Category: web

Well, the beta testing for the new rebelpeon.com backend.  We’ll be using ExpressionEngine, and hopefully there’ll just be one setup with it (currently each blog has it’s own mt installation).  This will just make things much easier for me. 

This weekend this site will most likely get migrated.  It all depends on how much time I spend making up new templates for the site.  I have an idea on how I want it to look, and I know how I’m going to do it.  It’s just actually doing it now.  The new site will be soley based on CSS, in much the same way that CSS Zen Garden is done.  Basically what this means is that the html will contain no tables or anything.  It will simply be straight text that’s been divided up by div tags.  This way, changing the website will take all of 2 seconds to do.  All I have to do is change the CSS behind the scenes and presto! new website.

Well, since my upgrade to MT 3.0D hosed comments for the most part, I’ve been looking at other blogging options.  There’s also the fact that, theoretically, I’d have to pay for MT with the blogs I have.  I’ve since posted to MT’s website about my problems with comments.  Needless to say, I haven’t recieved any help.  Also, there’s the fact that there’s no place to download 2.661 anymore, eventhough 3.0 is still beta.  Yes, that’s right, you can’t download a stable release of mt anymore.  Plus, there’s no way to downgrade from 3.0D to 2.661.  The only way I can really do it, is to export my entries, delete the db, recreate the db, reinstall 2.661, and then import my entries.  Needless to say, all my site setup and preferences are gone then.  So, basically I’m going to leave what I currently have up and running until I can decided on what to migrate to. 

So far I’ve looked at Greymatter, WordPress, and ExpressionEngine.  Greymatter just plain sucks.  WordPress has potential, but as of right now, the one I enjoy the most is definitely ExpressionEngine.  The only downside to that is that it’s not free.  Currently I’m running a 14 day trial version of it at test.rebelpeon.com/ee. 

Arg, decisions.  There’s currently a few problems with ExpressionEngine, like that it won’t let me import my MT entries, but I’m sure it’s just a bug.  Oh well, MT has left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I just want to get off it right now.

Well, rebelpeon.com is now running version MT version 3.0.

**Updated** It looks as if comments are seriously fubared.  You can create a comment, and hit post.  You WILL get an error, however it seems to be saving the comments.  The main page doesn’t seem to be updating the number of comments listed until after I rebuild the main page.  All of the rebelpeon.com websites seems to be having this problem…joy.

There seems to be some changes coming down the pike for Movable Type.  With version 3.0, they are going to require you to purchase their software to get the same functionality as you had in 2.661 and below.  Now, there is a free version, but according to their website, with the free version you won’t get support, you won’t be able to have them install it for you (you’d have to pay for that normally), you don’t have access to fee-based services (like I’d use that anyways), no promotion of your weblog via their recently updated list, no commercial use, no more than one author and 3 weblogs (ruh roh).  You can see the list here.  It’s in a banner on the right hand side that says, “Movable Type Free.”

Now, everything in that list is ho-hum to me, except for the only 1 author.  For those of you not aware of how things work here at rebelpeon.com, each weblog is running it’s own self-contained version of movable type.  This allows me to use my own search template since search templates are shared across all weblogs that use the installation of movable type.  Also, each weblog has (at least) 2 authors.  One of them is me, so that I can get everything setup and then the other person is the owner of the blog.  Now I’m sure most of you are seeing why 3.0 may screw me, err my weblog owners, over. 

Now, I could purchase the software (and get my weblog owners to help chip in), which would get me the ability to have 5 authors and 5 weblogs.  However, I felt that it would be a good idea to test out their free version to see how crippled it actually was.  You can see the fruits of that labor at my test site.  I simply made a new database in mysql, exported this website’s tables and then imported them into the new database.  This way I was able to get an exact copy of this website.  Since there’s only one author on this website (me), I had to create a new author after the upgrade to 3.0 was completed.  As you can see, both aaron and rebelpeon were able to post news.  Yes, that means that there are 2 authors on that particular weblog.

It seems odd that they, in essence, lie to you while purchasing.  Think of all the websites that won’t take the time to actually test this like I did.  Talk about a sleazy way of making money.  I don’t know if this a simple mistake, or not.  It is also possible that I’m not dealing with a final, final version.  However, they had a complete website design touting 3.0, so I’m assuming I’m using final code. 

Enough with the movable type bashing, lets move on to some of the improvements.  The biggest one is the comments.  You can leaving commenting the same (which is probably safe for the vast majority of our little weblog sites), or you can force people to register with TypeKey, then log in to leave comments.  You can have comments automatically posted, or you can screen them first.  There is also a new section where you can list and edit comments, just like you can entries.  I can see the benefit of this, but I can also see the abuse, especially with politically motivated websites.  The easy of editing posts may overcome some…  If TypeKey is being used, you can have a listing of commenters who have posted on your website.  You get such information as status, name, date registered, etc.  I’m not exactly sure how this all works (need to test it), but it may be the same as a profile for the website.  This could be what I’m looking for on my website, so people don’t have to look at categories that bore them. 

There is also a new trackback section.  I personally am not a fan of trackbacks, but some people swear by them.  I suppose it’s because I’m not linking to websites that talk about similar things all the time.  Anyways, you get a list off all the trackbacks.  Once again, you can edit and list just like entries have always been and comments have just become. 

Another nice feature that I sort of just stumbled upon, was if you log into movable type, the click on the view site, then do a search on your website, you can actually edit posts right from there.  This is an added feature, since there’s not really a search feature for entries while logged in.  This way, if you don’t happen to remember the post off the top of your head, you can simply do a search to find your website.  Talk about a random find though. 

Finally when you’re logged in, the look is different.  The same categories are there, but it has a much more fresh look.  There isn’t as many images to load (which may be beneficial to some), so actually logging in is faster, etc.  I enjoy the new look much better than the last.  It’s also not as blocky and big.

I’m sure there’s a lot more features that I’m simply not using or seeing yet.  If I were to actually look through the change log I’d probably see more things that have changed that I actually use, but what’s the fun in that 🙂

I will probably move rebelpeon.com over to the new system sometime in the next few weeks.  It changes some database tables, so I want to be absolutely sure when I want to go, since it will be a pain to get it back.  After rebelpeon.com makes the switch, I’ll slowly be moving the other sites too.  So, if you happen to log in one day and notice it looks a little different, that’s why 🙂

Well, I finally bought a new wireless router.  I’ve been dealing with this stupid US Robotics wireless router, pos for too long.  So, hopefully after this comes in, the website will be up more, then, well, it is now.  Hopefully I won’t have to restart it daily like the one I do now.  On a good note, it will be fun to destroy the thing.  I definitely know why I see it so cheap after rebates, maybe it’s because it’s a piece of junk that doesn’t work 75% of the time.  Just take a look at other people’s reviews on Amazon.com.  I’m definitely not the only person that’s had problems with it.  Hell, even Nick has had nothing but problems with his.  I can’t wait.

I doubt any of you can read this as I’m posting it because Insight seems to be having a few problems.  As of right now, I can ping their gateway, but that’s about it.  I can’t even hit their dhcp server, nor dns servers.  Therefore, I can’t get anywhere out on the internet.  Hopefully they have this fixed soon.  I haven’t called in yet, but I most likely will.  I don’t even know if others can see my website or not because I can’t get out to see in. 

Then there was the problems yesterday.  Well, I tried to get on my wireless connection yesterday but neither of my laptops were able to find it.  Now, usually what happens is that the laptops find the wireless connections, but can’t get on the internet (just local traffic).  However, yesterday, they weren’t even able to connect wirelessly to anything.  So, I soft restarted my router from the web interface, and still nothing.  I enabled SSID broadcasting, still nothing.  I hard restarted it and that’s where everything went badly.  After I hard restarted it, it started restarting itself every minute or so.  Now, I couldn’t log in nor get on the internet from any of my wired computers either.  I looked at the router, and noticed that the power, status, and wan lights were amber instead of green.  Well, that’s when James came over and we all headed to Upper Limits.  So, it sat like that until I got home at 6ish.  I then setup my server to act as a router.  It was working fine last night…and now it’s not again.  Grrr

**Update**  All is fixed.  Network connection has been restored.

Well, there appears to be a new firmware for my totally crappy router (about time).  It apparantly gives a speed boost from 108Mbps to 125Mbps.  I haven’t looked at the change log for it yet, but it’d be nice if it’d support WPA now too.  Especially since that was promised on the box.  So, between the hours of 12PM and 1PM CST today, there may be some downtime.  Do not be alarmed, it shouldn’t be for more than a few minutes.

Wow, today is just website maintenance day or something.  I fixed up my xml feed.  Now it actually has the same formatting as the website, has links, etc, plus it shows how many comments there are.  Also, for those of you that view my site via rss, all the old links probably won’t work for you because I moved around the file archives, and, well, certain rss aggregators don’t really like to update items they already have (SharpReader is one such aggregator).

As you can probably see, there are now icons coresponding to categories on my website.  I noticed that many of my posts (especially lately) can be easily grouped into categories, so I went ahead and did it.  The really nice thing as that when you click on one of the icons, it gives you the list for all the entries in the topic.  Some of the entries cross into multiple categories, but I didn’t go through and give them more than one category.  There are also some with no categories.  Those are just straglers.  I may give them their own icon, but as of right now there’s none because I can’t find or come up with a good “misc” picture.

The latest incarnation of rebelpeon.com has hit the streets.  Time to eat it up!  With this new iteration, we have searching, rss, comments, a real archive, etc.  There are just too many features to list here.  Lets just say this “little” upgrade will make me a lot more motivated to update the website.  Just being able to update it anywhere that I can access a web browser, makes me drool with anticipation.  I even have all the archives from the old (hand-done) way of doin it in the system.  Just remember kids, databases are your friend!

Holy crap, it’s late though, and I’ve been working on this WAY to much in the last week.  I’ll post a better update on everything tomorrow (after some sleep).

Weee…It’s done.

***Currently Listening To: Frank Sinatra – Duets II How can you go wrong with Sinatra?  I mean, he’s singing with other people, so that just adds to it.  Good quality listening enjoyment.