Chillat.net is back! We finally got the new server up and running, replacing the old monster (tira) with an IBM Netfinity server equipped with a 6 drive SCSI raid array to make sure our precious data is resting safe.

The performance should also be improved shortly as we plug another processor in it. So, let’s all welcome “gaia” to the family.

There will be a lot of changes happening in the next few months. The old microblog will be replaced with a new and fresh microblog and its old hostname (chillat.net) will provide a portal to the services and content of the site. More about this soon. Feel free to request features and share your ideas on the forums.

The forums and the microblog have been upgraded to the latest versions. Everything went OK as far as I can see, except for some tags going poof from some threads on the forum. So please help tag the tagless ones :) And report any problems that you may encounter.

Since pretty much all of the Chillat.net sites use Gravatars, I might as well write a quick post about it, and how it works. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar, and the name pretty much says it all. It’s an avatar that is set in one place, and made available wherever you want. Your gravatar is linked to your e-mail address, and once you got it set up all you have to do is upload a new image in order to update your avatar everywhere.

Getting one is super easy. Go to www.gravatar.com and click “Sign up” (or if you’re lazy, just click here). Make sure to register with the same e-mail address that you registered on the Chillat.net sites with. Proceed by uploading your desired avatar, and that’s it. Your avatar will now automagically appear on the forums, in the blogs, and on any other site that use Gravatar. This include most WordPress blogs and the bbPress forums.

The maintenance of the Jabber server is over, and everything should be back to normal including all user accounts and contacts. If you find that something is missing or wrong, leave a comment in this thread.

As previously stated, the maintenance was done in order to hopefully increase the stability of the server, so hopefully it should help prevent any future downtime.

The Jabber server will be down for maintenance on the 23rd of June, starting at 02:00 CET. Hopefully this will help with the stability of the server.

Just helped Peter out with a tricky problem. He was unable to upload images to his blog. Or well, uploads worked, but they didn’t actually get uploaded. The solution to this problem is simple enough.

Some Wordpress users find after performing the wonderful automagic install that everything works great until you try to upload an image using the Media Library. The upload appears to work but the image preview is blank and the image is not there when you try to view it.

Under the Wordpress Dashboard there is a “Miscellaneous” link under “Settings“. You will notice that the uploads folder is a very long absolute directory path that was auto-detected by the installer. Though it’s probably correct, something is “lost in translation” when the media uploader tries to upload the file.

Simply delete everything but the last two directories in the string and you are left with wp-content/uploads. Save that setting, and you should be good to go.

Snatched from That Wordpress Guy

A few of the Chillat.net sites has got a tiny orange bar in the top left corner of the screen. This is the Chillat.net gadget, providing quick navigation between a few of the Chillat.net sites including the forums, the microblog, and the official Chillat.net blog.

To add this gadget to your blog, all you have to do is go into plugins, and enable the “Chillat.net Gadget” plugin. Piece of cake! :)

If you have any ideas on improvements, just let me know.

Oh yes! The Chillat.net Forums is now live. Join the discussion! Signup is quick and painless :)

I’ve also set up two radio streams, both are podradio – one with security related shows (security now, eff podcast, etc.) and one with humor and such. I’ll see if I can get a music podradio running too.

All stations update their feeds nightly, and the content being played is always from the last 90 days. Randomized. And fully automagic :)

This is the official Chillat.net blog.