Technology Tales

Going mobile

Now that the mobile web is upon us, I have been wondering about making my various web presences more friendly for users of that platform and my interest has been piqued especially by the recent addition of such capability to WordPress.com. With that in mind, I grabbed the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin and set it to work, both on this blog and my outdoors one. Well, the results certainly seem to gain a seal of approval from mobiReady so that’s promising. It comes with a version of the Carrington Mobile theme but you need to pop that into the themes directory on your web server yourself for WordPress’ plugin installation routines won’t do that for you. It could be interesting to see how things go from here and the idea of creating my own theme while using the plugin for redirection honours sounds like a way forward;I have found the place where I can make any changes as needed. Home made variants of the methodology may find a use with my photo gallery and Textpattern sub-sites.

Sometimes, things do get missed…

Being a user of Textpattern, I should have a vested interested in any developments in that venerable web platform. However, the latest release came out at the end of August unbeknownst to me and that’s with an entry on the Dev Blog. Those blog entries come irregularly so that might have been how I missed it but there were other things going on in my life like the installation of new windows in my house and weekends spent in Scotland and Ireland.

Still, the whole release was more low key than, say, a new version of WordPress where many would be shouting how important the upgrade would be and with messages turning up on blog administration screens too. There may be good reason for this given the recent problems experienced by those who fail to keep up with progress. Of course, WordPress is a major target for unwanted attention so it’s best to keep your wits about you. The low key nature of Textpattern might be an asset when it comes to warding off miscreants and its greater compatibility with more technically minded folk may help security too. Saying all of that may be pure speculation but you only have to look at the world of operating systems to see how the idea came into my mind.

A later posting on the Txp blog tells you about the new goodies available in release 4.2.0 but here’s a short selection to whet your appetite: themes for the administration area, multiple sites and new tags. Upgrading proved painless though I did try it out on an offline version of the microsite where I use Textpattern before making a move on its online counterpart. All went smoothly but it’s alway best to look before you leap or a site rebuild might be in order and no one needs that.

A self-hosted online photo album option

I was perusing a recent copy of Linux Format and encountered a feature describing a self-hosted alternative to the likes of Flickr: Gallery. From my quick look, it looks fully featured, offering themes and even shopping cart facilities for those who want to sell their wares. The screenshots on the open-source project’s website look promising but, for a fuller appraisal, I would need to spend some time trying to bend it to my will. Before anyone mentions it, I am aware that WordPress can be used for photoblogging, but this tool seems to take things a bit further. It’s the sort of thing about which I might have wondered, given the pervasiveness of content management systems these days. My own custom-built photo gallery is devoid of a slick back end, hence why Gallery caught my eye, but I’ll continue with it and may even get to adding the needful myself.

Bumping newly edited older articles in Textpattern

Whether this is intended or not, you can put a pre-existing article to the top of your website’s Atom or RSS feed by saving it as draft while it is being modified before restoring its status to live again. This is handy when you have got permanent articles that you are enhancing over the course of time and you want to give your visitors a reason to return and maybe even prompt search engines too. New articles will achieve this always but it’s nice to see that older articles don’t get lost in space either. This may be a hack but I am using Textpattern for permanent postings rather than blogging and am very happy to see the availability of the feature.

Investigating Textpattern

With the profusion of Content Management Systems out there, open source and otherwise, my curiosity has been aroused for a while now. In fact, Automattic’s aspirations for WordPress (the engine powering this blog) now seem to go beyond blogging and include wider CMS-style usage. Some may even have put the thing to those kinds of uses but I am of the opinion that it has a way to go yet before it can put itself on a par with the likes of Drupal and Joomla!.

Speaking of Drupal, I decided to give it a go a while back and came away with the impression that it’s a platform for an entire website. At the time, I was attracted by the idea of having one part of a website on Drupal and another using WordPress but the complexity of the CSS in the Drupal template thwarted my efforts and I desisted. The heavy connection between template and back end cut down on the level of flexibility too. That mix of different platforms might seem odd in architectural terms but my main website also had a custom PHP/MySQL driven photo gallery too and migrating everything into Drupal wasn’t going to be something that I was planning. In hindsight, I might have been trying to get Drupal to perform a role for which it was never meant so I am not holding its non-fulfillment of my requirements against it. Drupal may have changed since I last looked at it but I decided to give an alternative a go regardless.

Towards the end of last year, I began to look at Textpattern (otherwise known as Txp) in the same vein and it worked well enough after a little effort that I was able to replace what was once a visitor dossier with a set of travel jottings. In some respects, Textpattern might feel less polished when you start to compare it with alternatives like WordPress or Drupal but the inherent flexibility of its design leaves a positive impression. In short, I was happy to see that it allowed me to achieve what I wanted to do.

If I remember correctly, Textpattern’s default configuration is that of a blog and it can be used for that purpose. So, I got in some content and started to morph the thing into what I had in mind. My ideas weren’t entirely developed so some of that was going on while I went about bending Txp to my will. Most of that involved tinkering in the Presentation part of the Txp interface though. It differs from WordPress in that the design information like (X)HTML templates and CSS are stored in the database rather than in the file system à la WP. Txp also has its own tag language called Textile and, though it contains conditional tags, I find that encasing PHP in <txp:php></txp:php> tags is a more succinct way of doing things; only pure PHP code can be used in this way and not a mixture of such in <?php ?> tags and (X)HTML. A look at the tool’s documentation together with perusal of Apress’ Textpattern Solutions got me going in this new world (it was thus for me, anyway). The mainstay of the template system is the Page and each Section can use a different Page. Each Page can share components and, in Txp, these get called Forms. These are included in a Page using Textile tags of the form <txp:output_form form=”form1″ />. Style information is edited in another section and you can have several style sheets too.

The Txp Presentation system is made up of Sections, Pages, Forms and Styles. The first of these might appear in the wrong place when being under the Content tab would seem more appropriate but the ability to attach different page templates to different sections places their configuration where you find it in Textpattern and the ability to show or hide sections might have something to do with it too. As it happens, I have used the same template for all bar the front page of the site and got it to display single or multiple articles as appropriate using the Category system. It may be a hack but it appears to work well in practice. Being able to make a page template work in the way that you require really offers a great amount of flexibility and I have gone with one sidebar rather than two as found in the default set up.

Txp also has facility to add plugins (look in the Admin section of the UI) and this is very different from WordPress in that installation involves the loading of an encoded text file, probably for sake of maintaining the security and integrity of your installation. I added the navigation facility for my sidebar and breadcrumb links in this manner and back end stuff like Tiny MCE editor and Akismet came as plugins too. There may not be as many of these for Textpattern but the ones that I found were enough to fulfill my needs. If there are plugin configuration pages in the administration interface, you will find these under the Extensions tab.

To get the content in, I went with the more laborious copy, paste and amend route. Given that I was coming from the plain PHP/XHTML way of doing things, the import functionality was never going to do much for me with its focus on Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger and b2. The fact that you only import content into a particular section may displease some too. Peculiarly, there is no easy facility for Textpattern to Textpattern apart from doing a MySQL database copy. Some alternatives to this were suggested but none seemed to work as well as the basic MySQL route. Tiny MCE made editing easier once I went and turned off Textile processing of the article text. This was done on a case by case basis because I didn’t want to have to deal with any unintended consequences arising from turning it off at a global level.

While on the subject of content, this is also the part of the interface where you manage files and graphics along with administering things like comments, categories and links (think blogroll from WordPress). Of these, it is the comment or link facilities that I don’t use and even have turned comments off in the Txp preferences. I use categories to bundle together similar articles for appearance on the same page and am getting to use the image and file management side of things as time goes on.

All in all, it seems to work well even if I wouldn’t recommend it to many to whom WordPress might be geared. My reason for saying that is because it is a technical tool and is used best if you are prepared to your hands dirtier from code cutting than other alternatives. I, for one, don’t mind that at all because working in that manner might actually suit me. Nevertheless, not all users of the system need to have the same level of knowledge or access and it is possible to set up users with different permissions to limit their exposure to the innards of the administration. In line with Textpattern’s being a publishing tool, you get roles such as Publisher (administrator in other platforms), Managing Editor, Copy Editor, Staff Writer, Freelancer, Designer and None. Those names may mean more to others but I have yet to check out what those access levels entail because I use it on a single user basis.

There may be omissions from Txp like graphical presentation of visitor statistics in place of the listings that are there now and the administration interface might do with a little polish but it does what I want from it and that makes those other considerations less important. That more cut down feel makes it that little more useful in my view and the fact that I have created A Wanderer’s Miscellany may help to prove the point. You might even care to take a look at it to see what can be done and I am sure that it isn’t even close to exhausting the talents of Textpattern. I can only hope that I have done justice to it in this post.

Work locally, update remotely

Here’s a trick that might have its uses: using a local WordPress instance to update your online blog (yes, there are plenty of applications that promise to edit your online blog but these need file permissions to the likes of xmlrpc.php to be opened up). Along with the right database access credentials and the ability to log in remotely, adding the following two lines to wp-config.php does the trick:

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://localhost/blog');

define('WP_HOME', 'http://localhost/blog');

These two constants override what is in the database and allow to update the online database from your own PC using WordPress running on a local web server (Apache or otherwise). One thing to remember here is that both online and offline directory structures are similar. For example, if your online WordPress files are in blog in the root of the online web server file system (typically htdocs for Linux), then they need to be contained in the same directory in the root of the offline server too. Otherwise, things could get confusing and perhaps messy. Another thing to consider is that you are modifying your online blog so the usual rules about care and attention apply, particularly with respect to using the same version of WordPress both locally and remotely. This is especially a concern if you, like me, run development versions of WordPress to see if there are any upheavals ahead of us like the overhaul that is coming in with WordPress 2.7.

An alternative use of this same trick is to keep a local copy of your online database in case of any problems while using a local WordPress instance to work with it. I used to have to edit the database backup directly (on my main Ubuntu system), first with GEdit but then using a sed command like the following:

sed -e s/www\.onlinewebsite\.com/localhost/g backup.sql > backup_l.sql

The -e switch uses regular expression substitution that follows it to edit the input with the output being directed to a new file. It’s slicker than the interactive GEdit route but has been made redundant by defining constants for a local WordPress installation as described above.

Remove Revisions 2.2

There is already a post on here devoted to version 1.0 of this plugin and that very much tells you what it does. The new version will work with the forthcoming WordPress 2.7 (itself a release that’s had a development cycle with such upheavals that it would make you want to watch from the relative safety of the sidelines) and has been made to be a little more user friendly in its actions; in fact, it behaves more like any other plugin now.

Download Remove Revisions 2.2

Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress plugin, a wish list

I must admit that I have a liking for FCKEditor over and above what comes as standard with WordPress and the FCKEditor for WordPress plugin has been addressing my preference for a while now. However, its most recent release dates from last April and its integration with WordPress 2.6.x has been leaving a lot to be desired. In that vein, I have decided to collect a few of them here:

1. Automatic saves: the idea behind this feature of WordPress is that you aren’t hitting the save button that often at all. In fact, given that hitting save creates a revision and an extra record in your database, it really isn’t something that you should be doing very often anyway. Unless, you don’t mind a bloated database, it’s probably best to avoid that habit of saving every few minutes like I do when using Word.
2. Word count: this doesn’t update without saving a revision while it should update periodically in a manner akin to the automatic saves.
3. Insertion of media such as images: this is just broken and it takes away the possibility of having galleries and captions without manual work.

What I have above are the major inconsistencies but there have always been annoyances like the adding unwanted &nbsp; entities allover the place, probably a habit of FCKEditor itself anyway. Nevertheless, it’s the integration work that really shows the lack of attention. Maybe, it’s time to move Dean Lee’s labour of love over to a fully community-maintained course of development. I know that it’s hard to see your “baby” leave you and take flight but I am inclined that it’s the best way forward when you considered how rapidly WordPress has been changing over the last year. Some moves have been made towards this but they really do need to go further.

A radical new look on the way for WordPress’ administration area

One thing that you can never say about Automattic is that it stands still for very long. That may generate adverse commentary from some but it’s bad to leave things stagnate too. In fact, resting on laurels also generates flak so you can’t please everyone all the time.

Earlier on this year, the WordPress administration screens went through something of an overall for version 2.5. In hindsight, it wasn’t terribly dramatic, but the prospect had me checking out what was happening with the development version and contributing to the project in my own small way. Now, it seems that a bigger upheaval is in prospect with wireframes and what not being brought into play on the design side.

The first change that anyone will notice is that the navigation has moved from the top to the side and that some things have been moved around and renamed. Another thing that you’ll see soon enough is that there is a QuickPress section added to the dashboard screen for those really quick and short postings. Sticking with the subject of content creation, alterations to post and page editing screens and the link creation screen are obvious too. What really comes to mind here is the level of customisation on offer so you can make yourself feel right at home: some of the screen furniture can be moved about and you can remove what you feel is nothing but useless clutter. Content generates comments, so the addition of keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation should be a boon for those with very active readers.

Some functionality currently added by plugins is getting incorporated in the main application. An example is automatic upgrades of WordPress itself. In the development version, it installs the latest nightly build but I am certain that it can be made to point to the latest stable release. That makes it more convenient for keeping a backseat eye on things rather than getting stuck into the hurly-burly of checking on what’s in Subversion.

There are some pieces that remain incompletely functional at present, such as the Inbox and Media added to this post pieces, but I have seen nothing that used to work to be broken. So, while the development version of WordPress is more of a work in progress than I have seen for a while, it will do what you need it to do. You always need to be cautious and I’d advise you to keep away until it’s ready for the big time until you have the knowledge to put things back should the undesirable befall your blog. I had an automatic WordPress update kick in maintenance mode without turning it off again. Nothing happened to the database, so a manual re-installation was all that was required to restore order. Otherwise, the development installation remains relatively stable though there are display problems in IE6 that do not afflict either Firefox, Opera or even IE8 Beta2.

All in all, these changes will make the next major WordPress a very big one and I have little doubt that the new administration interface will make for many comments. I must admit that I wasn’t too taken with it when I first glimpsed it in the crazyhorse branch but it now seems to be growing on me. The biggest change on the aesthetic front is that there’s a lot less whitespace about which may or may not float your boat. In any event, you can always change the colours like I have to make things more amenable. Even so, I reckon that WordPress 2.7 will be a major step forward when it comes and I think that I could like it. Saying that, I reckon that the release date is a good while away yet and the fact that 2.6.2 is being readied for release is telling in itself. Leaving plenty of time to remove any roughness is never a bad thing and especially so when you see the changes that are being made. In the meantime, I am certain that most people can wait.

An alternative use for Woopra

Google Analytics is all very fine with its once a day reporting cycle but the availability of real time data dose have its advantages. WordPress.com’s Stats plugin goes some way to serving the need but Woopra trumps it in every way apart from a possible overkill in the amount of information that it makes available. The software may be in the beta phase and it does crash from time to time but its usefulness remains more than apparent.

One of its uses is seeing if there are people visiting your website at a time when you might be thinking of making a change like upgrading WordPress. Timing such activities to avoid a clash is a win-win situation: a better experience from your visitors and more reliable updates for you. After all, it’s very easy to make a poor impression and an unreliable site will do that faster than anything else so it’s paramount that your visitors do not get on the receiving end of updates, even if they are all for the better.