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New plugins: blog conversion suite

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New plugins: blog conversion suite
You may remember a while back I was working on a fairly extensive blog plugin. I have since stopped working on that, opting to go with multiple related plugins. A full packaged, seperate system (similar to the original project), would be made available later on.

The suite of plugins can be described as a "skin", or alternative interface for Links. Instead of links in your database, you have articles.

1) PingServices

PingServices adds Trackback, Pingback, and Weblogs.com support your site. These are the most common methods of "pinging", or notifying other blogs about article you have written. The plugin supports sending and receiving Trackbacks and Pingbacks, but only sending weblogs.com pings (because weblogs.com is really a updates listing, rather than method of tracking interconnected articles).

The plugin also includes a sidebar widget which displays the last "x" articles which pinged you.

2) CalendarView

CalendarView consists of three parts. The first is a achives section. Every article is browsable by year, month, and date. The other two parts are sidebar widgets. The first is a calendar. Each date that has a article is highlighted and linked to it's subheading in the the month's archive. The second is a sidebar widget displaying direct links to all the monthly archives (though you can optionally display only the last "x" months and then link to the the full listing).

(the following are in the to-do list)

3) TagWords

This plugin is still in the planing stage. With TagWords, you assign key words to each article. With these tags, you build a "cloud" with various font-sized words (depending on frequency of use). The tags displayed in the cloud are the top/last "x" number of words (ie, 50 tags), but a full llist is displayed in a dedicated page. Clicking on a word in the tag cloud takes you to a page in with you can browse through all articles assigned that particular word.

The concept of the plugin is that the tag cloud acts like a large, single-level "virtual" category listing. It's a way to categorize articles without needing to create real categories.

4) RSS/xml/atom/etc. feeds

I haven't spent much time looking into to this. However, I do plan to work out a plugin to generate various feeds.

5) BlogRoll

A blogroll is just a list of other blogs you frequently read. What I plan to do is have two methods for creating the list. The first is an "assist" mode, and requires the PingServices plugin. What happens here is the system looks at your outgoing pings table and counts the number of times a each domain is used. The top "x" domains are automaticly set in your blog roll. The second is a "manual" mode, in which you'll manually create the blog roll with a simple form.

An example of the skinning I've been describing can be seen on my web site:
http://www.perlmad.net/site/index.html

I'm open to suggestions and criticism, or if anyone has a question I'd be glad to try to answer.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] New plugins: blog conversion suite In reply to
Hi Fuzzy Logic,

I was reading the description about your "Links Blogger" at your website.
- Where to see this thing in action (please provide URL) ?

What is the basis of this software ? Wordpress ? Six-apart ?


BTW: does anybody know the difference (advantages ?) between Wordpress and Six-Apart-products ?


".....Another big difference is that each user can run multiple blogs......":
this is what I would need.


Best regards,

Erich
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Re: [erichcyber] New plugins: blog conversion suite In reply to
The plugin is nearly 100% original code written by myself. I do implement a few open standards for spam filtering and sending Trackbacks and Pingbacks.

Sorry I can't give out more details right now.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.
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Re: [fuzzy logic] New plugins: blog conversion suite In reply to
Hi,

is there a chance to see this script working on a website, before I decide to purchase this software from yourself ?
I am interested.


Best regards,

Erich
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Re: [erichcyber] New plugins: blog conversion suite In reply to
It's not ready for release. Lots of loose ends on the administrative areas. Once all the gremlins are sorted out and all I'll set up a public demo with full access, but it's going to be a while. I've been stretching myself too thin trying to work on multiple plugins and getting further sidetracked, instead of concentrating on just one.

If you have a testing server, I'd be glad to set up a copy of PingServices and ArchiveView. Just bear in mind there are missing administrative functions (for editing/searching, etc.).

I forgot to note that the what these plugins basicly do is take an existing vanilla installation of Links and alter templates, and little widgets, etc. to get the *feel* of a blog. When I get around to compiling everything into a complete package, it will function outside of Links (won't be tied to the Links table) so you can still use it as a directory/search engine.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

Last edited by:

fuzzy logic: Oct 31, 2006, 12:18 AM