Mister Linky’s Blog

You may have noticed some new stuff around here… I’ll have more to say about that soon, once the dust has all settled.

I want to let you all know that there will be some downtime next THIS week for maintenance. I’ve been working like crazy to optimize the system and streamline as much as possible. But with the tremendous growth we’ve seen lately, especially in the past couple weeks, it’s time to upgrade our hosting.

This is a multi-step process that does require some downtime. However, because the first step involves backing up of existing data, there will be some time when the system is up but not writable.

What does this mean? As soon as the upgrade process begins, everybody’s widgets WILL be available. However, they will NOT be able to accept new links during the backup. Once the system has been backed up, they will shut us down briefly while the data is all restored on the larger system. Once that has completed, the widgets will be available once again. And as soon as I make sure everything is working correctly, the widgets will accept links again and everything will be back to normal.

When will this happen? I’m currently thinking I’ll start the upgrade at about 11:30 P.M. Eastern U.S. time on Wednesday, February 23rd. This is WAY past my bedtime, but I want to do this at a time that will impact most users as little as possible. How long it will take, I’m not really certain. I do know, however, that by keeping the widgets read-only during the backup, we will be back up and running a lot sooner.

So thank you in advance for your patience with this upgrade. It’s not much fun for anybody, but it’s something we’ll all be glad we did.

Part one testing complete… thank you for your help!!

Those red x’s are there in case you need to remove a link quickly, and only you as the owner can see them. they only appear when the system knows it’s you, such as after you log in, and continues for some amount of time depending on your browser’s security settings.

Need to make your widget a little narrower? Try adding this to your post, just before your widget. Once you find it works for you, you can add it to your template, before any posts containing widgets.

Here’s the code:

<style type="text/css">
.blenza-box {
  width:400px;
}
</style>

For more styling tips, see this post.

A few people have asked me over the past couple days years how to get started with Mister Linky’s widgets. Here’s something quick I’ll expand on when I get a chance…

I think the easiest way to start is to jump right in with a test post.

If you log in at www.blenza.com and click Wizard, select the type of blog that you have and then select one of the wizard types — original auto-linky, for example, or easy-linky (no caching, links appear right away).

When you click the Generate Code button, it will give you some script tag code that you select and copy.

Then you go over to your blog, write your test post, and then at the end, click the HTML tab (if you have one) and paste in the script tag code.

When you publish you’ll have a linky widget on your post.

That’s the basics — it can get a little more complicated, but not much, if you are creating a meme or playing a blog game, but just getting a widget is a good first step to start with.

Got spam? Here’s a quick note about what you can do about it.

• log in at www.blenza.com
• click Options and then under “Functional Options” is the filtering list
• click to add a new filter
• on the screen that follows, select Host if you want to block based on part of a url or Name if you want to block based on part of the name
• then type in the text
• for example, to block links from this blog, you would select “Host” and type “misterlinky” into the text box
• click Enter

I’m putting the finishing touches on a new kind of widget, and I need a URL in here to link to.

There may be days when you are posting multiple linkies. Or there may be days when you’re just getting the code for more than one widget. In either case, you’ll want to take care to keep them separate from each other. No, they won’t fight — on the contrary, they’re so nice they’ll just want so share each other’s links! Know what I mean? OK.

Here’s the problem. When you use the Widget Wizard to create the code for a linky widget, it takes the current date and uses that as an identifier, to distinguish it from other widgets. And back when people did one, maybe two memes a week, that was just fine. But let’s say you’re setting up today’s widget and tomorrow’s at the same time, they’re both going to have the same code. Let’s look at an example:

<img border=”0″
src=”http://www2.blenza.com/linkies/graphic.php?owner=whiskeytalking&postid=02Jul2009“>

And then you run the wizard again and you get the same code. What can you do? Simply add a letter to the postid= part that will make it different from the first one. Like this:

<img border=”0″
src=”http://www2.blenza.com/linkies/graphic.php?owner=whiskeytalking&postid=02Jul2009A“>

Now each widget will keep its links to itself. Hope this helps!

You’re not going to believe this… especially after all the trouble I’ve had with my hosting company…

The server where the Help Desk lives, it’s separate from blenza.com for obvious reasons. Well it was time recently for it to move to a new physical hardware system. What could possibly go wrong, right? Anyway, to make a long story short, they have lost a few hours of Help Desk data. It could have been worse. For a little while this afternoon, there was several days worth of data missing, which has been restored.

SO… if you’ve submitted a Help Desk ticket and you haven’t gotten a response, or if you try to click on a link and your ticket is missing, this is why. If any of this rings a bell, please submit a new ticket, so we can fix whatever’s broke.

Finally posting this message about what to do once you’ve been moved to the new server. Don’t do any of this until that’s done and Mister Linky has sent you this link.

For new widgets, all you need to do is use the Widget Wizard and you’ll get widget code that goes directly to the new server.

For existing widgets, where it says “www.blenza.com” all you need to do is change the “www” to “www2″ — now that widget will load directly from the new server. And in the case of existing auto-linky widgets, it means they’re not broken anymore!

NOTE: if you have the old header scripts, i.e. containing www.blenza.com/linkies/header.js or www.blenza.com/linkies/platinum.js — do NOT change these, but please remove them according to the directions you can find here.

ALSO NOTE: if you’re using a bookmark to create your widget scripts, you may be able to edit that bookmark and change “www.blenza.com” to “www2.blenza.com” but if you find you can’t, simply delete that bookmark and get a new one from the widget wizard.

Of course you shouldn’t do any of this until you’ve been moved to the new server, and to request that, simply file a ticket at the help desk — use the category “NEW SERVER” and please use the medium priority.