dille

Here it is, found it myself: https://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2004/02/02/blog-statistics/
It also seems like the crawler is no longer active (could someone confirm or deny this?).
I found another source that, unfortunately, looks like it’s been abandoned: https://www.blogcensus.net/?page=tools . Doesn’t even recognize WP… Tsk =] It works by pulling a web page through some regexes, so it’s flexible enough… As long as the software is mentioned in there, which might not always be the case.
Another approach detects the blogfarms like blogspot, typepad and so on by URL. See a nice SVG graph here: https://www.bsentinel.com/ .
Although the graph is nice (make sure you check out the map view too), it’s not what I want as it only checks the blogfarms.
What I was thinking of: what if I were to cook up a spider that went searching for RSS feeds and distill the weblog software from that? Most feeds have this info in some form, so that would give a decent result. Heck, I could try and determine the language and location while I’m at it =]
Dunno if anyone’s interested in those stats; I know I am. If only because it’s possible =] Feedback appreciated!

I am experiencing update problems as well, on several blogs. I catch some updates, but I know I miss more (blogrolling.com powered blogrolls on other sites, RSS reader). I suppose weblogs.com is acting up, but I don’t know for sure.
A while ago it got even worse: I had the include-line somewhere in index.php (you know, the one that calls the update script). Somehow, my blog wouldn’t load. It’d timeout at some point. Removing the line solved that problem.
I’ll try the blo.gs link to see if that solves problems.

Instead of downloading that link Michael gives on Binarybonsai.com, you should just click it, and copy-paste *that* into livesearch.php. Right now, you’ve got the beautified (colorized and all) PHP code-converted-to-HTML in there, and that’s not gonna work =]
Alternatively, just copy-paste the block of colourful stuff that pops up when searching into the file and you should be fine.

When I started using b2 2 years ago, I wished it had a better template engine than it did. Using PHP functions, like it’s still done today in WP, leads to more cluttered templates. For me, that’s not an issue; I eat, sleep and breathe PHP. For someone like my girlfriend, or my dad, PHP is complex, confusing, and something they generally don’t understand, something they want to stay away from.
What irks me more about using straight PHP functions is the fact that functions tend to change as the application grows. WP is no exception to that. That means that with every upgrade, I have to cross my fingers and hope that everything still works like it used to. Also, I have to make sure that nothing I changed is overwritten by the upgrade. It shouldn’t be like that, and it doesn’t have to be.
Those that say that a template engine is “just replacing < ?php the_thingy ?> with {$thingy}” don’t understand the long-term benefits of a template engine. If you use {$post.title} instead of < ?php the_title(); ?>, it’s not about saving those few keystrokes. Who cares about a few keystrokes? You’ll only have to do that 1 or 2 times anyway.
It’s about making sure that your template doesn’t have to change when the_title() does. For my girlfriend and my dad, that’s great news. For me, it means that I can upgrade all I want, and unless {$the_title} is somehow no longer assigned, I can leave my templates alone.
Even better, since I use Smarty for other pages and things, I can really integrate WP with the rest of the site; I can use one, and just one, header file and just include that everywhere. Need to change something? Changing it in one file changes it everywhere.
I’ve seen people say “You can use the shorthand < ?= ?> construction”. Well, yes, you can, if your server is configured to allow that; it doesn’t play nice with other XML < ? ?> constructs, which (for me, being my own web hoster) is a reason to disable it. Besides, it’s not about saving those few keystrokes. Another favorite seems to be “Smarty is difficult, evil, and it eats your children”. I’ve used Smarty for several years, and although it needed some “getting used to” (coming from another template engine which did things differently), I’ve never found it very hard to use. I like the fact that I can place “modifiers” on vars ({$var|uppercase}, for example), and that it caches the templates to PHP files. I also hear these “Smarty is slow” remarks, but not from people who’ve actually used it (not just “looked at it”, but really “used it”).
However, nobody should be *forced* to use Smarty, or any other template engine, if they don’t want to. The best of both worlds for me would be having every function *return* it’s thing instead of just echoing it, of at least have a get_… version of each function. That way, I will be able to use template engine I see fit, and the “I want plain PHP”-types can use plain PHP. Everybody wins.
Of course, I could write a getter function that just opens an output buffer, runs the specified function with parameters, and tosses back the contents of the output buffer. Don’t know what it would do to performance, though.
Well, those were my lengthy 2 cents… =]