I got an email today from Gerhard Zielinski, CEO of YellowTip Software BV, informing me that they included b2evo in their YellowTip Web Server.

It is a free open-source package that will allow you to easily install everything you need to run b2evo locally on your Windows machine: Apache, PHP, MySQL and b2evolution. All in one step and ready to use!

As an added benefit, you also get Zend Optimizer and phpMyAdmin.

I cannot test it right now but I think this is cool enough to deserve immediate relaying on this site. Here's the press release:

YellowTip Web Server 2.0 released!

29 April 2004

The YellowTip development team proudly introduces the next major release of YellowTip Web Server, version 2.0.

The main new feature of Web Server 2.0 is the inclusion of Apache 2. Apache 2 was developed with Windows deployment in mind. As a result it's much faster and much more stable than previous Apache releases for Windows. Next to Apache 2, Web Server 2.0 includes the latest stable versions of PHP, MySQL, Zend Optimizer and phpMyAdmin.

Due to high demand, our developers have included a selection of the most popular Open Source packages with Web Server 2.0: PostNuke, phpBB, b2evolution and Gallery.

The YellowTip Web Server was developed to make available a highly professional and easily installable package of Apache2, PHP4, MySQL4, phpMyAdmin and Zend Optimizer for the Windows platform (Win2K, WinXP).

With a convenient all-in-one installer, all components are installed in a single directory and can be used immediately after the installation process has completed. An uninstaller allows you to remove the YellowTip WebServer from your computer.

Wow! So 2003 is over already? That was fast! :|


Well... at least it has been a great year for b2evolution. And I believe that many improvements to this little piece of software would not have been possible without the many contributors who have added features, tested early versions, tracked down bugs, made suggestions for improvements, made skins, documented features, translated language files, hosted the site, provided support in the forums or even financial support via paypal...


Thus I'd especially like to thank here (in nearly alphabetical order): Brian, Candle, Daniel, Graham, Jordan, Jason, Marius, Michel, Ron, Sabrina, Sakichan, Simon, Topanga, Travis, Tristan and Vegar! (And now I fear I forgot someone, please forgive me for that :oops: the comments are yours! ;) )


Last but not least, really big thanks to all of you using b2evolution and promoting the software, essentially through the display of that little b2evo logo on your blog.


Let's hope we find enough time in 2004 to go twice as far as we did this year! ;)


Anyways, I hope 2004's going to work out great for you! ;)

Brian of Memenet is offering free hosting to anyone wishing to run a b2evolution blog! :yes:


Brian's offer here is verrrrrrry cool! B) Not only because it's free, but also because it works perfectly well and fast! Want to check out for yourself: here's the demo blog hosted by Brian's Memenet.


So now you can get a top class blogtool with top class hosting, all for free! How cool is that? B) Now we leave it up to you to make a top class blog out of it...! ;D


However, if I were you, I wouldn't wait until it's too late... :!:

Michel Valdrighi, the creator of the great b2, just posted some news today… after more than 6 months of silence… This is pretty good news to a lot of us who were getting really worried about him.

Welcome back to blogworld Michel! :) Hope you’re doing fine despite your employment issues. :|

Regarding the future of b2, it seems that Michel plans to leave it up to WordPress, which is pretty good news too. WordPress seems all clean to me! ;)

What does that mean regarding my own b2evolution? Well… don’t know precisely yet, except that I am running it here and that I still want more (much more:!:) than WordPress announces for their upcomming release… :P

Stay tuned ;)

We have talked about the annoying BlogNoise problem before. And most bloggers have agreed that Google would probably be smart enough to fix the problem shortly in order to provide a better service to their users.

A great part of the BlogNoise is generated by the fact alone that we - bloggers - have so many unrelated posts/subjects on the same web page. And when we - bloggers - link to each other, we let the indexing robots follow these links and then index a lot of crap at the other end. This is because, most of the time, the permalinks we refer to, just point right into the middle of a monthly archive page with so many different subjects!

I have suggested a technical google-side solution using RSS, but the more I think about it, the more I am getting convinced that it is not Google's job to fix this! It is rather our bloggers' duty to fix this! :!:

We have created crap on the Internet; now we just have to clean up! :!:

The blogger-side solution is actually quite simple: all we need to do is stop using permalinks pointing right into the middle of monthly archives! We need to make the permalinks point to single posts (possibly with comments and trackback). This way, when someone refers to the post, and later the indexing robot follows the link, it will only index a single post. And all the keywords being indexed will actually be related to that post! No more indexing soup mixing hundreds of unrelated keywords from dozens of unrelated posts!

Still, some questions remain:

• What happens with the old permalinked posts?
• How do we exclude navigation from indexing? (this is actually a general question about indexing the web)
• And last but not least: Do bloggers actually want clean indexing? :> Or rather, do they prefer to continue flattering themselves with all those illegitimate search-result-hits that so easily rocket up their monthly hit counts? :?: And it's even better when you consider unique visitors! 8|
  
  Let me add that this is very contradictory with another typical blogger trend stating, in the name of interoperability and public's interest, that the only valid markup is the latest XHTML DTD!

PS: I like interop. I like standards. I am doing my best to support them. And I AM working on cleaning up my permalinks. I'll get less google hits... but hits don't matter! What you want from now on is increasing your google-hit satisfaction ratio! You want no more visitors coming to your blog by mistake! :P