dixson.org » Blog Tech

Plugging plugins

Chris — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:13:12 +0000

I’ve installed and recommend the following WP plugins:

1. WP FancyZoom by Stephen Granade
http://granades.com/wp-fancyzoom-wordpress-plugin/

…FancyZoom is a nice, modern way of making popup images.

This is a “pluginized” version of Cabel Sasser’s FancyZoom which I had used on my old site. It rocks. [Cabel is one of the founders of Panic, Inc., makers of beautifully designed and highly useful Mac software. I use Transmit daily.] Thanks for the WP version Stephen.

2. Scissors by Stephan Reiter
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scissors/

[Scissors] …adds cropping and resizing functionality to WordPress’ image upload and management dialogs.

Very handy and easy to use.

3. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator by Arne Brachhold
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Moved to WordPress

Chris — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:19:15 +0000

I’ve moved on from Movable Type 4 to WordPress 2.7. MT, which I have used for years, is a very powerful weblog publishing system and I recommend it in many situations were its features and flexibility warrant. But, as a developer, the template system was burdensome in my opinion and I had a tough time adapting to the new MT 4 architecture. Additionally, I have a few client projects that I’ll be doing in WP so the time was right to make the switch.

The WP install was simple and I encountered zero issues on my shared server at Joyent. I imported my MT posts into WP with just a few clicks. I also changed the theme to iNove. Next, I need to learn more about developing my own themes.

MT 4 Install Part II

Chris — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:00:06 +0000

After a few attempts at getting MT 4 to behave, I realized the upgrade from MT 3 to MT 4 did not go smoothly. I had upgraded last month but the install left me juggling too many template issues. I ended up hitting the server earlier this evening (yikes, it’s Wednesday here already) and deleted mt-static and all the cgi files. After downloading a fresh copy of MT 4, I reinstalled everything, set permissions, and ran through the configuration steps. Three hours later, all is working perfectly now ( yeh, 3 hours ’cause I squeezed in some DX during the install process. ) I’m not impressed with the default, stock templates in MT 4 and will start doing some custom work over the weekend.

MT 4 Install

Chris — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:10:21 +0000

Updated to MT 4 over the weekend. Haven’t had a spare minute to customize the ‘Minimalist Blue’ style other than to apply a bit of CSS and adjust the font. Bear with me, I’ll have things straightened out soon.

Hosting and Blog Changes

Chris — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:45:47 +0000

I finally made the switch and signed up for hosting with TextDrive several weeks ago and love it. TextDrive is not for the technically challenged. You will get your hands dirty with mod_rewrite, htaccess tweaking and adjusting the server settings to your heart’s content. It’s a rush to have this kind of power over a hosting account (Did I just say that? It’s a rush? I really need to spend less time in front of this damn computer. ) Basically, I can install and configure just about anything I want or need on the server (within reason of course.) So far I’ve taken advantage of PHP5, WebDAV and sharing iCal files. Soon I’ll be working with ROR, Lighttpd, and Subversion (to manage the mess I make of my source.) I’ll be doing my Rails development and testing on the Macs and PCs here at home – in a shared hosting environment you do not want to piss off your ‘neighbors’ by hosing the server with shaky development code.

After being down for about a month, I got this blog back up (as you can see). Upgraded to MT 3.3 and imported my previous posts from MT on my old server. Still need to work on the templates. Excuse the clutter, design inconsistencies, and other glitches – I’m aware of them and making corrections.

I gave up on the MT security plugin I wanted to use. After several careful re-installs and configuration changes, it just kept spitting out errors. Maybe I’m just too tired today to determine the root of the problem (in my defense, the documentation for the plugin ~~sucks~~ is lacking in many areas. ) But the errors appear to be rooted in dynamic file publishing – or the lack thereof. For now, I’ll let it sit a few days and revisit the plugin with a clear mind.

Blog tweaks

Chris — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 08:30:59 +0000

I finally got around to moving this blog over to PHP. No big deal. Took a matter of minutes actually. Unfortunately, the PHP-based security plugin I wanted to use with MT is just not cutting it – which is most likely my fault given the configuration of things on the server (said configuration dictated by my paying client’s needs/requirements and not my own.)

My current host is great in all respects and have helped our business grow. However, I’ve been giving serious consideration to moving dixson.org to a new host that supports PHP5, MySQL 4.1, Ruby, Rails, Lighttpd, Subversion, and WebDAV. Since I’m now doing some development using Ruby on Rails, I want a host that fully supports ROR right out of the box. Stay tuned.

Blog changes coming soon…

Chris — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:30:07 +0000

First post of 2006. Happy New Year.

Been working on a few enhancements to this Movable Type install. Will be switching over to PHP pages shortly and have added some security plugins and other code to restrict access to certain categories. Highly recommend checking out Hacking Movable Type (ExtremeTech) by Jay Allen. It’s been very helpful with some of the ‘hacks’ I’ve been doing to MT.

MT Reading Material

Chris — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 23:28:37 +0000

Two books on Movable Type that caught my eye…

Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition by Rogers Cadenhead — This arrived earlier today. Since I just started reading it, I can’t offer an opinion on it yet. I will say that it gets my thumbs up for the following:

- unlike so many other computer/tech books I’ve accumulated over the years, it weighs a lot less than a small car and doesn’t take up half my desk
- it doesn’t include a CD/DVD of useless ‘tools’ and ‘templates’

Hacking Movable Type (ExtremeTech) by Jay Allen — I pre-ordered this one today. Should be available by May 30, 2005.

Welcome

Chris — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:08:35 +0000

I have re-released my blog. In its previous incarnation, I hadn’t dealt properly with multiple domains hosted on my Brandego server and as a result, comment posts, etc., left the user with URL’s pointing to Brandego. Since dixson.org is under the Brandego umbrella of sites, the URL issue was ugly and, worse, it caused problems. So, using a combination of URL rewriting, cgiwrap, a symlink, and an afternoon of hacking (the good kind), I was back in the blogshpere. Well, I thought I was. I ran into problems with the Berkeley DB used by default in Movable Type (MT). Instead of troubleshooting the db issue, I took the advice in the MT config file, “Consider using the MySQL configuration…”, and a few minutes later I had a MySQL db in place, issued the mt-load, and was off and running.

Delving into an MT configuration when you are in a shared hosting environment is a challenge, especially when the hosting provider recommends a different blogging package and no ISP provided install HOWTOs exist. But now that I have done it (and written it all down), it’s possible for the several other domains on this server to also purchase and install MT under the same shared hosting account. Two great resources with valuable information for installing MT that I recommend: davidbau.com and elise.com

Now it’s on to authoring some new templates and CSS to change the default blog look…