Web host software ban lists

After carefully choosing a web hosting service and carefully choosing server-based blogging software, surprise, surprise!

The blogging software I chose is on a ban list at the web host Lunarpages, a ban list that I cannot even find on Google with reasonable key word searches.

Apparently, it is not a complete ban. Sometimes Lunarpages only complains as this recent page shows.

In the software evaluation stage before choosing, a quick Google search with the name of the web host and the name of the software would probably be good enough to find any problems or issues.

Modularity and Conservative IT Philosophy II

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is one way of expressing the idea of software modularity or information hiding

"In computer science, the principle of information hiding is the hiding of design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from change if the design decision is changed.

"Protecting a design decision involves providing a stable interface which shields the remainder of the program from the implementation (the details that are most likely to change).

"In modern programming languages, the principle of information hiding manifests itself in a number of ways, including encapsulation (given the separation of concerns) and polymorphism."

These concepts also have application to web design.

Conservative IT philosophyand Movable Type choice

Everyone seems to be moving to Wordpress, I thought. Then I read: "About.com switching to Wordpress", but since I'm new to weblog development and I really don't know what features to look for in weblogs, I chose a traditional conservative IT approach . I chose Movable Type. Reports of features that didn't work and features that didn't work the way you'd expect them to, like the new WYSIWYG editor's rendering of lists scared me. I have deadlines to meet.

I wasn't that impressed with Movable Type either. Hundreds of sites have customized MT though, so you at least have examples of what can be done with it with an expenditure of customization effort.

The choice would have been different if I had a better overall view of blog functionality and how Wordpress compared with Moveable, if technical writers could describe software from the top-down better [Knuth's Literate Programming, Software Documentation], but I'm still making my way through the Open source Jungle. What I'd choose for my own personal use is different from what I'd choose for a company.

Syndicated Headlines in a Sidebar Widget

Now we're getting somewhere. Microcontent in sidebar widgets! Here's a quote:

"Here I thought I'd document how you can add a list of syndicated headlines from Feeds.App as a sidebar widget.

"It's really quite simple since Feeds.App has a couple of layout widgets already built into it since its release a year ago. Its just a matter of creating it in such a way that the Sidebar Manager can find it.

Sidebar Updates in Weblogs

Microcontent in a weblog sidebar that is updated frequently, what to do?

Usually weblog sidebars only have things like archives, blog rolls, or ads.

There seem to be two options:

1. A blog in a sidebar
2. Separate little boxes running down the sidebar.

Maybe the Sidebar Manager Plugin will do this.

Online Magazine Table of Contents

Online magazines like Slate and the new Seed Magazine usually have short descriptions of articles on the front page. How do you get blog software like Movable Type to do this? The developers of the Seed site provide some hints, but is there a quick and natural way to display microcontent in sidebars?

Let's say you want short descriptions of new content running down the right sidebar, a new content blog that is displayed on the front page in addition to the main blog running down the center column.

Let's say this new content blog is updated everyday, then to avoid link rot you need to only keep one day's worth of new content in this blog (or use permalinks after the first day), otherwise the link to an article will point to the top of the page, not the article.

Separate little boxes running down the right sidebar would be better, but that's not a blog.

Multiple Blogs on One Page

With Movable Type's Multiblog Plugin more than one blog can be displayed on a page. For instance, you could have the blog entries of individual reporters running down the right sidebar of the page like Majority Report does. The above link is to the documentation which is a little bit hidden.

"Rebuild control" is the core functionality: "MultiBlog allows you to define blog rebuild dependencies." From the documentation: "the ability to create rules that will cause other blogs to rebuild their indexes when another blog has an entry posted to it." Namely, let's say a reporter posts to a sub-blog and rebuilds her blog, this new entry is included on the front page which is also rebuilt.

Movable Type Brain Dump

"Movable Type Brain Dump: Tips and tricks I wish I had known when I started using Movable Type" really helps you get the big picture when you're struggling to create a three column professional looking blog, especially:

Using CSS Style Sheets To Create A Three-Column Layout
Understanding (Page-Level) Templates
Understanding File/Directory Name Templates
Understanding Template Modules (Chunks of Code)

Weblog usability mistakes

Jakob Nielsen provides a nice checklist of things that your blog might be missing or maladies that it might be suffering from:

1. No Author Biographies?
2. No Author Photo?
3. Nondescript Posting Titles?
4. Links Don't Say Where They Go?
5. Classic Hits are Buried?
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation?
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency?
8. Mixing Topics?
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss?
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service?

Nielsen calls headlines and lead paragraphs "microcontent" which is a nice way to describe the mini news of syndicated RSS web feeds.

Blog template tags are connected to the main index html file are connected to CSS stylesheet are connected to the Atom or RSS feed providing syndicated web content like del.icio.us [Wikipedia].