CogBlogged Tagged ‘using mt’

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, [...]

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).

< ?php include '/Volumes/web/html/alan/inc/better_mt.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 [...]

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 [...]

< ?php include '/Volumes/web/html/alan/inc/better_mt.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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In yet another feat of “faux syndication”, we now have our events database updating our Ocotillo Central and Action Group blog sites automatically. This provides a dynamic link from the info on the main Ocotillo Events calendar which has unique URLs for the following views: All Action Group Events General Ocotillo Events Learning Objects Action Group Events Hybrid Courses Action Group Events ePortfolio Action Group Events Emerging Learning Technology Action Group Events This information is now pushed to Ocotillo Central with the three next Ocotillo events appearing in the top right box where John posts his updates, and in an appropriate section in the listings for each Action Group. In addition, each group’s events are now dynamically inserted to the left side bar of each group’s blog. Once we can modify our calendar database authoring scripts, the co-chairs will be able to directly add/edit events to the database. I call [...]

flickr foto P8181355.JPGavailable on my flickr Rest a Bit on the “Restbit Bench”, Santa Maria Springs, Hermit Trail, Grand Canyon I just posted this photo to my flickr account using a nifty plugin for iPhoto (found via Tim Lauer). Basically, one can select one or more photos from your collection, select Export, add captions and tags, and then export them. The first one went smooth, the second attempt I kept geting error messages about account/email not matching, but some amount of retries, re-entering, re-starting iPhoto. Since I have my Flickr account set up for a JavaScript feed to this weblog, the image makes a trip from my iPhoto collection to flickr and then faux-syndicated to thie blog site. I really, really like what flickr is doing, they are adding new and interesting services, and providing developers access to the APIs for doing nifty add-ons like this plugin. Definitely good small [...]