I have finished (Finally!) copying all the information from the old blog hosted on my .Mac account, over to this movable type install… so, everything is finally here…all the posts and everything.
Next up.. switching to dynamic publishing for archives
I installed Spamlookup 3 days ago…and its already stopped like 75 trackback spam attempts… completely stopped the trakback spam Janice had been getting buried under… way cool… everyone go and install it if you run MT…
Also just updated to the newest version of Ecto. WAY COOL! it’s new UI is based on the appearance of Mail.app in Tiger (10.4)… it added a button to link to Amazon stuff ( which can be configured with your affiliate information). Definitely an impressive upgrade. This is one app I am thrilled I paid the shareware fee for!
This is just a quick test, to see if Ecto requires an update to work under Tiger… so far, it doesn’t appear to need anything. And the few minutes I’ve spent playing with Tiger, I’m impressed…the last build I had installed and running, was the original Developer Preview…. Now that its gone GM, and since I’m going to buy it on Friday, I don’t feel to bad about playing with a more recent build that I got from a friend… very impressive… everyone go buy it now!
Just finished upgrading to MovableType 3.16, so let me know if you see anything funky, or not working right. Also switched from MT-Blacklist for comment/trackback spam to spamlookup and mt-moderate. Hey.. if the author of MT-Blacklist thinks Spamlookup is better..its gotta be worth a try right? and the last 24 hours or so, Janice’s blog has been getting hammered by trackback spam..so maybe this will help.
As you can see..There is yet another new look for the site.
I took my inspiration from the style stuff generated by the Firdamatic that I tried earlier. So, armed with a basic idea, a book on movable type, and a book on XHTML/CSS I went to work. This is the end result.
Known problems:
Internet Exploder for Windows doesn’t support transparent PNG files (what I’m using for the title image) so it shows up with a background there.
Internet Exploder for Windows keeps sticking the right hand sidebar underneath everything else on the page.. instead of on the right hand side where it belongs…
If you see anything else that isn’t working right, send me an email, or leave a comment about it.
I was also playing with Movable Type’s dynamic publishing…but, so far, I haven’t been able to get that to work right. Hopefully, when Jay Allen’s Movable Type book comes out next month, it will have some info on Dynamic Publishing to help me out… Although..I suppose I could submit a trouble ticket to six apart and see if they have a quickie answer….
As much as I liked the style sheet the Firdamatic generated… It wasn’t consistent throughout the site (it only covered 2 of the templates used by MovableType)…so…its back to the old one…
I’m trying to teach myself enough CSS/HTML to redo the site myself.. so.. stay tuned… it could be entertaining to see how it turns out.. I also want to learn to take advantage of the dynamic publishing that MT 3 is capable of… so I’ll be playing with the site going forward (or.. I may do it the smart way.. and create a test blog to screw around on)
As you can see… the appearance of the site has changed a bit. Before, I was using one of the free stye sheets from blogstyle. As I’ve been browsing around various Movable Type sites, I came across Firda’s Firdamatic, which lets you answer a few questions, pick some colors and then it creates a new CSS Style sheet for you (and until I screwed around adding in things like my link to the iTMS, it passed XHTML and CSS validation).
I had to make some changes to templates and CSS sheets that Firda provides, so I could add in all the ‘stuff’ that used to be on my sidebar. I just noticed this morning, that I no longer have a way for typekey users to sign in… so I’m going to have to go back through the templates to see what changed that took that out.
Overall..since I don’t know anything about CSS or XHTML (and very little about HTML)…the Firdamatic is a good way to make get a more unique looking site then what is out there for free templates/stye sheets. If you know as little about CSS and XHTML as I do..I recommend going to take a look at it.
Let me know what you think about the new look…
So a little while ago, Apple introduced a .Mac affiliate program, similar to the iTunes affiliate program I’m a member of (Click on the iTunes graphic, or one of the songs on the right to buy from iTunes Music Store and help me earn a little commission)
And I figured since the list of ‘requirements’ to join the .Mac affiliate program were similar to the ones for the iTMS program, I’d go ahead and join up…. The other day I get an email back from the .Mac Affiliate Program.
Telling me that I have not been accepted into the affiliate program. The email goes on to state “The reason for this decision may be as follows:
* inability to access web site
* Web site not yet live
* traffic levels to low
* inappropriate material on site”
So..since the top reason they listed was inability to access web site…. how would they know if there was inappropriate material on the website (I wonder what material they thought was inappropriate?) And since the page is hosted on .Mac (I didn’t register it under either theteppers.net or kaelkicksass.com) wouldn’t the .Mac affiliate program people have known if there was some kind of systems issue preventing access to the .Mac servers…and then tried again later?
Oh well… overall..no big deal, it’s not like I’m raking in the dough from the iTMS affiliate, so I don’t think the .Mac program would have made that much of a difference.
Since I’ve mentioned it last time, I’ve been playing with Movable Type
Which really translates out to me having installed OSX Server on one of the iBooks, and installed MT onto that so I could play with configuration, templates, etc…
So, I’ve had a blog for a little over a year now (ever since Lifli gave a free copy to all .Mac users). And I’ve started to look at other options for software.