Good suggestion. Should be fairly easy to add that in. Will single-level categories be acceptable?

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

I think so. Take a look at this Blog. It's done with MType but the user created a few "categories" as tabs at the top... those are the things he likes to talk about. Kinda makes sense..

Something esle you may want to look into is permissions. I often we don't build a lot of this into a script. It would be good if the ability to actually have and open Blog can key off a field in the user / links table. (or better off something in the Community Plugin!)

Example: I want only "paid" members to be abe to have Blogs... etc. Again, not critical but good for later.

Safe swoops
Sangiro

Here's a summary of current features:

Any registerd Links user can maintain a blog. This behavior will likely change in the final product to be based on user status (registered, editor, administrator).

Add, modify, and delete posts. User has the option to preview posts and edits, and is prompted to confirm deletions.

Archive browsing. There is a sidebar that links the past "x" months in which a user made posts. There is also a calendar sidebar for browsing archives by date.

Blogroll. User can maintain a bookmarks list. The first "x" number (or all) of these links are displayed in a sidebar, but viewable with discriptions in a larger page. This is where the author will maintain the list.

Trackbacks. Send and recieve trackback pings in MovableType format.

Recently Active Blogs. A sidebar that displays the last "x" active blogs.

Recently Added Posts. A sidebar tht displays the last "x" posts. Currently, these posts are site wide, but will likely change to display posts within the displayed author's blog when NOT on the main index page.

Preferences. Customize the blog title. Mange a ban list for sites not allowed to send trackback pings. Manage a list of sites to ping to autofil the ping form.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Hm.. paid membership sounds like a good idea. It would be best in my opinion to handle paid memberships as a seperate plugin, so that it can be used for potentially other applications.

With some sort of pre-existing system in place, you'd set the user_class variable to "Subscriber" and enter the name of the field to check against.

That's something I'll keep in mind for later. What I'm wanting to do for 1.0 release, is handle access with the use of the Status column in the user table. There are three classes: "Registered", "Administrator", and "Owner". Registered means ALL users, Administrator means only users designated as Adminstrator, and Owner means the user specified in the owner field.

Last night I added support for multiple template sets. Users can now specify a template set to use in their preferences. Given a name such as "retro", the template parser will then pull templates from "blog_retro".

I also started on categories. If any categories are listed in the preferences, then a drop-down box will appear in the add/modify templates. The post template now has a extra table row with a "Filed under" section if a categorie was assigned for the post. I haven't written in any way to browse by category however.

I've left my demo uninstalled by accident, but I'll get it back online after I get off work tonight.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

I think that will be fine to start but you may want to look at least one other level later.

CCUnet
my Christian web

not a big deal to add. I think it would be a good idea to add an option in the admin area for auto-selecting the category in the new post form. When removing categories, I'll probably make it an option to either delete all associated posts or to move them to another category.

One other thing that just occured to me and should be added in the final release is an "abstract" text field. The purpose being for eventually supporting XML/RSS feeds, to display short descriptions of posts on index pages, and to replace the current system of auto-filling the "abstract" field in the send ping form.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

I agree. If you create and option for the plugin to key the "permission" off a field in the user table (or even in the primary link table), then all you need to do is find a way to populate that field for each user with whichever payment method you're using.

Safe swoops
Sangiro

That is how my current blog software works
That is a good idea CCUnet
my Christian web

Is the latest demo up yet?

CCUnet
my Christian web

oh, sorry. forgot it patch when I got off. your minds does things (or doesn't...) when you're up too late at night.

Edit: latest demo is now online. you can add categories and choose one when you make a post. I'm thinking there should be an option for un-categorized posts as well, so I'll add that in later. The categories don't affect anything yet since there's no method in place to browse them, but you'll at least see a "filed under..." note in the post.

Multiple template sets can be used. I only have on template set on there so the set to fixed on "default". I'll upload an extra set tonight, but I won't be spending much time on customizing it any... it'll just have a "using template set 'custom'" note on it somewhere.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Hi,

I tried to take a look at your

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


URL, and it spit out an error message. You should edit the "Error Message" to show only "An error has occurred" not any more debugging info to the users.... google will indx that, and it becomes a potential security breech.

The defaults for new installs should have all that disabled.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.

hm.. thanks for the warning.. I'm not sure why I even had debug on in the first place.

that's link is to an early version that broke quite a while ago. the demo lives elsewhere (noted in one of my posts). I'll set up a redirect so it goes to the proper script.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

just posted an update.

a number of issues are fixed:

a) page titles not including blog name
b) missing tags on permalink pages if blog.cgi/id format used to access them
c) sidebars now update immediately
d) URL's added to blogrolls now must pass a regex
e) globals loading from the correct template set

I'm also working with ccunet to design better templates. Also, instead of directly supporting multiple template sets, he'll be working on a half-dozen or so preconfigured CSS files to control the look and feel of the user pages.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

We are looking forward to having a blog plugin for Links Sql through GCommunity.

Expecting date for the first release?

Antoine

I'm hoping for May 1st. That's assuming I get the admin side of things completed. I'm not sure if the blog author selectable template skins will be done by then. If not, the blogger will ship with the default plain templates, and the skins will be posted at a later date.

I'm not sure how Gossamer Community will affect things as I've never used it. I've been designing/testing on unaltered versions of Links 2.2.1 and GLinks 3.0.0.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Categories
Advanced Editing
Drafts
Bookmarklets
Searching
Blogrolls
Multiple Authors
Custom Skin (CSS)
Access Stats
Photos
Photo Uploading
Photo Albums
Comments
Comment Editing

Thanks
Antoine

Categories
--already done. except you can't move a post from one category to another, yet.

Advanced Editing
--played with MANY different editors. I really want to have one, but nothing I tried worked very well or was way too complicated to customize. You CAN use most valid HTML tags, less anything that will potentially break the site (scripts, applets, ilayers, iframes, etc.).

Drafts
--probably can be done without too much trouble.

Bookmarklets
--I suck at javascript/browser plugins. if someone can write a bookmarklet I'd be glad to include it in return for a small royalty on each sale.

Multiple Authors
--that is something I'm considering for the future. At present, each user has his own blog. It can be restricted down to either users who are designated as Administrator (as opposed to simply Registered) or you can choose to have only a single authorized user. If you set the user class preference to Administrator, then technicly, you can have your Adminstrator users post/modify/delete in any users blog; you just can't explicitly assign multiple users to a single blog.

Searching
--shouldn't be too hard to pull off. I'll look into that.

Blogrolls
--already done

custom skins
--been playing around with different ways to do that. I have an admin field where you can list style names, which are then selectable in user preferences. I think the way I'm going to end up doing it will be to not use CSS alone (change colors and fonts), but also having selectable templates to use on each users blog.

stats
--would be nice to have. I'd consider that a very low priority on my to do list, however.

photoblogs
--that is something I'd really like to put in later. I want to concentrate on text articles in this release though.

comments
--it'll be there soon. I'd been putting off adding that in. As for editing, I think it's best if only registered users can leave/edit comments.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Thank you for the detailed information, however allowing users to upload and resize images must be a priority too for a serious blog.

Also useful to have a top header like include include_blogheader_.hml to host the main sitename which is providing the blog service.

Best
Antoine

I think you are right I've also shared this with Phiplip and I know he is open to this just don't know if it will make the initial release though. The other idea is already doveloped and will be included if I'm not mistaken.
Phillip hope you don't mind my responding here.

CCUnet
my Christian web

A little update since I haven't posted about this for a while.

I'm doing a lot of re-working on the whole system, to clean up code and add in some of the features that were requested. I'm hoping to have a demo for this revision posted in a few weeks.

Firstly, blogs are not enabled by default anymore. Your Links users need to activate their blog account and create a new identity to use specificly for the blogger. Going this route makes much more sense than using Links' user table.

Here's just a few the of things that are changing.

Editors
The Links user that created the blog becomes the primary editor. He/she is the "admin" and can create additional users and assign permissions for different aspects of the blog (such as changing general settings, templates, and creating categories).

Categories
The admin can restrict editors to assigned categories. By default, if users aren't assigned to specific categories, than they have root access and can post anywhere they please.

Posts
Posts can be saved as drafts. There's also a moderatation system. The admin can allow automatic validation of posts, or mark it for validation. Users who have moderation priviledges can approve, edit, or remove posts.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Any new developments on this plugin?

Charles

nothing much to speak of. there is A LOT of backend stuff being written, in fact, probably 80% of the whole thing is being rewritten.

I guess to give you a general idea of the major focus of the revision:

a system is being worked on to allow multiple editors per blog. as a result, a permissions system needs to be in place. Every detail has to be considered... who's allowed to manage general settings, edit templates, etc. Who has global permission for adding posts, and who can only post in designated categories. A system needs to be in place for inviting users.

It's a lot of work, and I've also been pretty stressed out/tired from my real job (we were having inventory) so I haven't got much done this past week.

I've got several hundred lines of untested code outlining most of the administrative functions that are needed. It's really down to working out a template management system, then cut 'n paste pieces out of the original plugin. Then finally debugging everything.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

This is not a good news! especially for community sites or Portals. Your Blog plugin will have surely success because mainly is integrated with GT Links Sql.....So think about it please!


Thank you
Antoine

I agree.

Safe swoops
Sangiro

yeah.... already dumped that idea. I must have been drunk or something when I thought up the idea of using seperate logins.

the planned route now is this:

blogger user data never touches any standard Links table. The Username is a foreign key relation to pull out the relevant user data, but all user preferences, etc., are in their own table. (honestly, I think all plugins should keep their plugin-specific user data in their own tables, or you end up with very cluttered data). The seperate identity idea still exists, but only as an "alias". Users can pick an "alias" to post as (they might want to use their real name on their personal blog, but use their registered user name in their friends').

activations, etc. : You can choose conditions that need to be met before they can post to their own blog, or you can choose to disable the function altogether. So for example, if you are doing paid memberships on your site, you could extend that into the blogger by entering in a condition such as "isPaidMember eq 'yes'" into your configuration. Then, you can select actions that those users who don't meet requirements can do: leave comments, join existing blogs (provided they get invited), etc.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.