The Playground

I've installed the latest release of MT4 on a new site called Babble On (just what I need, another new site!), and it started out as a testing blog for each of the new releases. I tried converting another site of mine MT Test Centre, that was a test site for MT 3.3, out of date now since I'm using 3.5 on all the others. It converted fine, except for a few broken plugins, Blogroll in particular that hasn't been updated yet. So far the themes for MT4 are scarce, and working out the stylesheet is no easy thing.

Before I take the plunge and convert all the blogs on this install to the latest version, I'd like to understand the styles so that I can keep the "look" I have on all these sites. So for the time being, I'll be sticking with version 3.5 and continue to play with MT4 and the stylesheets. It could be a while before I eventually make the change.

Posted by Toni at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

There's plenty of articles on the web that explain how to create tag clouds. Sixapart has a very good article called "Everybody Loves Tags" that explains the use and display of entry tags. Technology Evangelist gave me the idea for creating a category tag cloud for use instead of the normal category display. He created a special tag page, whereas I've just replaced the code for the category module. Since the categories on The Billy Lids isn't overly large, there's no great strain on resources to rebuild the pages.

Simply replace the categeory module content with the script, add the CSS to your stylesheet and you're done. It couldn't be simpler.

The Script:

<!-- Start Tag Cloud -->

<div id="cloud">
<MTCategories>
<a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"
class="tag<$MTCategoryCount$>"><$MTCategoryLabel lower_case="1"$></a> </MTCategories></div>

<!-- End Tag Cloud -->


The CSS:

/* Start Tag Cloud CSS */

#cloud {padding:1px; line-height:30px; text-align:center;}

#cloud a {text-decoration:none; padding:0px;}

a.tag1{ font-size:12px;}

a.tag2, a.tag3 { font-size:13px; font-weight:200;}

a.tag4 ,a.tag5, a.tag6 { font-size:16px; font-weight:300;}

a.tag7, .tag8, a.tag9 { font-size:20px; font-weight:300;}

a.tag10, a.tag11, a.tag12 { font-size:24px; font-weight:300;}

a.tag13, a.tag14, a.tag15 { font-size:28px; font-weight:400;}

a.tag16, a.tag17, a.tag18 { font-size:30px; font-weight:400;}

a.tag19, a.tag20, a.tag21 { font-size:32px; font-weight:500;}

a.tag22, a.tag23, a.tag24 { font-size:34px; font-weight:500;}

a.tag25, a.tag26, a.tag27 { font-size:36px; font-weight:900;}

a.tag28, a.tag29, a.tag30 { font-size:38px; font-weight:900;}

/* End Tag Cloud CSS */



Posted by Toni at 8:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

Once again the folks from Learning Movable Type have come up with an excellent tutorial to create a contact form using MT. I've tried to use the MT Comment Challenge plugin on contact forms before, but of course it won't work because it's not exactly a comment.

Elise has come up with a way around this by creating a new blog, and only having one post; ie, the contact form. I've managed to implement this on five blogs by using a link to the contact form. Use StyleCatcher to give the page a great look, and you're done. You'll find lots of themes on The Style Archive, which you can use in StyleCatcher by entering the path to the repository, which is http://www.thestylearchive.com/browse.

Posted by Toni at 9:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I installed a piece of javascript code today into the templates so that when you hover over the little icon next to links, a preview of the page pops up so you can decide whether you want to go there. Snap Preview Anywhere is free and easy to install. You simply place the piece of code into your index and individual entry templates (and anywhere else you would like the feature to appear).

Everitz Consulting has provided a plugin for use with the code, but I don't see the advantage of installing it. I was only made aware of the plugin for MT on the final page of the 3-step walk-through, after already selecting my options. The code still has to be placed in the templates, and you have the extra burden (for me it is a burden running FastCGI, where any change to the plugins requires the touch mt.fcgi call) of configuring the plugin. The configuration options are in the script that you insert into the templates, and are configurable when you sign up. Changing the options is possibly made easier with the plugin, whereby you wouldn't need to re-visit every template page.

Posted by Toni at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

There's still a few little quirky problems with FastCGI and MT. I've found that posting entries and doing a site rebuild sometimes stall, and I get a 500 Internal Error. By giving it a nudge, it then completes the task.

In the address bar of the browser, hit the GO button or press F5, and the task should continue and complete properly. You may need to do this a couple of times to get it to finish. I think it may have something to do with the timeout on FastCGI.

Don't be discouraged when you see the 500 Internal Server errors. The tasks can continue with a nudge.

Posted by Toni at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I added some code to the sidebar to use a new search feature that allows you to search the Movable Type Community, thanks to Elise at Learning Movable Type. It's a new way to search for Movable Type information throughout the MT community, MT Community Search (http://www.mtcommunitysearch.com).

Since this site is dedicated to Movable Type in particular, I decided it was a good inclusion, even if it's only myself that uses it, because I'm forever searching for something that relates only to MT.

Hence the new look. Try as I might, I have been unable to customise the CSS for the web2oz-emerald theme provided by Jesse Gardiner. As an aside, if you've visited the Style Contest Library recently, you'll notice some new inclusions. I have several custom fields, eg. comment challenge, subscribe to comments, and openid, that did not look good with the emerald city theme. (How thick am I? I've only just made the connection to the names of Jesse's themes - The Wizard of Oz. His other theme is Ruby Slippers, which I originally started out with.)

This particular design, which I love also, is called The Literary Life, by Caroline Smith. Since it's rather technical, I think the Literary Life is rather apt.

And again:Try as I might, I can't customise the CSS to display the input field the same as the rest of the blog. Although this looks better than the previous style, it doesn't look the same as the search box in the left sidebar. I've tried every configuration I can think of and nothing is working. I tried to leave a comment on the LMT site and there's something wrong with the CGI script (sounds like a problem typical of my own site, I was secretly smug thinking that I wasn't the only one with problems).

Posted by Toni at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

If ever I get an error on my site I get a boring message from my server, with an extra reminder: additionally, no 404 page was found. I thought it was high time I learned about doing this for my site so I spent a couple of hours reading tutorials and viewing some of the funnier 404 error pages by entering my search string in Google: create custom error page. There's plenty of explanations on the web of how this is done.

Basically, error pages are html pages like any other. Save the files with an shtml extension so they remain secure. The important thing to remember is to add a line to your .htaccess file to tell the browser where this file is located.

ErrorDocument 401 /401.shtml
ErrorDocument 403 /403.shtml
ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml

View the source code of my error pages and you'll see how easily they can be created.
http://www.bestoday.com.au/401.shtml
http://www.bestoday.com.au/403.shtml
http://www.bestoday.com.au/404.shtml

So far I have only done this on Toni's Corner of the World. My goal will be to add these error pages to all my weblogs, so they are integrated with the site.

Posted by Toni at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

Over the last couple of days I've been tinkering with the templates on my weblogs to include some of the nifty features you see on other people's sites. Hopefully these added features will improve the user interaction with faster page loading.

1. Added Support for OpenID
2. Abbreviated Category Indexes
3. Longer Excerpts
4. Added Previous 10 Entries
5. Added Category to Title
6. Added Permalink to Titles
7. Added Footers

Posted by Toni at 6:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I installed a new plugin today called Live Preview. It's a plugin created by Arvind Satyanarayan, and would you believe, he sat down one weekend and wrote it. If only I could do things like that. According to Arvind:

It adds a new button on the entry screen which when clicked causes a new panel to appear at the bottom. This panel will contain a preview of your entry as it would appear were it published on your weblog - styling, javascript, php includes etc. The best part about it is, you can keep going back and changing and live previewing your entry without having to save it whatsoever.

It works beautifully, and there was no problem with the installation. No more continually going to the preview window!

Posted by Toni at 6:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) |

The default post information doesn't tell the reader where the topic was posted to, so this little bit of code can be added to the main index template to add the category information.

to <MTEntryCategories glue=" | ">
<a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"> <$MTCategoryLabel$></a> </MTEntryCategories>

Add this code right before the "by" in "posted by". You will need to save and rebuild your index template.

Posted by Toni at 6:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |

I was getting a terrible flicker effect when I moved my mouse near the links menu on the left in the entry screen when I had WYSIWYG editing enabled. I've reset all the weblogs to use Markdown again. I'm still unable to use Internet Explorer to view the plugins but can do so in Firefox, so it looks like (unless I remove the editor) I'll be using Firefox to enter posts in MT. I can use WYSIWYG from the drop-down menu if the need arises. I did like the added options for hyperlinks that the default editor lacks, like adding TITLE and TARGET.

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool that allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then converts it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). Thus, Markdown is two things: a plain text markup syntax, and a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text markup to HTML.

Posted by Toni at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) |