Category Archives: blogging

2 – 4 -6 – 8 – why don’t we all syndicate?

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Allow me to come late to the party in order to declare that the data format known as RSS has fundamentally changed the way I read the web. (See previous entries by, for example, Liz Lawley and Edith Frost.) As many of you probably already know, hundreds of sites, from blogs to newspapers, syndicate their content via this format, and if you have a desktop program or a website that will collect all of this information for you, then you have a very powerful tool.

After giving Kinja a try, I’m now hooked on Bloglines. Although it’s not finished, yet, you can take a look at my list of Bloglines subscriptions. If you sign up for your own Bloglines account, then you can sign in and subscribe to one of the items in someone else’s list with the click of a mouse. For example, being the proud owner of a new Mac, I grabbed all of Edith Frost’s Mac-related subscriptions.

Why not make available a full-text RSS feed of your blog, which will make the entire text, rather than an excerpt, of each of your entries available in syndication? Users of MovableType, I can tell you how. Everyone else, you’re on your own.

Go into Template > RSS 2.0. Then find the portion of code that reads < $MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$> and change it to < $MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$>. Rebuild your site (Choose “Rebuild Indexes Only,” if you want to save time), and you’re done. It’s just that simple! (I think.) Make a link in your sidebar somewhere to “index.xml” and name it “Full-text RSS.”

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local media catches on

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In the last paragraph to this entry, Chuck notes that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has begun linking to local blogs from its online opinion page. Meanwhile, Gjoe points out that the Kansas City Star has taken notice of KC bloggers and KC Bloggers.

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comparing the weblog systems

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Via Slashdot:

prostoalex writes “The question of the best weblogging system out there arises quite often, especially after the new licensing scheme introduced by MovableType. Here’s a rather detailed breakdown of currently popular blogging and content management systems. Out of 11 software packages, 10 run on any server with variations of Perl/PHP and MySQL/PostgresSQL, and one requires Windows and .NET Framework. 4 are licensed under GPL, 3 are under BSD. Mark Pilgrim explains why licensing is suddenly important.”

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how i use movable type for educational purposes

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Jason‘s the Shepherd for the Wordherders, and he’s already posted an entry on how the changes in MT’s payment schedule will affect our multiple blogs.

However, I also maintain a bunch of blogs over on Jeff‘s CHLT server, so I thought I’d describe how I use MT there and whether these changes will push me to adopt another content management system.

First of all, I’ve adopted Liz Lawley‘s brilliant MT Courseware hack for my classes. I’m sort of confused as to what the new pricing scheme is for MT 3.0, but my understanding is that the free version will allow for one author and three blogs. I like to leave my course websites online even after the course is finished, however, and so I’ll hit the three-blog limit pretty quickly if I upgrade.

Additionally, I have frequently assigned a game of Ivanhoe, using MT as the game platform. This requires me to add, temporarily, all 30 or so students as authors to my MT installation. I don’t think I’d be able to do this at all under the new rules.

For the above applications, two tasks are very inconvenient using MovableType. First, adding thirty new authors to the Ivanhoe games takes way too long; I’d prefer an HTML form that allows me to enter all thirty at once in a grid, rather than clicking my way through the same one-author-at-a-time form thirty times. Second, adding all the content for Liz’s MT Courseware takes way too long; again, a grid that allows you to enter multiple entries using one form would cut back on a very onerous task.

As long as MovableType was free, I was willing to put up with these inconveniences on the backend in exchange for the elegant beauty of the frontend. But if I’m going to be asked to pay, I’d have to think twice about whether such shortcomings were acceptable.

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obligatory reflection on blogging

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Not that you’ve complained, dear reader, but I find myself overwhelmed by the nature of the developments in our “liberation” of Iraq (and reactions to said developments) to write anything sustained and thoughtful. I have a PhD. I should be, like, smart and stuff. Yet I find myself wanting to write these snarky little entries. Hit and run. Kibbles and bits. What good do they do?

Some thoughts are brewing, though.

  • Anyone remember weapons of mass destruction?
  • At what point do people who oppose the war stop agreeing with the sentiment behind the expression “Support our troops”?
  • Does anyone ever get fired in the Bush administration?
  • Which of these is worse: stupidity, incompentence, dishonesty?
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