So if you were having problems logging in, chances are you should be okay now.  Let me know if logins are working again!

That being said, anybody looking for this week’s Blog Tools Review can find it on FuglyCode.com.  This week I detail a very important anti-spam plugin called Akismet, which you can read here.  Note that, as I stated previously, Blog Tools Reviews will now only be posted on FuglyCode.com, so head on over to the new site every Wednesday at 12pm EST for your weekly dose of blog plugin fun!

Also, after almost a year of hiatus, Rise of the X-Syndicate is back with Chapter 7 – The Fall.  I found this chapter extremely difficult to write, partly because I wasn’t to certain how I wanted to present the conflict in the chapter, and mostly because it truly is a backbone for so much of what’s to come.  With it now published, I feel like I’ve jumped a huge hurdle, and future chapters are all starting to fall into place.

And finally, although I am spending much time on FuglyCode right now, I still have big plans for this site.  I intend to begin adding new content over the next few months, which will allow the site to grow into a much more rounded and interesting site.  I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Talk to y’all later!

I like it because this is probably the first site that I’ve ever created for myself, and after a year and a half online, I find nothing more relaxing than sitting back and looking at my site, which I built the way I wanted to, without the constant input from some external party about advertising revenues and traffic statistics.

Its not that I hate developing sites for other,  I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember, and I don’t see any reason why I would stop.  But there is something liberating about creating a site that is yours and yours alone, a site where you have final say on content, look and feel, and overall organization.

And that’s what Folaji.com is for me: a place I can escape to and be myself, where I can publish ideas, stories, and videos that had once only been a sentence on a piece of paper in an old binder.  A place where others can come and read those stories, discuss them, and share their own if they would like.  (Ok, maybe the Folaji.com community isn’t big enough for that yet, but hey, I can dream, can’t I?)

Alright, so why am I writing all this?  Well, I came to the realization a few days ago that none of this would be possible if not for the array of wonderful free web tools available online.  When you look at this site, you should understand that the look and feel, the blog engine, the different tools showing up on the side bar, were all developed by a large online community of bloggers and developers that offer their products for free.  If it weren’t for these people and their willingness to share their tools with the online community, then Folaji.com would only be a shadow of its current self.

So I decided that, as a thank you for everyone’s efforts, I would take the time over the coming months to review each widget, plugin and tool I use on Folaji.com.  This would be my way of thanking the community for such great work, and for allowing me to create this site, and hopefully will encourage others to do the same.

First, the WordPress engine has been upgraded to the latest version.  This upgrade has been a long time coming, but hadn’t been applied yet due to incompatibility with certain plugins.  If you’re interested in details of the upgrade, you can view a quick video in the link below.  Its mostly back end changes that make my life easier, but hey, who doesn’t want to make my life easier, right?

WordPress 2.9 Features

Next bit of news, the Forums have been retired/removed/not there anymore.  Now this shouldn’t be a surprise as I’d explained how I planned to remove them a couple of weeks back.  I just want to say that the people at SimplePress have made a wonderful forums plugin, but when it came down too it, however, the forums were simply no longer useful for this site.

But what happened to all the cool stuff we talked about?

I did make a backup before uninstalling the plugin, so everything is still somewhere.  Also, I’ve moved the RAWR update posts to the blog, and you can now find them under the DnD Weekly Updates category (there’s also a link on the RAWR page).

Oh, and one more thing: I have another blog hidden somewhere on the web that I’ll be incorporating with Folaji.com.  I’ve been thinking about it, and although the subject matter of the other blog is not really related to this site, there’s no real reason why I can’t merge the two together and just create a different category on this site.  So, expect some different and interesting content in the coming weeks.

Go ahead, try it out!

NOTE: From what I understand, you need JavaScript enabled and Flash installed for the tag cloud to work.

I will also look at ways to minimize site maintenance by removing unused plugins, and one of the pages I am most certain will be removed is the site Forum.  Although it was useful for our discussions regarding DnD, its become too much overhead to keep it up and running (and up to date), especially for something we can do using the blog’s comment feature.

So if you have anything stored in the blog that you do not want to lose, I urge you to copy/paste it now, otherwise it will go the way of the Dodo!  I’ll also keep you up to date on any further changes.

If you’ll look in the toolbar on the right of the screen, you’ll notice the Recent Chapters section has been replaced with a new Online Stories section.  These links will bring you to posts for each story, and each post will now have navigation links and a small table of contents embedded within them.

Series can also have logos, so if you want a logo for your story, feel free to send me an image of that logo by email.

Try this new feature out, and let me know what you think!

You’ll also notice that all Vikas Journal Entries have been published, and you can read through all of them by using the links below or by viewing the Vikas Journal Entries Series Page.  This series of 7 pages taken from Vikas’ journal details how he became the owner of the Death Valley Inn, how he began working for the Soulhers, and how he and many of the farmers of Cory became undead creatures.  Hope you enjoy!

• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 1
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 2
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 3
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 4
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 5
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 6
• Vikas’ Journal Entries – Page 7

And finally, a few notes about website updates.  On the day before the day before we left on vacation (that’s not a typo) WordPress announced the release of WordPress 2.8. I will be looking at upgrading the blog to this new version in the following weeks, though I expect the site will pretty much remain the same (upgrades mostly have to do with the site administration).  I may also have to upgrade the forum and run some tests on the different plugins, so expect a little site down-time and possibly some minor visual changes in the not to distant future.

Now, about three weeks ago a new version of WordPress was launched: WordPress 2.7.  This new version contains cool new functions and features that I honestly can’t wait to try out, and I’m hoping to be able to take advantage of my holiday vacations to install it before the end of the week.  This means that the site may be unavailable or broken for most of Thursday and Friday (I expect to be drunk Wednesday ). 

Although the initial installation should be a breeze, I have done many customizations to the site, updating plugins and reinstalling customizations should take up the bulk of the work.  Content shouldn’t be affected, which is good, although I’m not 100% of the availability of the forums plugin (the minimum requirements demand an update to the site’s database engine, although I’ll try to set it up without…!)

So, hopefully, by the end of the week we’ll have a fresh new WordPress engine running the site.  In the meantime, I apologize for any issues during the update!