Five weeks since the last post? Wow, that went fast. No apologies though. Look forward, not backward and all that stuff.

The website as it stands now is really just a big proof-of-concept. I've proved I can cobble together a fairly standard two column blog, with header and footer, and even post to it every now and then. But there's a big chunk of semi-interesting content in the sidebar that isn't being looked at because all the 'Of Interest' content isn't viewable in the RSS feed or to those accessing individual posts from the RSS feed.

This is around 60-70% of the stuff I post to the website. So you can see why I'd want to do something to get people reading it.

I really need to bring my photography back in a big way too. Although I did try experimenting with posting to the site through Flickr, it just didn't feel natural to me. There is the option of reinstalling the basic Flickr bar. Only this time I'll try and make it fit in with the design a lot better.

And now that I'm excessively posting to Twitter, having it integrate with the site is damn near mandatory.

While I'm doing all this I might as well upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 too (although the last upgrade was all kinds of pain). It'll be nice to check out the backend designed by the Happy Cog boys.

Consider the resolving of all these points to be phase one of the new master plan.
Phase two being a new design or, if I'm feeling particularly lazy, a quickie refresh of the current one.

I've had a few comments from people that Innocent Bystander "just ain't right" in Internet Explorer. Which doesn't surprise me really, given the issues I've had with the browser before before.

I had a bit of time to spare at work, so I thought I'd check out the problem. See what's going on. I typed in the address, hit Enter and got this screen:

Yep, my site has been blocked by the internet filter and I'm willing to bet that this tag is the culprit.

I could remove the offending tag, but what happens if that wasn't it? What if it's something else on the site thats grabbing the filter's attention? Do I remove the offending item (be it tag, post or image) again? And if that doesn't fix it? How far would I got to ensure my site gets around the filter?

I could keep asking these questions, going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, but that way lies craziness. Self-censoring really isn't an option. Innocent Bystander is my own personal website when I'm working on my own personal website. The best thing to do, I think, is just to keep posting as I am now and damn the filters.

Really, they're the ones missing out.

Of course there is still that problem with my site and IE. But I guess I can just blow the dust off Internet Explorer on the home computer and tool around there. Leaving my work life and sexy blog separate.

Now that I have the general look of the site down of course new problems are going to crop up.

I've got one huge issue with the RSS feed. It's full of multiple copies of site posts, when there should only be one.

Also this morning I noticed that the last post had decided to replicate a few times.

And I was so close.

[10:47] OK. I've managed to figure out what went wrong. The site was posting a number of posts dependent on how many categories I'd filed it under. Once I disabled the SideBlog plugin this fixed right up.

[11:10] I've got no idea what version of SideBlog I was using, but I think it was at least two years old. I've tried a much later version and it seems to be working fine.

After many, many hours of back-breaking labour and bruised fingers I'm done. Panama 2.0 is a go.

Here's what I've done:

• New design (duh!)
• Installed a CAPTCHA. I was getting sick of the SPAM filter filling up and overflowing into my mailbox. This will also mean that the logs are a lot cleaner too.
• Learned the basics of PHP.

While I'm happy with the site, I had a lot of issues with the sidebar. There are a still a couple of things I want to add to it, but they can wait:

• Recent Comments
• Tumblelog. This will be a short list of links and observations. Things that, while being cool, don't deserve a full post [4:25]Tumblelog is there thanks to some outside help. Cheers, Pauly.

• [4:32]I've just noticed that bullets aren't working in the main content page. Dang. Bullets are back, baby.

These will appear when (and if) I figure out how to use the WordPress Widgets. Of course, judging by the time it took me to learn PHP expect these addons some time late 2008.

EDIT: This is a repost. The site was displaying the old one three times for some reason. I deleted one and they all went.

With just a few little niggling things in the new design to work out, I thought it's time I put out a little teaser of what's to come.