Weblog
01/10/07 11:17 PM: 6 Useful Textpattern Plugins
As you may have read a while back, when I relaunched the site in September I switched from Movable Type to Textpattern. For the uninitiated, Textpattern is a CMS (Content Management System) that helps me keep all of my entries organized, allows for commenting, generates RSS feeds and all of that.
I had been using a very outdated version of Movable Type for a while, and the switch has been quite refreshing. I thought I’d outline here a few of the plugins that I’ve added to the basic Textpattern install.
If you’re not into how blog software works, the rest of this entry will probably be rather meaningless. But for those considering a jump to Textpattern, or those using Textpattern, hopefully this can be helpful.
First off, there’s tru_tags, which allows for the “tagging” of entries. Tags are basically keywords, and you can see the “tag cloud” in the sidebar. The size of a given tag is correlated to how many entries have been marked with that keyword. I haven’t done a whole lot with tagging yet, but it’s still nifty.
A big one for this site is also vdh_flickr. It is what grabs my flickr images and constructs the portfolio pages. I did some manual hacking of the plugin to add the lightbox effect (when you click an image), but it’s still pretty slick. Downside, it doesn’t use the flickr API, it just grabs the image URLS manually. Eventually I hope to find one that uses the API, or else I may have to write one myself.
asy_captcha is what I’m using to prevent comment spam. As I mentioned previously, it’s what adds a CAPTCHA test prior to allowing a comment to post.
glx_admin_ping sends various “pings” to blog indicies to let them know the site has been updated.
mcw_magnolia is what provides the linkroll in the sidebar. It grabs bookmarks from the social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia. I have it configured to display links with a certain tag (in my case “linkroll”). This is all customizable.
hak_tinymce allows you to use the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor with Textpattern. I haven’t installed this one yet, but TinyMCE is pretty nifty and this could prove useful.
I’m also using ako_social to add the “del.icio.us” link to each post. I’m eventually going to nix this feature, I think, as most people who use social bookmarking have their own bookmarkets or extensions installed. ako_social supports almost every social bookmarking site, from digg to Newsvine.
01/08/07 04:17 PM: Housekeeping, updates, etc.
First off, happy new year to everyone. Hopefully 2007 will be a good year. We’ll see.
This morning, this site was hit with a spam-comment attack, resulting in nearly 100 sexually-explicit comments being attached to various articles. I’ve seen removed all of these comments, and gone ahead and added a CAPTCHA test to the comment form. That’s one of those pictures with words in it that you have to type out, to prove you are a human and not a spam-bot. No one seems to comment here anymore anyways, but I feel like it’s an essential part of the whole “blog” experience.
In other news, not a whole lot else is new. I have some photo gigs coming up, so look for some new images in the next few weeks. Mostly local DC area bands, including Exit Clov, Middle Distance Runner (again), and Telograph.
Look for the next entry in the Favorite Records of All-Time series later today or tomorrow.
12/19/06 12:24 AM: Site updates
Some site business, for those curious. I’ve updated the Portfolio section with links to newly posted photo sets. This is a pretty big update.
Snowden at the Black Cat in Washington, DC – December 2006
¡Forward Russia! at the Black Cat in Washington, DC – December 2006
Middle Distance Runner at the Black Cat in Washington, DC – December 2006
The Album Leaf, Dirty on Purpose, and the Lymbyc Systym, tour candids
Dirty on Purpose on Tour – November & December, 2006
The Lymbyc Systym on Tour – November & December, 2006
Dirty on Purpose at the Rock ‘n Roll Hotel in Washington, DC – October 2006
I think my favorite of the ones I shot at the Black Cat would be this one:
Middle Distance Runner at the Black Cat in Washington, DC
11/12/06 02:35 PM: Oh, and FYI
I haven’t been posting much because I’m on the road working on a project with Dirty on Purpose.
11/02/06 10:32 AM: Morning Update
Those creepy Congresscritters
Leading off this morning is a clip of disgraced former-Congressman Mark Foley in the 2003 low budget action film Strike Force (The Librarians). And yes, this is for real.
I like my Tivo
A few months ago I got an actual Tivo. Previously I had tried Comcast’s Motorola HD DVRs, and I have to say they were awful. Half the time the scheduled shows would either 1) not record or 2) record corrupted. Lame. I decided paying $100 a month for television was completely ridiculous and now have a Series2 Tivo with basic cable. And that’s fine. It’s a better user experience than the Comcast DVR with HD.
Anyways, all of this is just a way for me to talk about two television shows, Jericho and Lost. Let’s tackle the island show first, and I’ll point you to an an interesting article in Entertainment Weekly. (Whoa, did I just type “an interesting article in Entertainment Weekly?” That won’t happen often). The third season of Lost has been kind of a letdown for me, I think it’s mostly viewer fatigue—I’ve reached the point where I don’t really care that much about the characters.
My favorite new show of 2006, though, is Jericho. It’s a post-apocalyptic drama set in a small Kansas town. The townspeople have very little information about what caused an attack on most major U.S. cities—though it has been implied it may have been the work of terrorists. In any case, the show tackles the grim reality of a town cut-off from everything… but also stays light-hearted enough (love stories, family drama, etc) that it appeals to more than just die-hard end-of-the-world genre fans.
Some other nonsense
I’m probably going to rework the photo galleries, again, to use a neat little Javascript “lightbox” to display the larger versions of each image. This is better from a usability standpoint, as you don’t have to leave the thumbnail page to view an image (instead the image will open in a “layer” placed over the current page. It’s pretty slick, and full of web 2.0 goodness. (cough)).
11/01/06 10:38 PM: A few notes
Lots of traffic today, mostly from the Drug/Indie Rock PSA article. I have to give credit where credit is due though, and that credit in part goes to nickd who pointed it out to me over at Pitchfork. I have a strong anti-Pitchfork bias, but indeed they did discover the PSA before I did. However, their coverage of it was not in any more depth than mine, so I don’t feel particularly bad about yoinking it.
Also, I noticed and corrected a bug where articles without any tags had a broken layout. Textpattern’s conditional statements are a little fussy, in that I have no idea why it wasn’t working—because it should have. Oh well.
Sean Powers will be back posting soon, so keep your eyes peeled for some reports from Missouri.
10/31/06 09:21 AM: On Design
It’s been nearly a month since I changed the site over from MovableType to Textpattern and implemented a new design. I started with a Textpattern template, and have since highly modified it. I repaired most of the glitches in it, such as the abnormal behavior of the navigation tabs. Also I managed to import the old archives, which at one point I thought was nearly impossible.
There are still a few bugs here and there, namely with regard to URL structure (old links to archives won’t work anymore, etc). Also there are a few pieces of content I need to move over, such as the 9/11 memorial video. But other than those few pieces, most of the content has been relocated. The “Portfolio” section is completely new, and I’m very pleased with that.
However, I again return to the design factor. I’m using a fixed-width design, and I honestly do not like it. It’s not terrible, but it’s not what I would ideally want for my site. To me, a design such as this does not emphasize content, it emphasizes design. And the design is nothing extraordinarily special. It’s a standard no-table layout, with some custom graphics that I put together, and some reworked navigation.
Eventually I will create a new template, that is better organized than this one, and makes more sense for the content I am trying to present. But at the moment, I think I’m just going to keep using this one since it does, for the most part, get the job done.
10/26/06 10:05 PM: New addition
Covers from The Georgetown Voice
I’ve added a graphic design section to the Portfolio area. Right now it only includes a handful of covers I designed for the Georgetown Voice. I’m hoping to dig up images of the rest of my covers, and also some PDFs of various spreads I worked on. We’ll see if I can find them.
10/24/06 10:17 PM: Archives have moved
After an afternoon of fairly hard work, I was able to import all the old entries from MovableType. I purged the spam comments, and hopefully have only legit ones in the archives.
Click on the archive tab up above to browse through them. Unfortunately they are organized differently than before, but that was mostly a limitation of Textpattern. Well, more likely it was due to a lack of effort on my part… maybe one day I’ll hack something together to replicate the old archives.
The other upshot of all this is that the “search” box will now search all of the previous posts.
Note: I still have some entries in 2001 that need to have titles added and have to be categorized. I could only do so much in one day. This weblog has thousands of archived posts… so it was a lot of work.
Another Note: With the addition of the old archives, I’m posting an open invitation for any of our previous posters to resume guest-posting here. That means you, Chris, Sean, Adrienne, Jay, Dave or Kevin. I hope to hear from at least one or two of you!
10/22/06 12:19 AM: Upcoming on WWU
Okay, so there are a few things I’m working on that will appear here soon. Here’s a quick rundown.
1. A new photo project. I’ll still continue the leaving beauty behind project, but this one will most likely be a bit more interesting. I’m probably also going to include a writing component with this one. This could be big, so keep your eyes peeled here.
2. Upcoming record reviews. There’s some grade inflation here, with my reviewing mostly records I love. Obvious exception was the Decemberists review. Hopefully in the next couple weeks I will be posting more reviews. On deck are records by the Pipettes, Okkervil River, Neko Case, the Hold Steady and TV on the Radio. Some of these aren’t new releases, but they are all from 2006.
3. That’s probably it for now.
