Technology Tales

Easier to print?

One matter that really came to light was how well or not the pages on here and on my hill walking and photography website came out on the printed page. After spotting a WordPress Codex article and with an eye on improving things, I have made a distinction between screen and print stylesheets. The code in the XHTML looks like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style_print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

The media attribute seems to be respected by the browsers that I have been using for testing (latest versions of Firefox, MSIE and Opera) so it then was a matter of using CSS to control what was shown and how it was displayed. Extraneous items like sidebars were excluded from the printed page in favour of the real content that visitors would be wanting anyway, and everything else was made as monochrome as possible, with images being the only things to escape. After all, people don't want to be wasting paper and ink in these cash strained times, and there's no need to have any more colour than necessary either. Then, there's the distraction caused by non-functioning hyperlinks that has inspired the sharing of some wisdom on A List Apart. Returning to my implementation, please let me know in the comments what you think of what I have done on here and if there remains any room for improvement.

Another look at Drupal

Early in the first year of this blog, I got to investigate the use of Drupal for creating an article-based subsite. In the end, the complexities of its HTML and CSS thwarted my attempts to harmonise the appearance of web pages with other parts of the same site, and I discontinued my efforts. In the end, it was Textpattern that suited my needs, and I have stuck with that for the aforementioned subsite.

However, I recently spotted someone very obviously using Drupal in its out of the box state for a sort of blog (there is even an extension for importing WXR files containing content from a WordPress blog); they even hadn't removed the Drupal logo. With my interest rekindled, I took another look for the sake of seeing where things have gone in the last few years. Well, first impressions are that it now looks more like a blogging tool, with greater menu control and the facility to define custom content types.

There are plenty of nice themes around too, though that highlights an idiosyncrasy in the sense that content editing is not fully integrated into the administration area where I'd expect it to be. The consequence of this situation is that pages, posts (or story as the content type is called) or any content types that you have defined yourself are created and edited with the front page theme controlling the appearance of the user interface.

It is made even more striking when you use a different theme for the administration screens. That oddity aside, there is a lot to recommend Drupal, even if I'd try setting up a standalone site with it rather than attempting to shoehorn it as a part of an existing one like what I was trying when I last looked.

Further securing MySQL in Fedora

Ubuntu users must be spoilt because any MySQL installation asks you for a root password, an excellent thing in my opinion. With Fedora, it just pops the thing on there with you needing to set up a service and setting the root password yourself; if I recall correctly, I think that openSUSE does the same thing. For the service management, I needed to grab system-config-services from the repositories because my Live CD installation left off a lot of stuff, OpenOffice and GIMP even. The following command line recipe addressed the service manager omission:

su - # Change to root, entering password when asked
yum -y install system-config-services # Installs the thing without a yes/no prompt
exit # Return to normal user shell

Thereafter, the Services item from the menus at System > Administration was pressed into service and the MySQL service enabled and started. The next step was to lock down the root user, so the following sequence was used:

mysql # Enter MySQL prompt; no need for user or password because it still is unsecured!
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit # Exit the mysql prompt, leaving the bare mysql command unusable

For those occasions when password problems keep you out of the MySQL shell, you'll find password resetting advice on the MySQL website, though I didn't need to go the whole hog here. MySQL Administrator might be another option for this type of thing. That thought never struck me while I was using it to set up less privileged users and allowing them access to the system. For a while, I was well stymied in my attempts to access the MySQL using any of those extra accounts until I got the idea of associating them with a host, another thing that is not needed on Ubuntu if my experience is any guide. All in all, Fedora may make you work a little extra to get things like thing done, yet I am not complaining if it makes you understand a little more about what is going on in the background, something that is never a disadvantage.

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. While it comes with a version of the Carrington Mobile theme, you need to pop that into the themes directory on your web server yourself, as 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. Homemade 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. Since those blog entries come irregularly, that might have been how I missed it, especially when 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. Though the quieter nature of the Textpattern project might be an asset when it comes to warding off miscreants, its greater compatibility with more technically minded folk may help security too. While saying all of that may be pure speculation, 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 Textpattern blog tells you about the new goodies available in release 4.2.0, yet 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. Even if all went smoothly, it's always 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

When I was perusing a recent copy of Linux Format, I 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.

Take a great leap forward, then consolidate...

While I have been a user of WordPress since late 2006, I only began to start keeping tabs on its development following my hearing news of dramatic changes coming in what became 2.5. Since a pattern developing with more significant changes coming in 2.5 and 2.7 while both 2.6 and 2.8 didn't add too much in the way of upheaval but rather evolved what was already there. With 2.8, theme and widget management got the once over, while there were plenty of other tweaks that polished a well received forbear. The differences between 2.7 and 2.8 are discernible without breaking anything that shouldn't be broken. In short, I rather like the result.

The reaction to 2.5 was mixed, to say the least, and that in part led to the dramatic changes in 2.7, especially regarding the administration interface. Now, I admit to having had doubts about these when I first saw them in development, especially when there was so much chopping and changing during development that stepping back until things settled down became a necessity. Even adding a ticket to the TRAC was problematical, unless you had sight of what was happening behind the scenes, because it became too easy to add an invalid ticket.

With the release of 2.8 into the wild, 2.9 is now on the horizon, and I am inclined to suspect that we might see more considerable changes again. For one thing, there was that interface poll a little while ago, so who knows what impact that may have on what comes next. The structure of the administration screens may not alter that much, but it still leaves changes to colours and icons with the aim of separating navigation from what else is on there, something that doesn't trouble me at all. In fact, I don't see very much wrong with how things are right now, which causes me to wonder if there's any point in making too many changes at all.

The forecasted incorporation of WPMU functionality is a bigger change that would mean the end of WordPress MU as a separate entity, and would concern me more with the amount of under the bonnet re-engineering that would be needed. Add Google Summer of Code projects to this mix and 2.9 looks as if it could be a step change in the spirit of 2.5 and 2.7, if not in feel. Summer 2009 could be very interesting for WordPress, leaving me to hope that it continues to work for me in the way that it does as we move from version to version.

Self-hosted web analytics tracking

It amazes me now to think how little tracking I used to do on my various web "experiments" only a few short years ago. However, there was a time when a mere web counter, perhaps displayed on web pages themselves, was enough to yield some level of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction in many a case. Things have come a long way since then, and we now seem to have analytics packages all around us. In fact, we don't even have to dig into our pockets to get our hands on the means to peruse this sort of information, either.

At this point, I need to admit that I am known to make use of a few simultaneously but thoughts about reducing their number are coming to mind, but there'll be more on that later. Given that this site is hosted using WordPress software, it should come as no surprise that Automattic's own plugin has been set into action to see how things are going. The main focus is on the total number of visits by day, week and month, with a breakdown showing what pages are doing well, together with an indication of how people came to the site and what links they followed while there. Don't go expecting details of your visitors like the software that they are using and the country where they are accessing the site with this minimalist option and satisfaction should head your way.

There is next to no way of discussing the subject of website analytics without mentioning Google's comprehensive offering in the area. You have to admit that it's comprehensive, with perhaps the only bugbear being the lack of live tracking. That need has been addressed very effectively by Woopra, even if its WordPress plugin will not work with IE6. Otherwise, you need the desktop application (being written in Java, it's a cross-platform affair and I have had it going in both Windows and Linux) but that works well too. Apart maybe from the lack of campaigns, Woopra supplies as good as all the information that its main competitor provides. It certainly does what I would need from it.

However, while they can be free as in beer, there are some costs associated with using external services like Google Analytics and Woopra. Their means of tracking your web pages for you is by executing a piece of JavaScript that needs to be added to every page. If you have everything set to use a common header or footer page, that shouldn't be too laborious, especially when there are plugins for publishing platforms like WordPress too. This way of working means that if anyone has JavaScript disabled or decides not to enable JavaScript for the requisite hosts while using the NoScript extension with Firefox, then your numbers are scuppered. Saying that, the same concerns probably any JavaScript code that you may want to execute, but there's another cost again: the calls to external websites can, even with the best attention in the world, slow down the loading of your own pages. When you add in latency caused by servers having to communicate across the web, it is not all about executing JavaScript code.

A self-hosted analytics package would avoid the latter, and I found one recently through Lifehacker: Piwik, formerly known as PHPMyVisites. Usefully, it turns out that it does next to everything that Google Analytics does. While I'd prefer that it used PHP for this, JavaScript is its means of tracking web pages too. Nevertheless, page loading is still faster than with Google Analytics and/or Woopra and Firefox/NoScript users would only have to allow JavaScript for one site too. If you have had experience with installing PHP/MySQL-powered publishing platforms like WordPress, Textpattern and such like, then putting Piwik in place is no ordeal. Though, you may find yourself changing folder access, uploading of the required files, the specification of database credentials and adding an administration user is all fairly standard stuff. After all that, I have the thing tracking this edifice as well as my outdoor activities (hillwalking/cycling/photography) web presence and I cannot say that I have any complaints, so we'll see how it goes from here.

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. Though some may even have put the thing to those kinds of uses, I believe that it has a way to go 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. Though that mix of different platforms might seem odd in architectural terms, 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. Since I might have been trying to get Drupal to perform a role for which it was never meant, I am not holding its non-fulfillment of my requirements against it. While Drupal may have changed since I last looked at it, 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, Though Textpattern might feel less polished when you start to compare it with alternatives like WordPress or Drupal, 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 recall correctly, Textpattern's default configuration is that of a blog, which means that 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. Because my ideas weren't entirely developed, 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 a 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, while 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. Though it may be a hack, it appears to work well in practice. Being able to make a page template work in the way that you require really offers a considerable amount of flexibility; it allowed me to go with one sidebar rather than two as found in the default set up.

Txp also has the 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 the sake of maintaining the security and integrity of your installation. I added the navigation facility for my sidebar and breadcrumb links in this manner, with back end stuff like Tiny MCE editor and Akismet coming as plugins too. While there may not be as many of these for Textpattern, the ones that I found were enough to fulfil 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 performing a Textpattern to Textpattern migration apart from doing a MySQL database copy. While some alternatives to this were suggested, 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 (like a blog roll on WordPress). Of these, it is the comment or link facilities that I don't use, allowing me to turn comments off in the Txp preferences. So far, I am using categories to bundle together similar articles for appearance on the same page, while also 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 the sort of audience to whom WordPress might be geared. My reason for saying that is because it is a technical tool that 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; usefully, 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.

Txp may lack certain features, such as graphical visitor statistics instead of the current text listings. While, its administration interface could benefit from refinement, it fulfils my core requirements. The more streamlined approach makes it more practical in my opinion, which is demonstrated by my creation of A Wanderer's Miscellany. Consider exploring it yourself to see what's possible, since I am certain that I have only scratched the surface of Textpattern's capabilities.

Episodes of poor performance

Over the last few days, I have been noticing from various that this blog isn't performing as I would want it. The first hint was a comment on a tuxmachines.org mention for a recent entry (thanks for the support, by the way) that the link wasn't working as it should have been. Add to this various emails from Are My Sites Up? saying that the site seemed to be down. By all accounts, this free service that I found through Lifehacker would appear to be doing its job and without the annoying advertising emails that Internetseer used to send me in addition to its weekly report when I used its free service. In fact, that you get alert emails several times a day is a factor in favour of the newcomer.

With one exception, these problems would appear to be intermittent. The exception was when I went using the WP Super Cache WordPress plugin. When it seemed to result in breakage of the site, it got disabled, even if it is meant to be helpful during episodes of heavy load. Otherwise, the outages would seem to be general flakiness of the service provided by my hosting provider. I have a site with them on an older server, and that seems to fare far better than the one playing host to this blog. This sort of thing does make me wonder if we are getting real progress, or whether it's a case of one step forward and two steps back. Nevertheless, I'll continue keeping an eye on things and, if there is too much deterioration, a move might be in order, but that's a good bit away yet.