I wanted to be able to print out the recipes without the sidebar stuff, the comment input boxes and the trackback info so...
I created a new stylesheet (named printing.css) and included it on the Individual Entry Archive pages (and Main Index for good measure). Now you can print recipes without the other clutter. Yay!
This line goes in the head of your pages:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/printing.css" />
Simple stuff.
Continue reading "CSS fun before bed (or how to make my site print nicely)" »
(I need someone to test this, so please let me know what happens and I can make updates as needed. -Thanks, Lisa)
So you've upgraded but haven't changed your templates. There's a few things you'll want to do to be able to use the spiffy new comment-y stuff.
1) Get rid of your Javascript popup comment window. Change the links on your Main Index to:
<MTIfCommentsActive>| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#comments">Comments
(<$MTEntryCommentCount$>)</a></MTIfCommentsActive>
<MTIfPingsActive>| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#trackback">TrackBacks
(<$MTEntryTrackbackCount$>)</a></MTIfPingsActive>
2) Make sure you have the new Javascript file. You can find it
here if it's missing. Create a new Index Template. Be sure to make the Output Filename mt-site.js. Paste the text in and save and rebuild it. (You can set it to not rebuild automatically with index templates because it won't change again.)
3) Fix up your Individual Entry Archive template.
(This is more complicated so it's in the extended entry.)
Continue reading "Converting MT to use the new comment stuff" »
For some bizarre reason, skins would not work the way I documented on :adi:'s site. Anyway, if you get everything set up and you always stay on skin #1 even though your cookie says a number other than 1, drop me a line and I'll show you the changes we made.
As for tonight, I'm too lazy to upload the changes because that was a long and fearsome battle. I''m sure I was scary to talk to while I was concentrating on the problem.
Back when :Statia: and I were first skinning her site, :Robyn: used the sandwich anology (*) to explain how you "piece" out index.php for skinning.
1) the code at the top, up to but not including MTEntries [bread]
2) the MTEntries stuff [the all important sandwich filler]
3) the code after MTEntries to the end [bread]
Section 2 is the code that stays in index.php.
Section 1 is headerN.php (where N is the skin #).
Section 3 is footerN.php (where N is the skin #).
You can get more complicated and leave the javascript and the other code that is global to all of your skins in index.php. Then your header & footer would just contain the code that actually changes per skin, but it's not necessary.
(*) The sandwich analogy has been around for a while.
Christine used it to explain skins to Robyn. And it's quite possible that
Amy used it to explain it to Christine.
I'm working on a skin that lets you cut & paste from IE. Mozilla is perfectly happy with my skins and you can probably cut & paste from your RSS reader (if you have one). If you want me to email you the text file version of the tutorial, I'd be happy to while I work on the new CSS.
Updates:
»
Donna pointed out over at :SG: the following about people who are designing linkware templates or who are using them: "any CSS divs inside the MTEntries tags (like "date" or "entry" or "posted") need to be the same across all skins for styles to apply correctly."
» Amy updated her tutorial, so I'll have to update mine as well. She mentioned in her comments at SG that "[she] updated the code on my tutorial a while back - this code is not going to work for people whose webhost is configured to have register_globals turned off in PHP." I'm guessing that's the problem that I had at adi's site. Updated!
Updated again - 9/5/05: Added info to use skin changing dropdowns instead of the skin index page. (Disclaimer: My code is actually formatted properly but the spaces are being compressed.)
Continue reading "Skinning tutorial" »
I've been meaning to post this feed, but keep forgetting to. Thanks goes to
Zuly for the needed prodding.
This is :Brad:'s version of this feed, not
Jennifer's. Please let me know if you want me to post my version of Jennifer's though.
Why use this feed?
This feed contains your 10 most recent posts as well as your 20 most recent comments. The difference between this and Jennifer's feed is that if someone comes by and comments on a post that's not one of your 10 most recent, your readers will still get to see the comment.
I like Jennifer's feed for sites that get a
lot of comments.
Continue reading "Posts + Comments Feed" »
With all of the talk about RSS feeds, I figured this would be a good topic to cover.
Now that you've gotten your RSS feed(s) set up, it's a good time to check out your site from the viewpoint of someone entering your site via an RSS reader.
You can do this by looking at the <link> tag for your entries. If you're linking to your monthly archives (or weekly), be sure to anchor down to the correct post to make it easier on your reader. If you're linking to an individual post (my preferred place to "land"), then things are probably set up pretty well already.
In either case, you should make sure that your reader can easily navigate to your front page as well as links to next & previous (months, weeks, posts, whatever).
If you are linking to an individual post, it's probably a nice idea to have the comments listed on that page as that's (probably) why the person came to your site from their newsreader anyway. (And personally, I like the comments displayed with the oldest at the top.)
A comment form (or at the very least a link to the comment form) is required also.
Now, look at that page. Should you add some of the lnks that you have on your front page to these other pages? Again, it depends. When I go to a blog from my newsreader, I don't usually hit the front page. Just the pages with posts that caught my eye.
If you have any questions or want my opinion about anything else, please let me know.
I decided to post my RSS feeds (1.0, 2.0 and comments 1.0) since there's been a lot of
discussion about them.
I'm using the
mt-entrybodymore plugin because I was
having problems getting my RSS to validate. I use
mt-xmlencode-block in my comments feed.
I also use
ResolveURLs to change any relative links in my posts to fully qualified links (ie, to the smileys).
Text versions of my feeds (right click and save as):
RSS 1.0 (also get this plugin) (name: index.rdf)
RSS 2.0 (also get this plugin) (name: index.xml)
Comment feed, 1.0 (also get this plugin) (name: comments.rdf)
Update: I blogged
this at :SG: too.
Update: Sam pointed out that I had my file extensions flipped, so I'm correcting them now.
Continue reading "My RSS feeds" »
