Posting this in case it can be of help to anyone who experiences the same thing. Last weekend I noticed I was no longer able to post on my blog using Ecto, a program I’ve used for years now. I could go in the admin of my WordPress interface and post from there, but when I would try with Ecto, no go, always getting error messages like this: “parse error. not well formed.” At the same time, I was starting to get a very large amount of moderation notices — I’ve been using Spam Karma for years now, with pretty much no worries. Looking on my server, I noticed that all my WP files had been updated on the Friday night, which didn’t make sense, because I hadn’t done anything in months (like upgrading or installing plugins). I assumed it was something to do with my server, and after I opened a ticket, support (from host TextDrive, now part of Joyent) was able to resolve the problem, finally pointing me here, which is where you’ll find your answers. I simply upgraded my WP to the latest version and everything was fixed. For the spam, after I upgraded, I notice that the Spam Karma plugin was disabled. Since enabling it again, everything has been fine.
Also, for at least a month I also couldn’t use Ecto to post to the Cafe Pause or PauseTalk blogs, but never thought much of it. After upgrading the WP version for each, I was able to post again.
Category: Meta
It’s funny how a small glitch can derail things in a somewhat passive way. You get used to a writing tool, and when it fails, other things get in the way, you get some other work done, and you hope things get better on your own. I guess it’s human nature to suspect it’s transient and may fix itself. But definitely a bizarre bug cropped up. Luckily the fix reads like it was straightforward. The important thing is you’re back on Ecto making regular posts! Keep up the great work.
Since I don’t really post much on those other sites, I just figured it was a server hiccup or something, which happens every once in a while. But when it was doing it for every post on my main blog, I had to do something.
This is probably totally unrelated, but it’s still kind of a bug - lately your posts say
time saved
time saved
when they’re viewed with the Google Reader. At first I thought it was some kind of cryptic message, but since it shows up at the bottom of every post, I figure that it must be a glitch.
ps. I mean they have
time saved
time saved
at the end of each post, after the entry itself.
Thanks for the heads-up! I’ll have a look and see if I can figure out what the problem is.