My first pass at having my weblog app generate an Necho file is here.
What I really want to tell you about is that my weblog is finally trading on BlogShares.
Oh well, what's done is done.
Now, I think I will delve into it once again -- this time to implement the MetaWeblogAPI and the BloggerAPI.
This is so cool. Sit back and watch the world blog its way around the clock. Now you know you simply must get those geotags and that RSS autodiscovery machinery into your blog.Indeed, this is one of the coolest things I've seen lately.
[Sean McGrath, CTO, Propylon]
You can see it for yourself over at what is becoming the testing ground for this site.
Of course I've got a few things to work out still, but the search functionality should find it's way into production shortly.
Does anyone implement search on their blogs? The .NET weblog systems I have seen don't, neither does Radio. But Sam Ruby's does. I would think that search would be a useful feature. Is it? If not, why not?I think that I will finally stop putting off adding this feature.
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]
Since then, there has been a lot of talk about what is the best (or preferred) method for presenting archives and navigating them, and it seems that most people don't care for the calendar method (at least not as the only method).
Personally, I do like the Calendar method for navigating, as long as it isn't the only method. I especially like the ability to select a range of dates using the ASP.NET Calendar Control -- such as everything for a month, week, or day, so you aren't forced to click each individual day to view posts.
Anyway, I've always provided the ability to navigate archives by month using the simple Archives list you see on this page. I even show the number of posts for a given month. Prior to right now, clicking a link in the Archive list would display all the posts, in their entirety for that month. Now, I list only the titles of each post and provide a link to each individual post, as others have done.
I am not sure which presentation method I prefer. When you click an Archive link for a specific month, do you want to have all the posts right there in front of you, or do you prefer just to see their titles, and perhaps even a summary?
What is the best way to implement referrer tracking in a home-grown weblog?My referrer page currently treats each unique URL as just that -- unique. So this - http://objective.mine.nu/archive/2003/1/2.aspx - is different than this - http://objective.mine.nu/. I decided to do this mainly because I was interested in the specific location that was referring someone to my site, not just the referring site. However, if you look at my referrer's page, you'll see that only the domain is displayed, and not the path info (moving your mouse over the links reveals the true referring URL).
[Harry Pierson's DevHawk Weblog]
This was pretty quick and dirty, well not dirty, but quick. Anyway, I've been thinking of other ways to display the referrer information, and keep coming back to a hierarchical view, where I display the referring domains, and then drill down to view data on the specific referring URL's.
Of course, I am always looking for a better way...
I had forgotten about adding this feature. I will work on it in the morning.
I am on the cusp of redoing the trackback functionality for the weblog app. Until then, you can click the Trackback link below each post to get the URL that a trackback can be sent to. I have verified that sending a trackback from Movable Type to my trackback page works. If you have no way of sending a trackback through your weblog app, then you can put everything in the querystring, or you can use the test form that the web service page provides. Go here for more information doing this.
More to come...eventually...
I decided to create an HTTPModule to intercept incoming requests and log the referrer information. Currently, it ignores requests made from the site it is implemented in. This will probably change and become an configurable option, I just didn't care to see referrers to my site, from my site -- but others might.
One other "to do" is to create a server control for easily displaying the list of referrers.
This brings the total number of weblogs powered by my app up to 6 including mine and metaApps.com.
I downloaded Radio.Userland. Why? I don't know, I wanted to see what it does and how it works. Anyway, I was checking out their News page and realized that I could easily make content from metaBlogs available as a news feed as well. 15 minutes later, it was done.
The metaBlog system itself is still a bit rough around the edges, for example, I don't have the archive functionality built yet. Also, the comments feature doesn't work. I had multiple users setup to post to my Bloger blog, I still need to set those users up in my metaBlog blog and point their posts to the right user ID.
Finally, you might notice the new design of the site. It might stay, or not. I am undecided.
Of course it is not 100% ready yet, but it is ready enough to begin using. The first task will be migrating this site to it. BTW, the system is tenatively named metaBlog. You can learn more about it at metaApps.com.
So what, you say? Well the Blogger API pretty much falls in line with the stuff I've been doing over at metaStash.com, that is, Web Services.
To follow up on the 'so what' theme, this means that blogging can be done from your own application, be it on the desktop or a website. Me, I am posting this from my own web page.