Last freaking post (with updates! until I’m done)
************LAST UPDATE***************
FINALLY. The new site is up, and it is…
The return of SPLEENVILLE.COM.
Yes, I decided to bring the old site back alive, as it were. Well, not alive — it’s the “new” Spleenville, not the old one, or the last version thereof which I couldn’t revive (some sort of database collapse killed it, if I recall correctly), so there will be all new posts. But I’ve set up a redirect so all you’ll have to type into your browser address bar is “spleenville.com/hq2″ (ADDED NOTE: sorry, I tried to make the main url redirect and it messed up all the other things I had under the root directory, so don’t forget that “/hq2″) and it will head right to it, like a calf to it’s mother cow’s, er. side. Or something like that. Anyway, GO.
*******END LAST UPDATE**************
I’ve been having real trouble getting a post up on this site, so I think it’s time I closed it and started my new website which I’ve been promising to set up. If I can, I’ll post the link to the new site in an update to this post.
Update: frak. WordPress 2.8 seems to be having a multitude of problems. So there goes that install. I’m going to try other blogging software. The problem is, the three I’m looking at — Textpattern, Nucleus, and Expression Engine (the free version) don’t seem to have commenter registration. You can add users, but the lowest restriction to users is “author” — they can write posts as well as comments. I’ve actually been thinking of having more than one poster — you know, a group blog kind of setup — for my new site. I still haven’t decided. But that doesn’t solve the problem of keeping out the trolls in a way that doesn’t mean I have to sit here all day modifying comments. There are outside commenting programs available, like Disqus, that I could set up, but I don’t want to depend on another server.
Update 2: okay, I deleted the WordPress 2.8 install and installed Textpattern and I was getting the same problems — specifically, images were degraded as if they had only been partially uploaded. I had been using gftp (a plain-jane Linux ftp program kind of like my beloved WS-FTP — the old free student version not the fancy shareware version), so I went into my server’s cpanel via the browser, deleted all the images, and re-uploaded them. Now they work. Still, there were some other problems with the WordPress so I may not install that. I have to test out more software. Stay tuned… I’ll just be updating this post until the issue is resolved, then I’ll put up the new blog’s url.
Update 3: apparently they’re having a few problems with WordPress 2.8. I’m not making any judgments — I’m just reporting.
Update 4, Wednesday June 17th: okay, today I played around with Expression Engine. Their free “core” version seems to have a member module where I can set up member registration for the site, but I can’t figure out how to get a register/login-logout/view your profile link to work. It just goes to a blank page. I’m getting a tad exasperated. Though I did decide to try another ftp program and found FireFTP which is a Firefox add-on that will work in Linux. It works fine. So I may try setting up WordPress 2.8 again and see if I can’t get it all working. The fun continues…
Also, I haven’t been idle in other areas. I’ve got a lot to write about as soon as I get the new site set up. Stay tuned…
Friday, June 19th update: okay, I’ve tested out three blogging software programs. There are a couple more (Nucleus and B2Evolution), but I’m getting kind of tired of uploading stuff, so I don’t know that I’ll be playing around with them. Anyway, what I’ve tested so far is WordPress 2.8, Expression Engine “Core,” and Textpattern. I can tell you I’m tending towards Textpattern, because except for a few design glitches (which may be due to the way Ubuntu displays special characters and can be fixed by changing style sheets), it’s worked the best of the three. The only thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any comment registration module or plugin for it. I could set comments to moderated, but that’s dreary. I do have the ability to ban commenters, though (the old-fashioned way, by IP banning), and I know that you’re all pretty tired of re-registering again and again. And I can set the comments to close after a certain number of days, which is somewhat discouraging to trolls.
What attracts me to Textpattern is the simplicity of its administrative area, and also it does not seem to be as unwieldy as the other two. WordPress especially has gotten pretty huge and complicated, and its “dashboard” screens are slow to load. Expression Engine is pretty complicated even in its core version not to have member registration ready to go out of the bat, IMHO. It otherwise works fine, but it’s not any better in that respect than Textpattern.
So the choice comes down to: a simpler program but one without comment registration, or a heavier program that hangs occasionally and furthermore won’t let me load up images (I thought I had set the permissions in WordPress correctly, but it still gives me a blank page when I try to upload an image) but lets me restrict commenters to registration only? I think I’m trending towards the former. In any case, I’ll probably have this decided by the weekend, in which case an ANNOUNCEMENT will be appearing at the top of this post. Until then, have a nice Friday.
The EE Core installation I have for the two sites I’m volunteer webmaster for, do seem to have commenter registration, but it’s actually site registration where you assign the default member group limited, non-dashboard privileges so they can’t access the controls to post, edit or delete entries. They can access their own membership details (except for privileges, of course) and post comments, and that’s all.
The version of EE Core I have installed is 1.6.3 — unless there’s been a massive change to Core’s capabilities since then the current version should still support commenter registration.
Hmm… well, I plan set up a test site to see how that works. I have version 1.6.7 waiting to be played with.
I had one issue with 2.8: it pasted double copies of the bottom-of-the-page navigation (“Newer Entries” – “Older Entries”) on all the archives, which I didn’t notice until I was scrolling through one category and found all the extraneous stuff. I have thwapped the templates back into submission.
I figure I can deal with EE, if that’s the way you’re going.
We\’ll be waiting. Stalking, whatever.
Re the WordPress upgrade, shades of MT3!
What does the link code look like? E-mail me if you’d prefer.
On my site the link code looks like this:
Register: <a href=”{path=[member "trigger" word]/register}”>
Login: <a href=”{path=[member "trigger" word]/login}”>
You set the member “trigger” word in the control panel at CP Home › Admin › Members and Groups › Membership Preferences in the last line on that page.
…and if you change that word you need to change it everywhere it appears in your templates.
I was just looking up another place where I seem to remember once before also having to change the trigger word but instead happened on a very recent forum thread at ExpressionEngine.com where it is claimed Core doesn’t include the member module.
Unless I pirated the one that came with my paid license to put on those other sites, I think either somebody’s got it wrong at EE, or something has changed very recently.
When you go to CP Home › Admin › Members and Groups › View Members what happens?
FTR, I distinctly do not remember having done so.
<sigh>
Found the one other file that needs to be changed to reflect a changed trigger word, as explained here.
I still don’t know why they require a special template to be hard-coded like that.
I do get a page showing my member list, which right now just consists of me.
I’ll email you. I have to take a look at that member-trigger-word thing — not sure if I set that up.
Just checked — yup, it’s there, the member trigger word is “member.” It was already set up, in fact.
How odd. I may have to try to set up those links on one of my Core sites to see if they work for me, or if the forum moderator who said Core doesn’t have those functions was indeed correct.
Anyway, as I said via e-mail, these days EE is really more of a site-building engine with blogging capabilities, than a blogging platform.
Have you considered using Haloscan for comments?
Ooh, no, I hate Haloscan with the heat of ten thousand suns. Sites with Haloscan often never load at all on my computer — I don’t know why.
However, there are a few other commenting scripts out there with all sorts of features that look interesting (Disqus, something else I can’t remember right now), and I am keeping them in mind in case the new site gets unruly. Speaking of which… (See the top of the post.)