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I'm upgrading my Movable Type 4.0 installation to today's 4.2 RC1 release, so if things get a bit borked for a while, please forgive me while I work out the kinks. See you on the other side!
File under General Geekery:
It came to my attention a while back that the comment submission procedure on Movable Type 4 (and specifically this blog) was less than elegant. So I turned off the default registration-required settings and set it to allow for anonymous Captcha-filtered comments. But it turns out that this was even a worse idea because the Captcha didn't even show up on the comment submission form, leading to unpredictable errors when a comment was submitted. It went something like this:
Step 1: Comment Submission: "Hello, I'm submitting this comment on an entry and there is no spam checking - wow! There isn't even a Captcha image! I'm going to tell all of my pharmaceutical distributor friends!"
Step 2: User clicks submit, with evil spam plots brewing in the back of his or her mind.
Step 3: Movable Type processes the comment and checks whether the entered text matched the generated Captcha. Here's the problem - the end user never saw a Captcha image.
Result: End user gets an ugly message and runs around in circles in frustration, their evil plans to spam-bomb me having been defeated.
Meanwhile, I'm pleased that I'm not getting any comment spam, but I'm feeling a little rejected because I'm not getting any valid comments either. I'm thinking that I might welcome some spam. I know people are reading - I get several emails a week asking follow up questions. I keep thinking to myself, why don't they just enter a comment - maybe someone else can help?
The Five Minute Solution: Take out all of the screwy if/else statements from the Comment Form template so that the Captcha will display no matter what. Since I took out all of the other authentication methods these statements aren't needed anyways. This seems to work, so comments are working (for now...)
It came to my attention a while back that the comment submission procedure on Movable Type 4 (and specifically this blog) was less than elegant. So I turned off the default registration-required settings and set it to allow for anonymous Captcha-filtered comments. But it turns out that this was even a worse idea because the Captcha didn't even show up on the comment submission form, leading to unpredictable errors when a comment was submitted. It went something like this:
Step 1: Comment Submission: "Hello, I'm submitting this comment on an entry and there is no spam checking - wow! There isn't even a Captcha image! I'm going to tell all of my pharmaceutical distributor friends!"
Step 2: User clicks submit, with evil spam plots brewing in the back of his or her mind.
Step 3: Movable Type processes the comment and checks whether the entered text matched the generated Captcha. Here's the problem - the end user never saw a Captcha image.
Result: End user gets an ugly message and runs around in circles in frustration, their evil plans to spam-bomb me having been defeated.
Meanwhile, I'm pleased that I'm not getting any comment spam, but I'm feeling a little rejected because I'm not getting any valid comments either. I'm thinking that I might welcome some spam. I know people are reading - I get several emails a week asking follow up questions. I keep thinking to myself, why don't they just enter a comment - maybe someone else can help?
The Five Minute Solution: Take out all of the screwy if/else statements from the Comment Form template so that the Captcha will display no matter what. Since I took out all of the other authentication methods these statements aren't needed anyways. This seems to work, so comments are working (for now...)
When I upgraded to Movable Type 4 several months ago, I wasn't able to find the time to tweak the style to my liking. I just went with one of the default styles and let it go. I've noticed a lot of other Movable Type blogs out there with the same style lately and decided I definitely needed a change. As hikers say, "Hike you own hike," I say, "blog your own blog." This week I finally set aside some evening hours to play with the templates a bit and made some changes. The header image is the Whitney Ridge from the west side (sunset view from Guitar Lake) taken from last summer's John Muir Trail trip - it's a picture that brings back happy memories of one of my favorite nights on the trail.
I'm still tweaking some CSS (the fonts don't want to play very nice) and I've also added a link to my new wildflowers page in the top navigation (also a work in progress). There will likely be a few more changes since I'm not entirely happy with what I've done in a short period of time, but at least I am now unique and no longer using a default Movable Type template.
I'm still tweaking some CSS (the fonts don't want to play very nice) and I've also added a link to my new wildflowers page in the top navigation (also a work in progress). There will likely be a few more changes since I'm not entirely happy with what I've done in a short period of time, but at least I am now unique and no longer using a default Movable Type template.
I've been sorting through and reorganizing some old posts and galleries on the site, and for some reason this is not playing nice with the RSS feeds. I'm editing some old posts, updating links or categories, and although this shouldn't trigger a 'new' item in the RSS feed, some entries are doing this (and others aren't, which is why I am annoyed - difficult troubleshooting). I've only seen two entries go into the feed, while I've actually edited close to ten, so I'm just going to accept this as a bug and not deal with it - I hope it doesn't cause too much trouble to the feed readers.
You may have noticed some changes around here. Mostly good changes, I hope.
The first big change is the upgrade to Movable Type 4. Unfortunately my highly customized MT3 theme would not play nice with the new MT4 templates, so I am using one of the new stylesheets. The hills and trees are nice. Next, I brought the color theme over to my Gallery so that they blend together a bit better even though they are completely separate applications.
My favorite new addition to the site is a PhotoMap, a plugin that shows all of my photo albums on a Google map. I know that there is a cluttered mass of pins along the Sierra Nevada, but the maps lets you zoom in to get finer detail. I'm still adding to my Gallery and PhotoMap as I finish porting some old photo albums in from Webshots and my old Coppermine photo management, so it will only get more cluttered. I've got to stop backpacking so much. Heh, right.
Lastly, I added Google Ads to the page. My photo collection is growing, and with that growth comes additional server space. Along with that growth comes traffic. So I've outgrown my $4 a month hosting plan and have upgraded to a more expensive plan that has the space and bandwidth I need. It's also more expensive. If something seems a bit, um, inappropriate, let me know and I'll add it to the ad filter.
I've spent the past three weekends not catching fish in the East Bay regional parks, so this weekend I'm heading back to the mountains while the passes are still open to see if the trout over there like me better. It shouldn't be too long before the entries here are trip reports and nice pictures once again, instead of this website mumbo jumbo. Stay tuned.
The first big change is the upgrade to Movable Type 4. Unfortunately my highly customized MT3 theme would not play nice with the new MT4 templates, so I am using one of the new stylesheets. The hills and trees are nice. Next, I brought the color theme over to my Gallery so that they blend together a bit better even though they are completely separate applications.
My favorite new addition to the site is a PhotoMap, a plugin that shows all of my photo albums on a Google map. I know that there is a cluttered mass of pins along the Sierra Nevada, but the maps lets you zoom in to get finer detail. I'm still adding to my Gallery and PhotoMap as I finish porting some old photo albums in from Webshots and my old Coppermine photo management, so it will only get more cluttered. I've got to stop backpacking so much. Heh, right.
Lastly, I added Google Ads to the page. My photo collection is growing, and with that growth comes additional server space. Along with that growth comes traffic. So I've outgrown my $4 a month hosting plan and have upgraded to a more expensive plan that has the space and bandwidth I need. It's also more expensive. If something seems a bit, um, inappropriate, let me know and I'll add it to the ad filter.
I've spent the past three weekends not catching fish in the East Bay regional parks, so this weekend I'm heading back to the mountains while the passes are still open to see if the trout over there like me better. It shouldn't be too long before the entries here are trip reports and nice pictures once again, instead of this website mumbo jumbo. Stay tuned.
There are still some bad links I'm coming across from time to time, but for the most part, the port over to Movable Type 4 has been successful. If you are subscribed to the atom or rss feed and get this post, it means that the feed redirect is working. If you are subscribed but *don't* get this post through your reader, you might have to resubscribe using the links towards the bottom of the left panel.
This is my new Movable Type 4 installation - welcome! Don't bookmark anything yet, I'll be changing the paths shortly, once I remove the old MT3 installation. I'll let you know when everything is working (hopefully), then you can all leave comments telling me it's really not.
A few inches of snow in the Sierra has put a damper on our weekend plans to head over to the East side to check out the fall colors and fish. As of right now, highway 120, 108, and 88/4 are still closed or on chain controls. The Tioga Pass webcam shows the road with a slick layer of ice.
So, we're stuck at home. I'm going to use the unexpected downtime to do some upgrades to the site. My webhost will be upgrading the PHP on their servers in the next few weeks - it *shouldn't* cause a problem with my Movable Type and Gallery installations, but it's a good enough excuse to bring them up to the newer versions.
I also hope to finish porting the links to photo albums in old posts from their old Coppermine albums to the new Gallery albums (unfortunately there is no clean way to simply do a URL redirect). Then I can remove the old Coppermine installation entirely and everything will be in Gallery - and it will also clear up much needed space. I only have room for a few more trips worth of pictures right now.
So, this is just a fair warning - if the website breaks, I'll hopefully have it up again shortly.
I think I fixed the site issues. You can enjoy pictures again!
I'm working on some lingering issues after accidentally killing my website (my own bad this time...). I still need to get the Gallery software up and running, but I want to complete a full backup of it all first just in case I @#$% it up again. Pictures will hopefully be back soon.
