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Reviving Blogging plugin

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Reviving Blogging plugin
This had been something I was working on over a year ago, but never finished. I'd lost my broadband Internet at the time and working on projects with lots of uploading is just a PITA. Anyway, about a week ago I restarted this project from scratch.

I've decided against designing the program to be compliant with any other systems (Pingback, Movable Type, etc.), at least for now. I feel that since this a Links oriented plugin, that it should be designed firstly to communicate with other Links bloggers in it's own standard. Non-Links bloggers can simply manually fill out a form if they want a trackback listing.

At this point, however, I'm only working on getting blogs running on the same site to be integrated together. Once that's done, some sort of system can be devised to create a combined index accross multiple sites.

I'd love to post a URL to the demo, but since it's in such an early stage with little error checking and security built into it, I'm disabling it whenever it's not being worked on.

I'm open for suggestions and comments.

If anyone has a piece of code or a link to a module that will generage calanders I'd appreciate seeing it.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I thought I'd let you know that I'll likely have a public demo available by next week.

This is being tested on 2.2.1 and 2.99.0, so barring any major changes moving into GLinks 3.0, it should work without any problems for those who plan to upgrade when the final release is out.

What's done:

There are a few sidebars that can be used on all pages. One is a list of recently active blogs, and another is list of recent posts. A third side bar is a calendar navigation table, which although available for all pages is only designed to navigate a specific users' blog (either the currently logged in user, or the user specified in the query string).

Adding, modifying, and deleting posts.

Basic, bare bones templates. just text, tables, and forms... no integration with any of the default template styles. it makes things easier to integrate into your own custom design this way.

What's not done:

A comments and trackbacks system. I may finish the comments system tonight or tommorrow. If it's done by then, I'll go ahead and post the demo. I'm going off on a three day trip to Ohio, so it will be Monday at the earliest otherwise.

Converting the script to an installable plugin module.

Alex, if you see this, can you PM/email a login for the plugin's area so I'll be able to post this?

[edit]
hm... nevermind about that... isn't there a way add/remove plugins in the plugin admin area? I only see options to modify what's already there.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Last edited by:

fuzzy logic: Mar 2, 2005, 2:25 PM
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I'm looking forward to seeing this

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I bet! I still have PM's from you from a year ago about this script.

are there any specific features you are looking for?

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I found HaloScan today (http://http;//www.haloscan.com) which is a free comments/trackback service and set it up for the script. The service seems pretty nice, and offers customizing comments and trackback page templates. the only downsides I see are that you have to need a HaloScan account and you must login to their site to send the pings -- it doesn't appear that you can do it remotely. Regardless of that, I think this is a good step forward, as this system works with many of the major blogging programs (Blogger, MovableType, etc.).

Here is a link to the demo:

http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/links/blog.cgi

Please be aware of the following:

Some of the templates may appear broken (I don't have time to add the HaloScan trackback code to all the templates before I got to work today).

The calendar on the main page isn't supposed to be there... I forgot to remove it. thus, if you click on it without loging in or going to a users page, you'll get an error page saying it oculdn't find user ''.

If you set up an account on the demo, you'll need to also set up an account on HaloScan if you wish to try out the trackback system.

Please report an problems you may encounter so I can try to fix them before i leave this weekend.

On that note, I've got to get ready for work and leave. I won't be back until 11:15 EST tonight.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Phillip,
This looks really good I think all the basic functionality is ther so far. The registration and post are seamless. The preferences link leads back to the main index not preferences. Maybe that isn't finished yet. Are images in the plan? How about a blog roll?

That's it for first impression I'll keep playing

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I hvaen't set up the preferences section yet. the only thing I plan to due with that is let you customize your blog title and let you hide your blog from public view. Maybe other things, but that's all I can think of.

By "images", do you mean images for icons, etc. to be used in the templates, or do you mean a PhotoBlog type functionality?

What do you mean by blog roll?

To address a few things you posted on the demo...

The new blog link should probably say new post.

it probably should. I'll change this.

What plan if any is there for archives?

You can already browse through old posts using the calendar menu. I may create an additional sidebar that will link to a monthly archive that shows all posts for the month.

it would be nice to set the date for the blog and maybe html area can be incorporated to add the ability to do more sophisticated posts.

Do you mean to let the user specify a date, rather than have it filled in automaticly when added?

As for HTML area, I suppose you mean something like the textarea form here, where's there's the word processor type editor, and the plain-text editor with pseudo tags. If I can find an existing editor for that I can incorporate without a too much trouble, I'll certainly consider it. However, as it is, you should aready be able to use any valid HTML to format your post.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
In Reply To:
I haven't set up the preferences section yet. the only thing I plan to due with that is let you customize your blog title and let you hide your blog from public view. Maybe other things, but that's all I can think of.

By "images", do you mean images for icons, etc. to be used in the templates, or do you mean a PhotoBlog type functionality?
I mean will posters be able to add images to their posts. But photoblog would be really awesome.

Quote:
What do you mean by blog roll? 0

I blog roll is a linked list of blogs frequnetly views by a blogger. see www.blogrolling.com
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What plan if any is there for archives?

You can already browse through old posts using the calendar menu. I may create an additional sidebar that will link to a monthly archive that shows all posts for the month. 0

most blogs have a linked list of old articles by week or month and year
Quote:
Do you mean to let the user specify a date, rather than have it filled in automaticly when added? 0
Yep exactly what I mean. A date dropdown box or pop up calendar aould be agood feature to make that more smooth.
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As for HTML area, I suppose you mean something like the textarea form here, where's there's the word processor type editor, and the plain-text editor with pseudo tags. If I can find an existing editor for that I can incorporate without a too much trouble, I'll certainly consider it. However, as it is, you should aready be able to use any valid HTML to format your post.0

Check out www.htmlarea.com it is free and can be incorporated into any text area field. It works with IE and Netscape see below.

htmlArea is a WYSIWYG editor replacement for any <textarea> field. Instead of teaching your software users how to code basic HTML to format their content, they can use htmlArea to:
  • Format text to be bold, italicized, or underlined.
  • Change the face, size and colour.
  • Left, centre, or right-justify paragraphs.
  • Make bulleted or numbered lists.
  • Indent or un-indent paragraphs
  • Insert a horizontal line.
  • Insert hyperlinks and images.
  • Insert tables
  • View the raw HTML source of what they're editing.

You can also create your own buttons to insert custom blocks of HTML code and images.

Hope this is helpful you've done great work on this.
Let me know if you need help to test on another site

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Images & htmlarea.... thank you for the link. with that you'll certainly be able to add images and use enhanced formatting for the HTML-impaired :-) I'll get to work on integrating that once I find the HTMLArea 3.0 beta download.

Blogrolls... I figured it out after I posted, but I was on the way out. I'll add this.

Dates... I see what you mean... the date you post something is not neccessarily where you would prefer to have it displayed. I'm going to have to rewrite everything that deals with dates in order to do this, but it makes sense do change it.

I'm going to play around with the comment/trackback system a little bit more first before I tackle any other changes.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
just a quick update...

I've got sending and receiving trackback pings working without the use HaloScan now. Once I get my offline version copied to my website, I'll make the demo available again for more testing.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I'm about half finished with getting an installer module written up. While I'm in the process, I'm adding some configuration variables to control a few things (though they won't effect anything just yet).

AllowedUsers
when set to "all", any registered user can maintain a blog. similarly, with "admin", only registered users designated as an "administrator" may maintain a blog.

SingleUser
when checked, only the user specified in AdminUsername may make posts.

AdminUsername
The username of the administrator that will maintain a blog.

BanURL
a spam control feature... URLs in this field will not be allowed to successfully ping any blog in your installation. User's may ban additional URL's from their preferences page.

AutoPing
if checked, then URLs specified in AutoPingURL will be pinged automaticly whenever a user makes a post. Users may turn feature off from their preferences.

AutoPingURL
URLs in this field will be pinged whenever a user makes a post. Users may specify additional URLs in their preferences.

If you can think of any other options that should be available, please list them.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Sounds good I'll think about anything that might be missing.
How are implementing templates? Inherit from LSQL or use its own templates like page builder?

The latter would be a nice feature so new set of templates could be created for bloggers.

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I'm not familiar with page builder.

the way I have things set up is that the plugin creates its own template set in the template directory, and it inherits globals from the default template set. this way, they don't get mixed in with standard Links templates, and any edits done through the admin panel get saved to the local subdirectory like the standard ones do.

One thing I may do eventually is include some instructions on setting up rewriterules to make the system appear static.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
In Reply To:
the way I have things set up is that the plugin creates its own template set in the template directory, and it inherits globals from the default template set. this way, they don't get mixed in with standard Links templates, and any edits done through the admin panel get saved to the local subdirectory like the standard ones do.
That's how pagebuilder works as well CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I think I lost about half my hair the past couple days trying to get some things worked out. I thought I'd had the template set working, but it turned out it was pulling templates from the default set. I was also having problems with the code for creating the tables and defs, which turned out to be a result of a bad Links installation.

The demo now lives here:

http://www.perlmad.net/cgi-bin/lsql/blog.cgi

here's what's new since the last update:
  • TrackBacks are now implemented in the script without the use of any third-party.
  • fixed some HTML errors
  • created an installer using the plugin wizard
I've been working everyday since I got back from Ohio (and still won't be off until Monday) so I haven't had much time to work on this lately. In the immediate future, I'll be working on the admin and user options. Once those are squared away, I'll get working on adding in some of the features we've been discussing.


Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Thanks for the effort and working through the problems. I've done some testing of the demo. Still looks good

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
here's a bit of an update on the progress...

I haven't spent much time on this lately. I'd bought a new laptop so it's been slow getting my files moved over. my clunky desktop is moving to the basement to the basement for use as a file server & gaming pc. Then I got my foot run over by a big Dodge Durango at work, so there's been time at the hospital getting it checked out, follow-up visits, filling out paperwork, and dealing with insurance agencies. (my foot's fine, btw Cool)

anyway... I did get a few things done.

The calendar nav menu no longer relies on Calendar::Simple. I'm now using GT::Date.

A basic "blogroll" link managing system has been added.

I've given up on adding in an advanced editor for now as it's doing nothing but slowing down production. I really like FCKeditor, but I'm having trouble getting FireFox to handle it properly. So for now, the program will simply accept any HTML thrown at it, and otherwise replace carriage returns with break tags for basic formatting.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Hi ccunet...

I've just uploaded an update that implements some of the user preference features discussed above. I'll briefly explain:

blog_ban_url
line-break delimited list of URL's banned. currently just a cut and past into a textarea field, though. Note that is will NOT block the IP address associated with the URL. I'll be changing this (probably next update) to use a text form to add and checkboxes to remove them. You'll also be able to manage bans (and remove all associated pings) directly from the post permalink page.

blog_default_ping
line-break delimited list of URL's to ping by default. again, just a cut and paste thing for now. Obviously, you can now ping multiple sites at once.

blogroll sidebar
this was actually already done in the previous beta, but I somehow overlooked it when I was updated templates. You can either display all your links in this block, or set a cutoff in the loop segment of the template.

There were a number of template changes and a couple bug fixes. I don't know how I missed it for so long, but there was stupid bug in the calendar sidebar subroutines. It was linking dates for all users instead of only the viewed user. Blog author user data was also not being obtained under a few circumstances (though it wasn't noticable in the previous version).

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Phillip,
You're doing a bang up job with this. I can't wait till it is available to test/acquire. The blogroll is working as it should. I htink the cut and paste of teh ping and ban are OK for now. SHOuldn't be aproblem to use.

Do you have an outline of the templates you use? I could start working on some to be used with it

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Attached is a RAR archive of the current templates. Most templates are named well enough so that you'll know what their used for. If you have any questions about any particular one, let me know.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I've just uploaded another update.

There is now an archives sidebar and accompanying indexes for a full list of links to each monthly archive, and the monthly archive itself.

Also patched the calendar sidebar once again. An oversight allowed previous months to be linked even when no prior posts exists. There are now prev and next tags to control linking on the date boundaries.

The installer was also changed. I previously had been forcing table creation, but it's far better to not do that. Obviously, it also doesn't remove them either. During installation, it will simply warn of the prior existance, so you'll have the option to go into mySQLman to drop the table/columns manually, and then reinstall the plugin. Make sense to preserve data in case of updates, don't it? Tongue

I'm curious if the new updates system will allow patching of plugins...

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
In Reply To:
The installer was also changed. I previously had been forcing table creation, but it's far better to not do that. Obviously, it also doesn't remove them either. During installation, it will simply warn of the prior existance, so you'll have the option to go into mySQLman to drop the table/columns manually, and then reinstall the plugin. Make sense to preserve data in case of updates, don't it? Tongue

I think so

CCUnet
my Christian web
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Re: [ccunet] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
I think I am for the most part finished with end-user features. There are a few things (such as a different way to add/remove bans, etc.) to change, but I'm setting them aside, to allow for some much needed behind-the-scenes editing. At just under 1200 lines of code, it's getting hard to follow my own work. The next day or so I'm spending most of my time reorganizing, optimizing, and adding in more error checking.

I made one last update for today: The post listings in the monthly archived view are now broken down by date. I will be applying this to the main index and user index as well.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
For those interested in purchasing GLinks Blogger now:

Please post any comments on what absolutely should be changed/fixed/added, based on the demo available on my site, before I distribute this beta version.

Please contact me via PM or AIM to discuss pricing and other issues.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Last edited by:

fuzzy logic: Mar 30, 2005, 7:44 AM
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Re: [fuzzy logic] Reviving Blogging plugin In reply to
Quote:
Please post any comments on what absolutely should be changed/fixed/added,

- Ability for users to categorize their entries

Not an absolute must (it's a pretty neat plugin as it is!), but would probably be needed before I'd jump in. Smile

Safe swoops
Sangiro
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