Posts

So — PortaBlosx

I was thinking, blosxom is very cool, but I’d like to be able to do a few things in regards to getting something on my blog when I am out and about;

  1. Be able to post from anywhere (i.e. I want a web-based interface of some sort)
  2. Be able to post from my Palm (I built AvantBlog for this reason, why not have AvantBlosx? 🙂 )
  3. A nifty little dialog-thingo allowing me to make quick posts (very similar to the Palm version) would be nice as well, something I could bookmarklet easily.

So I had a look around, and the first one appears to be pretty much available already, care of PHPetal. After that tho, there doesn’t appear to be a simple, clean interface available that could be hacked to use on Palm and as a simple little bookmarklet dialog.

My idea is basically to just provide the person with a very simple interface, at this stage it would consist of a select box containing a recursed listing of their blog directories, and a textarea where they could enter their post. As per blosxom, the first line would be used as the title, and I would either make up a filename based on the title, or just generate one from a timestamp.

What do you reckon?

PHPetal is pretty cool

I think (can’t remember already – it’s been a long day!) I found this one care of a lead from the blosxom mailing list, but here’s a cool, web-based application which operates very similarly to the “PortaBlosx” idea that I am still thinking of working on. It’s called PHPetal and basically just provides a one-page interface to posting to your blosxom-powered blog. It looks pretty funky, although it’s a bit “heavy” for converting to a Palm version I reckon, so I will keep thinking about my own, simple version.

And Then It Was Live!

Yes, I finally got my new site live, and it all appears to be working, including the new and fancy, blosxom-driven “Notes” section.

This has taken quite a bit of work to get live, but I am quite happy with the way that things have turned out. The main addition(s) that I want to make at this stage are writebacks on my Notes section, so that I can hear what you guys out there have to say about things, rather than this being a 1-way only information device 🙂

Keep an eye out for the ability to comment on my postings here in the nearish future (hopefully!). When I get it working, it should also allow for trackbacks, so you can register comments on my posts on your own blogs if you like

She Wants The World… And a Search Log Analyser!

Just kidding, but I got some details back from Lisa C, and she appears to have some very specialised requirements for her system. I have suggested that it might be better if we work together to develop a “base system” which would include the complete logging functionality, and then she can customise and/or extend the reporting/analysis interface as required.

I think this approach should work quite well, allowing me to collaborate on a logging module, and to refine the database schema, then develop a generic, “useful-across-the-board” analysis interface, which should be capable of being extended easily. Metabase, here I come.

No DOLA

That’s annoying — last week I got a call from DOLA, asking if I would be able to come in early next week (this week) to talk to them about doing some IA work for them.

I had to turn them down, because I am now working at AdultShop.com, which is taking up nearly all of my time, and I simply wouldn’t have had time to dedicate to the job. I asked them what they were doing anyway, and apparently they wanted me to work on the information architecture of their entire suite of websites and online applications – bugger!

Client Education Library for Information Architects (CELIA)

Aim:
Provide a collection of resources which will help Information Architects to educate potential and existing clients about the importance and relevance of Information Architecture and strategy.

Contents of Collection:

  • Diagrams
  • Quotes
  • Statistics
  • Case Studies/Examples
  • Online Resources

A search facility would be available, allowing you to hunt down certain things, as well as all widgets being categorised carefully and fully browsable. I’d like to be able to give everything a “permanent URL” within the collection as well, so that people can link back to it’s entry, and “reference” their resources properly, thus keeping authors happy(er) about the fact that their work is being used by other people in a relatively generic format.

We have response

Well, I thought they were silent, turns out I just needed to put the idea of CELIA to the whole AIfIA membership to get a response.

After being sparked on by a discussion on the [aifia-members] list, I posted about CELIA and had some reasonable responses. One of them was from James Robertson, of Step Two, an Australian Knowledge Management and CMS company based in Sydney – so he has offered to be a part of it, and this can be Australia’s biggest contribution to the community yet!

webpad Needs Some Love

webpad has been sorely neglected, and it is starting to show. I have a bad feeling that it won’t work on a default install of PHP anymore, and there are a number of reported bugs related to the install and configuration process which have done anything *but* go away with time. I think it is getting close to time that I need to re-write the core code for little-ole webpad, and try to bring things up to scratch.

There are also a number of improvements I would like to make to the system at the same time, but priority one will be to bring all of the existing code up to a certain level, then move forward to a new version.

And so… the requirements (as far as I am concerned) for version 2.1 public are;

  1. Re-write of backend code to standardize style/syntax etc.
  2. Ensure that all code is 100% compatible with a default installation (no register_globals being the big one here)
  3. Switch all of the Blogger.com operations over to using the new, inbuilt XML-RPC functions in PHP, rather than the external library it currently uses.
  4. Ensure that all Blogger.com operations still work (their API has been all over the place, so who knows??)
  5. Iron out any bugs in the install process to ensure that the app can be installed with a minimum of fuss.

With that out of the way, I will then look towards a 3.0 release, which should look something like this;

  1. Inclusion of ODBC, PostgreSQL and possibly Oracle plug-ins for authentication
  2. Streamlined setup/install and user management (*large* improvements planned)
  3. Improved support for authentication methods other than WIXAS
  4. Much better file management (directory creation, renaming, deleting etc)
  5. Integration with Blogger Pro, Radio and MovableType if possible (expanded to include template management and better post management)
  6. Ability to load a file from the filesystem via direct request (i.e. http://webpad/?file=/path/to/file.txt) assuming permissions allow it and it’s within the user’s home dir.
  7. Much better mult-user support
  8. Commercial licenses will attract a modest fee (in the vicinity of $USD15), while personal use will remain free

Now Working on RESTy Archives

I seem to have sorted out the main code for making blosxom at least pretend to be RESTy, now I am working on the archives system to clean that up. It is largely based on the main code, but needs to take into account the “forced” /archives/ directory when working out relative paths and stuff like that.

Once this is complete, I will then start working on creating some templates for the actual site (coverting my Visio wireframes into real XHTML!).