blogtech

I just read on the MovableType site that Ben and Mena are getting ready to release MT version 2.0, and it will include a ’send this entry’ feature similar to the one I’ve implemented on my blogs. So … since they are the experts, I’m not going to do any more development or write a tutorial or anything like that on how I did it here. I’ll just say that it was a lot of mucking around in perl cgi and javascript. Ben gave me all sorts of information and instruction, and I thank him very much.

Several people have asked me how to add random text strings to a web page, so I thought I’d write a little tutorial. All you need is a text editor and a web site. If you publish your own blog, I’m sure you’ll be able to do this. If you follow these simple instructions, you should be able to add the same feature to your web site.

I am by no means an expert on the subject, and there may be better ways to do this, but it has worked for me. If you have suggestions or improvements, please let me know.
[click to continue...]

When I want to register a domain name, I go to Dotster.com. It might cost a few dollars more - and I’m talkin’ like, $2 more - than some of the bargain basement registrars, but you cannot beat their customer service, administration, and control panel options. I’ve used them for years and highly recommend their company. I mention them today because I just discovered that they have a thing going now called the Dotster Sunday Mystery Special. Every Sunday they have a new little schtick. Today it’s a deal on .info domain names. Check ‘em out.

<Montgomery Burns>
Excellent!
</Montgomery Burns>

I’m about 75% done with my mt-sendentry.cgi development. Youshik has been a tremendous help with some of the trickier Perl bits and Ben is the man for being so cool about answering my eMails. I really hope I can finish working on it tonight so I can have v 0.1 released by this weekend.

It was a dark and stormy night.

I had a rebuild error in my individual archive template.

I yelled at my monitor, “What could it be?!”

I hadn’t modified that template in weeks! Something was wrong. And it was bad. I couldn’t rebuild all. Ack! What to do? I begged Ben for assistance.

“Help!” I cried in the night. “My rebuilds are failing and I don’t know why!”
[click to continue...]

Note to self: Remember to change MT/lib/MT.pm line 205 from

return $mt->error(”Building entry failed: ” . $entry->title);

to

return $mt->error(”Building entry failed: ” . $tmpl->errstr);

More on this later!

This article, Setting Up Form Mail, was a tremendous help in my latest project. Soon you will be able to send any MT entry via eMail. How cool is that? Check out my Hemingway blog! Each individual post has this feature in place. w00t! I am an excited nerd now!

I just downloaded and installed the MicroPoll system from technoerotica. I think it’s a killer, tiny, perfect-for-blogs polling script. Do you agree?

Want to add one of those groovy-cool calendars to your blog? MovableType 1.4 lets you! The extended text of this entry shows you the code. How cool is that?
[click to continue...]

Is it true? Yes! It’s the return of the Featurette Guide! The expanded, revised, and updated Blogger Featurette Guide™©! Check out all the groovy-cool things your fellow bloggers have done over the years.
[click to continue...]

I don’t have time right now to really browse the Xanga.com page, but it looks interesting. There is an ad for something called WebCrimson that is apparently another CMS. Man, I really need to sit down and go through some of this stuff. Time … Time … Time …

Here is my MovableType development wishlist. These are the features I really wish my favorite content management system had. Alternately, these are the things I really wish I could do with MovableType, which the current version does in fact support, but I haven’t yet found a way to do. If someone knows how to do any of these items using the current version, I’d sure appreciate a point in the right direction. In no particular order:

• Entry Lists by Comment Counts: This was one of my favorite features in GreyMatter and I hope to see it available in an upcoming MT release. I want to be able to display a list of the most-commented-on entries. The ability to specify that an entry has to have at least n comments to appear in the list would be marvelous as well.
• Support Links: I’d like to see a link to the support board, and not just the documentation, in the MT editing screens. Currently the menu shows, “Blog Name”, “UserName”, “Help”, “LogOut”, and the date. I think a link to the support board could fit in there quite nicely. Heaven knows I go there enough.
• True Hyper-Text Documentation: I think the MT user manuals are terrific and well-written. My only gripe is that the main manual is humongous. If I’m not on my home computer and I have to access the on-line manual, it takes forever to load and navigate. I would love it if the developers would split it into separate files, perhaps by chapter. I think it would make reading and researching much quicker.
• Copy / Move: This is probably not a very useful feature to most users, but I’d like the ability to copy and / or move entries between blogs. One of the things I’ve been doing is moving all of my older football and sports posts from my main blog to my (somewhat newer) sports blog. A quick way to do that would be handy.
• An MT Link: I wish there was a link directly to the main MT homepage somewhere on all the editing screens. For the life of me I can’t understand why Ben and Mena haven’t added one. If I created any kind of web application - and, obviously, I haven’t so I should probably keep my mouth shut - I would have a link to my own page all over it.
• Blogs Sorted on Main Screen: A minor request, I think, is the ability to sort the display of the blogs on the main screen. Right now they’re simply listed (as far as I can tell) in creation order. My most-used blog is at the bottom of the list and I have to scroll down to get to it. I know it’s a silly little thing to want, but that’s why I called this a wishlist. My Amazon.com wishlist is chock-full of silly little things I want.
• Entry List Nesting: I’d like to list, for example, the five most recent entries from each category, but I don’t want to hard code the category names. Something like this: <MTArchiveList archive_type=”Category”><MTEntries lastn=”5″ category=”<$MTArchiveTitle$>”></MTEntries></MTArchiveList> I’ve mentioned this one to Ben and he said he’s thinking about it.
• Stay at Top: Another GreyMatter feature I miss is the ability to tag an entry as “topmost”. That way you can add new entries, but the “topmost” one would stil show as the first in line. I don’t know if that’s ever going to be possible because of the way the <EntryList> tag is designed, but again … that’s why they call it a “wishlist”.
• AutoNotify: I would like to be able to set a blog to automatically send notification eMails to everyone on the notify list every time a new entry is made without having to specifically “force” the eMail to be sent.

I suppose that’s all I can remember now. I’ll update this list if I think of new ones, or if some kind soul is nice enough to tell me how to do something that I thought I couldn’t.
Thanks, Ben and Mena! You’ve created a wonderful product.

HTTP Ads just launched. I’m very impressed with the interface and site design. I’ve been reading about its development for some time and was excited to read that the service is now available. I’m going to do some more research, but it looks like it could be the next “killer app” for bloggers. Very interesting.

If your web site is hosted by DreamHost, you can easily add a counter to any of your pages. Just add this to the page you want tracked:

<img src=”http://counter.dreamhost.com/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=USERNAME-COUNTERNAME.dat&pad=F&ft=0&dd=E&istrip=T” alt=”add some witty quip here”>

Simply replace USERNAME with your DreamHost account name. Change COUNTERNAME to the name of the counter, and there you go. The COUNTERNAME parameter is why this is cool: You can have multiple counters at DreamHost without having to configure anything other than that one parameter. So on my Hemingway page, I have “hemingway” there, and on my GatorBlog I’ve used “football”. Each counter is incremented whenever the image (Note that it’s an IMG tag!) for that particular COUNTERNAME is requested. Nice.