraEdit for everything else, it doesn’t offer the powerful tool set that PhpED does for PHP development.
With PhpED, you get features such as:
- Debugger - follow your scripts step by step and see how every variable gets populated.
- Web server - run your PHP scripts in a local environment. I like using WAMP5 for local development as it comes with Apache, PHP and MySQL pre-packaged and ready out of the box.
- Code profiler - see just how performant your code is before you risk it on a production server or use it to find bottlenecks in your code.
- CVS client - a handy feature, if you don’t already have a preferred CVS client. I use Tortoise CVS quite happily to keep my source code safe.
- Built-in language reference manuals - no more scrambling around for the PHP or MySQL manuals.
- Built-in database client - much quicker than firing up PHPMyAdmin. My preferred tool is a free copy of Navicat I got from the cover of PC Plus magazine!
- Smarty support - Makes working with templates a nicer experience.
- All of the usual code formatting, syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding etc. that you can get with many other programmer’s editors and much more.
If you’re serious about your PHP and you haven’t yet tried an integrated development environment, I’d recommend at least trialling PhpED. If the sale finishes before you decide to buy then check out the built-in tips for a surprise discount! 
Technorati Tags: PhpED, web development, PHP, WAMP, NuSphere
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