cogdogblog: using mt http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/pcat_using_mt.php CDB Latest on using mt en-us alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu Copyright 2006 2005-04-26T23:51:40-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sit. Stay. But This Blog Has Moved http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/04/26/bye.php Well it was easy. In between commercials on Tuesday night TV, and a late night burst of extra excitement, I have moved this entire weblog into its new home, hosted very happily in a WordPress 1.5 blog. I was not sure how much would export over (actually everything did), so I hate to say this is now a forwarding address blog ( as well as a retro record of my blogging from April 2003-2005). The first move was on the same server in May 2005; it was then moved to its own domain in January 2006. So adjust your links accordingly- the new CogDogBlog is at: http://cogdogblog.com/ and adjust your RSS readers to: http://cogdogblog.com/feed/ Did I say again how easy that is? How slick the WP interface is? How limitless the templates look and code, now that they are recognizable PHP and not obsfucated, let's go out and run 3 miles while the rebuilds chug perl? I very much enjoyed the learning of MovableTpye for this old blog, but the time has come, and this blog has gone. The new one will be ongoing an evolution as I learn more about WordPress, so watch out for the sharp edges over there. See ya. 1273@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Well it was easy. In between commercials on Tuesday night TV, and a late night burst of extra excitement, I have moved this entire weblog into its new home, hosted very happily in a WordPress 1.5 blog. I was not sure how much would export over (actually everything did), so I hate to say this is now a forwarding address blog ( as well as a retro record of my blogging from April 2003-2005).

The first move was on the same server in May 2005; it was then moved to its own domain in January 2006.

So adjust your links accordingly- the new CogDogBlog is at:
http://cogdogblog.com/

and adjust your RSS readers to:
http://cogdogblog.com/feed/

Did I say again how easy that is? How slick the WP interface is? How limitless the templates look and code, now that they are recognizable PHP and not obsfucated, let's go out and run 3 miles while the rebuilds chug perl?

I very much enjoyed the learning of MovableTpye for this old blog, but the time has come, and this blog has gone.

The new one will be ongoing an evolution as I learn more about WordPress, so watch out for the sharp edges over there.

See ya.

]]> using mt 2005-04-26T23:51:40-07:00 IM This Entry http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/04/22/im.php 1270@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ I just added a new feature to this blog's templates, likely the last tweak I will do as I am rather dead set on moving soon to WordPress (especially after seeing D'Arcy's demo of the flickr gallery plugin).

The new feature is a link along the front page and archive pages (and individual entries) where the line has links for comments, trackbacks, etc that says "IM this". Clicking the link will open an iChat/AIM client chat window with the URL in the chat entry area, so all you need to do is pick a buddy to share the URL with.

Stealing this from Preshrunk's entry on "Feature Creep" (who stole it from someone else, go stealing!), it is a simple matter of a link that looks like:

<a href=aim:goim?message=http://www.blah.com/blog/the/url/for/this/post">IM this</a>

where in MovableType templates it looks like:

<a href=aim:goim?message=<$MTEntryPermalink$>">IM this</a>

Okay, this is pretty low on the potential use scale, but rather simple to do for newbie template twidlers.

Like I said, waiting for MovableType to rebuild 800 posts is but one more reason to wake up and join the WP crowd (yes I will James, no need to spur me on, it's a matter of time). MT is like, so.... 2002. Tired.

When the switch happens, it will likely be a conversion attempt of the past CDB 800 posts, but sitting at a new to be determined URL, and leave this old blog as an embarrassing artifact.


]]> using mt 2005-04-22T23:21:58-07:00 The Dog Barfed Up Some Comments http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/04/14/comments.php Although I noted yesterday that my own technical gaffs had erase all of our blog comments going back to September 2004, I did comb through the last database dump from early March 2005 and sifted out the legit comments for Sept 2004 - March 3, 2005, so the loss was the last month and a half. It was fairly trivial with BBEdit to semi-manually sift out all the spam roach poop. There were a total of 1947 rows in the comment table of the database (for about 6 blogs, mostly inactive) and out of those, I deleted 1662 spammies, easily identified by their repeated patterns, url encrusted comments, and general stench. There were sequences of more than 150 in quick succession to a dormant blog (which is now fenced off). And the captcha security code on the comment form is working like a dream, perfection, baby. 1260@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Although I noted yesterday that my own technical gaffs had erase all of our blog comments going back to September 2004, I did comb through the last database dump from early March 2005 and sifted out the legit comments for Sept 2004 - March 3, 2005, so the loss was the last month and a half.

It was fairly trivial with BBEdit to semi-manually sift out all the spam roach poop. There were a total of 1947 rows in the comment table of the database (for about 6 blogs, mostly inactive) and out of those, I deleted 1662 spammies, easily identified by their repeated patterns, url encrusted comments, and general stench. There were sequences of more than 150 in quick succession to a dormant blog (which is now fenced off).

And the captcha security code on the comment form is working like a dream, perfection, baby.

]]> using mt 2005-04-14T15:26:51-07:00 Captcha Spammers! Fugggedaboddit http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/04/08/captcha.php It's a new spam free day for CogDogBlog and our other affiliated MovableType 2.661 blogs here. I've successfully integrated James Seng's captcha plugin, so that all comment posts require a human to type in a randomly generated security code that appears on screen as a graphic image or 'captcha'. Spambots cannot automatically read these, so any spam that dribbles in is human posted. Spammers thrive on automation, not manual effort. This would not have been possible had not Audree, our eportfolio programming genius, been gracious enough to help with the cryptic perl installs of the GD.pm and GD perl libraries. Thanks Aud! Some notes: (*) Yes, D'Arcy, I know that captchas are a total barrier for the visually impaired. My plan (not fully implemented) is to provide a link to our standard feedback form which is accessible. This form publishes no content online so is useless for spammers (though they try, fools). (*) The captcha takes away my previous restriction that all comments had to be previewed; again D'Arcy, I agree it was a PITA, but gone now. This might be the tradeoff for the first point? (*) My individual entries can now include the comment for rather than putting them all in pop-up windows. (*) I'll be testing this to see how effective it is, not just on CDN but the Low Threshold Applications site as well. Out LTA authors need not be bothered by phenterminegamblingbeastiality link foisting. (*) It may not be perfect as folks are already working on breaking visual captchas. I still plan to try maybe later this month a migration to WordPress. It really seems to have more flexibility (after doing an MT rebuild of 800+ entries I see the value of a dynamic publishing WP blog) and to be honest it feels like it did in 2003 when I looked at blogs- the blogs I liked reading and looking at were published in MT2.x-- but these days, the ones looking and feeling cool are Word Press (and Drupal). While MT3.x has some desirable features, it hardly feels much more evolutionary than what I have now, and really feels, well stale and dated. Plus I understand there are a number of very effective WP spam fightinh tools. MT has 1- the MT-Blacklist plugin (yes, Cheryl told me about Brad Choate's new antiSpam plug-in... requires MT3, so fugggedaboddit). Of course it is subjective! It's my blog. FYI, James Seng has ported his MT captcha plug-in to his new Drupal run blog. So cya, "Absinth452" and pals. Go crap on someone elses blog. 1252@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ It's a new spam free day for CogDogBlog and our other affiliated MovableType 2.661 blogs here. I've successfully integrated James Seng's captcha plugin, so that all comment posts require a human to type in a randomly generated security code that appears on screen as a graphic image or 'captcha'. Spambots cannot automatically read these, so any spam that dribbles in is human posted. Spammers thrive on automation, not manual effort.

Captcha

This would not have been possible had not Audree, our eportfolio programming genius, been gracious enough to help with the cryptic perl installs of the GD.pm and GD perl libraries. Thanks Aud!

Some notes:

(*) Yes, D'Arcy, I know that captchas are a total barrier for the visually impaired. My plan (not fully implemented) is to provide a link to our standard feedback form which is accessible. This form publishes no content online so is useless for spammers (though they try, fools).

(*) The captcha takes away my previous restriction that all comments had to be previewed; again D'Arcy, I agree it was a PITA, but gone now. This might be the tradeoff for the first point?

(*) My individual entries can now include the comment for rather than putting them all in pop-up windows.

(*) I'll be testing this to see how effective it is, not just on CDN but the Low Threshold Applications site as well. Out LTA authors need not be bothered by phenterminegamblingbeastiality link foisting.

(*) It may not be perfect as folks are already working on breaking visual captchas.

I still plan to try maybe later this month a migration to WordPress. It really seems to have more flexibility (after doing an MT rebuild of 800+ entries I see the value of a dynamic publishing WP blog) and to be honest it feels like it did in 2003 when I looked at blogs- the blogs I liked reading and looking at were published in MT2.x-- but these days, the ones looking and feeling cool are Word Press (and Drupal). While MT3.x has some desirable features, it hardly feels much more evolutionary than what I have now, and really feels, well stale and dated.

Plus I understand there are a number of very effective WP spam fightinh tools. MT has 1- the MT-Blacklist plugin (yes, Cheryl told me about Brad Choate's new antiSpam plug-in... requires MT3, so fugggedaboddit).

Of course it is subjective! It's my blog.

FYI, James Seng has ported his MT captcha plug-in to his new Drupal run blog.

So cya, "Absinth452" and pals. Go crap on someone elses blog.

]]> using mt 2005-04-08T23:02:04-07:00 CDB Greatest Hits All 837 of 'em http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/03/29/hits.php 1231@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Since I am pondering doing the MovableType to WordPress conversion, I've done a bit of reflecting on the last two years of blogging. Nothing profound has emerged, but I did start to think about the part of a blog post I spend the most time on (obviously it is not spell checking) -- coming up with a good title.

A good post title, grabs attention, sets the mode, and I often tried (in vain) to hit the punny spot. It's worth being original, and just not having a dry, 'just the facts ma'am' sort of title.

So I thought, why not peruse all of them via a MT template that displays all blog entries listed my title in alpha order? The template was a snap, the meat of it being:

<ol class="posted">
<MTEntries sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
<li>
<a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">
<$MTEntryTitle$></a>  
(<$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M %p$>)
</li>
</MTEntries>
</ol>

So here it is, not available in any store, the full collection A-Z, 837 (and counting) CogDogBlog's Greatest (and not so Great) Hits. And I could recall the topics of most of them except for a few... My personal of the best include:


Rock On! I'm moving to another label....

]]> using mt 2005-03-29T20:38:30-07:00 Now the iPodless Podcaster http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/02/26/podcaster.php 1175@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Day number 578 without an iPod...

No, I have no intent to start regular podcasts, enough other people with velvety FM radio D.J. type voices that never say "ummm" are at it already. There is no time to jump into this endeavor. But never say never.

On the other hand, twice or more or in the last week. I have included references to .mp3 files in a blog entry, and there is no reason those could not be made podcast-able. So to investigate what it would take, should ever a leap month appear in my calendar, here is a simple recap of how easy it was to add the proper RSS tags to my MovableType blog to make it "podcast" ready.

All you really need is Brandon Fuller's MT-Enclosures Movable Type Plugin:

Audio blogging is starting to take off. Currently, Movable Type has no support for audio blogs so I decided to whip up a quick plugin to provide the capability.

The missing link here is automating the process of adding the special <enclosure> link into your RSS 2.0 feed. That is the job of this plugin.

Installing it is a matter of clicking, downloading, and moving it to the plug-in directory.

Next, you need to make sure your blog has a template for RSS 2.0 feeds (it should be there for MT 3.x). Us old folks with MT 2.6x and older likely have RSS 1.0 templates (RSS feeds that have URLs that end in *.rdf). You can keep 'em, but it is easy enough to create a new index template, have it save as a file named index.xml, and get a copy of a basic RSS 2.0 template from SixApart's MovabbleType old dingy templates.

While you are getting techy with the templates, you might as well make my recommended change of the default description tag:

  <description><
  $MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>
  </description>
  <description><
  $MTEntryBody remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$>
  </description>

This way your RSS feed are not restricted to the stubby 40 words of the Excerpt, but whatever you type into the MT Body entry field. Take control of your feed descriptions!!

The change the MT-Enclosures is that inside the <item>...</item>... area, you add a line that makes the magic happen:

<MTEntries lastn="20">
   <item>
      
      <$MTEntryEnclosures$>
      
   </item>
</MTEntries>

The plug-in automatically sniffs your content, and any hypertext links to enclosure content will get added to your RSS feed like:

<enclosure 
  url="http://cogdogblog.com/alan/snore/iwantanipod.mp3" 
  length="877408" type="audio/mpeg" />

which is what podcast reader tools look for to download to your computer and possibly transfer to yoour pod (if you have one, sniff, sniff).

The only hitch with the MT-Enclosures plug-in is, if I read the docs, right, it will look for all kinds of enclosed media (video, images, etc), so on my baby attempt, I used the include option to keep it to only URLs that end in *.mp3:

<MTEntries lastn="20">
   <item>
      
      <$MTEntryEnclosures include="mp3"$>
      
   </item>
</MTEntries>

The other design decision I took was that I am not expecting to do a whole lot of 'casting, so it would not make much sense to subscribe to my main RSS feed. So my strategy was to create a new blog category called "audiocasts", so if I write anything with a linked .mp3 file, I will add this category to my post. Thus, subscribing to the feed for that category, will give you all my "audiocasts" in RSS 2.0 with proper enclosures:

http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/cat_audiocasts.xml

and I even got fancy, and used Adam Kalsey's way cool button maker to generate my own custom RSS Audiocast badge:

RSS Audio

And there it is.... I am ready to podcast if I ever care too. The blog is ready.


]]> using mt 2005-02-26T18:23:59-07:00 Keeping Tabs on Comments in Multiple Author Blogs (MovableType) http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/02/20/comments.php 1163@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ With exceptions of newer systems (yes, Drupal fans, that is you), many blog software packages are designed from the perspective of single author weblogs, but with some digging you can expand their functionality for multi-author sites.

We've recently released the Low Threshold Applications (LTA) site, recast as a blog from a once manually edited HTML site. To make the index of LTAs by author work, we had to assign the blog entries to accounts for the people that wrote the content (we are doing all the blog posting from content written by others). One limitation of MovableType is I can give author credit to only one person, so posts with multiple authors needed some under the hood tinkering to add new database tables and use PHP/mySQl query to pull out entries by "co-authors".

This also means that comments posted to an entry go to the actual author (a good thing), but how do I, as a site owner monitor that traffic? (just in case the spam roaches sneak in-- I can feel their antennae and little feet scurrying outside the moat).

At first I thought about altering the MT comment scipts to add my address asa BCC header to all email (ugh, more email). I think they way to do this is to edit the /lib/MT/App/Comments.pm file, around lime 216, from:

my %head = ( To => $author->email,
			 From => $comment->email || $author->email,
			 Subject =>
				 '[' . $blog->name . '] ' .
				 $app->translate('New Comment Posted to \'[_1]\'',
					 $entry->title)
		   );

to

my %head = ( To => $author->email,
			 From => $comment->email || $author->email,
			 Subject =>
				 '[' . $blog->name . '] ' .
				 $app->translate('New Comment Posted to \'[_1]\'',
					 $entry->title),
			BCC => 'mt-admin@somesite.edu'
		   );

but the thought of more email was not enticing. (BTW, I never tested the above code, just guessing).

A simpler approach was to create an RSS feed to the comments that could be subscribed to, in this case:
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.xml

it's really just a new archive, with some cut and paste / minor editing from the full blog RSS feed (see some details), but at least it offers a scan across a mutli-authored blog what is being said. And once created as a feed, it can be embedded into content page:

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.php

Sure MovableType may be showing some signs of age, but it is still an open enough tool set to tinker with, once you get beyond what comes with the box.

]]> using mt 2005-02-20T10:13:03-07:00 Spam Slithered in the MT Cracks http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/02/12/spam.php 1146@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Worrisome. I just got Movable Type (2.661) comment spam on entries in one of my blogs where the database has been set via comment closing routines to turn the allow comments to the value that closes them. How is it possible for the roach to sneak in? I had hoped that was a complete shutoff.

I stomped the roach swiftly with the steel toed boots (it just made that slimy soft crunching spineless sound) and have updated Blacklists (10,000th iteration).

Update: My error, these were Trackback spams. Gotta shut down those old ones.

Update: I just mass closed Trackbacks on a bunch of old blogs that are not used by attract the roaches. Done via direct MySQL statements (thanks phpMyAdmin):

UPDATE `mt_trackback` set  trackback_is_disabled=1 WHERE trackback_blog_id=XX

where XX= the database ID for the blog (browse the mt_blog table to grab these).

Next, I turned off trackbacks older than September 1, 2005:

UPDATE `mt_trackback` set  trackback_is_disabled=1 WHERE trackback_created_on < '2004-06-01'

STOMP! goes the boot!

]]> using mt 2005-02-12T10:30:04-07:00 Roll Your Own MT Search Bookmarklet http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/02/05/search.php Now that the Furl-Delicious-Frassle-CiteULike-Connotea-Bag Bookmarklet Tool (a simepl web form to help you build a one click browser bar tool for adding web sites to various collections) seems to be working-- I decided to make another tool. This one helps you create a browser bar button for quick searching of any MovableType weblog, as described December 5, 2004. So here is the new MT Search Bookmarklet Maker: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/mt_search_maker.php I use this extensively to search my own blog without needed to load the main page, or to do a quick search from any other web page using highlighted words on that page (like the Google Search button). 1128@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Now that the Furl-Delicious-Frassle-CiteULike-Connotea-Bag Bookmarklet Tool (a simepl web form to help you build a one click browser bar tool for adding web sites to various collections) seems to be working-- I decided to make another tool. This one helps you create a browser bar button for quick searching of any MovableType weblog, as described December 5, 2004.

So here is the new MT Search Bookmarklet Maker:
http://cogdogblog.com/alan/mt_search_maker.php

I use this extensively to search my own blog without needed to load the main page, or to do a quick search from any other web page using highlighted words on that page (like the Google Search button).

]]> using mt 2005-02-05T22:09:42-07:00 Better MT-ing 3: All Your Archives Are Wrong http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2005/01/12/archives.php Getting back to our series on better blogging, on this one I make the bold contention (ducking tomatoes) that all (well most) weblog software packages create archives the wrong way. It is not that they cannot do it better, but for the most part, the out of the blox templates build archives the lazy way-- just tossing old blog entries into one large, never ending scrolling sack. What am I blabbing about? Just about every blog software I have seen has nicely built systems for creating archives by date of previous writings. They organize them into links by month, day, etc. Some, like MovableType, allow user defined categories, so old entries can be grouped by any hierarchy. But what happens, and what is wrong (in this dog's opinion) is that the definition of an "archive" is just one long entry appended after another. If you write a lot, or create more than 40 articles in a category, it becomes almost a useless overweight to find old content that takes long to download (all pictures come with it too). It ends up being one of those big anvils that always skirts the Roadrunner and plops the Coyote (I was always more of a Wile E. Coyote fan myself, but that is another story). But here is where it gets interesting blog heads- you do not have to accept it that way, you can roll up your sleeves, and modify your archive templates to do what makes more sense to me- publish a list of previous posts by title and abstract, with links to the full shebang. In this edition, I aim to show you not only how to weave this magic in MovableType, but also in Blogger where I recently managed to achieve the same feat. I have to give credit to the Tweezer's Edge, a blog where I noticed this first-- if you can build a better archive, I think it makes you stand out from the crowd that is still limited to the default templates. 1062@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Getting back to our series on better blogging, on this one I make the bold contention (ducking tomatoes) that all (well most) weblog software packages create archives the wrong way. It is not that they cannot do it better, but for the most part, the out of the blox templates build archives the lazy way-- just tossing old blog entries into one large, never ending scrolling sack.

What am I blabbing about?

Just about every blog software I have seen has nicely built systems for creating archives by date of previous writings. They organize them into links by month, day, etc. Some, like MovableType, allow user defined categories, so old entries can be grouped by any hierarchy.

But what happens, and what is wrong (in this dog's opinion) is that the definition of an "archive" is just one long entry appended after another. If you write a lot, or create more than 40 articles in a category, it becomes almost a useless overweight to find old content that takes long to download (all pictures come with it too). It ends up being one of those big anvils that always skirts the Roadrunner and plops the Coyote (I was always more of a Wile E. Coyote fan myself, but that is another story).

But here is where it gets interesting blog heads- you do not have to accept it that way, you can roll up your sleeves, and modify your archive templates to do what makes more sense to me- publish a list of previous posts by title and abstract, with links to the full shebang.

In this edition, I aim to show you not only how to weave this magic in MovableType, but also in Blogger where I recently managed to achieve the same feat. I have to give credit to the Tweezer's Edge, a blog where I noticed this first-- if you can build a better archive, I think it makes you stand out from the crowd that is still limited to the default templates.

]]> using mt 2005-01-12T09:11:43-07:00 MovableType Multiple Author Blogs / Contribution Lists http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/21/author.php As reported a few times before, I have been prying time here and there to work on a prototype web site, that replaces a current, hand edited Low Threshold Applications web site with a dynamic one authored in MovableType. I am just polishing off a new add-on hack that uses PHP and mySQL to dome nifty magic. We are making progress on moving the old content over, but one of the last features to tackle (I think) was a dynamic generated equivalent of the LTA Contributors List where it lists the authors names, emails, organizations, and a list and links to the content they had authored. After exploring the available tags in MovableType, plugins, I was still not finding a simple way to do this. Yes, MT can sift through entries sorted by authors, but you have to know all the author username in advance, so every new author would mean a rewrite of the template. Not dynamic enough for me. I found a solution very close to what I was after from Scriptygoddess (a heavenly MT resource), MT hacks: Master Author Archive, MySQL version and with not too much leverage, was able to customize my own. Basically, I use PHP to pull info on all the authors on this particular blog, then for each author, echo their contact details. Under each, he trudge the database again, and for each author, pull just the entry titles they have posted to build a list and links. However doing this the way we wanted meant needing extra information on the author, as MT's author table just lists their login name and email, and I needed their full name, and their organization/affiliation. So my approach here was to create my own local author table in the MT database, and tie it to the MT one via the MT generated author_id (I am likely losing all of the non programmers here, bye ;-). 986@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ As reported a few times before, I have been prying time here and there to work on a prototype web site, that replaces a current, hand edited Low Threshold Applications web site with a dynamic one authored in MovableType. I am just polishing off a new add-on hack that uses PHP and mySQL to dome nifty magic.

We are making progress on moving the old content over, but one of the last features to tackle (I think) was a dynamic generated equivalent of the LTA Contributors List where it lists the authors names, emails, organizations, and a list and links to the content they had authored.

After exploring the available tags in MovableType, plugins, I was still not finding a simple way to do this. Yes, MT can sift through entries sorted by authors, but you have to know all the author username in advance, so every new author would mean a rewrite of the template. Not dynamic enough for me.

I found a solution very close to what I was after from Scriptygoddess (a heavenly MT resource), MT hacks: Master Author Archive, MySQL version and with not too much leverage, was able to customize my own. Basically, I use PHP to pull info on all the authors on this particular blog, then for each author, echo their contact details. Under each, he trudge the database again, and for each author, pull just the entry titles they have posted to build a list and links.

However doing this the way we wanted meant needing extra information on the author, as MT's author table just lists their login name and email, and I needed their full name, and their organization/affiliation. So my approach here was to create my own local author table in the MT database, and tie it to the MT one via the MT generated author_id (I am likely losing all of the non programmers here, bye ;-).


]]> using mt 2004-12-21T15:19:05-07:00 Better MT-ing 1: Naming Files To Your Advantage http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/15/naming.php What's in a file name? Well it is the URL that you will publish, so make the most of it. You can make room for flexibility in your blogs if you set things so all content created is published as *.php rather than *.html. What is PHP? A long forgotten acronym, but it is a powerful server side language for mixing in some script like commands that can make web pages be much more dynamic than static HTML. Even if you never use one iota of PHP code, your blog site can still spit out web friendly content, HTML only if you change things as described below. It is an once of prevention (well maybe more than an ounce) that creates opportunity down the road. So in this bit of MT, we will show you how to change everything so your blog is on the PHP bandwagon, and then show you an easy way to save your individual blog posts with more meaningful urls than http://www.mycoolsite.org/blog/archives/000035.html 964@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ What's in a file name? Well it is the URL that you will publish, so make the most of it. You can make room for flexibility in your blogs if you set things so all content created is published as *.php rather than *.html.

What is PHP? A long forgotten acronym, but it is a powerful server side language for mixing in some script like commands that can make web pages be much more dynamic than static HTML. Even if you never use one iota of PHP code, your blog site can still spit out web friendly content, HTML only if you change things as described below. It is an once of prevention (well maybe more than an ounce) that creates opportunity down the road.

So in this bit of MT, we will show you how to change everything so your blog is on the PHP bandwagon, and then show you an easy way to save your individual blog posts with more meaningful urls than http://www.mycoolsite.org/blog/archives/000035.html

]]> using mt 2004-12-15T23:38:28-07:00 Better MT-ing in 6 Bites http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/15/bettermt.php I've been at the blogging biz using MovableType (MT) since April 19, 2003, and along the way I've been putting aside some ideas for things I have done beyond the out of the box set up that might help others. Also, since I am still living in the free land of MT 2.661, I have no idea how much transfers to the 3.$$$$ versions. Quite a good chunk of this is MovableType specific only, but since I have been recommending new bloggers get their feet wet with Blogger.com, I have some ideas that can be applied over there as well (especially the section coming up on Making Better Archives. For quite some time I have seen that every weblog software pretty much considers "archiving" the act of stitching together all posted entries into one long, ever loading web page. There is a better way. Also, since I spin a lot of content with PHP, I offer some ways to leverage the dynamic features it can offer, again, not for everybody (and certainly not a Blogger.com option). For example, the side bar you see on this posting and all others in the series, is generated by including one template file, so as I add articles, in the include file I can activate links, and then they are updated on all web pages that use it, without needing to republish the content. Also, I aim to show you how to create a dynamic drop down menu like I use at the top of my blog pages to navigate among categories. In the mix are some suggestions for using MT modules for updating content on many pages, cleaning up and adding to the sidebar, beefing up your style sheets, and making a special style sheet for pages printed from your site, creating RSS feeds for comments, trackbacks, categories, etc. Well that is the plan-- hopefully being at the end of the semester for our system here yet having another week for us non faculty grunts to work, I can squeeze in these new pieces. Stay tuned. 962@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ I've been at the blogging biz using MovableType (MT) since April 19, 2003, and along the way I've been putting aside some ideas for things I have done beyond the out of the box set up that might help others. Also, since I am still living in the free land of MT 2.661, I have no idea how much transfers to the 3.$$$$ versions.

Quite a good chunk of this is MovableType specific only, but since I have been recommending new bloggers get their feet wet with Blogger.com, I have some ideas that can be applied over there as well (especially the section coming up on Making Better Archives. For quite some time I have seen that every weblog software pretty much considers "archiving" the act of stitching together all posted entries into one long, ever loading web page. There is a better way.

Also, since I spin a lot of content with PHP, I offer some ways to leverage the dynamic features it can offer, again, not for everybody (and certainly not a Blogger.com option). For example, the side bar you see on this posting and all others in the series, is generated by including one template file, so as I add articles, in the include file I can activate links, and then they are updated on all web pages that use it, without needing to republish the content. Also, I aim to show you how to create a dynamic drop down menu like I use at the top of my blog pages to navigate among categories.

In the mix are some suggestions for using MT modules for updating content on many pages, cleaning up and adding to the sidebar, beefing up your style sheets, and making a special style sheet for pages printed from your site, creating RSS feeds for comments, trackbacks, categories, etc.

Well that is the plan-- hopefully being at the end of the semester for our system here yet having another week for us non faculty grunts to work, I can squeeze in these new pieces.

Stay tuned.

]]> using mt 2004-12-15T09:54:07-07:00 MT Upgrade Dance (2.6 to 3.1) Steps... Advice? http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/09/dance.php Appearances, aside, I copy others quite often... and reading Scott's note on successful migration from MovableTYpe 2.x to 3.1, I am pondering dragging the CogDog up a notch. I'd resisted for a while because (a) The blog is doing fine as as; and (b) I have about 12 MT blogs on 3 different servers and a pile of authors, so I was unwilling to shell out $$. But Scott's post got me thinking about just upgrading my own site (hee hee selfish dog). I am trying to sort out the best strategy to migrate my one MT blog without messing up what works and the other 11. Does anyone have any thoughts? Right now, I would be considering making a clone of my site, cloning the database, and then migrating just that part. I may have to weed out the other blogs, or just make a copy of everything and then delete the unwanted blogs. ?? 949@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ Appearances, aside, I copy others quite often... and reading Scott's note on successful migration from MovableTYpe 2.x to 3.1, I am pondering dragging the CogDog up a notch.

I'd resisted for a while because (a) The blog is doing fine as as; and (b) I have about 12 MT blogs on 3 different servers and a pile of authors, so I was unwilling to shell out $$.

But Scott's post got me thinking about just upgrading my own site (hee hee selfish dog). I am trying to sort out the best strategy to migrate my one MT blog without messing up what works and the other 11. Does anyone have any thoughts? Right now, I would be considering making a clone of my site, cloning the database, and then migrating just that part. I may have to weed out the other blogs, or just make a copy of everything and then delete the unwanted blogs.

??

]]> using mt 2004-12-09T17:27:43-07:00 MT Blog Search Bookmarklet http://cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/12/05/bookmarklet.php I am a bit amazed I never thought of this earlier... the primary use for CogDogBlog is pure selfish- tracking things or projects so I can have a record I can find later. More often than not, i am trying to remember a site or reference from a few months/years back, and the only way to look for it is go to my, ahem, overloaded main page, and using the search form. But in the last 15 minutes, I wrote a quick little JavaScript that allows me to do a quick search and bypass the main page. Actually I ripped it pretty much from the Google Browser Buttons, which does a quick Google search on any highlighted text for a page in view, or if no text is selected, provides a pop up box to type in the search words. A dull beam of light said tonight-- "hey, I could do that for my MovableType Blog!" So here it is, just drag the link to your browser toolbar, and you have direct search to CDB: Get Your CogDogBlog Search Bookmarklet Want to roll your own? You just need to create an empty bookmark/favorite, copy the code below, and make appropriate edits to personalize it. javascript:t=getSelection();if(!t)%7Bvoid(t=prompt('search%20CogDogBlog%20for...',''))%7D;if(t)%20location.href='http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&#38;search='%20+%20escape(t); with 3 edits needed shown in bold: javascript:t=getSelection();if(!t)%7Bvoid [1] (t=prompt('search%20CogDogBlog%20for...','')) %7D;if(t)%20location.href=' [2] http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi? [3] IncludeBlogs=1&#38;search='%20+%20escape(t); [1] Customize the name of your blog for the pop up keyword entry [2] Customize the URL for your MT search script [3} Customize the database ID number for your blog for the value of IncludeBlogs If you are unsure of the values for [2] and [3]. just look at the URL produced by any search performed from the normal MT search form. Your mileage may vary, but this will save me a few steps from searching my own blog. For that matter, you can also exploit knowledge of the URL produced by search results to create links within your blogs to key words that are not necessarily your predefined categories. For example, I can easily add links if I wished to, say a collection to mythical entities (there is a poor joke in this): CDB Mentions of Stephen DownesCDB Mentions of BlackboardCDB mentions of Sasquatch Knowing how to pick apart search URLs opens up all kinds of doors.... never be afraid to dissect a URL. 936@http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ I am a bit amazed I never thought of this earlier... the primary use for CogDogBlog is pure selfish- tracking things or projects so I can have a record I can find later. More often than not, i am trying to remember a site or reference from a few months/years back, and the only way to look for it is go to my, ahem, overloaded main page, and using the search form.

But in the last 15 minutes, I wrote a quick little JavaScript that allows me to do a quick search and bypass the main page. Actually I ripped it pretty much from the Google Browser Buttons, which does a quick Google search on any highlighted text for a page in view, or if no text is selected, provides a pop up box to type in the search words. A dull beam of light said tonight-- "hey, I could do that for my MovableType Blog!"

So here it is, just drag the link to your browser toolbar, and you have direct search to CDB:

Want to roll your own? You just need to create an empty bookmark/favorite, copy the code below, and make appropriate edits to personalize it.

with 3 edits needed shown in bold:

javascript:t=getSelection();if(!t)%7Bvoid
[1] (t=prompt('search%20CogDogBlog%20for...',''))
    %7D;if(t)%20location.href='
[2] http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?
[3] IncludeBlogs=1&search='%20+%20escape(t);

[1] Customize the name of your blog for the pop up keyword entry
[2] Customize the URL for your MT search script
[3} Customize the database ID number for your blog for the value of IncludeBlogs

If you are unsure of the values for [2] and [3]. just look at the URL produced by any search performed from the normal MT search form.

Your mileage may vary, but this will save me a few steps from searching my own blog.

For that matter, you can also exploit knowledge of the URL produced by search results to create links within your blogs to key words that are not necessarily your predefined categories. For example, I can easily add links if I wished to, say a collection to mythical entities (there is a poor joke in this):

Knowing how to pick apart search URLs opens up all kinds of doors.... never be afraid to dissect a URL.


]]> using mt 2004-12-05T23:07:34-07:00