Recently in Blogs and Blogging Category
Upgraded to Movable Type 4 today. The upgrade process was pretty straightforward for the first part. However, I really got stuck in one area - in the archives templates section. My archive pages were not getting generated at all. I struggled with it and I realized later that I have to map the archives.
I will write a detailed review later but here are my tips if you want to install MT 4.
1. Don't forget to back up your old blog and the database.
2. Read the "Archive Mapping" and the "Archive File Path Specifiers" help pages.
3. The MT 4 default templates are here.
4. If you want to start from the new templates totally, use the "Refresh Templates" feature which is explained well on this page.
5. If you are having a lot of issues, try the Dynamic Publishing option discussed on this page.
6. Check out the MT news blog.
The new version is totally different and much much better. There are a lot of new features but these are the ones which really impressed me.
1. It is very easy to switch between templates now, similar to the template switching in Wordpress
2. The dynamic publishing is awesome. Maybe it is not suitable for very large sites but I was blown away by it.
3. Better editor and totally new interface.
Little more rambling about the coolness of dynamically generated pages and archive mapping :). I have always statically generated my pages till now. And maybe dynamic generation existed in previous versions of MT but I did not realize it. For example, my post about Bourne Ultimatum can be accessed at both http://blog.maisnam.com/archives/000218.php and http://blog.maisnam.com/archives/2007/08/bourne-ultimatu.php. However, here is the cool part. None of those pages exist. In fact, none of the pages in my /archives folder exist. Even though the user feels that they are actual pages, they are actually dynamically generated in real time. If you knew all about this and feel that it was something very simple everyone should know, so be it. But I am enjoying my new enlightenment :).
Have fun, everybody.
I have been compiling a list of blogs by Manipuris. The list is available here:
http://dir.manipur.org/?cat=4
If you would like to suggest another blog to be added to the list, please do so at:
http://dir.manipur.org/?add=4
From the list of blogs by Manipuris, I like reading these:
1. Arunima
2. Ranjan Yumnam
3. Brajeshwar Oinam
4. Bobo Chandam
KanglaOnline and E-Pao.net also maintain a list of blogs by Manipuris.
http://kanglaonline.com/?template=directory_details&catid=14
http://e-pao.net/epPageExtractor.asp?src=links.blogs.html..
Update (March 10, 2009): Aamir's Khan's blog is at: http://www.aamirkhan.com/blog/
Update (October 15, 2007): Aamir Khan's current blog is at: www.aamirkhan.com/blog.htm. The actual URL for the blog is: http://202.87.41.148/digital/AamirKhan/blog.php. This blog is on his new website: www.AamirKhan.com. This blog has posts since Oct 9, 2007.
- www.aamirkhan.com/blog/ - Aamir Khan's current blog (Oct 7, 2007 to present)
- www.lagaandvd.com/blog.php (June 17, 2007 to Oct 8, 2007)
- http://mangalpandey.spaces.live.com/blog/ (July 16, 2005 to Aug 16, 2005)
Update (August 3, 2007): Aamir Khan's current blog is here: www.lagaandvd.com/blog.php. He seems to be updating it regularly (last updated: Oct 8, 2007). Note (Oct 15, 2007): Aamir no longer uses this blog. This blog has posts from June 17, 2007 to Oct 8, 2007.
Original Post (August 16, 2005):
Came across Aamir Khan's blog! The blog is essentially about his new film "Mangal Pandey". There are only four posts till now (July 16(2), August 8 and August 15) but there are lots and lots of comments (713 comments for the first three posts i.e. an average of 238 comments per post). The nice thing about his blog is that he posts personal responses to selected user comments/emails. Note (Oct 15, 2007): Aamir no longer uses this blog. This blog has posts from July 16, 2005 to Aug 16, 2005.
Aamir is my favourite Indian movie actor. He is a brilliant actor, probably one of the very best in Indian cinema. His movie "Dil Chahta Hai" is one my two most favourite Hindi movies (The other one is "DDLJ").
Also, saw from the photos that Aamir uses an IBM Thinkpad. IBM Thinkpads are supposed to be the best laptops. They work great but the cost is higher when compared to others like Dell. However, Looks wise, I feel Thinkpads are not that great. Instead, I prefer Sony Vaio.
Via: Dr. Karuturi's Blog
If you did not notice it yet, http://www.movabletype.org/ now takes you to a new site - http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/, which is part of the newly redesigned Six Apart website.
As of now, http://www.typepad.com/ does not take you to the new typepad site (http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/) yet.
Previously I did wonder what "Six Apart" means. After reading through the page, I learnt that it is the number of days between the birth dates of Mena and Ben Trott, the founders of the company.
While I was there, I glanced through the history of Six Apart. It was interesting to read how the company grew from a two-person hobby to a 60-person company spanning three continents.
Six Apart is definitely a company to watch for in the days ahead.
Related Links:
- 02/15: New Site Launches (Six Apart)
- 02/11: Should Yahoo Buy Six Apart? (Internet News)
- 01/17: Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? (Internet Stock Blog)
Google has joined the initiative to fight/prevent comment spam. It has introduced a new tag called "nofollow". When Google comes across a hyperlink with this tag, it will ignore these links and not give any credit to them.
Read more about it in the Google Blog post (Jan 18, 2005).
Movable Type already supports comment moderation i.e. comments do not show up online till they are approved. But even deleting the unapproved comment spam is a real headache. I get about 20 to 30 comment spam on an average each day. Movable Type released a Guide to Comment Spam some days back (Jan 4, 2005).
Update (09:30 PM 1/20/2005): Have installed the MT nofollow plugin. Now, the links in the comments will automatically have the "nofollow" tag added to them. So, Google and other search engines will ignore those links.
Update (12:52 PM 1/21/2005): Read related article at news.com
I had upgraded to Movable Type 3.11 from 2.661 a couple of weeks back. But I did not change the default styles and templates. Yesterday, I updated the styles and templates. Everything was great but I started getting some mysterious 500 Internal Server Errors. I could not figure out what the problem was. Later, I found a couple of these lines in my server error log.
[2004-10-21 05:36:31]: error: file is writable by others: (/home/maisnam/public_html/blog/archives/000102.php)
I then chmoded all the files in the "archives" folder to 644. Now, I am not getting those internal server errors anymore. Hope I have solved the problem. I will be posting updates on this topic.
Update (12:53 AM 10/21/2004): I am getting these errors again everytime I add a new entry or make a change to an existing entry. It seems that the problem comes back everytime the files are re-generated. Right now, the patch-up solution I have found is to manually chmod to 644 all files in the "archives" folder and the index.php and archives.php files in the main folder. Any suggestions are welcome.
Came across FeedBurner today. It is an RSS and ATOM feed reader. It also provides detailed feed statistics.
The feedburner URL for this blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/m
From the Jun 21 2004 Issue of TIME magazine:
"What makes blogs so effective? They're free. They catch people at work, at their desks, when they're alert and thinking and making decisions. Blogs are fresh and often seem to be miles ahead of the mainstream news. Bloggers put up new stuff every day, all day, and there are thousands of them. How are you going to keep anything secret from a thousand Russ Kicks? Blogs have voice and personality. They're human. They come to us not from some mediagenic anchorbot on an air-conditioned sound stage, but from an individual. They represent — no, they are — the voice of the little guy. "
Read the article:
- Online at time.com
- Cached local copy (html, 20 kb)
- Cached local copy (pdf, 32 kb)
Everything is working fine now. I figured out why I was not getting the main page. It was being generated inside the cgi-bin directory.
Now, I have to figure out if I can set up Movable Type on my CS account and keep the MySQL database file on elangbam.com.
Hi All,
Installed Movable Type on elangbam.com webspace today. Tried to install on my CS webspace but some modules were not present. Also, I am not provided MySQL access in my CS account.
- Bobs
