Changes

a warm gun: Where the fun never stops!

So there’s a lot of things that are going on around here. First on the list is to actually implement the commenting system, which is about 90% finished. Some things to include will be the Turing test and to be able to keep the URLs nice and simple, as they already are. Also, I want to integrate Textile into it, so that the comments are typographically correct. (Now if only I could make it fix people’s grammar and spelling…)

Next up on the list will be doing a few maintenance things to which I’ve been meaning to get for awhile, like coming up with something better for the archive page, and posting more photos, since I haven’t actually done that since the first photo post.

I suppose it’s also about time that I purchased a copy of Shaun Inman’s Mint and set it up. Furthermore, since referrer spam has gotten to be a pretty big problem for me, I’m going to be looking into some anti-referrer spam tools, getting those set up and all that. It’ll be a bit of work, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. I will do my best to make sure that legitimate surfers don’t get blocked from this website.

Also, I’ve been toying around with the idea of coming up with a new design for the site. We’ll see how that goes. I do still like this design, and the blood splatters are an effective (if subtle) brand, but a new design would also be nice, as it would help keep things fresh.

Finally, and most ambitiously, I’m going to write my own publishing system… as a Dashboard widget! It’ll only work with this site, but it should take some of the tediousness out of posting here. Posting is usually a pretty involved process. Since I do everything by hand, there’s a lot of busywork involved. I do prefer to do this site by hand, since I think that it is still an important skill to have, making me never dependent on a tool to be able to publish. However, even in a manual site there is room for automation. Also, this site serves largely as my testing ground. It’s where I learn and test out various new techniques. (AWG was my first foray into CSS-based web design, for example.)

How I post on AWG

First, of course, comes the writing. I start by opening up TextEdit, and just start typing. I’ll type and type and type, which can sometimes take a couple minutes but sometimes even take a few hours. By the time I’m done writing, I’ve got a plain text file with the date, headers, and body (including XHTML elements that will appear throughout the post, such as links and strong text.

But I’m not done yet. From there, I copy the entire body (meaning not the headers) and go over to http://textism.com/tools/textile/ to get my post text made typographically correct. Then I take that output, paste it back into TextEdit, save the file as a PHP file, and upload it to my include folder. From there, a few more things happen. First, I’ll create the archive directory and index file for the post—or just the post’s file if it’s for a day in the life—which usually just involves duplicating and renaming said file from another post, then opening up that new file, changing the PHP include line, the title, and the keywords, then saving it.

Next, I have to edit the PHP include file for the front page, which has PHP include links for whichever articles appear on the front page. If the article is for a day in the life, then I edit the PHP include file for that, which does the same thing as the front page, but is for the front page of ADitL.

Finally, I quickly add the new entry to the RSS feed’s XML file and save it, ensuring that those of you who keep up-to-date on my site via a newsreader are able to see the update.

How I want to post on AWG

Now, the knowledge gained from that is awesome. The fact that I know how to do that kicks ass. But as you can see, it’s rather tedious, and it makes it so that I’m not as motivated to write more, knowing that it will take a significant chunk of time out of my day to do so. What would be really nice would be to have something like the DashBlog widget, where you just write a title, write the post, click “submit”, and walk away. Of course, me being who I am, I want a little bit more control over that, but the elegant simplicity of that stands in stark contrast to the mindless busywork I outlined above.

So here’s what I’ve got in mind: a widget that serves as both the writing and publishing mechanism. Don’t get me wrong, I love Transmit and I’ll continue to use it. But the idea is for me to take a lot of the tediousness out of writing and publishing, and having it all rolled into one tool that’s as easy to call as a Dashboard widget should accomplish that. Here’s what the widget should have:

• A radio button allowing me to select if this is an AWG post or an ADitL post.
• A text field where I enter the date for the post, with the RSS entry date being applied by the widget itself. (Sometimes I start working on a post a day or so before I end up publishing it, and I like to have the date on the page reflect when I started writing.)
• A text field where I enter the title of the article.
• A text field where I enter the optional sub-headline.
• A text field where I enter the RSS description.
• A text field where I enter the keywords for the post.
• A text field for writing the actual post itself.
• A “submit” button. (duh)
• A built-in spell-checker. More specifically, it will access Mac OS X’s built-in spell-checking service.
• A built-in implementation of Textile.
• The ability to send basic FTP commands. (e.g. to create a folder, navigate a directory hierarchy, copy files, delete files, etc.)
• A script that will, once files are downloaded locally to my machine, make the necessary edits to those files that I would normally do by hand, including time-stamping the entry for the RSS file.

So, to this end, I’m going to give Wcode a try for help with developing the widget. It should be a wild ride, but I’m determined.