I cancelled my Blogger account way back in 2001, and I’ve resisted the impulse to register again ever since… but as of today I’m back. No, I’m not moving away from my home-grown system; it’s just that I got an invitation to join a new Sydney grogblog* called The Martini Club. So those of you with Blogger sites may notice that my comments are signed differently. Just in case you wonder!
* I just made that up. You read it here first, folks!
I’ve made a much-needed improvement on my Archive page: You can now search post text, comment text, or both. Previously it was only post text and it drove me crazy because occasionally I’d want to find a specific comment and not be able to remember which post it pertained to. You know, I really need to roll all this into GoddessBlog sometime soon…
Thinking of switching from Movable Type? This blog software breakdown compares several of the most popular (self-hosted) options. In case you’re wondering, GoddessBlog doesn’t do half those things. But then again, I can’t imagine ever needing to use them. (File editor? CSS editor? I’ll stick with FTP and Pico, thanks.)
Movable Type has changed its licensing and pricing structure and it looks like the shite has really hit the fan. I’ll admit to a small feeling of smugness at having run my own custom-built system for three years now.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present my RSS feed. I went with version 0.92 (for now). I started by downloading NetNewsWire and subscribing to several blogs and news sites. Then I went through to find the ones that looked best in my aggregator. Based on their XML and this sample PHP script, I put together a bit of code that actually manages to validate. If you use a different aggregator, please let me know how it looks to you or if you’d prefer a different format. Thanks!
Oh, and if any GoddessBlog users want the code for themselves, just let me know. It’ll take you less than ten minutes to implement.
Woohoo! I managed to fix that bug that prevented Safari users (including myself) from saving their cookies at this site. If you’re using GoddessBlog, you need to rewrite a few lines to make it work. If anybody else notices any weirdness when leaving comments here (like if it suddenly won’t remember your name), please let me know.In addcomment.php, look at lines 34-37. I’m using the “header” command to send the cookies to the browser. Safari is kinda puking on this, so instead we’ll send them a different way. Just change those lines to look like this:
$date = date(“D, d-M-y H:i:s”, ($time));
setcookie (“userName”, $userName, $time, ‘/’,
‘www.web-goddess.org’);
setcookie (“userEmail”, $userEmail, $time, ‘/’, ‘www.web-goddess.org’);
setcookie (“userUrl”, $userUrl, $time, ‘/’, ‘www.web-goddess.org’);
That should do it! Oh, and of course, replace the www.web-goddess.org with your own domain name. 🙂
1. How long have you had a weblog?
Some of you might be surprised to learn that although I started web-goddess in January 2001, I’ve actually had a weblog since September 2000. It was for an earlier incarnation of the Purple Weasels site and it mainly focused on Notre Dame news. I was inspired by this question to log into Blogger and see if any of those old posts still exist. Amazingly, they’re still there! I’ve scraped ’em out and I’m hoping to bring them back online soon. Like I said, it’s mostly college news, but there are some gems in there too.
2. What was your first post about?
Well, everyone’s very first post is always the equivalent of “Testing 1…2…3”, right? Disregarding those, my first real post on the PW site was this article about the then-upcoming Notre Dame vs. Nebraska football game. My first web-goddess posts (which you can read for yourself) were an announcement about my Roald Dahl site and a rant about British retail culture.
3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one?
Well, doing the PW blog for a few months made me eager to launch one of my own. Once web-goddess had started, though, I didn’t have much blogging energy left over. The PW blog (and site) eventually petered out. Other than that, the only major change has been the switch from “.co.uk” to “.org”. The former still works, but I think the latter is easier to remember.
4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else?
I started off using Blogger but quickly got pissed off with server outages and mysteriously disappearing archives. So I wrote my own, called GoddessBlog. It’s been a learning process, and I’ve done a lot of tinkering over the past year. You can download the source code yourself here. There are even a couple
other sites running it! It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it gets the job done and it feels pretty good to run your own system.
5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place?
I’ve tried to get into journals before, but I always lose interest. It’s like when you meet someone in person, you know? You can only talk about yourself for so long. I don’t mind if people throw in some journal-type entries, as long as they also entertain me with posts about Buffy or politics or dance music. Once I get to know someone through their site, I’m more willing (and, indeed, eager) to read about their latest vacation or rants about their job. But you can’t launch straight into that stuff, because when it’s a stranger, it’s boring. So I guess what I mean is, I’m not really interested in reading the journals of random netizens, but I am interested in reading the journals of my friends.
(Sidenote: That last question brings to my mind my greatest site anxiety, that y’all are getting sick of hearing about me – and especially the Snook – and would rather I just stick to the links and quizzes. I mean, looking back through my archives I can see the the percentage of biographical-type entries has been on the increase. But then I get indignant and think, “Screw that. There are a million identical weblogs and the only thing that makes mine stand out is ME. So why should I change that?” Which is comforting… for a while.)
The minor slashdotting I’m receiving has demonstrated some flaws in my backlink system. I’m modifying it now so you may notice some weirdness. Once I get it ironed out, I’ll post an update for the GoddessBlog version.
I’ve created a GoddessBlog mailing list so I don’t have to rely on people reading the blog to find out about releases and bug fixes. If you’d like to be on it, just send a blank e-mail here.
Another GoddessBlog Update: The Backlinks module is now available! It’s incredibly easy to setup and maintain. Go forth and code, my guinea pigs. 🙂
