Mattsapundit

Blogging at Mattsapundit is a thoroughly enjoyable experience, thanks in no small part to all the back-end stuff that keeps this website humming along.

Mattsapundit is hosted by BlueHost on a Linux 2.6.9 box. It’s served up fresh by Apache 1.3.34 and powered by the latest version (2.0.2) of Wordpress. In order to keep things running smoothly and provide some added features, I use a whole mess of plugins, as follows:

• Advanced WYSIWYG Editor: Allows for an easy WYSIWYG interface as I compose my brilliant posts.
• Adhesive: Lets me create “sticky” brilliant posts, which stay at the top of the site, outside the normal chronology.
• Creative Commons Configurator: Adds the details of my Creative Commons license to each post and feed.
• WP-EMail: Allows readers to send my brilliant posts to others.
• Editor Search: Enables me to search back-end files without poring over reams of code.
• Paged Comment Editing: Makes it easier to sift through the mountains of readers’ comments.
• General Stats: Keeps track of the number of users, categories, posts, comments, pages, words in posts, words in comments and words in pages.
• JS Toggle Boxes: Creates the collapsible menus in the sidebar.
• My Link Order: Allows me to set a specific order for items in the blogroll.
• Now Reading: Displays the books I’m reading, along with profit-generating Amazon links.
• Now Watching: Same thing, but for movies.
• FeedBurner Feed Replacement: Redirects the default WordPress-generated feeds to high-powered FeedBurner feeds.
• WP-Print: Displays my brilliant posts in a printer-friendly format, perfect for aerial distribution over population centers.
• Spam Karma 2 - Reloaded: Screens comments to eliminate “Refinance your Viagra” ads.
• Subscribe to Comments: Allows users to get notified via email when new comments are posted.
• Google Sitemaps: Creates a Google-compliant sitemap of my site.
• Subscribe Me: Adds nifty buttons under the “Syndicate” heading, allowing you to subscribe to my brilliance via MSN, Google, Yahoo, Bloglines, Yahoo and NewsGator.
• Search and Replace: Allows me to search for text or code site-wide and replace it quickly.
• WP-SlimStat: Keeps detailed statistics on referrals and visitors.
• Contact Form ][: Generates the contact form.
• Flickr Photo Gallery: Interfaces with my Flickr photostream to allow easy posting of photos.
• WordPress Database Backup: Allows easy backup of the site in case of imminent nuclear attack.
• WP-ExtremeVideo: Allows me to post Google Video content and play it right in the brilliant post.
• WeatherIcon: Displays current weather conditions at Mattsapundit Central Command.

It’s all prettied up by the fDawn theme, written by Fredrik Fahlstad. Toolbar icons were provided by FamFamFam.
In return for my tax dollars, I get weather data from the National Weather Service and traffic data from Houston TranStar.

Audio posts are created on my Motorola e815 phone by the free Audioblogger service and sent here over the Verizon Wireless network.

I snap my photos with a Nikon Coolpix 5600 and my phone, and I host them on a Flickr Pro account.

As of mid-April, Mattsapundit is now standards compliant, to ensure the site renders properly in a wide variety of browsers. The W3C’s XHTML Validator, CSS Validator and Feed Validator are invaluable in this task.