Jim at Snoozebutton Dreams has some bad news.
Give him a hand if you can. When you get to his site, read the news then, scroll down to his paypal button, if he hasn't moved it up yet like I asked him to.
Update: He's moved it to near the top of his blog.
After appearing okay for a bit this morning, I'm back to getting a "Host Not Found" message when trying to dial up the Llama Shop. Apparently, some other folks are not having any problems.
-Robert the Llama Butcher
(also posted on Rocket Jones)
In part one we saw how easy it is to create a PDA compatible version of your blog. It only takes a few minutes, and once complete you don’t have to do anything special, because it updates automatically every time you post.
In this part, I’ll go over the steps needed to download your blog (or other PDA friendly web content) into your PDA. It’s pretty easy too.
(in the extended entry)
There are several places online that offer this service, but the one I use is AvantGo, mainly because the reader came preloaded on my iPAQ. You may have to download the appropriate (and free) software to your PDA, which is simple to do, just follow their directions. The basic service is also free, although you can upgrade your account to allow more content to be downloaded. Personally, I haven’t found it to be necessary. Also, please keep in mind that I’m using an iPAQ, but most PDA’s should work in similar ways. Details may differ for you if you use a similar device. If you’re having problems, read the manual or do like I do – Google is your friend. AvantGo also has .pdf versions of their help guides online for Pocket PC’s and Palm Pilots.
Setting up an AvantGo account is easy and free. Using your PC, go to their homepage and after picking your User ID and password you select the content you want downloaded to your PDA.
There’s a huge selection of content, including many newspapers and specialty magazines and newsletters. Obviously, you don’t get the full versions, usually you get major headline stories. Each ‘subscription’ has a maximum downloadable size, and most of these count towards your limit that you must stay under with a free account. The limit on my account is 2000k. I currently subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Christian Science Monitor, MSNBC news, Sporting News, USA Today and PocketPC Life. Add in the blogs Off Wing Opinion, Simon World and Flying Space Monkey Chronicles, and I’m using 1150k, so I’ve got plenty of room to spare. You can change subscriptions at any time, and you probably will do that often at first as you look around for the best mix for you.
To set it up to read blogs, AvantGo offers what they call “Personal Channels”. This is the ability to take any webpage on the net and make it downloadable. Note that if the page isn’t formatted in a PDA-friendly manner, then trying to read it after downloading will be an exercise in frustration. Stick to the dedicated PDA-style pages, there are plenty of them out there, and more coming all the time (Q&O, Minor Perfidy, and many others, are you listening?).
All right, we’re ready to create a new personal channel from the latest Munuvian to go PDA compatible – Flying Space Monkey Chronicles. After you’ve signed in, click on the My Account tab on the right hand side of the page. Below that is your account information and then a section called Account Management Tasks. In that section is a link called Create A Personal Channel, that’s the one we want. Click that.
Now you’ll see some blanks to fill in. The Title is whatever you want to call it, it’s the name that’ll show up on your PDA, and the Location is obviously the URL. Type those in, then make sure you click the VIEW button to the immediate right. This gives you an idea of what you’ll be seeing when you download.
Below that, I generally put a maximum size of 100k on blogs, which is probably way overkill because I input zero for link depth and check ‘no’ for image downloads and links. I want straight text, and if I see something later I want to follow up on, I make a note of it (hey, it’s a PDA!) and do next time I’m on my desktop PC.
The last section is Channel Refresh. For my iPAQ, I ‘synchronize’ once a day, usually in the evening. So by selecting Refresh On Every Sync, I get the latest content every evening, and read it the following day. You can set yours to update however you want, it’s pretty flexible.
Don’t forget to click the Save Channel button at the bottom of the page when you’ve got it all set up.
Then do it all over again for each channel you want to create.
Next time you synchronize your PDA, all that content will be loaded, and you can tap the AvantGo icon (or whichever service you used) to read it. And all your friends will refer to you as a technological trend-setter, and be jealous.
Looks like I need to edit all 200 of our DNS zone files before the drama is completely resolved.
The secret to reliable DNS: Never rely on anyone else's DNS server. Once I've finished the cleanup, all mu.nu DNS will be handled by the Munuserver and only by the Munuserver.
Of course, this means that if you can't reach the Munuserver, you won't be able to lookup domain names at mu.nu. But since all the mu.nu domains are on the Munuserver anyway, and if you can't reach the Munuserver you can't reach anything, this probably doesn't matter very much.
It's 3 A.M. so I'm not going to do this right now. If you have any problems reaching a mu.nu site, give me a yell, otherwise I will do this sometime tomorrow.
Oh!
If you have a non-munu domain hosted here, at your convenience, set the delegation to:
Primary: mica.mu.nu 64.91.238.2
Secondary: ns.mu.nu 64.91.238.3
Though you might want to wait until I finish cleaning up.
Open posting at Snooze Button Dreams today.
The best posts will win points, too. How's that for sweet?
What's going on? I'm being told that our server has vanished! All that raw llama meat is going bad and I can't get into the shop! Have the Thought Police finally caught up with Pixy?
Robert the Llama Butcher
(also posted on Rocket Jones)
If you don't recognize the term, PDA stands for Personal Digital Assistant, and refers to that group of handheld devices like the Palm Pilot, the iPAQ Pocket PC, Blackberry and many others. Basically, they're PC's that fit into your pocket. I recently got one, and love it to death.
Why in the world would you want to do a PDA-friendly version of your blog? Well, some of us out in the world are techno-junkies (not me) and some of us just don't have time to surf to all the places we'd like to each and every day (uh, that would be me). So by downloading your blog to our PDA's every day or two, we can benefit from your wisdom and insight whenever we have a moment or two to spare.
First I'll explain the steps to make your blog PDA friendly, then in part two I'll show those who have PDA's how to get this great blog content downloaded to your wee beastie. It's all in the extended entry.
Blog steps (most of this lifted and slightly modified from ScriptyGoddess, although I saw it in other places too).
1. Go to the Templates area of MT and click "Create new index template." Give the page a name, I chose "Rocket Jones - PDA version." Then come up with a name for the output file. I chose the very creative name "pda.html." You can also use .htm, or .php if you wish. It just depends on your preference and server.
2. Be sure the checkbox "Rebuild this template automatically when rebuilding index templates" is checked.
3. Leave "Link this template to a file:" empty
4. In the "Template Body" box, enter your template code. You can simply copy and paste this into the box if you wish. But, be sure to look through the code for comments on areas you may want to customize (look for the TITLE and DIV id tags).
Sample Template (start copying here):
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<TITLE>Rocket Jones - PDA Version</TITLE>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
color:#333;
background-color:white;
margin:20px;
padding:0px;
font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
leftMargin=0
}
h1 {
font:bold 12px/12px verdana, arial, helvetica,
sans-serif;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:0px;
}
p {
font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
color:#333333;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:0px;
}
.Content>p {margin:0px;}
.Content>p+p {text-indent:0px;}
.tinyfont { font:8px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.smallfont { font:9px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.titlefont { font:14px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
a {
color:#000000;
font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration:none;
}
A:link { color: #09c; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:visited { color: #07a; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:active { TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:hover {
FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal
BACKGROUND: #eee;
}
#Header {
margin:50px 0px 10px 0px;
padding:17px 0px 0px 20px;
/* For IE5/Win's benefit height = [correct height] +
[top padding] + [top and bottom border widths] */
height:33px; /* 14px + 17px + 2px = 33px */
border-style:solid;
border-color:black;
border-width:1px 0px; /* top and bottom borders: 1px;
left and right borders: 0px */
line-height:11px;
background-color:#eee;
/* Here is the ugly brilliant hack that protects IE5/Win
from its own stupidity. Thanks to Tantek Celik for the
hack and to Eric Costello for publicizing it. IE5/Win
incorrectly parses the "\"}"" value, prematurely
closing the style declaration. The incorrect IE5/Win
value is above, while the correct value is below. See
http://glish.com/css/hacks.asp for details. */
voice-family: "\"}\"";
voice-family:inherit;
height:14px; /* the correct height */
}
/* I've heard this called the "be nice to Opera 5" rule.
Basically, it feeds correct length values to user agents
that exhibit the parsing error exploited above yet get
the CSS box model right and understand the CSS2
parent-child selector. ALWAYS include a "be nice to
Opera 5" rule every time you use the Tantek Celik
hack (above). */
body>#Header {height:14px;}
.Content {
margin:5px 5px 5px 5px;
padding:2px;
}
.dateheader {
position:relative;
width:auto;
min-width:120px;
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:5px;
z-index:3;
}
-->
</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=Header>Rocket Jones - PDA Version</DIV>
<div align="left">
<MTEntries lastn="15">
<MTDateHeader>
<div class="dateheader"><H1><$MTEntryDate format="%A, %B %e,
%Y"$></H1></DIV>
</MTDateHeader>
<br>
<DIV class="content">
<span class="titlefont"><i><$MTEntryTitle$></i>
(<$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M%p"$>)<br /></span>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p><$MTEntryMore$></p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<p>
<p>:: Comments left behind ::</p>
<MTComments>
<$MTCommentBody$>
<span class="smallfont">:: <$MTCommentAuthorLink$>
<$MTCommentDate$></span><br /><br />
</MTComments>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
</div>
</MTEntries>
</div>
<HR width="75%">
<P CLASS="tinyfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.movabletype.org">Powered by MovableType</a></P>
</body>
</html>
(end copy here)
5. Save the template.
6. Rebuild the template.
7. Go to your web site and view the results.
8. Tweak until satisifed.
9. Post a link to it on your main web site. I put mine in the sidebar.
10. Announce it. Put the word out. Let the world know that it's there so we can take advantage of it. There will be much rejoicing amongst us geekish types, because, you know, according to the Dilbert author, we're getting all the chicks and we don't have all day to be sitting at the keyboard anymore.
11. That's what he says anyways.
Ok, so that part is pretty straightforward. For those who don't want or like to tweak, the default as given above seems to be fairly standard and works well.
The next part will be for the PDA-enabled. You know it's out there, how do you get at it via your PDA?
Hi everyone! Welcome to my first biquadrennial State of the Munion Address.
In the past eight months, we have grown from a small community of thirty blogs and a forum sending out thirty gigabytes a month, to a not-so-small community of over a hundred blogs and three forums sending out two hundred gigabytes a month. Opening our doors in April was such a huge success that I haven't entirely recovered from it yet.
Moving forward, I plan to offer three new options to Munuvian bloggers:
First, Movable Type 3.1, which is expected to be released as early as this week. This offers a few nice new features such as dynamic page generation and scheduled posting (like Trickle), and comes with several neat plugins as standard, including the new MT Blacklist and a cross-blog posting thingy. MT's new pricing means that this will only cost us $100 for the whole of MuNu.
Second, Expression Engine 1.1. Thanks to the generosity of the people at PMachine, we have a free unlimited user license, and I'll be providing this as an option. Expression Engine is fully dynamic, which makes posting and commenting faster than with MT, but page generation slightly slower. It's a more flexible and general-purpose package that should please some of our power-bloggers.
Third, I have installed a blogging package in the MuNu forum system. The advantage of this is that it is tightly integrated with the forums - and also that users can create blogs themselves without my intervention. The disadvantages are that it isn't as flexible as MT or EE, and it doesn't directly support individual domains. I don't expect any of the existing bloggers to use it (though you are welcome to try it out), but some of the forum Munuvians have expressed interest.
All of these options will be available within the next couple of weeks (assuming MT 3.1 is released on schedule). However, no-one is required to move at all - I'll keep MT 2.6 up and running until nobody wants it any more.
Exactly how we move is still up in the air. I'll start by setting up two test systems so that people can play around a bit. One of the issues is maintaining permalinks; I'm not sure how this is going to work. We have probably the biggest and most complicated MT installation in the world, so it might take a bit of fiddling.
I'm pretty sure I can maintain an integrated "New at MuNu" list. Certainly this can be done between MT 2.6 and 3.1; I'll need to play around with EE a bit to make sure of that as well.
As some of you have already noticed, I've been doing a lot of work over the past few weeks on the forum side of MuNu. I've installed a new package, MX-System, which integrates closely with the forum software, phpBB, and provides a lot of new functionality. Cribbing from my post on the forums, I've added the following goodies already:
Cash(That last is something that should work but is broken in the forum software.)
Attachments
Photo album
Music
Games
Portal
Shoutbox
Basic chat
Enhanced site statistics
RSS Feeds
HTML entities ∀ℑŠ‡‰€
And I have the following goodies installed and in testing:
PetsAnd there are even more features that I'm investigating.
Shops
Lottery
Bank
Stock market
Staff list
Calendar
Meetings
News
Blogs
Knowledge base
Mods database (this is just a little thingy that tells you what goodies I've installed)
Web links
Downloads
Because it's so flexible, I've decided to use it as the system for the MuNu home page. Try it out, particularly if you're not an Internet Explorer victim. (Due to a long-standing bug, IE does not like MuNu cookies. This doesn't affect MuNu subdomains, just the main MuNu domain itself. I'm trying to work around this, but haven't quite solved the problem yet.)
As you can see, the main page provides links to all the MuNu blogs and forums. Over time, I'd like to drive traffic to the MuNu portal and then out to all the munuvian sites. I've got various ideas on how to do this, including a regular Carnival of the Munuvians, which I'd like to start next week. (This week is my busy week at work.) Email me by next Monday with your best recent post, and I'll feature you all on the MuNu home page. I'm not sure yet how often we'll run it, but we'll try it and see.
Beyond that... Well, as I mentioned, we are now generating 200GB of traffic a month; easily a couple of million pages. (I tried to track this with a MuNu counter but it choked and died.) This is 40% of our available monthly bandwidth, so we have room to grow for a few more months. I'm looking at migrating us to a bigger and more powerful server with more bandwidth, but naturally this will cost more. Fortunately, prices are coming down all the time, so by the time we really need it it might not cost much more at all. I'm keeping an eye on pricing; I'd like to stay with out current hosting provider if I can get a good deal.
From next week I should be more available for setting up new Munuvians, so if people would like to get the ball rolling again in Ellis Island, I'll be along shortly. It's great to see people actually seeking us out and asking to become Munuvians, and it reflects well on all of you. Even Harvey.
Oh, and the t-shirts should be ready sometime around Christmas...
I've just added "home" and "html" to the Blacklist. I've been peppered with nonsense comments, presumably by a bot.
The only thing they had in common was the urls were in this format:
homexxxxxxxxx.com
htmlxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com
Where the Xes were random crap. I'm assuming this was happening at other blogs too?
We'll need to remove them from the Blacklist tomorrow or in a couple days. Whenever this fucktard gets bored and quits or modifies his bot.
Aha. So THIS is what it looks like in here! Hi everyone :)
*does a little munuby dance*
Thanks so much Pixy! So good to be blogenabled once again :D.
Wasn't there a post here about munubies I was supposed to set up? I can't find it anymore! :(
In case anyone else is in the habit of using the two letter abbreviations for munu sites (pp.mu.nu, jl.mu.nu, etc.) I thought I should mention that they are currently (as of this posting) wonky--browsing to the shortcut url is a step into the wayback machine to Feb. 20th, 2004.....
<Bill Murray's voice from Ghostbusters>Pixy? What did you DO, Pixy?</Bill Murray's voice>
Okay. I did a search and couldn't find it. I'll bet this was addressed last week, though, while I was off doing other things.
But here's my question--
How do I customize the text that people see when they want to comment on my blog, so that I can articulate a "comments policy" there? I'd like to remind people that they have to play nice. How do I do this?
Is there a way to enable MT tags in the body of a post? No one over at MT forum wants to tackle this one. What I'm thinking about is listing Trackbacks in the text of a single post. Anyone? Bueller?
Tom mentioned it a few days ago...now it's my turn:
I have to say a massive thank you to Pixy for saving me from Blogspot and to all the Munu Community for just being, well, Munuvian. I wouldn't be one without you.
Movable Type 3.1 - the general release - will be released on August 31. I'm planning to buy an unlimited non-commercial license and install it.
I haven't worked out yet exactly how we're going to manage the transition. I need to play with it a bit first to see how compatible it is. I'll set up a test environment so that people can try out their own templates and see whether it works. Once we've done that we'll see how we want to organise the move.
At least it's not going to cost $4000 to upgrade:
Do I qualify as a "Personal User?"If you're an individual whose blogs don't support a commercial endeavor, you can use the Personal Use license. (Incidental revenue such as Google AdSense, Amazon Associates fees, PayPal tip jars, or other similar programs which aren't the main purpose of the site are allowed under the personal license.)
So, what happens when the number of posts on Mu.nu get to the one right after 99999? I mean, based on trackback links, the storage number of posts is only a five digit number. So what happens when we need that sixth number? Do old posts just get rewritten or something?
(I'm sure this isn't pressing (we're only at 42XXX) but it may come up and I'm somewhat curious...)
Hi all.
The server has been complaining about being overloaded, so as a temporary measure I've disabled the web stats programs except for Awstats (which I think is the best one anyway), since they were the only thing I could find that seemed to be putting a significant load on the machine.
I've also tweaked Awstats so that it only updates every two days rather than every day. If you need right-up-to-the-minute figures, you can update it manually. Just click on the link at the top of the Awstats page; it takes a minute or so to rebuild.
I was wondering why Frinklin had sent me an email with the subject "^_^ mew-mew (-:" and a zip file attached. The contents of the message didn't make much sense, and I hadn't had time to check the attachment.
But just now I got a message from BRD with the subject "Re: Mail Server" and a zip file attached.
Someone's got a virus. It's probably not Frinklin or BRD; the one from BRD was recognised by SpamAssassin as coming from a forged address, but I don't have much else to work on. Whoever it is, though, has all three of us in their address book, so it's likely to be a Munuvian.
I've had to rebuild PHP yet again. This is done using that script that resets everyone's file permissions so that nothing works anymore.
It should all be reset back to working state, but if I've missed anyone, let me know.
Hi everybody!
Just two quick questions:
1. what code do you use to list the trackbacks under the post in the main body--ie a line showing each trackback, title etc?
2. is there an easy way to create a condensed format in a two column sheet? in html it would be done by making the whole thing in a table, and setting the table width at 75% or whatever, but I'm not sure how to do it in CSS. Any thoughts? (what we're trying to do is create a format/look that will produce relatively equivalently among different browser resolutions---in our current format the right hand column is getting kicked down to the bottom for many readers.)
Thanks in advance!
Today is my one year Blogversary. Not at mu.nu, that came later, but one year of witty comments.
I just thought you'd like to know.
Quick question - I'm using the 4Images Gallery tool (installed via Fantastico here) and I'm trying to get it to do thumbnails, but it keeps asking me what the path for ImageMagick is. So what do I put in there?
Can anyone pull up Madfish Willie's... or is it just a boggle on my end?
Hi kids!
I've been busy this past week setting up the all new MuNu Portal. Hop on over and give it a try!
You'll need to register to get all the goodies (and trust me, you want all the goodies!) but all that requires is a username and a working email address, so it's no great drama.
Anyway, have fun and let me know what you think.
Update: Wups, you can't play the games because you don't have any coins for the machines! I've given you 20 pengos each. Have fun!
Has anyone ever installed one of these successfully? I know Emma did, but every time I ask her about it, she doesn't respond. :( I use my cPanel file manager to upload the necessary files, insert the code on my page and have performed the necessary steps to actually get music and colors right and it does NOT appear on my page.
HELP!!!
That's right folks, it's time to start gearing up for the second annual
The rules are simple:
1. If you have a favorite hockey team, place their logo somewhere on your front page.
2. Every time your team plays someone else's team in the Jamboree, the loser must place the winner's logo on their front page for 24 hours.
That's it!
Need an example? Let's say that Victor's Washington Capitals are playing Heather's St. Louis Blues and win (it's an example, not reality *snicker*), then Heather will display the Caps logo prominently for a day or so, and Victor can crow and link to and point out her shame and sudden increase in good blogging taste - yes, trash talking is encouraged.
Last year's line up (I assume you are all participating again):
Victor - Washington Capitals
Heather - St. Louis Blues
Helen - Dallas Stars
Ted - San Jose Sharks
Others I expect will participate this year:
Daniel - Atlanta Thrashers
Nic - Washington Capitals
Who else? Gir, what moosey club do you follow now that the Jets left town? Any Detroit fans? Who still admits that they kinda like the Rangers?
So everyone, let me know and I'll do the minimal setting of this up (translation: I'll make a list). If anyone needs, I have a source for team logo's if you can't find one.
Despite the name, I see no reason that this can't be open to any and all.
I just hope that there will be a hockey season this year.
(sorry for the cheap shot, Victor)
Please, please, oh please, go to this guest post at Lovely Wife's blog and say how very much you agree with the poster. Don't forget to throw a "Yay" in the comments, just to make it official.
Thank you. The check is in the mail.
UPDATE: Never mind, y'all. LW purged and closed the comments as it was getting way too serious. My thanks to the ones who figured out it was humor, though!
A question: I am trying to keep a track of the top referrers to my site so I can keep an updated "top referrers" section. However from 4 different sources I get 4 very different answers. From using Cpanel (Webaliser) I get a set of results that doesn't ring entirely true against what I expect; when I use Sitemeter (I know, not the best) it has very different answers; when I look at the Truefresco referrers it's similar to Sitemeter with a couple of discrepencies; and when I use my old fashioned Spidey-sense there seem to be ommissions or ranks that are way out of kilter.
So the question is does anyone know of a decent way to track top referrers? Is there a better way of doing it through Cpanel? Or is it all guesswork, all the time?
So I'm wandering through CP Panel, marveling at all the pretty lights and blinking doo-dads, when I come across an area the promises to tell me "interesting information" about my last 300 visitors...cool!
It seems that a lot of my hits (if not the majority) come from the Alliance logo image that bogsplotted Alliance members are using. That was not unexpected. What was unexpected was this referrer, using what I believe is called a "hotlink" to my Clinton Pez dispenser picture. I don't like that.
I considered trying to delete the image from my image page, but then my post would suffer, too.
Then I found that CP has hotlink protection! Way Cool! Only, I'm afraid if I turn it on, all the bogsplotted Alliance members will lose their logo...
So--a little help? Anyone know how I can use the hotlink protection feature without making the poor bogsploters needlessly suffer?
UPDATE: I altered the image in my files, as you may notice if you click the link. That doesn't solve the bandwidth problem, but it's funny....
UPDATE part deux: Following Madfish Willie's instructions, I put as many Alliance URLS as I could find in the CP Panel list of recent accesses into the "allow" box, and then enabled the protection. We'll see if it works.
Oh, and Jim--the picture I substituted for the clinton pez dispenser image is in the extended entry...
Well, that didn't work! Wonder why I can see the pic in preview, but can't from Munuviana?
Yours Truly is in the printies. I was interviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Details over here. Annoying registration is unfortunately required to view the article and Bugmenot seems to be down. Drat.
On an unrelated note, traffic at Ellis Island is a bit low. Can I get some excitement for Elizabeth? She's an awesome writer and I think she'll be a wonderful addition to Munuviana.
I was updating my Dropdown muNu blogroll and noticed that Lynn & physics geek had the same question I do. How do we go about styling the output of that list with CSS so we can get a smaller font that matches what's being used in our 'side' style?
Doesn't seem to matter how I wrap it, the output is unaffected. What am I missing?
Pixy? Paul? Bueller? Anyone?
I just noticed this little gem on my sidebar -- that I don't recall seeing there before. Is this a Gremlin in my archives? Something I need to fix?
TIA,
Em
I'm trying to restyle and retool my blog, and in going through the stylesheet I see a definition for a CSS div id with the name #banner-commentspop. I've searched through all the other templates for my site, and can't find any reference to a <div id="banner-commentspop">.
Whenever I update a stylesheet or template, I like to prune out unused or unnecessary code. Is there some external template for the comments that incorporates this style definition, or can I safely delete it?
Thanks for any insight!
Hi all.
I'll be updating the forum software this weekend, and setting up a whole new front end for MuNu. I'll also be applying some server patches.
There may be some downtime for the blogs, but unless things blow up in my face it should be less than five minutes in all.
Over at Patriot Paradox the second ever Link Carnival is ready for your links.
Each Thursday I'll be making a post, linking to three of my favorite blogs, then asking you to do the same. Here are the rules:1. Link to three blogs other then this one, and yourself.
2. If you see a blog already listed try to link to another blog other then that one.
3. If you can trackback to this post, which will help you because it will link back to you under this entry.
I'm hoping to see all Munuvians stopping by and linking away. Call it a comment party or what-not just stop by and link to your free favorite blogs, and be sure to link to the post. If successful it will be back next week!
Also each day I have a new Daily Quiz question up, so be sure to visit and answer daily.
OK, this might sound a bit weird, but there was some ecological message that went across the screen while I was at the theater this afternoon that said if we all unplugged our TV sets when we were not usin' 'em, the amount of 'lectricity we would save would be near the annual amount generated at Hoover Dam. My question is exactly why is my TV is still using 'lectricity after I switched it off? Jes' figgered with all the brain power floatin' 'round the Munu universe, surely one or two of ya'll could put the answer in simple enough words for me to understand.
Hello,
I am trying to figure out how to install 2 different things into my MT install:
1. Trickle
2. Smilies
ANyone have any idea how I can get these to work without access to cgi-bin and Movable Type files?
Stupid question from a non-techie kind of guy.
When I post an entry to my blog, even if I get a successful ping to http://munuviana.mu.nu, my spanking new entry does not appear in the list of "new on MUNU" entries. I'm sure I'm overlooking something silly and would appreciate if anyone could give some assistance.
Thanks,
JKS.
I'd really like to help out with this issue, because I know it bugs a lot of Munuvians, and their visitors as well.
Since I didn't get any takers on my previous post about testing comment memory here, I've done some iterative testing on my own. I know very little about coding, and programming, but due to my own experiences, I have long suspected that there may be two factors at work in this problem. One is the actual code used, which as I say I know little about, and the other is how the browser is handling cookies.
As a result of my testing on MuNu, (and I can't make this claim for any other domain, as I have no way of testing), I can definitely say it is an end-user problem -- sort of. It's actually Internet Explorer that doesn't handle the code the way we want, although FireFox does.
I am running a completely standard installation of Firefox 0.9.2, and my comment info is successfully remembered on every blog on MuNu. (Except Rusty's, on which he has been playing with the cookies scripts) Conversely, no matter what cookies settings I use for Internet Explorer, it will not remember my user info on any MuNu blog. (Actually, I haven't tested every single one with IE... once through with FireFox took long enough!)
From what I can see, Internet Explorer chokes on the fact that the cookie is being set by blogs.mu.nu, but that it needs to read from the subdomain the user is on -- e.g. LightandDark.mu.nu -- so it fails. (In a single-blog installation, theses 2 addresses are the same.) So I think Rusty's on the right track for trying to find a fix for IE users via the var HOST variable.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about scripting to be able to help resolve the problem under Internet Explorer, but at least this explains why there is such a variation between users who have no problems with their comment info being remembered, and those who do.
So, for Internet Explorer users, I don't have a solution. But for Firefox, and I suspect, Mozilla users, if your user information is not being remembered in comments boxes at MuNu, it's gotta be because of the settings you're using in your browser.
Go to the Tools menu and click on Options. Then click on Privacy on the left side of the Options window. Click on the + beside Cookies, and make sure there is a check mark in the box labeled Enable Cookies. Be sure there is no check mark in the box labeled for the originating web site only, and also make sure that the button for accept cookies normally is turned on.
One other thing to note! There are actually two seperate places where comments can be left, and therefore 2 places where cookies need to be set in order for a blog's comments to remember a visitor.
The first is in the pop-up box that normally shows up when a user clicks on the comments link at the bottom of a post on the main page. If the user enters their information and selects yes for remember me, then, if using Firefox, they will be remembered for the next time. This arrangement allows a user who has had his comments remembered at one MuNu blog to be remembered at all MuNu blogs that use the popup comment window.
However - if the user then goes to a post's permalink page (daily archives), - this is where you'll be if you've followed a link to the post from another blog - that location requires a completely separate cookie to be set, so even though the user has been remembered in the comments pop-up box before, they will also need to re-enter their information in the permalink page's comments area in order to be remembered in that area on future visits as well.
A few people have set up their configurations so that clicking on the comments link on the main page takes you to the comment section of that post's individual archives page instead. (for antispam reasons) This type of comment section is the same one described in the preceeding paragraph, so will not remember users who have their information remembered at other blogs. The user will have to enter their information at that specific blog in order to be remembered the next time. Emma's site is an example of this kind of setup. (Yes, Emma, it's your specific "session only" setting that's not allowing your info to be remembered when you re-visit a blog).
I know there's a lot of jargon here, so if you need a better explanation of anything, ask away in comments. I'll keep looking for an IE solution too, but the MuNu programming/coding gurus are a lot more likely to come up with something useful.
Also, I'd really like to know whether other Firefox users are having their comment info remembered please?
Paul
First, showing how dumb I can be, I didn't realize that I wouldn't have to ping a munuvian. Duh! Why all the pings when you post my dear! Okay, so I finally got that bit through my thick head.
But this last time I posted, linking to Auterific and Snooze button, I got this message:
2004.08.08 21:41:55 80.178.121.136 'Rachel Ann' added entry #40354
2004.08.08 21:42:39 80.178.121.136 Ping 'http://ping.blo.gs/' failed: Ping error:
2004.08.08 21:42:40 80.178.121.136 Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: Ping error: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour.
2004.08.08 21:42:42 80.178.121.136 Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: Ping error: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour.
Sniff, sniff. I wanted both Linda and Jim pinged. I know Linda got pinged, but I'm not sure Jim did. If "they only accept one ping every half-hour, how do I ping more than one munuvian?
Hi! I'm here!! (Rachel Ann waves wildly) and
HELP!
as in; give me a clue to how I can make my Blog Title more willowy; I'm thinking different fonts. Found the codes for colors but I wanted to do something with my just sitting there title. I would also like to center the title and find two willow trees to surround it...but right now if I can just change the font.
Ok, so it's official. This is not a user end problem. I have been surfing the MT forum for help and I have some scripts to fix the problem. I'm going to continue to tweak my comment template and then I'll post the solution in the comments section of this post. Help is on the way!!!
PS-Techies: It seems the problem is that the default for the template we used was set to "no" in remember info....which, as you know means the cookie is erased every time the comments are refreshed, including after posting!
Over at Patriot Paradox I have a new event starting called Free Link Thursday. Here's a description:
Each Thursday I'll be making a post, linking to three of my favorite blogs, then asking you to do the same. Here are the rules:1. Link to three blogs other then this one, and yourself.
2. If you see a blog already listed try to link to another blog other then that one.
3. If you can trackback to this post, which will help you because it will link back to you under this entry.
I'm hoping to see all Munuvians stopping by and linking away. Call it a comment party or what-not just stop by and link to your free favorite blogs, and be sure to link to the post. If successful it will be back next week!
Also each day I have a new Daily Quiz question up, so be sure to visit and answer daily.
Teresa over at Technicalities posted today about her dislike of the way her Hotmail e-mail account handles embedded links - you click thge link, and a new Hotmail window opens with the link in a "frame". I hate that kinda crap too.
Several months ago, I found a neat little utility at SlayerOffice that decrapulates the link and treats it like a regular link in a regular web page. It installs as a favelet on your toolbar. All you do is click the decrapulator favelet and then click the link.
So, to all you with Hotmail accounts, go to OfficeSlayer's Hotmail Link Decrapulator Favelet, and download the little app, and improve your Hotmail Experience!
Update:
# Language: Javascript
# Requires: MSIE6, Mozilla, Firefox, Netsape 7, Opera 7
Pixy, I seemed to have developed the same weird 'posted by' name problem that a few others have been afflicted with in the past. I couldn't find the specific posts to see if there was a solution. Was there?
I've been doing some thinking about why some Munuvians and visitors get remembered & some don't. The one variable that I thought was worth checking is whether some folks have their browser's cookie permissions set differently with regard to storing cookies across domains (since MuNu uses so many subdomains)
Would folks who uses Firefox, and who have problems being remembered, please do the following, and report back in comments:
In the browser, got to Tools | Options | Privacy and click on Cookies. Let me know if the box marked For the originating wesite only is checked? And if it is, uncheck it, close and reopen your browser and retest the Remember Me seetings on your blog
Thanks!
Paul
Since she's not blogging lately, and checking email infrequently, could someone with rights to her page (which is Pixy and Pete the No-Longer Blogless, I guess) delete the porn comment spam which is showing up on her sidebar? I'm sure she'd appreciate it.
And, yes, I've saved a screenshot for posterior whatever that word is that's supposed to go here. I'm suddenly drawing a blank.
Recent immigrants to Munuviana may not realize that we have our own space program. Air Munuviana was our first rocket, flying fast and high until an electronics failure caused a catastrophic disassembly into component pieces (translation: she was recovered in several handfuls of tiny little bits).
But to any true rocketeer, the loss of a rocket is just an excuse to build another one, so I've been gathering supplies to do just that. This weekend I picked up the airframe tubes and a brand new altimeter, so all that's needed now is a little construction time.
As Victor would say, nameless rockets have bad juju, so I've already decided on one. In honor of Mu.Nu, or new moo, or something like that, the obvious choice is:
Any artists out there wanna do a logo? As before, all Munuvians will be listed on the rocket and much commenting upon will be made. I won't promise traffic spikes, but several rocketeer friends mentioned that they visited some of us after seeing the Air Munuviana.
She'll probably be a little shorter, but the airframe is a slightly larger diameter. The design allows for both solid fuel motors as well as the nitrous-hybrid motors.
Maiden launch is scheduled for September. Pictures to come.
It seems that a new denizen has taken residence or taken over Beyond the Black Hole. I am highly suspicious that it is none other than my old nemesis, Kang A. Roo, but I am unsure as how to determine such.
