Another day, and another issue with the new image uploading system in WordPress 2.5.

This is the second problem I’ve had with the new image uploading system, and I’m definitely not alone.. Thankfully, there’s a quick fix for this particular error.

FTP into your web hosting account, and edit your .htaccess file. Insert the following code at the bottom of your .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

Save your file, go back into your dashboard, and you should be able to upload images now.

Rumor has it that 2.5 was rushed to coincide with WordCamp, and as such a bunch of bugs “slipped through the cracks”. Hopefully all of these issues will be addressed in WordPress 2.5.1. Personally, I’d prefer an option to disable the uploader, as nothing was wrong with the old way of handling images!

Got some Google freebies, and I figured I’d give it away to one of our lucky readers! The winner will receive 2 Google stickers, a crazy magnetic LED Google pin thingy, and a $50 AdWords voucher.

To enter the contest, just do any of the following:

- Subscribe to RSS feed via Email = 2 entries
- Make a comment of value on a post = 1 entry
- Write a post about ZanderChance.com on your blog = 5 entries

Please note: If you are already subscribed to any of the sites below, you are already earning entries.

The deadline for this contest is 12:00 AM May 1, 2008.

I’m sure most people on the East Coast are familiar with the Borgata.. It’s a high-end casino in Atlantic City that brought that Las Vegas vibe to the beach. A beautiful casino, absolutely flawless in it’s execution, it quickly became the hot-spot for the young and wealthy. The Tropicana fired back with their French Quarters, with a number of great restaurants and bars, and catering to a much younger crowd.

The French Quarters is definitely cool, but I’ve stayed true to the Borgata.. Tonight, we went down to the Borgata to burn through about $5000 in comps that were due to expire soon. So 9 of us decided to have a nice dinner at Ombra, an Italian restaurant located in a wine cellar at the Borgata. I expected the best, but we were VERY disappointed with the food there.

I started off with the Truffled Grissini (bread sticks slathered with white truffle butter & parmigiano reggiano, wrapped in prosciutto), which was probably the best food I ate all night. Followed up with an average Caesar Salad. For my entre, I had the Beef Short Rib “Alla Napolitana” (16 ounce braised short rib, red wine-tomato ragu, stone ground polenta).. This wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t worth the $44 they charge. For dessert, I opted for the Chocolate Dieci (chocolate cake with creme fraiche chantilly, summer berry composta, frangelico syrup). The cake had great presentation, but it was average at best – The Great Wall of Chocolate at PF Changs is 1000x better.

Total bill for the 9 of us was close to $2000. Yikes!

Afterwards, we headed over to the B Bar to get some drinks and enjoy the eye candy.. Sadly, the only eye candy was a sexy waitress from Poland. The rest of the staff was average, and the clientele was pretty bad as well. It was a real eye opener, as Saturday nights at the Borgata used to be great! I wandered over to the Gypsy Bar to see if there was any talent in there, but it wasn’t much better.. The Gypsy Bar also had a live band playing, making it impossible to even hold a conversation.

We spent about 3 hours at the B Bar before settling up our tab (another $500 or so) and calling it a night. Next time, I’m going to the French Quarters to see if the nightlife there is any better. Here’s hoping!

Now that Fantastico has added WordPress 2.5 to the mix, you’ll see more and more bloggers upgrading to the latest version. This is a pretty major upgrade, and there are a few things to be aware of before making the move.

1) BACKUP YOUR FILES!!

Sure, Fantastico makes life easy, but I ran into an unexpected quirk yesterday, and it could happen to you as well. What happens if you run out of disk space? Your backup won’t be made, and if the upgrade fails (which mine did), you’re in a world of trouble. Luckily, I had a backup of the database for this site, or else I would have lost probably 6 days worth of posts.

So what went wrong? Fantastico backs up EVERYTHING when upgrading, which in my case included a Podcast directory with 100MB+ of MP3s. Unfortunately, this site was hosted on a basic plan that only included 400MB of storage space, and I was already using 345MB of space prior to upgrading. Do the math, and you’ll see that I maxed out my quota, and the upgrade aborted midstream.

2) The Media Gallery doesn’t work!

This was fun, as a moderator on the WordPress forum initially swore up and down that this wasn’t a bug. After a million people chimed in with the same problem, he pulled his head out of his ass, and actually addressed the issue. The fix? A new media.php and handlers.js file that can be downloaded from the sticky in the WP forum. If you’re running Firefox, you probably didn’t have an issue, but if you were running IE, you’d likely just see a blank page.

Other than that, things seem pretty good.. The dashboard definitely takes some time to get used to, but as with all things, you’ll eventually get used to it. If you come across any other issues, let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

A good business card is absolutely essential.. If you go to a conference, you’re likely to collect a hundred or more cards over the course of the event! The key is to have a hard that sticks out from the crowd and gets noticed. I have a great looking card for my e-commerce site that was designed by a buddy of mine who does high-end graphic design work. It’s a double-sided, full-color card printed on thick stock with a matte finish. It really leaves an impression with people, and I ALWAYS get a comment on them when handing them out. And, it didn’t cost a fortune – I got 2000 cards (designed and printed) for around $300.

For those with bigger budgets, here is a collection of the coolest business cards I’ve ever seen:

Cool Business Card Designs

One of these days, I’ll get off my butt and get a good-looking card designed for ZanderChance.com.

Winning The Web held one of the craziest blog contests I have ever seen, and gave out $14,575 in cash and prizes! Kudos to Gyutae Park for thinking outside of the box, and bringing in so many big-name sponsors to pony up prizes for this contest. Talk about link bait, I saw mention of the contest on EVERY blog I visited over the past month. And the icing on the cake was the perfectly timed April Fools joke, where Gyutae convinced readers that a sponsor had stepped up and was offering a Hummer H2 as a prize!

As people entered his contest, his RSS readership grew considerably. A good majority of them will continue to read the site, which was the motivation behind this contest. Mission accomplished!

Blog contests are nothing new, but Gyutae’s received a TON of attention because of the massive amount of prizes he was giving away. And he’s not the only one who benefited from it – The sponsors also received a lot of coverage (and backlinks), for a relative bargain.. Definitely something to think about the next time you’re solicited for a giveaway.