I have just discovered the side benefit to the torture I went through in migrating this blog from MovableType to WordPress.

The spammers can not find me!

Yes, I know it is only temporary, but this blog has now gone from literally thousands of spam messages a day to - drumroll please - NONE!

I give it another week.  Until then, I am going to bask in the glow.

PS:  More Wine Country Capers posts to come….

Popularity: 9% [?]

For those of you who may have noticed our absense, I’m pleased to announce that we are back.

I admit, our updates have been few and far between as of late.  Between server problems, blog software problems, stressful lives and a multitude of other excuses…. errr…. reasons, Cuisine Capers has been a lower priority than we would have liked.

But no more!  Get ready!  We’re back!  (I think.  I just migrated to another blogging platform today, so I may be terribly premature in my triumphant announcement!)

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hi all, I’m out of town at the moment, but thought I’d drop a quick note about a local Madison event coming up, featuring a Foodie Panel. It should be fun!

Madison Interactive, a group for people who work on public websites – both for work and for play – in the Madison area – is hosting its third free event. Whether you’re uploading articles to a local media website or just tending a personal blog, we want you to join us and share your experiences. And to make it all even more interesting, we’ll also be having a brief panel discussion with some local online folks who focus on writing about dining in Madison.

Please pass this note on to everyone you think might be interested.

Panel Discussion Details:
MadInteractive Panel No. 3 - Food Blogging in Madison
Location: The High Noon Saloon

Event Time/Date:
5 – 7pm on May 31, 2007

Panel Time:
5:30 to 6pm

Details
———

Topic: Food Blogging in Madison

The discussion will center around the various writers in town covering the food scene.

Moderators:
JM and Nichole of Eating in Madison A to Z

Panelists:

* Christopher Robin from Christopher Robin’s Fresh Foods
* Jonathan Hunter of Underground Food Collective
* Irene Cash of Madison Dining Online, Cuisine Capers, Cooking Out of the Box
* Monnie Halberg of Nutritilicious
* Linda Falkenstein of thedailypage.com

We hope to see you there!
MadInteractive

Popularity: 11% [?]

This entry doesn’t have much to do with food or cooking, I’m afraid.

I’ve become somewhat frustrated with the platform that this blog runs on. I’m using MovableType, which I have always loved, but which is becoming increasingly frustrating for a few reasons.

Most of my other blogs (Madison Dining Online, Cooking Out Of The Box, etc) have been implemented using the latest versions of Wordpress.

I have become extremely impressed with the growth of Wordpress within just the last year or so. MovableType seems to have come to a screeching halt for the average user, while Wordpress is forging forward, mainly by the efforts of the community that uses it. The plugins are terrific, and the flexibility is really impressive.

But. I have hundreds of entries on Cuisine Capers, with hundreds of photos. In addition to that, Google LOVES this blog. Migrating to Wordpress will be a very painful process, and it will set me back a great deal in terms of search engines, etc.

Having said that, I now get over 2000 spam messages a day. Yes, that is right. In a mere 24 hours my filters catch anywhere between 2000 and 3000 messages. This has made the commenting, trackback and interaction portions of Cuisine Capers an impossible goal. All comments are getting caught in the filters, and it is impossible to visually inspect the comments to find the legitimate ones. So, they all get deleted. I’ve also had to turn of trackbacks. On top of that, when I get hit with pings and spam comments in rapid succession, it takes down the server that this blog is running on. That makes my host very, very unhappy.

So, do I live through the painful migration, and then spend months rebuilding search engine traffic to avoid the above situation?

Decisions, Decisions.

Popularity: 6% [?]

After weeks of frustration and beating my head against a brick wall, I’ve finally figured out that it was my blog roll that was breaking my Movable Type template.

So, it has been removed until I can figure out how to add it back in without breaking the entire blog!

Popularity: 6% [?]