Weblog Tools Collection

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WordPress 1.2 Beta is out for testing if you havent heard the news yet. You can download it from here http://wordpress.org/nightly/ Grab the one with the latest date. The devs (especially Matt) are very busy chasing and killing bugs in their tracks. This is purely a developmental version but testing would be greatly appreciated. Here is a short list of new features and improvements.

* New plugin architecture
* Sub-categories
* Custom fields
* Localization framework and unicode encoding support
* All post times stored in local time and GMT
* Cleaner cruft-free and search engine friendly URLs
* Non-mod_rewrite clean links option
* Strong encryption of user passwords
* Redone administration interface, particularly with regard to options
* Encoded passwords and cookies
* OPML Export
* Easy, efficient upload and automatic thumbnail system
* Sub Sub categories
* Post preview
* Specify character sets - blog in any language.

The announcement on the dev blog is here http://wordpress.org/development/archives/2004/04/28/12-beta/

I am looking for someone with some Blosxom experience to port my WayPath hack/plugin to Blosxom/Perl. It should not require too much work, just some knowledge of the existing code and a simple port of the XMLRPC API that is already supplied with Blosxom. If you are interested, please leave a comment or email me at dinki at mac dot com. There is already a perl plugin for MT which can be easily replicated.
Also, if you do use Blosxom as a blogging tool, I would love to get some input on what you think of it and maybe a writeup or two on it.

A good read for newbies and experienced coders alike:
http://brainstormsandraves.com/articles/semantics/structure/

I am back in the market looking for a job for myself. Here is the gist of my resume.

#EDUCATION
I have a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Toledo.
I have an Undergraduate degree in physics with minors in English and Computer Science from The College of Wooster.

#PROGRAMMING EXPERIENCE
I specialized in databases. I have taken courses and have 3 years of experience in database administration and database programming.
Have three years of experience in C++, C, PHP, Perl, shell scripting, Visual Basic and VSE.
Have a working knowledge of Java, Javascript, UML, all of .NET, ASP and WML.
Can read most kinds of code and excel at debugging and bug tracking.
I work with at least three different open source applications.

#SYSTEM ADMIN EXPERIENCE
I have over 5 years of experience with system administration in Operating Environments including Windows, UNIX, Linux and Macintosh. I am a Macintosh Certified Technician.
I have a fair amount of professional security and networking experience including security audit analysis and networking code analysis.
I have taken classes in and have a good understanding of wireless technology including cellular technology and IEEE 802 range and Bluetooth technologies.

#PROJECT MANAGEMENT & CUSTOMER SERVICE
I am very good with people. I love interacting with people, am not shy or afraid of public speaking and consider my candid nature and my ability to connect with people to be one of my major strengths. I work really well singly and with groups of people.
I am fluent in English, Hindi and Bengali and have a weak working knowledge of French.

#OTHER IMPORTANT ASPECTS
I am willing to relocate to any part of the world and will be requiring sponsorship to work in that location (beside India). I am very flexible with travel and working hours. I am willing to make travel upto 90% of my working hours.
If you or your company are interested in talking further with me or would like to know more about my experience or background or would require references, please contact me at dinki at mac dot com.

Here is a link to my latest resume.

I have made some small changes to Pictorialis which are reflected in the new download.
- Two different methods of creation of thumbnails
- Choose a small area of the picture
- Chose whole picture
- Now has the ability of using NetPBM instead of GD, option in wp-admin/post.php
- Better upload code, faster processing
- Addition of extra code to weed out posts with no pictures. This blog now produces thumbnails of posts which have pictures and thus pictorialis can now be used as a full text blog as well without penalty.

There are some more updates and fixes planned, they will come as and when time permits.

Francey of Francey Designs has added WordPress to the list of blog applications that her template generation system works with. The other applications for which her system generates templates include Diaryland, Diary-X, Blogger and Moveable Type. Check out her designs (again) and get her to build some custom templates for your site/blog.

Kses are a set of PHP scripts written by Ulf which

removes all unwanted HTML elements and attributes, and it also does several checks on attribute values. kses can be used to avoid Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Buffer Overflows and Denial of Service attacks

I have modified the original kses distribution scripts to allow the checking of allowed HTML tags. This code will fill in incomplete or incorrectly nested HTML/XHTML tags as well. I am working towards coding an HTML filter and validator and this is the first step. Future enhancements include checking and correction of validitity according to the doc-type mentioned in the HEAD etc. For now, here is the link to the modified kses.php file.
For WordPress users, you can simply download this file, rename it to kses.php and upload it to the wp-includes directory of your WordPress installation. For all other uses, please follow the directions inside the kses distribution or your application.

Ping-o-matic is ready for deployment! Dougal’s Blog Service Pinger has its own domain name. Together with Matt Mullenweg, he has created a pinger for the major blog update trackers on one page. There are many major feature upgrades planned for this webpage with many cool ideas to be explored. Major enhancements in the current version:

* Your blog name and uri are stored in cookies, and automagically filled in for you when you return.
* The pinger output dynamically appears in your browser as each ping completes. You no longer have to wait for all of the pings to complete before your browser loads the page.
* Fixed the RubHub ping so that it actually works now.
* Improved some of the error output.

Another exciting feature of this service will be its own pinging API. This site will act like a “ping aggregator” and will take care of pinging all of the other site in one fell swoop. Ping-o-matic will be the only site you ever need to ping.

Ever wished you had a tool which could tell you how deeply nested the different < div > tags in your webpage/blog were?
A tool to generate topographic “maps” is the answer to my prayers.
It can also help you “see” your divs physically, something for which I have had to design a page with weird, contrasty colors at first, so I can see the divs, and then go back and change the color in the css once I am done designing the physical layout.
It’s a bookmarklet/favelet, which makes it all the better
Oh, and dotcanada sucks.

I was looking for a way to alter the image randomly on my WordPress weblog, but as the header image is called from a CSS file, I was unsure quite how to do it.

I am unsure no more !

PhotoMatt wrote a random image script, the details of which can be viewed here.
Although I use WP, this will work for any blog that has an image called from the CSS.

I did this;
- Created a folder on the server called ‘headers’
- Into that, I uploaded several different images that would suit as a header image.
- I saved the script above as a php file (call it what you will - mine is ‘rotate.php’) and uploaded into the same ‘headers’ folder.

Now I edited the CSS file.
In WP, there is a line in #header which can be used to specify a url for the image to be loaded. This needs a light alteration:

Mine was
#header {
background-image: url(image.jpg)

and it is now

background-image: url(headers/rotate.php);

Now, when the CSS is called, the background image is chosen randomly by the script.

I was sent a php script by someone I was helping on the IRC channel and I thought that the method could be really useful to someone else. Try it out yourself. Here is the link.

This page basically allows you to display your script online without having to email it or do anything messy. One little disclaimer is that it is available to everyone and is stored on their server for a while. So please be careful with passwords and sensitive information.

There is a new version of Pictorialis out which fixes a couple of issues that were brought up with the Beta and you can download it from http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/pictorialis.zip

Fixes for this version include:
- Built in EXIF support which does not need pre-compiled EXIF in PHP
- There is a selection mechanism for versions of GD which makes sure you always get the best possible thumbnails and pictures conversion.
- This also has some file upload fixes which makes sure that the uploaded files do not get erased before the script gets a chance to grab the files.
- The installation process has also been better defined with some fixes for the installation troubles reported from the previous version.

As in the pervious version, this new version has the following features:
- XHTML compliant code
- Simple once click addition of photos, auto thumbnail and resizing
- Extraction of EXIF information from original photo and saved as meta
- Easy installation, as easy as installing WordPress
- Simple, clean design and look
- Simple navigation

My example PhotoBlog with WordPress can be found at Pictorialis

Please visit the new Pictorialis Forums.

[EDIT] New Pictorialis Project Page. Please Bookmark.

I have long pondered this question and have come to some conclusions on my own. RSS is powerful and very light on bandwidth usage. Aggregation is very effective, simple to use and can be used to gather tons of information with very little processing power and bandwidth. However, there are some weaknesses of RSS which come to mind.

RSS is a text based protocol and the design of the site, the aesthetics and the overall experience is muted. Visiting this site and browsing the various features and comments (etc.) cannot be replaced by an RSS feed. I personally use RSS to see if there is any new and relevant information on a blog or site that I frequent and then I visit the site to check it out for myself. So RSS, for me is more about prospecting than it is about aggregating. Many of the newer mutlimedia blogs are completely lost to RSS. For example, the experience of visiting and browsing a picture blog is reduced to a bunch of pictures (if the feed is setup correctly) where the context and the design of the site do not play any part in the experience. The overall experience of writing and reading a blog is diminished. This thought has been expressed many times by Matt, Zeldman and others. But I think this is not stressed enough.

There are just way too many undecided news feed protocols out there. Dave Winer and others have tried very hard to come up with strict protocol definitions but have failed in many ways (in my opinion of course). The various versions of RSS, RDF, REST and now ATOM are way too difficult to comprehend, keep up with and fashion to the liking of your blog. The specifications need to be frozen in order for implementation to be absolute. In writing some code for these feeds, I have also found that the specifications are very fragmented and quite difficult to adhere to. It almost feels like they have been put together with only a certain peice of software in mind and interoperability is an afterthought rather than a primary goal. It is also very difficult to understand the difference in features of the various protocols.

In coming back to the topic of this post, I would say that publishing news feeds on a blog or CMS is a good idea but it should not become the sole method of visiting blogs. Blogs are designed to be read through the interface designed for them by the author. Each blog has a lot of personality and a lot of user experience is associated with browsing. I suggest that you offer one or two kinds of feeds through your blog interface and ignore the rest. As for the readers of a blog, I suggest that you visit the blog rather than just reading their news feed everyday. Not too many authors update their blogs everyday and a couple of visits a week should satisfy even the most avid follower. Just visit your list of blogs once in a while and click around, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Mark suggested I introduce myself ……
Self taught in all things html / css, I know nothing about php (yet), using WordPress since early January (before that tried Blogger / MT / Nucleus and more - didn’t like them) prior to that I hand coded, love playing with code and breaking it because then I can see better how it works, and am nearly always to be found in front of my computer.

Other interests include bodyart (27 piercings, 3 tattoos, 2 implants), console gaming, I wrote and maintain www.abody.co.uk (a bodyart studio site), I run the interviews and statistics part of www.ukbodyart.org and I’ve not long bought Diablo 2.
My site is www.tamba2.org.uk

There’s probably more, but I won’t bore you any more

Change the font, font size, add borders / images / background colours to the comments themselves or just the page background.

Font Changes
In wp-layout.css, add this;

ol#commentlist p {
font-family: Tahoma;
font-size: 100%;
}

This is the font that the comments will be displayed in. Change to suit your site.

Add Borders

ol#commentlist li {
border-left: solid 1px #ff0000;
border-right: solid 1px #ff0000;
border-top: solid 1px #ff0000;
border-bottom: solid 1px #ff0000;
margin: 10px;
}

This will add a border around each post, and separate the posts by a margin of 10 pixels.
The colour there is red, so alter as you will, and for those borders that you do not want, just remove the line required.
You could always have a dotted line instead of solid too.

Comment Image
Add this line to the above code:

background-image: url(’image.gif’);

This will place an image behind the comment entry. You can use a jpg / png / gif

Comment Colour
Add this line instead to the code:

background-color: #ff00ff;

(If you add both of the above - an image and a colour - the last one in the statement will take precedence. I’d just add the one though).

Comment Page Background
Add the following to your wp-layout.css:

#commentspopup {
background-image: url(’image5.gif’);
}

Note: If you do not use popup comments, add this to your wp-comments.php instead.
That will place an image on the overall page. If you just want a colour, then use this:

#commentspopup {
background-colour: #ff00ff;
}

Lastly, if you want the line with the commentors details to stand out more prominently from your new colour scheme, open up either wp-comments-popup.php or wp-comments.php, and make the following two changes that I have noted in bold type:

< ?php comment_text() ?>
<p><cite<strong>1</strong>><?php comment_type(); ?> by <?php comment_author_link() ?> &#8212; <?php comment_date() ?> @ <a href="#comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>"><?php comment_time() ?></a></cite<strong>1</strong>></p>
</li>

put this into your wp-layout.css

cite1 {
font-size: 90%;
font-style: normal;
background-color: #fff;
}

This last part will give a white background to the commentors details.

There are a few screenshots accompanying the description of the alterations needed at www.tamba2.org.uk/graphicalcss

The creator and author of TopStyle, the tool kit for creating standards-compliant sites through valid CSS and XHTML, as well as FeedDemon, which is a highly-rated RSS aggregator, is in the middle of a personal challenge right now. He is undergoing some spinal surgery to rectify some chronic pain he has been having.

You can send him a Get Well Soon wish on his blog and encourage him to rest, relax, and heal up properly! You can find out more about Nick’s software by visiting his site. I personally have been using TopStyle Pro for a couple years now, and I find it to be an indispensible tool in helping me with my WordPress sites. I was also a beta tester for FeedDemon, as well.

Best wishes to Nick and his family.

Mark posted a while back (link) a quicktags improvement that included the ability to have drop shadows around your image.
Visit that link to get the code and follow the instructions for adapting your current setup.

I’ve adapted it so that the image can now be left or right aligned with text wrapping, and I’m assuming that you have added the CSS from that link to your ‘wp-layout.css’.

Add the following to your wp-layout.css;

.img-shadow1 {
clear: both;
float:right;
background: url(images/shadowAlpha.png) no-repeat bottom right !important;
background: url(images/shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right;
margin: 20px 0 0 17px !important;
margin: 20px 0 0 8px;
}

.img-shadow1 img {
display: block;
position: relative;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #a9a9a9;
margin: -6px 6px 6px -6px;
padding: 4px;
}

div.clearer {
clear: left;
line-height: 0;
height: 0;
}

The instruction <div class=”img-shadow”> will produce a left aligned image.

The instruction <div class=”img-shadow1″> will produce a right aligned image.

While the Quicktag will insert the top of those 2 codes, it will not produce the second. You will have to add the ‘1′ manually.

A couple of points;
- You must have a carriage return after the closing </div> and before your text. If you do not, your text will be in bold This will not unduly affect your text wrap.
- If when you view your entry, the image has ‘broken through’ and is affecting the entry below it, you will need to use the clearer div. This needs to go after the last image in your post, but before any text that follows it. An example:

You post a picture, with text, and the image breaks through. You need to alter your post to insert the clearer:
<div class="img-shadow1"><img src="ducks.jpg" alt="" /></div><div class="clearer">&nbsp;</div>
magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation …

Information on this is also at www.tamba2.org.uk/graphicalcss

We have all been the victim of referrer spam in one way or the other and I have often wanted to show people the easy way to prevent this kind of prarsite from sucking our bandwidth (and getting in on the search engine action)
SpywareInfo has a good article on referrer spam and also have some easy solutions to block out referrer spammers.

Seems a lot of people these days like to debate on the relative value of building a site to a particular standard. Anybody familiar with WordPress will know that its foundation is semantically-correct code, built to XHTML standards and with valid CSS as well.

I’ve been in the middle of a few of those forum threads myself, being somewhat of a standards-evangelist. There are lots and lots of people out there who are FAR more knowledgeable than I about web design and web standards. However, my point is this–if I get it, then why don’t more people get it too?

I will not bore you with platitudes of reasons to build a site to a standard, and by site, I mean from the most simple web log to the most complex portal or e-commerce site. Instead, I invite you to pay a visit to MACCAWS.org– “Making A Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards” and get another perspective on things. It will also dispel a few common myths about the adoption of web standards when building your current or next site.

Pay it a visit, and let us know what you think.

I have been working on a Photolog which uses WordPress and would really like to know what people think of it. The features of this Photolog include:
- XHTML compliant code
- Simple once click addition of photos, auto thumbnail and resizing
- Extraction of EXIF information from original photo and saved as meta
- Easy installation, as easy as installing WordPress
- Simple, clean design and look
- Simple navigation

I still have some more work to get the archives and the paged navigation work correctly, but here is Pictorialis - My new Photolog.

Here is a beta version. This might have some errors so please be careful with existing databases. Post errors/suggestions on here.
Thanks.

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/pictorialis.zip

[EDIT] New Pictorialis Project Page. Please Bookmark.