Weblog Tools Collection

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I had written this hack a long time ago, but considering the renewed interest, I wanted to make sure it was recorded. It make a small row of clickable smilies show up on top of box where you edit your post. Click on the smilie and it gets translated and put in the right place, no more guessing! Here is the link to the hack.
*Edit* The hack has been fixed for use on comments which show up on the main page (without the use of 12_comments popup)

I have most of the work done for blogPost Beta 1.0. Here is a small list of features and bugs.

#Features include (for now), posting to multiple blogs, comment and ping control, category control,
–more– and –excerpt– modification ability.
#Bugs: There are quite a few for now. I have not been able to test this on too many blog applications
I know that the comments do not get blocked on MT, their documentation sucks
If someone could get me an LJ code, I could test it on there
Any others, let me know.

Here is the download link to blogPost 1.0 Beta. Have fun!

*Update* - A couple of bugfixes already. Comment and ping control should work for MT now (sorry Anil!) it was my Boo-Boo, not MTs fault!

Nice WordPress Hacks, this time from codegurl They include:

The Date Since - displays the years, months, weeks, hours, minutes, and seconds since a post was added
Auto Comment Plugger - displays the commenters from the post before or the current post
Blog Stats - displays useful blog statistics (partially finished)
Nicer Archives - displays the archives in a neat organized fashion
Get Stats function - simple function for stats

WayPath has released the Beta version of their Waypath Related Stuff This is a very interesting extension of the Waypath algorithm. Waypath lets you search for related information from their collection of RSS feeds through either their web interface or the use of Plug-Ins for various weblog applications. This extension allows the search of related books from Amazon.com. Even though this might not be very useful for every blog item, somewhat static informational posts can definitely benefit from this addition. I am about to use it to put some books up for my Regular Expressions Tutorial. If and when they release the XML-RPC/REST-XML methods for their new search, I will try to write another plug-in for WordPress and php based blogs. (my previous Waypath plug-in was a relative success) Worthy of mention is that if you have an Amazon affiliate ID, you can include that in your list of books and make money off the click-buys!

I am almost done with blogPost. This application (written at my own behest, to learn) is a client application to post to blogs. Some of the final features will include:

Ability to post to multiple blogs with the same item
blogPostComment, ping and post status controls (which are lacking in w.bloggar)
Ability to code RPC calls into the application (with associated help files) for new blogging applications and APIs not implemented
Pure XMLRPC implementation, so simple code, existing methodology
Open Source, ThankYouWare

Features NOT part of the agenda include:

Fancy interface with lots of XP like icons which are never used by the average blogger
Ability to edit or modify previous posts
Category name retrieval from blog(might be included in forthcoming editions, just not this one)
Multi-threading (this example will NOT be thread safe)

I have gotten the XMLRPC++ modded enough to work with my application and I am presently working on the MFC code to make the GUI and the pretty front end stuff. I am also starting work on storing profiles and automatically setting up users for various blogs. The first alpha will not have many of the features. I am still too busy with other crap from school. I will be looking for beta testers by the end of this month. If anyone is interested, leave me a comment or send me an email and I will hook you up. Greg Door (a kind soul, a true friend I must say) is going to work through this with me (as per our last conversation) and with our collective minds, we should wrap this up by the end of this year. Once the application is where we want it to be, it WILL become shareware with some features lacking in the free version. We will have to decide on that. So beta testers with the final beta have free software.

Jon Anhold has listed his hacks for WordPress and a link to those hacks belongs on this page. They include:

Email Notification stuff
Archives (older stuff) page
Random logo

Daynah has a handy tutorial for those just starting out with FeedDemon and RSS.

…excerpt from: http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2003/11/feeddemon_tutor.html

Nick has released the 4th and probably the final release candidate of his amazing RSS reader for Windows. I haven’t had the time to install or use it yet as my computer is still in pieces due to the redecorating….
…excerpt from: http://www.twenty4.org/archives/2003/11/20/feeddemon_rc4.php

Has your blogroll been hacked recently? If so I have some quick solutions for you which might get you off your Blogroll kick and might save you some hassles in the long run.
1) Use WordPress which has a built-in BlogRoll - no subscriptions needed!
2) Use my LinkTours php script which emulates a blogroll, is stored on your own webserver and is very slim and tidy, but it lacks the pinging scripts (so no updated sites list)
3) MT has a hack (I know it exists, Im still trying to find it) which emulates a BlogRoll
4) TypePad has built-in blogroll functionality, as well, using the TypeLists feature - Added by Anil
5) The online RSS reader Bloglines will let you export folders of your subscriptions as a blogroll. This means your blogroll is automatically synchronised with what you are really reading. - Added by Ben
6) Make Backups!

If anyone else knows of any other scripts or hacks for a Blogroll like list, please leave a comment and I will add it to the main site.

This ( http://www.mysql.com/doc/T/a/Table_maintenance.html ) is a good place to start with corrupted MySql databases. If you backup again and run myisamchk on your tables, you could recover the information.
There are a couple of other methods. Your Mysql setup information in stored in a file called my.cnf inside your etc directory. Make sure your data directories are pointing to the base dir. e.g. Here is my setup

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

Restart mysql and httpd if you made those changes (with /etc/init.d/mysqld restart and /etc/init.d/httpd restart from a prompt, logged in as root)
Now, once you have that setup correctly, PhpMyAdmin might come to your rescue. On a default install of MySql (both from binaries and compiled) a new database called mysql is created which lists all the users for the mysql server, etc. Make sure you re-create the users and passwords as they existed in your previous server AND give all these users rights to every database (or * in phpmyadmin) At this point, the documentation suggests that MySql should allow access to the databases, but I have found a restart of mysql and httpd helps. After a restart, you should be able to see the databases through your phpMyAdmin interface.
As for backups, I have a very nice perl script which I run from cron everyday and it backs up the databases, keeps an incremental backup for a certain period automatically and works well for me. I know it is GPL, so click here to get it.
http://dinki.mine.nu/weblog/b2-img/mysql_backup.cgi

I got a request in the WordPress forums to have a way of autmatically turning off comments for entries that fall off the first page and here are the results. My idea is turn off comments for the posts that fall off your list once you post. Quite simple actually. It takes the post_ID of your new post (which is published status) , subtracts a pre-determined value to get the post for which comments need to be shut off, and then sets that information in the database.
Now that I try to post the hack, I realize it might be really difficult to find for non-programmers. Click here http://dinki.mine.nu/weblog/b2-img/b2edit.phps to get the hacked b2edit.php and save it under your wp-admin directory.

For WordPress 1.0+ :
Find post.php in your wp-admin folder and find this line:
} // end if publish
(this shows up twice, you want the one that is after the case ‘post’: )

and add this right above that // end if publish line:

//Comment off hack by LaughingLizard http://dinki.mine.nu/weblog/
$posts_per_page = get_settings(’posts_per_page’);
$post_comment_fix_ID = $post_ID - $posts_per_page - 2;
$check_vars = $wpdb->get_results(”
SELECT post_title, ID FROM $tableposts
WHERE ID < = $post_comment_fix_ID AND comment_status = 'open' ");
if ($check_vars) {
foreach ($check_vars as $check_var) {
if (!preg_match ("//i”, $check_var->post_content)) {
$comment_close = $check_var->ID;
$result = $wpdb->query(”
UPDATE $tableposts SET
comment_status = ‘closed’
WHERE ID = ‘$comment_close’ “);
}
}
}
//End of Comments off hack

That’s it.

Here is an excerpt from a recent thread of conversation from the WP support forums that I like to help out at.

I have used the nickname LaughingLizard since my undergrad days. I did nothing special to think of the name, just sounded like I fit right into it. After graduation I wanted to register the name but found some restaurant owner (very lascivious business genre) had registered it already. The desire to name my blog after my nickname had to come to an end for the time being. As for the present name of my blog, I worked very little to acquire it. I love the word muse, worked it around a little, kept in mind that I wanted it to be something that is easily searchable and distinct as a word group, and there it was. As luck would have it, when I could finally afford to purchase the domain, I found that too was registered! Here is a link that you (and other name seekers) might be interested in and it might help you get some interesting ideas. It randomly generates blognames for you. Hours of fun!!
Chris Thompson’s Blog Name Generator

How did your blog name come about? If you dont blog, do you have a fun name in mind? Have any stories to share, any fun little kibbles ? This is your chance to register (just a small form) and write an entry!

ZonkBoard is a fun blabber board made specifically with weblogs in mind. It’s simple to use and simple to set-up! If you’ve already got a ZonkBoard, go ahead and log in now to configure it. Otherwise, sign-up and grab one now!

ZonkBoard features include:

Personal Color Configuration
Simple Cut & Paste Install
Online Entry Manager
Ban Nasty Users!
Date/Time Stamped Messages
Lots More…

w.bloggar is an application that targets to be an interface between the user and his blog(s), in other words, is a Post and Template editor, with serveral features and resources that the browser based blog editors can not offer.

Because it’s a software that runs over Windows GUI it allows the user to edit his posts without being connected to the Internet, saving locally one or more texts to be posted in the future. It can be minimized to the Tray bar as an icon and everytime the user wants to publish a new text, he just need a click and has the editor ready to work, finished the text, another click (if connected) and the post will be published. w.Bloggar uses the well documented XML-RPC interface.

CSS Creator

Are you tired of hand-coding the CSS that you use for formatting? Or would you rather have a visual guide to help you when choosing backgrounds, font sizes, font colors and more? If so, then you need to check out CSS Creator.

From the site:

“CSS Creator allows you to choose a style for your Web page. Select different Cascading Style Sheet properties from the page below. To select a color, look for the HTML tag you want to effect, click the field you would like to insert color into, like color or background, then simply click the color you want from the colors grid on the left. Most changes will display on the page as you make them.”

…excerpt from: http://www.csscreator.com/version1/index.php

Feedster Builder lets you create an RSS feed for sites that don’t have them. It pings weblogs.com too.

Localfeeds is a nice new service that’s leveraging information from GeoURL. Enter a U.S. or Canadian zip code, and find RSS feeds geographically close to you.

Geolocation has always interested me. I can’t wait for the day that I can have a cell phone that will let me post to my blog, and automatically tag the posts with my GPS location. But right now, I’m still locked into a contract with a service that is lagging, technologically.

…excerpt from: http://dougal.gunters.org/index.php?p=307&c=1

Are you a seasoned blogger looking for a change? Just getting started? Either way, Josh’s rundown of the different weblog apps makes it falling-off-a-blog easy to choose the right one for you.
…excerpt from: http://r.hotwired.com/r/hw_wm_r_mynscp/http://www.webmonkey.com/02/18/index3a.html

I, like many people are new to the blogging experience. In addition I look at applications that accomplish what I need done with a high degree of flexibility. One of the many application I have look into using was Movable Type. During the installation of Movable Type the obvious thing to recognize was the need to run this application in a CGI executable directory or CGI bin with Perl support. This was done with ease on my set up however some hosting services do not allow this capability because of the need for security and efficiency. Also the flexibility to place this application indifferent places on a website can be greatly complicated for the average web programmer. The configuration however is very well documented and straight forward. Once this application is unzipped and/or uploaded a getting started how to is provided in the web directory of the application as index.HTML. This web page link to a documents page which will guide you through the entire setup of the application. This application is entirely written in Perl and provides many option during and setup and also once the application is up and running. These options include support for many different kinds of databases including flat text file databases, which can be useful on system where a SQL database is not available. Also support for mail services such as sendmail. Once installed and up and running, you must first log in a one of the developers which listed in the install documentation. After logging in as the admin you can addusers, setup templates, add blogs, and manipulate the existing blog to get a feel for how the application operates. One draw back found with this application is the lack of dynamic content insertion. With some other blogging application which operation using PHP, a web developer can insert a PHP tag into an existing website essentially inserting the blog information into the website. This content then becomes dynamic which mean the static pages never need to be change when information is posted to the blog. In Movable Type a less dramatic approach is used to update pages with new content. In Movable Type all information is entered into the blog management interface then once in place the postings are published which essentially writes out a new static web which includes the content and template. This in my opinion is a less elegant approach to inserting updated content of a blog however in the end does achieve the same end user effect. With a few small drawback Moveable Type excel as a blog management application which allows control of several blog though one interface where as many PHP counterparts only allow one or a couple blogs to be run on one site and very little support for multiple users. In the end Movable Type is a very easy application to install with the proper server configuration and blog management is first rate. Room for improvement can be found in the lack of support for dynamic pages and move from the old Perl and CGI standard to a more modern language such as PHP.

Nick has released the third release candidate of FeedDemon, the RSS reader for the Windows platform. Important: Due to changes in this release, news items downloaded using earlier releases will be removed after installing RC3. Your groups, watches and news…
…excerpt from: http://www.twenty4.org/archives/2003/11/04/feeddemon_rc3.php