Blogger

Tsk! To think that I have been using that slow Wordpress editor for so long…

I posted a question over at the Wordpress support forums in search of a web based editor I could use to post to my blog from work - without actually ever visiting it.

Not that this blog is subversive or contains illegal material , slanderous comments or items of a sexual nature . It’s just that I have started a new job and don’t want to make it obvious I am a blogger, that I blog and yes, I might be blogging about YOU.

The moderators over at the WP support forums came back with this site: WriteToMyBlog is a web based editor based on TinyMCE which allows remote posting to your blog - but via an excellent WYSIWYG editor. The editor is much better than the ones supplied with Blogger and Wordpress and it even handles a copy/paste from Microsoft Word - the enemy of working HTML!

I welcome my new interface to MegaTao.com and hope you will all heed my advice to start using it.

You can get a TinyMCE plugin for Wordpress too though - but I shall be sticking with WTMB.

I promised myself a long time ago that I would quit Blogger and get my own domain name, install Wordpress and start doing my own stuff.

I did half of that, well - sorta.  I did quit Blogger and I have moved to using Wordpress but I am still hogging on somone elses domain and don’t have any creative control over my template here.

http://www.taoski.com had already been taken, http://www.photao.com has been taken too, so I have been looking around at other possible domain names.  I decided that I did’nt want to go for http://www.taoskiblog.com as I don’t want to be limited to just a “blog” type domain name.  I also wanted to get myself a “cool” and “web 2.0″ sounding name such as Flickr or Labelr or something like that.

The only thing I have come up with a the moment is http://www.spangl.com.  “Spangle”.  Not too sure on it though.  I think the idea came from the obscure title of one of Nick’s postings.

But I have been thinking.

Are domain names so important now?  Most of the sites I come across are through links on http://del.icio.us or through other peoples blogs and Google.  I can’t think of that many occasions where I have given links to people by word of mouth.  So would it really matter if my domain was http://www.taoskis-wonderful-blog.com or http://www.tao-was-ere-again.com?

Some excellent free Blogger Templates here, including a port of the excellent K2 wordpress template!

Almost makes me want to stop writing my Blogger Template Overhaul series….

Via ProBlogger

I blogged a little while ago about the chap who was attempting to raise over $2k in donations to get himself a brand new iMac.

He has just recently ordered his machine for £2606.66!
Someone even donated over $1k to enable him to achieve his goal.  Pretty amazing really!

But i'm not greedy.  Just a Mac Mini would do me fine.  Or one of the original iMac's…

Anyone got one kicking around that they don't need?

I am already amazed by the Wordpress blogging platform!

Just this morning I have been able to:

• Import all of my posts and comments from Blogger
• Set up my sidebar using a drag-and-drop widget editor.
• Add a page that Blogger users get directed to with my popular posts listed.

So far, I am more than impressed.

In the (near) future I will be moving this to my own webspace, so the URL will change again.
Wordpress has many, many templates available but here at Wordpress.com you cannot edit the template code (at the moment).

Thats it!  I have had enough! 

I have decided to switch my blog from Blogger to Wordpress pending the purchase of some webspace.

At the moment, Blogger is having real issues with publishing and is sticking at 0%.
All the other Blogger users over at the Blogger Support Group are reporting the same thing too.

I have been planning to get rid of Blogger for some time now as they seem to have alot of publishing issues. I still have my "Bling Your Blog" series underway in Writely which focuses on customising a Blogger template so I might still publish that here.  When Blogger sorts themselves out, I will also import all my posts to here and make a new template that auto-redirects to this site.

Fancy that! A Blogger "how to" posted on a Wordpress blog!

I see I have 2 questions in the comments of my previous post from fellow Blogger users regarding template design.

So, rather than respond in the comments, here are the answers:

Question from GVM:

You seem to be a blogger expert, even a very friendly one, would it be a problem to ask you the following ?
- how do you adjust the size of the letters in the side bar, esp. the text in the About Me profile ?
- where can one find the "search this site" button ?

To change this, you need to find the following line in your CSS code at the top of your template:

#profile-container { }

And change it to the following to make the font the same size as the main post body text:

#profile-container {font-size:90%;}

Make sure you do a full blog republish and if you don't see the changes immediately, press CTRL+F5 to force a full refresh of your page.

The "search this site" button is actually built into the Blogger NavBar you see at the top of the blog. It just called "Search this blog" instead. The only problem with this is that it does not always pick up searches for new posts immediately. I had some posts that were over 3 weeks old that did'nt appear when I searched, but eventually they were indexed and it worked ok.

You can always try Google Sitesearch too.

Question from Tarun:

Different background for different posts intersting.tell me how to do it.

Well. That sounded more of a curt instruction really Tarun! But here's the answer.

To do this, you will need to use some Javascript code which sequentially adds 1 to a variable or takes it away for each post and then assigns a CSS property to the post depending on the value.

and First, you need to add the following lines to the CSS style area of your template. This is usually at the top of the template code, and will be enclosed between the </style> and </style> tags.

div.post-even { background-color : #F5F5F5; padding: 5px 15px; }
div.post-odd { padding: 5px 15px; }

Then, on the line just before the <Blogger> tag, I inserted some Javascript to zero the variable we would use.

<script type="text/javascript">var evenodd = 0</script>

And on the line just after the <Blogger> tag, I inserted some more Javascript that determines if the variable "evenodd" is 0 or 1 and applies the relevant CSS DIV to the post.

<script type="text/javascript">if(evenodd == 0) {document.write('<div class="post-even">');var evenodd = 1;} else if(evenodd == 1) {document.write('<div class="post-odd">');var evenodd = 0;}</script>

And that's it!

I actually made mine a little more complex by adding a gradient image to the bottom of the post in the CSS bit:

div.post-even {background-color : #F5F5F5;
padding: 5px 15px;
background: #F5F5F5 url(http://static.flickr.com/39/81719143_e19cdc7865_o.jpg) bottom left no-repeat;}

Hope this has been some help to you both. I am in the first stages of a new "project" that will encompass many similar requests - so watch this space.

MC Hammer Blog

No, no, no!
This was not why blogging was invented!
Gah!

ps. Turn your sound off… crap MIDI file alert!

Just been farting around with my template again over at my TaoTest blog. After seeing the cute and excellent site design over at OrderedList I decided to take mine to a "low tech, single post" level.

In order to do this effectively I would have to limit the size of the inital view of the latest posting to a few lines and then introduce a "Read More" item at the bottom for people to load the full thing up.

I did a search for Blogger Hacks and found this posting by Nerdier than thou! on how to create such a thing.

The only issue I can see with this is that you have to insert some CSS code into your post to get it to work correctly - which I don't want to do. I just want to make a posting and have the first portion of it displayed automatically.

So… Off to JavaScript land I went and came up with something that actually works!

Here's the code bit i stuck in my template:

<mainorarchivepage>

<script type="text/javascript">

var str_length=400;

str = '<$BlogItemBody$>';
last_dot = str.indexOf('.',str_length);
document.write(str.substring(0,last_dot + 1));
</script>

<br><a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Read more!</a>
</mainorarchivepage>

<itempage>
<$BlogItemBody$>
</itempage>

The blog post is written into the variable str and then the post is scanned for the next full stop after the number of characters specified in the str_length variable. To show more content, increase the value of str_length.

The post is then re-written using the document.write command as far as that full stop character to allow for proper sentences to be displayed rather than being cut off in mid flow.

The JavaScript is between the <mainorarchivepage> tags to allow it to be shown on the front page.

A normal <$BlogItemBody$> tag is shown between the <itempage> tags to allow it to be displayed in full when you click the "Read More!" link.

This is still a Work In Progress - so please don't take it as gospel - but I think it works ok. Not sure how it will work with pictures though.

Rather than messing with CSS code, I was thinking of putting some keywords into the text such as !start! and !end! to signify the start and end of the posting you want to be displayed before the "Read More!" link. That should be pretty easy for JavaScript to sense and strip them out, and alot easier than going into the HTML code when posting.