Posts Tagged ‘Meta’
If you’re not reading this via RSS, you may have noticed that I’ve completely changed the look and feel of firsttube.com. It’s something I wasn’t expecting to do regularly, but since I’ve moved to Wordpress, this will be my third theme. The first one lasted only a few days, to be fair, and I settled on the beautiful Librio. However, I did a lot of customization with Librio, which meant I couldn’t really update the theme, and it was far from 2.7 ready. On top of that, I hacked up some areas I didn’t like and I was never able to get it just right.
Fast forward a bit, I’ve gone ahead and modified instantShift’s Christmas theme that was designed for Smashing Magazine. I am, at least right now, very happy with this theme and I think I’ll stick with it for awhile.
Today is a new beginning for the US… and a little change is in order.
Behold! The firsttube.com RSS cloud generated by www.wordle.net (doesn’t work here without the www. Lame!). I got the idea from Kroc. This is based on a snapshot of my RSS feed the morning of 12/12/2008.
So far, one problem, two gripes. My problem is that I can’t seem to get posts with dots in the slug title to work right, even though I once solved this problem before. What’s worse is that it won’t fetch those posts anymore, which really sucks.
Onto my gripes. I can’t get inline replying/threading to work. There is very little documentation on it so far. The functions are called comment_reply_link() and get_comment_reply_link(), and there’s nothing anywhere in the codex that helps, there’s little on the internet, the only place to get any real detail is the code itself, which explains:
from wp-includes/comment-template.php starting at line 949 on WP 2.7.0
* Retrieve HTML content for reply to comment link. * * The default arguments that can be override are 'add_below', 'respond_id', * 'reply_text', 'login_text', and 'depth'. The 'login_text' argument will be * used, if the user must log in or register first before posting a comment. The * 'reply_text' will be used, if they can post a reply. The 'add_below' and * 'respond_id' arguments are for the JavaScript moveAddCommentForm() function * parameters. * * @since 2.7.0 * * @param array $args Optional. Override default options. * @param int $comment Optional. Comment being replied to. * @param int $post Optional. Post that the comment is going to be displayed on. * @return string|bool|null Link to show comment form, if successful. False, if comments are closed.
It doesn’t matter much, because it doesn’t work, period, even though I’ve followed the instruction here to a t. So I’ll have to fix that in time.
My last gripe is with the new wp_list_comments() routine. I understand this is all new, but the idea that templating comments requires a callback function as a wrapper to all comments, pings, and trackbacks is clumsy at best. The codex on wp_list_comments() have nothing to explain it to people, so while I’ve dug in and gotten things working, it’s not for the feint of heart just yet, since you need to build a PHP function in your theme in your functions.php file (or create one if it doesn’t exist, which cannot be done via the Dashboard). I’m a little sad, since the theme system is so flexible and the new plugin system is just incredible, to see the new comment loop be so manual compared to the single file approach used so successfully in the past.
I know that Scoble says Wordpress 2.7 rocks, and it does. Scoble doesn’t realize the shortcomings because he hasn’t tried to play with the new features, and fortunately, it very gracefully degrades. But it’s got some work to do to be perfect, for me at least.
Yes, I’ve redesigned firsttube.com once again, but I’m only christening it 10.0.1. There are no major changes here other than the look and feel overhaul – no new features, no new tricks. This theme is a bit lighter, a smidgen easier on the eyes, a touch cleaner code-wise, a trifle easier to manipulate, and a notch more organized, CSS-wise. As a result, those who visit the site will get a neat surprise. That is all.
I recognize that I’ve been a little wordy about WordPress lately – no pun intended – but I’m afraid that it’s really interesting to me, and probably will be for the next few days. So, if you’re growing weary of the WordPress related posts, I’m sorry.
Today I took my first stab at writing a WordPress plugin. Turns out, it’s really easy. I’m mean really easy. The plugin is pretty simple: it just searches through every post and turns the unlinked words firsttube.com into a hyperlink. However, it seems like it might be a useful plugin for some, even just as a text-replacement plugin. So we’ll see if I publish it. In the meantime, though, it took me about 15 minutes to write and then it was recognized by WordPress, which was very cool.
I have a few ideas for more involved plugins too that I may write, one day. But in the meantime, this one is pretty cool.
To those of you that read firsttube.com via RSS, I’m sorry about the recent difficulties. My conversion to Wordpress is almost entirely complete, including handling all old links, etc. I have a few legacy things left to fix. In the meantime, I realize that my feed has been screwy for the last few days and I’m sorry about that.
It should be fixed now, so that likely means another 20 dupes or so, I can’t control that. But I can tell you that I think we’re all caught up. Thanks for hanging with me.
Thus far, my move to Wordpress has been an adventure. Here’s a few lessons learned.
First off, I was very excited about the features of Wordpress. I was really excited, most specifically, about the API, and about the rich text WYSIWYG of the backend. I’ve done a lot of work on Small Axe’s backend, but it’s still nothing compared to Wordpress.
When I imported my stuff, it worked well, but the “slugs” — or URL-friendly post titles — did not convert properly. They converted as Wordpress friendly, properly escaped slugs. The problem was, my slugs needed to stay intact, because I didn’t want all old links to break.
Understanding the way Wordpress functions is really tough for a WP newbie, because the code is so spread out, yet compact, voluminous, yet digestible. Start with index.php, onto wp-blog-header.php, into wp-settings.php, and then you find the massive list of files in the wp-includes directory. You’ll dig all over trying to find files to find includes in includes in includes. I finally found a great article that tries to explain the Wordpress slug architecture. It’s fairly complex. Much of it lives in/wp-includes/query.php. However, my problem was very specific.
Many of my post slugs had periods in them. The period does not interfere with the URL, but Wordpress doesn’t like them, and somewhere in the massive beast. So I had to find the page that “gets” posts. Lo and behold, there is a function called “get_posts” that lives in /wp-includes/query.php. I kept poking around. Like anyone who keeps digging, eventually, you’ll find yourself in wp-includes/formatting.php. And there it is.
Slug posts get sanitized – like everything, virtually all input is strictly sanitized – by a function called sanitize_title_with_dashes(). This function generates the slug. In order to include dots in your slug titles, just replace lines 366 and 267 (on Wordpress 2.6.0) with this:
$title = preg_replace('/&+?;/', '', $title); // kill entities $title = preg_replace('/[^%a-z0-9 _.-]/', '', $title);
Then your slug titles will not strip periods. Of course, I don’t recommend you actually use periods, I just wanted them to work when fetching old posts created before I knew any better.
After that adventure, I have to tell you, I’m really loving Wordpress. There are some incredible plugins that have done some amazing functionality extension for me. So far, so good.
Here it is, the tenth and largest ever revision of firsttube.com. After a long decision-making process, I decided to migrate to Wordpress. There are a number of reasons why I did this, but here are a few.
First of all, Wordpress is actively developed… a lot. Small Axe is a lot of fun, but it’s a hobby, and although one I enjoy, it was a lot of work. On top of that, certain features were a challenge for me that I simply never had enough time to implement, such as a quality API. With Wordpress, I can post from my iPhone. Or Flickr. Or Digg. Etc.
I was also able to preserve my permalink structure with this code. I’ve developed a decent standing in Google, one I’m fearing I will have destroyed with this migration, but it was important that my links be maintained.
Themes with Wordpress are a snap. Honestly, changing the look and feel is cake once it’s uploaded.
The migration to Wordpress was PAINFUL! Importing the feeds was easy enough, it can be done via RSS, so I quickly edited my RSS script to output my whole blog. Boom! Done. But getting comments in was a lot of work. I think I’ve covered all of them though, and that’s exciting.
One problem is that my “tags” came over as “categories” and my “topics” were entirely discarded. Had I been a little smarter about Wordpress, I could easily have fixed that. But that part doesn’t really bother me, so it will stay reversed. Dammit.
I’m still considering whether I want to host my own comments or push them into Disqus. I really like Disqus, but I’m not entirely certain about pushing my blog content to a third party service.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with this iteration and the theme I’ve adopted. The HTML needs some work, there are a few pages/site features I’ve still not properly migrated, but all in all, I’m feeling good about this move. It gives me more time to focus on other PHP projects, Wordpress add-ons, and OSNews. I’ll keep you all posted, and now that I’ve upgraded to a new codebase, I promise to update more often. In the meantime, enjoy firsttube.com 10.
I’ve been pretty liberal in completely redesigning my website for some time now. I built this site sometime in August of 2000, using my own HTML. All dynamics were achieved… well… faked… via re-uploading static HTML files. Version 2.0, a major overhaul, arrived shortly thereafter, and version 3.0 completely migrated to PHP as the base. The site thrived as a Phish music archive and when I moved away from that, I retired what was then version 4.0, and several versions followed until this one, version 9. But alas, shortly, I will begin the design of firsttube.com version 10, and it will be a chore, as I intend to modify most of the tables in my underlying database. Many features I wish I had implemented long ago – such as subscribing to threads and letting users enter a website, thereby not exposing their email address – are long overdue and virtually omnipresent in other weblogs.
I’ve even tossed around using another blog engine and just migrating my data, but then, where would I play?
My primary goal, though, for firsttube.com 10, will be a radically simpler and more attractive interface. I like some Web 2.0 mainstays. Expect larger text, brighter colors, AJAX where appropriate, and simplicity. My new comments page, which I’ve been playing with, is already stripped down and already kind of overwhelming. So back to the drawing board, it appears. Stay tuned for more updates than necessary.
Font "Oz Handicraft BT" was not found.…And We’re Back!
So far, I’m hosting about 5 domains with another one potentially in the pipe. I’m giving everyone cPanel access, which means MySQL, phpMyAdmin, mailboxes, forwarders, Fantastico, and much more. You shouldn’t have to do anything: your feeds should remain intact and you should see no interruption of service.