Returning Renault Bears to a worthwhile life of daytime telly, eating jammy toast and surfing the internet.
Posts tagged Mystique
Latest On The Update…
Sun 25th Jul 2010
We have been using the Mystique theme for the blog for some time now and felt as if we needed a change. Not because there is anything wrong with Mystique but just because we felt like a challenge. After a great deal of soul-searching we decided instead of using a free theme, we would use some of our pocket money on a professional theme.
After we had stumped up the asking price ($32 from Themeforest), we were disgusted to discover that despite it looking good the functionality of it was crap. We were expecting a professional back-end even better than the free one from Mystique: we were disappointed because it was nowhere near the class of Mystique. In fact, we emailed the author of the new theme to tell him of some of the failings of his theme. He replied saying how good some of the design ideas we had given him were and that he would include them in his next update. We did not even think they were design ideas, we thought they were minimum requirements for any theme let alone a supposedly premier theme.
After spending half of the weekend trying to reprogram it to look something as we wanted it to, we have had to accept defeat. If you would like to look at it, try here http://renaultbears.com. We would be interested in your thoughts.
So we have given up on changing the blog, everything will be back to normal tomorrow.
Hope you have all had a good weekend!
Latest Bear News…
Fri 12th Mar 2010
We are planning to make some changes to the blog over the weekend. Providing we get the time, Edward will be changing over to using a different version of WordPress. We are not sure how long this change will take so we thought we had better warn everyone in case we are down for a prolonged period. We should be able to start the change over on Saturday afternoon and if everything goes according to plan, we should be back up and running an hour or so later.
However, we have no experience with this other version of WordPress and so it is going to be a steep learning curve. If anything goes wrong, or if we need longer than we originally planned, then the blog maybe down for a longer period.
During the changeover, you will not be able to view the blog and your browser will report an error. Do not worry; we will get the site back up and running as soon as we can. Once the changeover is made, if you visit the blog prior to us reinstalling the Mystique theme and restoring all our articles from backups, then the results may be unpredictable – please be patient.
In case you are interested, we are changing over to WordPress MU. This is the multi-user version of WordPress designed for running more than one blog. We are making the changes to enable us to run a second test blog alongside our existing blog to enable use to test new plug-ins and design elements prior to making them permanent on the main blog. WordPress MU is the version of WordPress used by everyone from Yahoo to the New York Times, so it should be good enough for a few Bears.
We hope that the changes will be over in an hour or so without any major upheaval but please be patient with us if this is not the case.
Have a great weekend 
Mystique Two Is Here
Wed 24th Feb 2010
The continuing story of Mystique erm… continues. We installed the new version 2 of our WordPress theme last night and we are happy to report there seems to be very little wrong with it. Razzi and I got in from work tonight and Edward told us there is another update fixing some of the bugs in version 2. By the time we came to check it, there was an update to the update. Therefore, we are still working on updating the theme when we initially thought we had finished.
Milenko is doing a brilliant job and some of the new features on the back end are tremendous. As soon as we get the new version stable and get a handle on how everything works, we shall start implementing some of the new features for you all to see.
Meanwhile, can we just ask if anyone sees anything you think is a little strange with the blog, or if something just plain does not work in your browser, then please let us know? If something does not work, you are likely to spot it before us so please let us know. This way we can try to resolve the problem ourselves of bring it to the attention of Milenko and get his expertise to work on the problem.
Have fun and remember… let’s be careful out there!
More Mystique Testing…
Fri 19th Feb 2010
The latest version of Mystique, our WordPress theme, is now installed and appears just the way we want it. Most of the changes are on the backend and invisible to blog visitors but behind the scenes, the changes are quite widespread.
For visitors, you may notice we have made the blog slightly wider and there are new features we have disabled until we have more time to experiment with them. There is an annoying black strip along the top of each page, which we are currently looking at, but otherwise we cannot find any other bugs.
We will still be working on the blog tonight, so if you visit and something appears not to be working then just give us 10 minutes and try again. In addition, if something does not look quite right, do not worry it will just be the result of an experiment going wrong.
I hope that we will be back to normal tomorrow but in the meantime… let’s be careful out there!
Update: We now have the new version of Mystique installed and most of the teething problems sorted with the latest incarnation of our blog theme. As far as we can tell, there are no problems with the blog’s display but, as always, we ask that if you spot anything you think is wrong with the way it works on your computer then please let us know.
The blog should be back to normal tomorrow.
Thanks and Goodnight!
New Mystique, Coming Soon…
Thu 18th Feb 2010
Mystique, our WordPress theme, is due for a major new release very shortly so tonight we will be experimenting with a pre-release version of the new theme thanks to Milenko over at digitalnature. Therefore, for tonight, there will be no post while we experiment with latest version of the theme. We will be changing some of the settings and appearance of the blog so please do not panic if you view the blog and it looks a little strange – that will just be us trying the new settings out. We will be back as normal tomorrow, so just chill until then.
In the meantime, remember… let’s be careful out there!
Latest Bear News…
Thu 28th Jan 2010
Some of you may have noticed we have had a little bit of a tidy up around the blog. We had fallen behind slightly with updates on our Mystique theme and so last night we upgraded it to the very latest version. There are some fun new gadgets included in the latest theme and some bugs have been ironed out by Milenko over at digitalnature.
Amongst some of the new features included in the latest theme is the use of “timesince” dates on subscriber comments. Pretty much the same as you see on Facebook, all comments now record how long ago the comment was made instead of the exact time it was added. A nice little touch is the inclusion of a little country flag next to your comments. Many of the updates are to do with speed of loading, which, as far as we can tell, seems to have made the blog feel more responsive and the pages load quicker. There is also the promise of a Facebook connector above the menus to add to the Twitter and RSS Feeds connectors already in place.
Not to be outdone by the update, Egginanoo (who does all our artwork) decided it was time to change the colour scheme. She has decided to give us a more dulled down grey scheme instead of the blue one we were using. She even let Razzi pick the flock wallpaper for the background. This had quite a good effect because it took his mind off the loss of his beloved Debbie!
All seems to be quiet on the new arrivals front. eBay is unusually quiet which could be the time of year or could mean we will soon be inundated with new Bears. You never can tell.
While updating the blog, I was looking back at some of the older posts and noticed that it is over three years now since our first Bear, Eddie, came to join us. Little did we think when we embarked on our first Egyptian adventure with Eddie how far this Bear fixation would go? Eddie does not live with us at the Bear Sanctuary; instead, he lives with Pixy and has only just returned from a Christmas/New Year break in Cuba. While there, he was only a few miles away from Haiti when the earthquake hit the island. However, maybe that is a story for another day…
Thank You…
Thu 26th Nov 2009
Today we thought we would take a day out from the normal day-to-day activity of the Blog to record our thanks to some people who usually don’t even get a mention. However, without these people it would be impossible for us to bring you all the latest tales of The Bear’s exploits. Many of these people work without pay; they do it purely for the love of it.
First off, we have WordPress, which, for those of you who do not know, is an Open Source Content Management System. Put simply, it is the system that runs our blog behind the scenes. They have recently won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award at the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. It is our publishing system of choice and it doesn’t even cost a penny – a whole host of volunteers maintains it. It is like the Microsoft Office of the blogging world except because it is open source we get to download it and all updates free of charge. In addition, just because it is free, doesn’t mean it is not straight out of the top draw with some of the best support available through the Codex and Forums.
Every day thousands of new people turn to WordPress to power not just their blogs but also to control full sites and communities like our own. They do this safe in the knowledge that because they are opting for the open source option they are not compromising on usability or scalability, as is the case with many paid for legacy CMS systems. Everybody involved with the WordPress community, from developers down to users like ourselves, is part of the overall experience. We share ideas and all gain from the experiences of other users.
Without WordPress, this blog would not be here today.
Another who is responsible for a great deal of work behind the scenes if Milenko over at digitalnature. He is the person responsible for our WordPress theme: Mystique. Mystique is a free WordPress theme that attempts to top commercial themes in terms of its design and functionality and includes one of the best, advanced user interfaces of any commercial theme we have seen.
For those of you who know nothing about blogging: if you think of the blog as a car, then WordPress would be the engine and chassis while the theme would be the bodywork and the way everything looks to the user. Milenko works tirelessly on this theme, which only today we have upgraded to version 1.30, and again he releases it under the GPL Open Source agreement and asks only for donations for his work. Just as with WordPress, a user community who share ideas and experiences helps Mystique.
Those of you who have been following our blog for a while will know we have had some terrible experiences with Web Hosting in the past. However, since we have transferred everything over to Just Host everything has just worked. They have proven to be one of the most reliable web hosting companies we have dealt with. Their service is fast, reliable and all at a very reasonable price. Furthermore, their response to requests for technical support is swift and helpful. It is easy to say; “well that is what they get paid for,” but so many other services are not the same. We hope you are listening Weycrest!
The following are people who work on WordPress plug-ins to add features to our blog and as such deserve our thanks…
- Matt Mullenweg for Akismet (Anti-Spam)
- Marco Cimmino for CIMY User Extra Fields (User Database Registration fields)
- Keith Solomon for Configurable Tag Cloud (Tag Cloud)
- WP Marketing for the Hana FLV Player (Embedded Video Player)
- Hannah Gray for Profile Pic (Profile Photographs)
- Simon Bruchner for Show Authors Without Posts
- Lester Chan for WP-PageNavi (Advanced Paging)
Finally, we would like to thank you all for dropping by from time-to-time and reading of our exploits. We run this blog for fun and we have a great time doing it but it would get mighty lonely around here without you all.
Thank you.
…and hey, let’s be careful out there!
