I have two announcements today.

First, I’ve moved the forum to it’s own account. It was at thripp.com/forum, but now it’s at f.thripp.com/f. I think that’s better in the long range for thripp.com. There could even be a blog about the forum at f.thripp.com someday. All the old links redirect. I couldn’t put it at the root as Simple:Press Forum (the software behind the forum) won’t allow it, but I’m starting to like f.thripp.com/f. No messages or users were lost. Let me know if you spot any problems.

Second, my home-grown URL trimming service, x.thripp.com, has been renamed …

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I’ve created a new blog, Daytona State College News, at DaytonaState.org. I’ll be posting news and information about Daytona State College. The cool thing is even though this is on a domain name, it’s still part of the thripp.com and you can log-in with the same account. You can even contribute posts as I’m using the add users widget.

I’m using the Multi-Site Manager plugin to keep it the same as thripp.com. Check it out, and expect some great posts by me every once in a while.

I added a spam counter to every blog’s sidebar, below the comments count. This is cool, because it shows your readers how much spam you get. The sidebar for this development blog says “21 Comments” and “120 Spams.” I get a whopping amount of spam at Brilliant Photography by Richard X. Thripp, so my counter looks more like this: “4,411 Spams.”

All thripp.com blogs have spam protection through Akismet, so we should be able to stand up to any amount of spam (unless the spammers overload my web server). Make sure to check and clear out your spam queue …

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I switched from the new version to the ShareThis Classic version, which opens a new page like this instead of a JavaScript pop-up. I like the new design a lot better because it’s more clean an intuitive. Now, the ShareThis link for all your posts and pages is next to “Printable Version,” instead of being floating above it which didn’t make sense. Enjoy.

I added these lines to the thripp.com .htaccess file using Apache’s mod_rewrite module:

RewriteRule ^(.*/)?category/(.*) $1$2 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?feed/(.*) $1feed [R=301,L]

This means that if someone accesses a category with the category/ prefix, the server redirects them automatically, and if someone puts a trailing slash on a feed, it removes the slash. I tried fixing the category issue before, but it somehow stopped working.

Here are two malformed thripp.com URLs for you to try out:

http://richardxthripp.thripp.com/category/photography/
“category/” and the trailing slash on “photography/” should be stripped automatically.

http://richardthripp.thripp.com/feed/
The trailing slash should be stripped automatically. Be patient because Dad’s posts are huge so his feed …

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I’ve added a “Short URL” listing in printable versions of posts, like this one. As you know, you can click “Printable Version” below any post on the thripp.com network (provided the blog owner hasn’t disabled it), and then you’ll see a print-formatted version with footnoted links. Now, there’s a Short URL listing below “Printed from:”, which looks like this: “Short URL: x.thripp.com/37a5g”. This is a dynamic URL generated using the recently released x.thripp.com API; the same as the Twitter links, but without the http:// prefix, since you don’t have to type that in any web browser. …

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All thripp.com blogs have word counts which you can see under Dashboard > Word Count once you make or edit a post or page. There is also a public word counter in your sidebar. This is a great feature, because it’s an indicator of your progress as a writer, and the dashboard page shows you which posts and pages are the lengthiest.

Take my Dad’s blog for example. His administrative page looks like this:

And his readers see this in his sidebar:

Since this change starts right now, the counter won’t appear in your sidebar …

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I’ve moved the last person to thripp.com: my father. He was at richardthripp.com, but his new home on the web is richardthripp.thripp.com, and his old site redirects. His blog is called Books by Richard Thripp, featuring hundreds of pages of his crazy writing. You can even buy his book, Along the Far Climb Down, for $1, right through the site (it goes to PayPal). I don’t have a framework so that just anyone can sell anything, but it may be something for me to work on later.

Along with the merger of photos.thripp.com into the thripp.com network, this …

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2008-07-30 Update: this feature has been upgraded and x.thripp.com is now the shorter th8.us. Read here for more info.

Take a look at the bottom of any thripp.com post, and you’re going to see something different:

I’ve created an elegant URL shortening service called x.thripp.com, and for every post on thripp.com, a URL is automatically generated. So you can just right-click, click Copy, and then paste a mini version of the post’s URL to Twitter, or in an email, or anywhere else. Not that thripp.com URLs are long, but they use your post’s title by default, …

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I’ve implemented the features mentioned in my entertaining title. Finally!

That’s what your sidebar looks like when you’re logged in. And that’s when you’re reading ANY blog. Very convenient, and it makes it hard to get lost. Before, there was just Site Admin and Log Out, but this is so much cooler. Clicking “Subscribe” adds the blog you’re reading to your subscribed list, which you can read in your admin panel. If you’re subscribed, the link changes to “Unsubscribe” (should you want to do that).

When you’re in your administrative section, you see this under “Dashboard”:…

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