The Blog Peoria Network

Someone has deliberately corrupted my core files. Anytime anyone uses a widget in their blog, the site re-directs to a pharmacy site. The solution is to temporarily dewidgetize your side and use the default sidebars.

If your site now loads normally, do nothing.

I am going to upgrade to the latest version of WPMu as soon as time permits.

THIS is what I spent most of my day off trying to figure out.

A long time ago, when I created Peoria Pundit, it was called Bill’s Content. I hosted the site with a crappy company called Affordable Host. I later changed the name of the site, started using the name Peoria Pundit, and moved the entire mess over to A Small Orange. Affordable Host was run by morons, while the good folks at ASO have been great.

Unfortunately, I left my domain name registration at Affordable Host, which was later purchased by DotCanada.com. Apparently, this is a case of one group of idiots buying out another. No matter how many times I’ve told these morons to start sending me billing information to an email address that I actually can still use, they absolutely insist on sending it to one I do not have any access to anymore since I’ve moved three times and switched ISP’s twice.

Well, today my domain name registration lapsed. Apparently, it lapsed after DotCanada’s billing department went home for the day. All of them. And no one answering phones in the tech support department has any access to any information at all except what number I should call tomorrow. And judging from their attitudes, it was a huge inconvenience to talk to me, too.

Funny, I thought the Internet was open 24/7. Silly me.

Which means PeoriaPundit.com is sick in bed with the I’m-doing-business-with-a-bunch-of-idiots flu until sometime after 8 a.m. tomorrow when the oh-so-important billing department opens.

I may record the call and play it for my readers’ amusement. But then this is a family blog.

I created the The Blog Peoria Project to encourage neighborhood-based citizen journalism. And to some extent it has succeeded. But I was kinda hoping for more. I envisioned it as a network of blogs, but it’s mostly a locally-based free blogging service, with no more interaction between members than would exist between any group of bloggers.

Soon, the fine folks at Automattic will release something called BuddyPress, which will take an existing WordPress Multi User site like BPP and make it more of an interactive social network, with blogs as just one component. Features will include personal messages between members, member albums, friends lists, a front page that aggregates to member content, and more. A feature I’m excited aboutis one that allows members to form and administrate their own groups

Buddy Press (actually, a series of plugins) is still under development, and as soon as a stable version is out, I’ll upload them all.

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit.