I thought it might be helpful to explain the tools behind mashby.com, so below are the four tools that make up my blogging toolbox.

WordPress

At the heart of my tool set is the Content Management System (CMS) that I use to manage all the content on this blog. The software I use is called WordPress.

I’ve written before about how wonderful WordPress is in an article entitle Alchemy In Action, so there’s no need to to repeat myself. However, I will add that since I wrote that over a year ago, WordPress has just gotten better-and-better. It’s an amazing blogging platform and it’s what allows all the other tools I use to really shine.


MarsEdit

As great as WordPress is, I find that I prefer to create my articles in an off-line editor versus creating the posts through a web browser. My tool of choice is MarsEdit by Red Sweater software.

Do I have to use an offline editor? Of course not, but there’s something special about being able to save drafts of posts, or easily format images in software written specifically for the Mac. There are a bevy of features, such as a robust WYSIWYG editor and the ability to have a perfect preview of your article before you publish, but the following are the key features for me:

• Ability to save drafts — I tend to write in fits and starts due mostly to interruptions. With MarsEdit I can save an article I’m working on and then finish it later.
• Easy Image Posting — Posting images is as easy as dragging and dropping directly into the article. The image will upload when the article is published, but I can position it and see what it looks like in preview prior to publishing. Brilliantly easy and this feature alone is worth the price of the software.
• External Editors — I’ll go into detail on this one in the next section, but when I really need to focus, this one little trick is worth it’s weight in gold.
• Support For Multiple Blogs — I actually use MarsEdit for multiple sites, so having one tool to publish from is a big help.

Write Room

Sometimes I need to drown out some of the distractions on my desktop. E-mail, instant messengers, not to mention Twitter can make my desktop a bit of a minefield. So when I need to focus just on the text of what I’m writing, I turn to WriteRoom, by Hogsbay Software.

It may seem like a simple tool, which it is, but it can make a big impact on helping you to focus. Everything drops away behind a solid background and all that remains is the simple text and cursor. The only thing I can focus on is typing. In the immortal words of Stimpy, “Joy!”

Thankfully MarsEdit supports external editors, so I simply select “File \ Edit in WriteRoom” and I’m now in typing bliss. When I’m done, or ready to do some fine tuning with links and images, I simply hit escape, and save and close WriteRoom and everything imports back into MarsEdit.

The process is actually so smooth, you’d think that the two programs were written by the same developer.

Skitch

Last but certainly not least in my toolbox of blogging must-haves is Skitch.

Skitch is a unique imaging tool that lives directly in your title bar. When you need to grab an image, you simply take a quick screenshot and drop it into MarsEdit. It literally couldn’t be easier.

If you need to do some editing, you can resize, crop, add text, or graphics and of course name the file. It’s intuitive and easy to use and best of all — it’s free!

I use Skitch all the time, not just for blogging and I really wish these guys would ask for money. I would happily pay for it and I want to ensure that the program stays around. It’s not a replacement for Photoshop, but for 99% of us image editing mortals, it’s more than enough for what you need.

Conclusion

So there you have it. My complete arsenal of tools and how I use them. Hopefully some of what I shared may be of use to you and may assist you in finding an easier way to manage, edit and publish to your blog.

To show you how all of these tools work together, I threw together a quick screencast so you can see each tool in action. Enjoy.

Version 1.0

After dabbling a little bit with Blogger, I decided to take the plunge and install MovableType on my own server at the end of 2002. After playing with the software and learning how to blog, I officially launched mashby.com on March 1, 2003.

mashby.com v1

The template I ended up using was a Blogger template called Autumn Hues by Martijn ten Napel. I liked that it was a clean design and that it used this new thing called Cascading Style Sheets.

Version 1.1 & 1.2

Over the years, I opted to change the color scheme a little bit to brighten things up a bit.

mashby.com v1.1

Interesting Trivia
I was not the first person to own the domain mashby.com. Seems Marilyn Ashby registered the domain for her real estate business from 2001 – 2002. I picked up the domain in 2003.

I didn’t know this fact until I used the Wayback Machine to find some old screenshots

mashby.com v1.2

Version 2.0

On September 13, 2008, I switched from MovableType to WordPress and switched the design of site while I was at it. I ended up choosing the theme Amazing Grace by Vladimir Prelovac.

mashby.com v2

Besides the fact that it was such a departure from my previous design, what I loved about the Amazing Grace theme was how modern it looked. The design was elegant with lots of color and images. It was such an improvement over the previous version of the site.

Version 3.0

Which brings us to the current version. Although I had been a huge fan of the “Amazing Grace” theme, after all my tinkering and futzing about, I felt it was a little too busy. I was looking for something cleaner and more focused on the text of the entry.

Here’s a list of the themes that caught my eye:

• BlogTheme by Woo Themes
• Elegant Grunge by Michael Tyson
• Manifest by Jim Barraud
• Fontella by Horacio A. Bella
• Typography by miloIIIIVII
• Typographby Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Now that I’ve done this retrospective, it’s kind of funny to see that I my initial motivation was to move back to a typography based design. Forgetting that this is how the blog was originally designed.

Ultimately, I ended up choosing the theme OneRoom by Jeremie Tisseau. What drew me to this theme was the coloring and the clean lines. The copy takes center stage and then the left and right columns support the articles without pulling too much focus.

mashby.com v3

While I implementing the new template, I decided to simplify the extra bits that I had in the sidebars and take away as much as I could. Hopefully I’ve reached my goal and implemented a tight, clean, focused layout and design that makes reading these little missive’s a little bit easier.

It has a ton of cool features, such as: support for multiple blogs, posting photos, and moderatation of comments just to name a few.

I’m just getting into it, but I have to say I am very impressed. And this is my first post from the WordPress for iPhone app.

The blog is comprised of very short entries that almost come off as jokes from a FOO stand up routine, if it weren’t for their somewhat elitist tone. Being somewhat elitist myself, I found nearly every entry a riot, but a few were real standouts.

Ready?

We flew in to San Francisco as we’ve done a dozen times over these past few months.

Our tiny jet is more a floating foyer than a formal jetliner and, at 40,000 feet, the rules and conventions of commercial air travel simply do not apply.

“I’ll bet I could get that door opened before you could kill me,” she said in a voice that she would likely have described as playful.

I finished my scotch, turned my seat toward hers, and unbuckled my restraint.

“Ready?” I asked.

I’ll bet we never speak of this again.

It appears that several people write for the blog and it’s full of little tidbits of clever conversations. Conversations where the writer has the perfect comeback that most people think of 10 minutes later. Check it out, it’s worth the read.

The feature set of MoveableType and WordPress are virtually the same. I really haven’t found where WP does something that MT can’t do, or vice versa. The difference is HOW each product approaches publishing online. There is something distinctly different in the WP approach that makes it much more accessible. It’s not just in the user interface, or the fact that WP uses PHP instead of PERL — it’s how the entirety of the application has been designed and you have to experience it to understand it. WP is just a much more coherent approach to publishing. It works better, it feels better and it helps me publish to the point that the tool actually disappears from my perspective. MT, on the other hand, feels more like I’m trying to pull a donkey up a hill. I’m constantly having to fight against the program to complete the task at hand.

These differences were recently brought to my attention as I compared how SixApart and Automattic addressed adding Social Networking to their product lines. Products like FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube have changed how people market their sites/products/services online. It’s now common practice to promote through all of these channels to draw traffic to your site, but there’s a new trend on the rise that is looking to reverse that process.

The new question that is being asked is “Instead of going out to these various networks, why not have them come to us?” In answer to that question, SixApart has released Motion and Automattic has released BuddyPress.

At first glance they may look similar, but as you dig into it, it’s clear that BuddyPress has a much more coherent approach and is easier to understand. When I first watched the video for Motion, I kept going “Huh? How am I supposed to use this?” If you take a look at the Motion Demo, you’ll see what I mean. It’s just a pile. In my office, we have a nickname for Facebook. We call it FacePile, because it just dumps a pile of various and sundry information at your feet. Motion does that to an even greater degree. After looking at the demo, the only feeling I’m left with is “Why?” Why would someone want this on their site?

Then you take a look at the BuddyPress Demo and there’s a remarkable difference. It’s clearly designed to mirror the FaceBook style of community, but it’s cleaner and clearer as to what you can do and how everything works. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s a better design that FaceBook! I’m currently developing a new community web site and I actually had to stop and think about BuddyPress for quite some time. So at the end of the demo, I’m left thinking “How would I use this?” Not, “Why would I use this?”

So What’s Your Point?
Most of what I do on a day-to-day basis is work with users and distill down complex technology systems into plain english for my clients, friends and family. I guess you could say that I live in the world of interaction between user and interface.

So often when I’m talking with a developer and the subject of UI comes up, they just roll their eyes and dismiss it out of hand. Since it’s not quantifiable and algorithmic, it gets treated like alchemy — which perhaps is right — but the attitude is one of disdain and frustration, not of respect and appreciation.

Add to this equation the fact that I’m not a designer, so my vocabulary is a little limited when describing systems and UI. Then along comes two answers to the same question and I can finally point and say, “Do THAT, not that.” and I find that a little exhilarating.

This example also reminds me why I enjoy WordPress so much and why moving away from MovableType was such a good decision.

In his article Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities, he recounts a tale of being assaulted by a conversation one row back on a recent flight. The woman just won’t shut up about how her mud room is a real priority. Naturally, this leads Merlin to discuss the true nature of priorities.

First, ask yourself why any “high priority” item has remained unresolved in your life for more than 60 seconds. Why isn’t it done completely? Have you ever “re-assigned” “priority” to some task? Really? Because that sounds more like procrastination than management, let alone “effective” action and decisive execution.

I don’t want to spoil it, so I encourage you to the article at this link. There are some real gems in there that stop and make you think about your priorities.

Why the change? Well, it’s nothing dramatic, or awe inspiring — I simply wanted a change. The grass is always greener on the other side and I’ve been wanting to get my hands dirty with WP for quite some time.

I don’t know if this will mean that I’ll post more often, but at least it’s nice to have some new digs!

This happened to my good buddy Mike Rohde with an article that he did on Yoplait yogurt. He wrote a quick article about an idea he had regarding their packaging and next thing you know, he’s in the top 4 on Google if you do a search for yogurt packaging.

As for me, my hotspots have been Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap (currently slipped to page 2) and National Brand 43-571 (page 1) because of an entry I wrote concerning my love affair with paper. However, in looking at my Google Analytics this week, I found that the bulk of the traffic to my blog comes from an entry entitled “Having A Hard Head Can Sometimes Pay Off“. Doing a search for “Axiom and Garageband” turned up the reason why — I’m the #1 result.

The article dealt with my trials and tribulations in getting my Axiom 25 to work with GarageBand. It was a project I did almost 2 years ago and one month after the post, I never went back to it. Another case of something I “had to have” only to move onto something else 20-days later.

Regardless of my lack of interest in the subject, clearly there were plenty of people still looking for a solution, finding me and as luck would have it, being met with frustration. Over the past year, I’ve hacked this site every which way and never really completed the process. It goes a little something like this.

1. A client of mine wants to change something with their install of MoveableType.

2. I apply it to this site first to see if it’ll work.

3. It does/doesn’t and then I usually, but not always, revert the site back to the way it was and you can see where this is going.

All these changes affected my Axiom / GarageBand article when they broke the download to the PDF that provided the solution. Doh! So this afternoon, I updated the PDF, checked all the links, fixed the download tool I use to keep track of such things and generally cleaned this up a bit in the process.

So for those of you that found that article only to be met with frustration, I apologize. Hopefully the revised article will be more helpful. As for me, I’m going to be a bit more cognoscent of the long tail of my articles so that they don’t spank me in the butt.

Many of my friends have switched their blogs to WordPress, including my good friend Rachel over at Fiat Lux and for larger installs, it would appear that Drupal is the current flavor of the month. Yet it seemed that MT still had a strong presence and large community around it.

Yet, as I drill down bugs, glitches and fixes for MT4, I have to say that things seem awfully quiet. Maybe I’m too close to it right now, but the forums seem awfully quiet to me. Anyone else find this to be true, or is it just me?

I didn’t know that they were going to actually record a podcast at the meeting, but that’s exactly what they did. The format of their recording was a little off-the-cuff and I didn’t have anything really prepared, so when they passed the microphone to me, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Their podcast is centered around the cities of Smyrna and Laverne. Since I live in Antioch, I didn’t really have much to add. M. was kind enough to throw me a lifeline when she asked, “What have you been up to?”

I talked about the new podcast Simply Digital and then was reminded about NPUG and talked a little bit about that. There was a lot more that I could have talked about, but the conversation turned to something else, which was fine by me. I was happy to be off the hot seat.

What struck me though is that I do have quite a lot going on and I don’t really promote it very well. This isn’t a new thought, but it’s one that I seem to forget and then it pops up now and again. What also keeps popping up is that I’m SO tired of the design on this site.

If you’ve been a reader of this blog for awhile, you may recall that I was inspired by a cracker box a couple of years ago and I’ve even made it far enough to create a little beta site. Past that, I’ve never taken it much further and I don’t know that I will with that design. I was in love with it two years ago, but now it just feels constrained and limiting.

On top of that, I’m wanting to shake things up a bit with the content of the site as well. I’m going to move the photos to my Flickr account and I’m going to incorporate the never completed travelogues into the regular posts. What excites me about this is that I will only have one blog to manage and not three.

I also want to highlight the other activities going on with the other sites that I manage. Whenever something comes up, I could just post an article about it, but when there are long breaks between other articles, it seems a little bit much. So often times I just skip it. So I plan on adding an “Elsewhere” section to the home page. This way I can highlight things happening on other sites without having to write a whole article about it. Things that will find a home in this area will be Simply Digital, NPUG, The Ashby Group, TV.com and some other things up my sleeve.

With all the photos moving to Flickr, I think there needs to be an area on the front page to highlight recent photos that have been uploaded. For example, I just posted photos from my recent vacation to Florida. With so much copy written for each photo, I don’t see posting a article just on the photo set, so I think I’ll show the most recent photos somewhere.

I’m also toying with the idea of showing my del.icio.us links, but this re-design is more than just new or shifted content. My usual inspiration from sites such as SimpleBits and Asterisk, among others, is still strong, but my biggest inspiration points came from my morning cup of coffee. There on the mug was an image that hit me like a bolt of lighting. I’ll go into more detail once I’ve made some progress on the re-design.

So that’s kind of a brain dump of what I’ve been thinking about regarding the weblog. I want to consolidate my content, add some external content to the front page and completely change the design to something inspired from a coffee cup.

Kerry picked me up at the house and we drove to Wolfy’s Den together, arriving at the perfect time, 15 minutes after the start of the party. As we arrived on the 3rd floor, I scanned the room and confirmed my expectations — I didn’t know a single person there. Of course that didn’t stop me. I made my way to the bar, ordered up a Yazoo Hefeweizen and started making the rounds.

As I introduced myself, I found that there was a pretty diverse group there. It wasn’t just “geeks”, but professional writers, WKRN video journalists, mobile content distributors, and bloggers of every type. Kerry was a huge help, because if I found myself in a lull, I could make my way to where Kerry was standing and he’d make an introduction to get me jump started again.

Speaking of Kerry, he was a regular social butterfly. Every time I looked up he was being hugged and greeted by someone new. Everyone seemed to know him and you could tell that they were all happy to see him. Mike Rohde and I often call ourselves Kerry’s “blog fathers” since we encouraged him to get into blogging and I suppose you could say that I was one proud papa.

One of the first people I met was Todd Dunn, a video journalist for News 2. I had seen the ads for “video journalists” on television, but I didn’t really know what it was all about. Were these guys bloggers, secret video ninjas, or what? Well Todd set me straight. News 2′s video journalists are one man video juggernauts. They are employees of News 2 and they suggest stories to management. Each of them have certain specialities and as such, generate their own stories, versus just picking stuff off the AP wire. If a story is green lit, the VJ goes out with a high end Sony digital video camera and shoots the footage, conducts the interview, you name it. When they get back to the office, they edit their own footage, write up the story and deliver it. Like I said — a one man video juggernaut. Pretty impressive.

As I made my way round the room, I ended up meeting the group from the This Is Smyrna, TN blog and ended up staying awhile. I found it fascinating to find out what each of them wrote about and to hear funny stories about their podcasts. They all had me in stitches as they recounted their interview with Marivuana Stout Leinhoff. These guys were a hoot!

Once the party was in full swing, the News 2 General Manager, Mike Sechrist, got up to say a few words. After welcoming everyone, he stressed how thankful he was for everyone’s participation in Nashville Is Talking and what a success it’s been. WKRN is one of the few local stations that have made the effort to reach out to the blogging community and Mike says it’s improved things at News 2 immensely. In fact, other networks have taken notice and come down to see how WKRN does things. Not only that, but they’ve been featured in several national and international magazines, including the Japan “Time” magazine!

This wasn’t just a fluff speech either, because Sechrist went on to say that News 2 is very interested in what video bloggers are doing and that they’d like to feature their content in the news broadcast whenever possible. He was quick to point out the fact that there are certain standards that video bloggers would have to meet in order to be picked up. Mike cited the fact that most of the user generated footage they see isn’t up to their standards. Out of a minutes worth of footage, there is typically only a few seconds that News 2 would actually use, so they have to pass on it. To assist video bloggers, they are going to conduct a free video podcasting seminar in the near future, where they will cover the basics of filming news quality footage. Not only that, if they do use your footage, they will pay you for it!

Color me impressed! Free filming classes, bloggers getting recognized by traditional media and on top of that, getting paid for their work. Here I was thinking I was going to some little blogger meetup where bloggers just talk shop. There was the shop talk stuff, but this little get together was so much more. This wasn’t big media pandering to user created content. This was big media helping those users raise their standards and level of quality and at the same time validating what they’re doing and giving them a voice.

As I sat there listening to Mike Sechrist talk, I was suddenly struck with a sense of déjà vu. I was reminded of the first time that Palm reached out the the user community. I was lucky enough to attend the first “Influencers Dinner”, where Palm invited User Group leaders, webmaster, forum leaders and other Palm OS evangelists. It should be noted that this was back before there were blogs, but those in attendance equated to roughly the same thing. Palm brought us all together to hear what we had to say, but more importantly, let us know that they were listening.. I remember how heady those times were because it was the first time the company that I was promoting so heavily (and still do to this day) validated what I was doing.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget it and last Thursday night, I had that feeling again. Not so much for myself, but for everyone else that have been with Nashville Is Talking from the start. I could see the light bulb going off over everyone’s head around the room. They have a voice. They are being heard. And most importantly, they can do even more. Needless to say, there was a rip roaring round of applause when Sechrist finished talking and the room erupted in discussion to digest what he just said.

I meandered around the room a bit and ended up meeting Tim Coble, who is Kat Coble’s husband. He works for a mobile content distributor and we stumbled upon the topic of bicycling. Seems he’s a big of a fan of the sport as I am and we talked for at least an hour about all this cycling. A great guy and we hit it off so well, we even talked about getting together for a ride some day.

Around 10pm, Kerry and I both had a look that said that we were ready, so we made our way to the elevators and headed home. On the way we compared notes and it seems that we both had fun. All-in-all, I had a fantastic time at the party. It FAR exceeded my expectations beyond their wildest dreams and I’m so very thankful that Kerry invited me to attend.

If you’d like to see photos from the event, Kerry posted his set of pictures on Flickr. Oh and one last thing, it appears I’ve been added to the blogroll for Nashville Is Talking!

I’ve just been doing my own thing and not really paying attention to what’s been happening with “Nashville Is Talking”, so I’m a bit clueless about the whole “scene”. According to Kerry, “this will be the first all-encompassing blog meet-up sponsored by News 2 in over a year.” He’s been pretty plugged in to the blogging scene here in Nashville, so I’m interested to see what it’s all about. From the sound of things, it appears that there’s a fairly vast community that’s connected to one another.

Wolfy’s bar is not open to the public, so it will be open just for this private affair. News 2 will be picking up the tab for appetizers, and there will be a full bar, albeit not an open bar, but that’s probably for the best. Nothing pretty about a pack of tipsy bloggers.

Anyway, if you’re downtown tonight, be sure to stop by Wolfy’s and say “hey!”

Creating metrics for a blog is a really tough problem. In fact, I haven’t found anyone that has found a clear cut solution regardless of what side of the fence you happen to be on. Fence? Yes, there are two sides to this issue. Some feel that trying to measure the success of a blog can’t be done and that it’s futile to attempt to do so. The other side believe that without metrics, there can be no real understanding of a blog’s success. As the weblog “scale|free” put it, “I think measurement is essential, otherwise all you’ve got is a warm fuzzy story that may actually be completely incorrect.”

Personally, I belive trying to develop metrics is a a waste of time. Blogging is about creating a relationships. Relationships with customers, clients, future, clients, peers etc. I think there are some ways to measure POPULARITY, but it’s very hard to create metrics on a relationship. For example, how do you measure how “successful” someone’s marriage is?

In my opinion, the first question that has to be answered is what do you mean by success? If you’re trying to develop metrics to track the ROI, then you’re in for a world of hurt. I can’t find any tangible metrics for measure ROI. However, if you belive that popularity make a blog successful, then I think that there are some ways to measure the popularity of a site and thus, determine how “successful” a blog is.

Charlene Li had an e-mail conversation with Robert Scoble on this very subject and they came up with three measurements:

1. How many inbound links there are. That shows how many people find you interesting enough to link to. Use Technorati.
2. How much raw traffic each site is sending. For instance, when Joel Spolsky linked to me he sent me about 12,000 visitors off of one link. Slashdot usually sends 15,000 to 100,000, depending on the sensationalism of the headline. Mainstream press? When Dave Winer was linked to by an article on MSN’s home page he got 200,000 visitors from one link.
3. Anecdotal influence measures. For that you have to go to conferences and talk to people. Collect business cards. Etc.

In my opinion, all of these measurement are more of popularity and influence than on ROI. I think these are good measurements and valid tools, but I don’t know that they address the typical metrics that marketing aficionados look for.

The only other items that I could add to the list mentioned above is as follows:

1. Overall Traffic – How much traffic is a blog generating? If it’s part of a larger site, then track how much traffic is going to the blog versus the rest of the site.
2. Comment and Trackbacks – This is a tough one, because lack of feedback doesn’t mean that a blog isn’t popular. Yet if you look at the cream of the crop blogs, you’ll find that they do generate a lot of comments. Trackbacks are also plentiful as other blogs continue the discussion.
3. RSS Feeds – You can’t get accurate numbers in terms of subscribers per se, although Bloglines and del.icio.us do have tracking tools within their services, but you can see how many hits the feed(s) are getting to give you a ball park number.

Recommended Reading
There is no one answer and certainly my opinion can be just as wrong as the next person. So my recommendation is to read what other people have written to form your own opinion based on your frame of reference. Here’s a short list of good articles on the subject:

» What makes a successful blog? (Part 1)
» What makes a successful blog? (Part 2)
» Scoble On Metrics: [link 1] [link 2]
» Counterpoints To The Whole Issue Of Metrics: [link 1] [link 2]
» Best Practices For Blogging

Unfortunately, Adam Kalsey made the announcement today that there will be no future development for this wonderful program. Luckily for us, he’s keeping the files on Sourceforge, so we can still download and run the program to our heart’s content. I know that there hasn’t been any updates in over a year, but it’s still sad to see the final nail put in the coffin.

Crazy Technology
Yet there’s more to it than that. Alongside the issue of my schedule has been a few technology issues as well. I upgraded from a pa1m0ne Tungsten C to a pa1m0ne Tungsten T3 and it has been anything but smooth.

I made an initial upgrade but I never got all my apps installed and my data working properly. The T3 has HORRIBLE battery life and as a result has a tendency to die on me. I hope to write a more in depth entry on the whole debacle, but suffice to say that the T3 died on me at least 5 times over the past few months causing me to lose all my data. To add insult to injury, due to the fact that the device was returned back to it’s original state, a state that includes known bug the T3 wiped out my 256MB SD card as well. I lost a year’s worth of backups because of that infernal handheld.

Yet my bad luck with technology hasn’t been limited to just handhelds. As I type this, my main workstation is laying on a desk with the case removed. I had two fans go out on me. One is on the graphics card and the other is on the northbridge chip. I’ve purchased new fans, but I have to solder and splice some cabling to get them to work and so far only one fan is back up and running.

Just before my main box went belly up on me, I had recently reformatted my laptop, so I’ve been a bit like a man without a country. Some, but not all of my data is on my laptop and it seems like every time I turn around there’s a new piece of software that I have to install in order to get my work done.

And I’m Just Crazy
The final piece of the puzzle that has kept me from writing, and ultimately the largest contributing factor is myself. It’s not as though I haven’t had things that I’ve wanted to write about, I’ve simply allowed the resistance to take over and win. Each morning I sit down to write and then something pops up that should be nothing more than a speed bump and I build it into a roadblock.

For example, one of the most common “speed bumps” is the weblog itself. The style of this weblog is much more of an article format, than a traditional personal weblog style. My entries are long articles, not short to-the-point entries. On top of that, I include an image with each post. That entails scouring Google Image Search, finding the right image, tweaking it in Photoshop, saving it as a web image and then uploading it to the server. It may seem like a small thing but knowing that I won’t be happy unless I’ve written 1000+ word essay and found the quintessential image that matches the copy can make even starting an entry a daunting prospect.

Found My Voice – Now I Need A Soapbox?
Yet I have managed to at least start quite a few entries. I have 35+ entries in one state or another waiting to be finished and published. On top of that, I have several topics that I’m just itching to write. From politics to Palm OS, there are a handful of entries half composed in my mind and ready to be put into binary copy. Yet I haven’t “penned” these burning issues because for one reason or another I’ve felt that I needed a bigger forum than just my little weblog. It’s not that I don’t value the few readers that I have, it’s simply that I want to start a dialog and having a soapbox with a larger readership would make discussion more in the realm of possibility.

I’ve been entertaining turning InterPUG into an on-line magazine, or launching a whole new site dedicated to generating discussion on “bigger” topics – whatever that means. Granted, I may feel that I need a bigger audience, but without having the content to share, what does it matter how many could read it? Entries can always be republished on PalmInfoCenter, or Brighthand, if the respective editors deem it worthy of publication. Until then, I’m simply using the excuse of not having a large enough soapbox to act as yet another roadblock.

Time To Cut Bait Or Get Out Of The Kitchen
So why don’t I do something about it? Well, by this entry, I’m here to say that I’m going to do just that. Believe it or not, this article isn’t about whining about why I can’t write, but rather to provide a testimony that I intend to get back on track.

I read the FAQ on Stephen Pressfield’s website and I found it truly inspiring. Here’s a man who has written one of the best historical fiction novels of our time and he too faces the same demons that I do each and every morning. The difference is he overcomes them. So I’m taking his advice and dedicating myself to fighting the “resistance” and get something down each and every day. I’m not saying that I’ll have an entry each and every day, but I will at least write every day and if I don’t have the perfect image, so be it, I’ll publish it anyway.

Strip away all the pretext, planning and lofty goals and all I’m left with is this – I just have to write.

My Experience With 3.0
As a friend recently told me, when I get into something, I don’t go half way, it’s all or nothing for me. So naturally, I purchased a personal license and upgraded to 3.0D the day that it came out. My experience over the past two and a half months has been MUCH better than I expected. It’s been very stable and I only ran into one or two little quirks here and there, but nothing that I would consider a bug per se.

As much as I’ve enjoyed 3.0D, I had to agree with most folks who didn’t upgrade in the fact that there wasn’t a very compelling reason to upgrade from 2.66. There simply weren’t enough new or improved features.. Most of the changes between 2.x versions of MT and 3.0D were mostly behind the scenes. I noticed that the software ran faster and I liked the new design of the user interface, but that’s not a lot of motivation for most users.

The only real noticeable change with 3.0D had to do with comments. There was now a method of approving comments, which helped limit the amount of comment SPAM that some sites were experiencing, including this one. There was also built-in support for TypeKey, but the weblog community has been lukewarm at best to this type of authentication system. I’ve chosen to use it, but most weblogs haven’t added support for it, so I’ve really only used it on my weblogs. All-in-all the comment and trackback handling has been greatly improved, but again, it wasn’t compelling enough for most users to upgrade.

The New Stuff
I think all that will change at the end of this month when SixApart releases version 3.1. According to their web site, there’s a bevy of new features and from what they’re telling us thus far, it all looks good. Here’s a breakdown of what coming on August 31^st

1. Dynamic Pages
Some people don’t like the “rebuild” aspect of MT and for those people, their prayers will be answered with this new feature. Now you’ll be able to specify if a page is to be dynamic, or static. I currently do this now, sort of, by using PHP where I need it. The important thing here is that these features will be built-in to MT, so you don’t have to be knowledgeable about the technology in order to use it. Don’t know PHP? No worries!

2. Post Scheduling
This may only appeal to the truly prolific anal-retentive writers out there, but you’ll soon be able to schedule a post in the future. For example, if you like to post one entry a day, but find that you’re several days ahead of schedule, you’ll be able to set when you want your future posts to appear.

I think it’s a great feature for news based web sites that are using MT and due to non-disclosure agreements have posts that can’t appear before a certain time. Take a Palm OS news site for example. Let’s say that PalmStation has some pre-release information given to them from pa1m0ne. PalmStation now has all the details regarding a future product and writes and article about the new device. However, because of the non-disclosure agreement they signed in order to get this coveted information, they can’t publish it until Midnight EST. With MT 3.1, sites with these issues will no longer have to stay up until the appointed time in order to publish.

3. Subcategories
For me, this is the best feature of all! One of the main reasons that I create multiple weblogs in order to configure this one web site, is because I can’t have sub-categories. With MT 3.1, I’ll finally be able to consolidate at least three weblogs (main, photos, travelogue) into one. In other words, I can have categories that are specific to the Travelogue that don’t appear in regular posts.

4. Application-level callbacks
This may not mean much to you and me, but for developers, this is great news because it will allow them to do more with MT.

5. Plugin Suite Included
Six Apart is also including the six winners from the Developer’s Contest as part of a suite of Plugins. You can take a look at this page to read more about the Plugins, but the most important one for most MT users will be MT-Blacklist.

If you’re running MT 2.x then you should have MT-Blacklist installed. Period. It’s a piece of cake to use and it makes the management of comment SPAM a breeze. However, for those of us that migrated to MT 3.0D, I have to say that I’ve missed the features of MT-Blacklist. Well, with the developer’s contest, Jay Allen upgraded his application and actually won the grand prize. You can read all about the details at this link, but from the sound of it MT-Blacklist 2.0 will be a VERY powerful tool that will be a must have for any MT 3.0 weblog.

So There You Have It
After all of the hullabaloo surrounding the new pricing structure and what MT 3.0 was or wasn’t, there’s finally convincing reasons for upgrading your weblog to version 3. There is still a free version of MT with no support that most personal webloggers will still qualify for and even if you don’t, at most you’ll spend $100 which is a pittance for the quality product that you’ll receive in return. With dynamic pages, post scheduling, subcategories and fantastic new Plugins, there’s no reason that I can see that MT users shouldn’t upgrade come September.

So ladies and gentleman, start your upgrade engines!

So Why Use It?
MoveableType has a very easy, straightforward method of posting to your weblog through its web interface and version 3.0 of the software has made it even better, so why do you even need a desktop client. Technically, you don’t need a desktop client. Everything you need to manage your weblog can be done via your web browser, but there are some nice features that desktop clients bring to the table that are worth considering.

» Spell check- This is the biggest motive for using a desktop client. I don’t know about you, but my spelling is horrible and without spell check, my entries would be littered with mis-spelled words. Most desktop clients have built-in spell check and thus help you proof your work before you publish it.

» File & Image Upload Tools - A quick and easy way to upload images to your weblog. Some even include thumbnail support, meaning that you can create thumbnails of images you’re uploading automatically.

» HTML Templates - If you use certain bits of HTML, or would like to, many clients have templates that allow you to quickly insert your “bits” anywhere in your entry you need them. Some even give you the power to completely alter the look and feel of an entire entry through page templates.

» Multiple Weblog Support - Often times, people use more than one weblog within their site. For example, you might create a weblog for “Links” and then integrate that into your web site. To the end user it may appear that it’s all one weblog, but behind the scenes, you know better. In the case of this weblog, I currently use 5 different weblogs to manage all my content. With many desktop clients, you can easily switch between different weblogs, even if they are are different servers!

» A True Preview - When posting directly using MT, you really can’t see how your entry will look until after it’s posted. With many desktop clients, you can customize the preview so that it looks almost exactly as it will appear on your web site. Now you can see how things will look BEFORE you post!

» Save Locally - Although I’ve never lost an entry via MT, it never hurts to have a local copy just in case. Also having a file locally gives you full control of it for future use.

» Other Fun Things - With some weblogs you can do fun stuff too, like include what song you’re currently listening to at the time of posting!

As you can see there’s a lot that a desktop client can do. If any of those items looked like something that you might be interested in, then perhaps trying a desktop client is for you. The beauty of using a local client is that it doesn’t adversely affect your weblog. You can even use multiple desktop clients on the same machine if you want to!

Where Do You Find Them?
Glad you asked. I maintain two listings of all known weblog clients. One is at the MT Wiki at this link and the other can be found in the MoveableType Forums at this link. At either of those links you can find a list of clients for your particular OS, including handhelds and mobile phones.

That’s right! You can use your Palm OS or Pocket PC handheld to post to your weblog and in some cases you can even use your mobile phone! So you see it’s more than just your desktop where a local client can come in handy.

What Client Is Best?
Well, that really depends on your weblog, your style of posting and where you want to post from. For example, if you use all the fields in MT, such as “Excerpt” and “Extended Entry” then you’ll need a weblog with full MT support, but if you just use the main “Entry” field, then just about any weblog client will work.

To go into further detail will require, well, a lot more detail, so I’ll save that for another entry. In the meantime, I did a couple of reviews last year on Windows Clients, Palm OS Clients and Linux Clients. Those articles should give you a good feel for what’s out there. If all goes well, I’ll update those articles in a few days.

In the meantime, the best way to find what works best for you, is just to PLAY! Install one, or install them all and give them a test drive. These applications are typically small, easy to install and remove, so giving them a whirl shouldn’t comprise your system. Kick the tires, take it around the block and then decide which one works best for you.

What Do You Use?
For this weblog, I mostly use Zempt, however I did like ecto before the demo ran out. It was a little early in the development of the software to decide if I was ready to purchase it, but I have to say it’s a really nice client.

For my Director’s Log at npug.org, I use Slug. That weblog is A LOT simpler, without images and very few links, so I find that Slug is perfect for that weblog. It lives in the tool tray and I can post something in the blink of an eye. It’s ultra simple, but it fits perfectly with that weblog.

I use mo:Blog for posting via Palm OS and when I’m in Linux, I use BloGTK (a great client btw). I mostly post in Windows, but when I’m in other operating systems, that’s the software I use.

Closing
Hopefully this entry has given you a broad overview of what desktop clients are and how they can be used. If you haven’t tried one yet, perhaps now you’ll give one a try and see if it doesn’t make posting to your weblog easier.

For those of you currently using a desktop client, I’d LOVE to hear what you’re using. Please post a reply to this entry and share what client you like the best and, if you feel so inclined, please say why you like it.

All-in-all desktop clients expand on what you’re already doing with your weblog, or extend your posting experience to more mobile platforms. Regardless of what software you choose to use, it’s always good to know that you can fall back on the basic MT web browser interface, should you need to.

I do notice a few nice changes, but this version isn’t drastically different from 2.661, so if you’re running an older version, I’d hold off on the upgrade until a more final version comes out. The biggest change, which you’ll notice if you post a comment to the main weblog, is that TypeKey has been implemented in MT 3.0. This is optional and weblog authors do not have to enable it if they don’t want to. I decided to give it a test run to see how well it functions. So, if you want to post a comment, you’ll need a TypeKey account. It’s free, but it is an extra step and that might turn into a PITA for many people.

The motivation behind TypeKey is to limit the amount of comment SPAM that’s oh so prevalent in the weblog community. Back in March, I installed MT-Blacklist and it’s helped a lot, but there’s still some SPAM that gets past. TypeKey should help stop that. If you find TypeKey prohibitive to you posting a comment, please let me know.

So far I like the changes that have been implemented with version 3.0, however I have to admit that the price tag is a little scary. I think most people who run personal weblogs of any depth are going to migrate to WordPress, or some other weblog tool. My greatest concern is for commercial users. I’ve been implementing MT with a lot of my clients, but given the new pricing structure, I don’t know if many will be willing to pay the extra money. $199 was a real sweet spot for my clients and the fact that there wasn’t a limit on the number of weblogs you could create made it very flexible. Even with the most expensive license, a whopping $799, you’re limited to 15 weblogs and 20 authors. That’s a pretty steep price tag. :O

Often times with commercial applications, I end up creating multiple weblogs to get around issues with the software, such as the lack of complex categories. Perhaps when the final version is released, some of these workarounds will be worked out and my clients will qualify for the $199 license. Until then, I think the entire weblog community is going to take a “wait and see” approach to see how the dust settles. I know that SixApart needs to charge more for their software, but the restrictions placed on the number of weblogs and licenses is pretty steep and a lot of people are ticked off about it.

Burning Bird hits the nail on the head and sums up my feelings pretty well regarding the new pricing structure. I run a lot of volunteer web sites that generate ZERO revenue and none of them will fit within the free version license. This puts a lot of projects on hold, because I can’t see deploying MT knowing that there’s a huge price tag waiting for me somewhere in the future. Either SixApart is going to have to revise their pricing, or fan of MT are going to flee in droves to a competitor’s product.

If you’d like to learn more about the differences between the versions available, Les has a pretty good take on it, albeit a bit of a harsh one.

Over the past couple of weeks, the time monster has been reeking havoc on my usual routine. As a result, I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to. The challenge that I’m facing is that I’m doing more and finding less time to write about it. My “quiet time” has been at a minimum for the past few weeks, so either I either DO or WRITE, but I can’t seem to be able to do both. With spring in full bloom, tons of gardening and yard work to do, Dan in town, trying to get the motorcycle started, bicycling 100+ miles per week and the regular chores and tasks of running my own business, community groups and trying to have a wee bit of a personal life, I’m not left with a while lot of time left in which to write about everything that’s going on.

That sucks, because there’s so much that I want to share! I’ve recently done a face plant in my driveway, have a ton of cycling rides to talk about, want to share my recent addiction to espresso, as well as movie reviews and other various and sundry stories. I’ve started half a dozen of these entries on my AlphaSmart Dana, so there’s hope that I’ll get them done someday, but for now that Time Monster has me firmly in his grasp.

It’s times like these where I’m envious of other weblog authors who have a distinct knack for writing concise and to-the-point entries, like Fiat Lux, or more personal and straightforward entires like Brainology.net. Both of these authors write excellent entries, but they are able to keep them short and to the point. I find it next to impossible to write in this manner. What others can write about in 300 words, takes me 1500. LOL (As a side note, I just noticed that I’ve written over 200,000 words in 14 months – hard to fathom) Yet, it’s not just the brevity in which I’m envious of, it’s also the way in which they talk about personal stuff too. For some reason, this weblog has taken the form of what I would call an article style, meaning that instead of short personal updates, entries are structured more like an article, or a short story. I like this style and I don’t want to change it per se, it’s just that I sometimes wish I had another outlet for certain topics.

I’ve been slowly working on a re-design of npug.org and I’ve been toying around with the idea of keeping a diary while I go through the process of the redesign. Clearly this would make for a good weblog and could easily be hosted on the NPUG web site. I can even see this weblog continuing after the redesign is complete since there’s plenty of other NPUG stuff to write about. What appeals to me about starting a whole new weblog is that it would be much more straightforward and simpler in format. No images, no links, just my thoughts on NPUG at that moment. Writing in that kind of style is very appealing to me and yet THIS entry is about how my time is so restricted, so how do I have time for ANOTHER weblog? :O

Maybe it’s a passing fancy, or maybe it’s a deep desire; at this point it’s way to early for me to be sure, but it would appear that I’m looking for another outlet. Clearly I like writing and sharing my personal thoughts and mashby.com doesn’t seem to give me all the outlets I need. Even though the Time Monster has me under its thumb, it’s something that I’m going to have to explore a little bit and see if this is a path worth following or not. Of course whose to say that there’s even an audience for this new weblog? But is that really the point? If a writer posts on an unread weblog, is it really a posted? I’ll give this some more thought. Stay tuned.

Recently, my weblog has been getting increasing numbers of SPAM and as is normally the case, I was a little bit happy to see it. However there’s a new type of SPAM that I’m having to deal with that I don’t care for at all. It’s called comment spam. If you run a MoveableType weblog then you’ve probably heard about this new type of SPAM, but for those of you that don’t allow me to explain.

MoveableType employs an open comment system. That means that anyone can post a comment if the comment feature is enabled. Most weblogs employ comments because it’s good to get feedback about what you’re written. Spammers have recognized that there is a loophole in open comment systems and as a result MT weblogs have become a target for comment spam and comment flooding. Spammers are now using automated scripts to send many comments at time to a weblog entry and are doing this to weblogs everywhere. The only real way around this loophole is comment registration and that won’t appear until MT releases it’s 3.0 version. In the mean time I’ve been deleting the comments by hand. It’s not that bad of a process when it was one or two a week, but I’m now finding that I’m getting 3 or 4 a day and it’s starting to become a PITA.

So just what do these Comment Spam posts look like? Well, surprisingly they almost all look the same. The subject says something like the following:

hi from Larry Heta amazing page see a later tomorrow or never

|| Posted by Alicia silverstone nude picture galleries (1 total) on March 13, 2004 07:08 AM

Pretty innocuous huh? Here’s where the catch comes in. The spammer lists his name as “Alicia silverstone nude picture galleries” and his URL points to some nasty web site. As a result, when the comment is posted, you see a link called “Alicia silverstone nude picture galleries” just below the comment. I pride myself on keeping my weblog pretty clean, so this kind of junk really makes me angry.

As I was deleting the example listed above, yes that was from an actual Comment Spam, I got to thinking, “What’s the point of these stupid Comment Spam posts anyway?” I suppose one purpose of it is to try and lure my readers to click the link and check out the site, but there’s actually more to it. Many spammers are posting comments so that their PageRank will appear higher in Google. If you’re interested in learning more about the ins and outs of this topic, Wired News did a great article on the subject called Spammers Clog Up the Blogs, that is worth a read.

I guess I should call myself lucky because I’m not generating near the level of Comment Spam that some weblogs are generating. Of course that is probably because my humble weblog isn’t near as popular as these other sites. Ego aside, I’ll still count myself lucky though because many of these sites are having to implement Blacklist Plugins and other tools to try and combat the hundreds of SPAM attacks they’re getting a day. MT Blacklist seems to be the preferred solution and I hope I never have to install it.

In the meantime, I’ll go on deleting the occasional Comment Spam that I receive. I’ll take it as flattery that with more people reading my weblog, more spammers will come as part of the package as well. Ahhh, the high cost of fame.

Step One: Find Some Smileys
Before anything else, you need to find some smileys that you can use on your web site. Mine came from a custom set that I use on the NPUG forums, but I found a great resource with tons of smileys to choose from. Jason has a huge collection of them, but I found his Basic Sets to include the best selections. There are even some holiday versions that I could see using for special holidays just for fun.

Step Two: Upload The Smileys To Your Site
Once you’ve selected the smiley set that you like, download them to your computer, unzip them and then upload them to your web site. For example, you could upload them to your /images directory. If you’re handy with an FTP program like WS_FTP LE you can upload the images directly to your server, otherwise, you can use the built-in upload feature in Movable Type. Simply log in to your weblog and choose “Upload” from the menu on the left.

Step Three: Install MTMacro Plugin
Brad Choate has written one of the most useful plugins for Moveable Type (MT) called MTMacro. There are a million and one things that you can do with this plugin, but for our purposes, we’re going to use it to find any emoticons and turn them into smileys. So simply follow the instructions on Brad Choate’s web page to install the plugin.

Step Four: Create Your HTML
Now that we have the plugin installed, we next have to create the HTML for each of the smiley images MTMacro will use to replace the emoticons it finds. What you’re creating are simple IMG tags to point to where you uploaded your smileys. All of this really depends on the images that your using, but here is the HTML that I used for my weblog. Please customize it as needed for your web site.

<img src=”/images/smile.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Smile” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/smile.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Smile” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/frown.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Frown” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/frown.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Frown” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/biggrin.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Big Grin” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/biggrin.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Big Grin” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/wink.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Wink” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/wink.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Wink” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/tongue.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Tongue” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/tongue.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Tongue” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/confused.gif” width=”15″ height=”22″ alt=”Confused” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/cool.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Cool” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/cool.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Cool” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/eek.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Eek!” border=”0″ /><br /> <img src=”/images/eek.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Eek!” border=”0″ />

Step Five: Create Your Macros
You’re almost done. The next step is to create the macro – that’s the little bit of code that tells MTMacro what to look for and replace. Take a look at the following example:

<MTMacroDefine name="smile" string=":)">

That little bit of code is telling MTMacro to look for :(. The thing you have to think about is what type of emoticons you might you, or your readers might use if you’re going to add support for comments. In my case, I took into account that some people might use a nose in their emoticon and some might not, so I created a macro for :) and :-)

But what does it do when MTMacro has found it? Well that’s where your IMG HTML code from step four comes in. A complete macro looks like this:

<MTMacroDefine name=”smile” string=”:)”><img src=”/images/smile.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Smile” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine>

That’s all there is to it. So now all you have to do is come up with macros for each of the smileys that you want to use. Here’s the code that I used for this site.

<MTMacroDefine name=”smile” string=”:)”><img src=”/images/smile.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Smile” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”smile1″ string=”:-)”><img src=”/images/smile.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Smile” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”frown” string=”:(”><img src=”/images/frown.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Frown” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”frown1″ string=”:-(”><img src=”/images/frown.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Frown” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”big_grin” string=”:D”><img src=”/images/biggrin.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Big Grin” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”big_grin1″ string=”:-D”><img src=”/images/biggrin.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Big Grin” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”wink” string=”;)”><img src=”/images/wink.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Wink” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”wink1″ string=”;-)”><img src=”/images/wink.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Wink” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”tongue” string=”:P”><img src=”/images/tongue.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Tongue” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”tongue1″ string=”:-P”><img src=”/images/tongue.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Tongue” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”confused” string=”???”><img src=”/images/confused.gif” width=”15″ height=”22″ alt=”Confused” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”cool” string=”8)”><img src=”/images/cool.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Cool” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”cool1″ string=”8-)”><img src=”/images/cool.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Cool” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”eek” string=”:0″><img src=”/images/eek.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Eek!” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”eek1″ string=”&-#58;0″><img src=”/images/eek.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Eek!” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine><br /> <MTMacroDefine name=”lol” string=”LOL”><img src=”/images/lol.gif” width=”15″ height=”15″ alt=”Laughing Out Loud” border=”0″ /></MTMacroDefine>

Step Six: Add The Macros To Your Template(s)
Any template that you want to apply MTMacro to, simply add the code from Step Five to the top of the template and select the “Save” button. Technically this code can be anywhere in your page as long as it’s above the code in Step Seven.

Step Seven: Apply The Macro To The Content In Your Template(s)
There’s just one more step to go. All that’s left is to add the code to your templates. You can add these anywhere you like but the most obvious places to add them would be your index page, comments section and each archive that you support. For this weblog that meant the “Main Index”, “Category Archive”, “Date-Based Archive”, and “Individual Entry Archive”. Since my comments are on the “Individual Entry Archive”, but if you’re using popup comments, you may want to add this to your “Comment Listing Template”, which is found under the Miscellaneous Templates section of MT.

In each of the templates, look for the following tag:

<$MTEntryBody$>

Replace that code with the following:

<MTMacroApply><$MTEntryBody$></MTMacroApply>

What this bit of code does is tell MTMacro to look in the MTEntryBody and apply all macros to it. Now all that’s left is to save the template.

When you’ve finished editing all your templates, simply rebuild your site and you’re all done!

Tip: Using Template Modules
I got sick of having to up all the code from Step Five in each template, so I created a “Template Module” and used the MTInclude tag instead. If you’d like to do this, here’s how to do it.

1. In the “Template” section of your weblog scroll down to the “Template Modules” section and select the “Create new template module” link. Title it “smileys” and in the “Module Body” copy and paste in the code from Step Five. Select the “Save” button to finish this step.

2. In Step Six, instead of posting the code from Step Five use the following code:

<$MTInclude module="smileys"$>

If you have multiple weblogs on your site, you will have to create this module in each of your weblogs. That can be a pain to edit, so I would suggest link the “smileys” template module to a file and that way you only have to edit one module for the change to appear all across your web site.

The End Result
Now whenever anyone uses an emoticons in the comments, or if I use it in any entry, it will instantly be converted into a smiley. What could be easier? Here’s a list of all the emoticons supported on this weblog:
– :) (Smile) – :( (Frown) – :D (Big Grin) – ;) (Wink) – :P (Tongue)
??? – ??? (Confused) – 8) (Cool)
:O – :O (Eek)
LOL – LOL (Laughing Out Loud)

I hope you found this little tutorial helpful. If you end up using this on your own weblog, please send a Trackback, or post a comment. I’d love to see how you use it on your web site.

After the change back, I kind of missed the saying “Ask me what time it is and I’ll tell you how to build a watch.”, yet I didn’t want to lose the main description of the site “Michael Ashby’s (aka mashby) weblog regarding technology, movies, travel and other odd rants and ramblings.” That gave me the idea of adding a little chaos to the site by adding a PHP script to select random text and display it where the description is. The entry explains how I did it.

Choosing A Script
There is a PHP script that I found a few years back called “Random Image Picker” by Richard Heyes. It’s a simple little script that searches a specific file and randomly displays one line from it. Initially I used it to randomly display images for a client site. If you go to www.nysais.org and look in the upper right corner, you’ll see a random image appear. Each time you refresh, a new image is randomly selected and appears. Pretty cool huh? Well, after inspecting the script, I realized that instead of images, I could just as easily display text, so I decided to use this script.

I searched to find the script again, so that I could make it easy for you to download, but I came up with nothing. So, I’ve zipped it up, along with the random text file I used and you can download it at this link. If you don’t like this script, or if you simply want to find another one, I recommend checking out PHP Resource Index or HotScripts.com.

Step-By-Step Instructions
The following instructions assume that you’re using “Random Image Picker” and walk you through each step that I did to configure, install and run this script.

1. Download Random Image Picker.

2. Unzip the file using Winzip, Stuffit, or your preferred choice of compression software.

3. Open the file title “random.image.PHP” in a text editor. I strongly recommend using a text editor and not FrontPage, MS Word, or any other GUI HTML editor. For Windows users, this means you should use Notepad (Start \ Run \ notepad \ OK).

4. On line 12, you’ll see the following:

"$filename = 'http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/random.txt';"

change the url to your domain name. So if you’re domain name is foo.com, the line should read

[CODE]$filename = ‘http://www.foo.com/random.txt’;[CODE]

5. Save the file and close notepad.

6. Upload random.image.PHP anywhere on your web site. I’m a bit anal retentive, so I put it in a /scripts/random/ folder, but you can put it in your home directory if you like. It doesn’t matter. If you’re familiar with FTP great, if you’re not, simply log into your MT control panel and select “Upload A File”. Browse to where you saved the file and then OK. With the rest of the instructions, I’m going to assume that you uploaded the script into your root directory (http://www.foo.com/random.image.php).

7. Log into MT, choose your weblog, and select “Templates”.

8. Select “Create new index template”. Title it anything you like, but the “output file” field should be “random.txt”. In the body you’ll need to put in the stuff you want random. Look in the included random.txt that I put in the zip file to see what I used. All you have to remember is that each item should be it’s own distinct line. If you’d like to have random images instead of random text, simply put in the HTML code needed to display an image on your site. For example,

<img src="/images/foo.gif" width="150" height="150" border="0" alt="foo" />

Again, just make sure that each item is on it’s own distinct line. When you’re done select the “Save” button.

9. Now for the last step. Simply find the template that you want to place the random text in. In my case, this was a template I created called “header.html” that I include on all my templates. You might be editing your Main Index page, the choice is yours. Once you’ve opened and selected your template, all you have left to do is add an include to where you want your random text to appear. This can be done a number of ways.

If you’re using PHP, then add the following line to your template:

<?PHP include('http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/random.image.php'); ?>

If you’re not using PHP, then you can use the following MT Template tag:

<$MTInclude file="random.image.PHP"$>

You’re Done!
That’s all there is to it! Now you can edit your random.txt file via MT whenever you want to add or delete anything from what is randomly displayed. For example, you might want to post random quotes on your web site and as you come across more quotes, you can simply insert them in the Random Text template you created.

If you’ve found this tutorial helpful, please let me know by posting a comment to this entry. I’d love to see how you’re using this simple little script on your site.

Since I began using MT for the weblogging software for mashby.com, I’ve found all sorts of interesting applications for it’s use. Anything from links management to task lists, to total content management. I’m still anxiously awaiting the release of MovableType Pro, but until then, I’ll keep bending MT to my will. To help illustrate just how flexible MT can be, today I’ll show you how you can manage your Links page through some small changes in how you normally use MT.

Getting Started
I’m assuming that you already have MT installed and are using it already for your weblog, or other type of web site. I’m also assuming that you’ve used it long enough to become comfortable with it. In other words, you’re familiar with most of the general terminology.

The total process of using MT as a link manager can be broken down into 4 major steps:
    1. Create and configure a new weblog
    2. Customize template(s)
    3. Making Your First Entry

1. Create and configure a new weblog
From the main menu, select “Create A New Weblog” and then fill out the appropriate fields, such as the name. Since we’re create a links weblog, I titled mine “Links”. As for the paths, I set them up the same as my main weblog, then I clicked the “Save” button to create the weblog.

Now that the new weblog is created, I tweaked some of the settings in the configuration. Here’s a breakdown of the setting changes I made:
   » Preferences
      »Set “Convert Line Breaks” to “None”
      »Set “Default Post Status” to “Publish”
      »Set “Allow Comments default” To “None”

   » Archiving
      »Turned off all archiving

2. Customize template(s)
Now that you’ve setup and configured the new weblog, it’s time configure the templates. For my links page, I didn’t need RSS feeds, or archiving, so I went ahead and deleted ALL the templates. With a blank slate, I went about creating a new templates called “Links” with the output file of “links.html”

To create the Links templates, I recommend making a copy of the main template that you’re already using for your weblog and use that as the base for this template. Where your entries are listed in the template, replace them with the following code:

01: <MTCategories>
02: <h3><$MTCategoryLabel$></h3>
03: <p>
04: <MTEntries sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
05: <a href="<$MTEntryBody$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a> ( $<$MTEntryExcerpt$> )<br />
06: </MTEntries>
07: </p>
08: </MTCategories>

You may need to make a few changes in the layout or design to match your templates, but here’s a line-by-line breakdown of what I did.

01: I start the code with the <MTCategories> tag because this is going to be a list by category. Some links may be for weblogs, others for news and I wanted a way to break them up by category

02. The next tag is <$MTCategoryLabel$> and this will give me the name of the category. I’ve put the <h3> tag around it so that it’s large and looks like the rest of my page headers.

03: I begin a paragraph

04: The next tag is <MTEntries sort_by=”title” sort_order=”ascend”> and this tag says I want my entries sorted by title in ascending order.

05: Now I’m building the link. I start by opening the HTML link tag with <a href=” and then insert the <$MTEntryBody$> tag, which is the Entry Body field in an entry. Next I close a href tag with “> and then insert the title of the entry with the <$MTEntryTitle$> and then close the link with </a>. Lastly, I put a line return with <br /> to finish the line. Since this is going to be a list of entries, I have to have the <br /> tag, otherwise all the links would be strung together on one line.

06: I close the entries list with </MTEntries>

07: I close the paragraph with </p>

08: Lastly, I close the categories list with </MTCategories>

Save the template and you’re all done with this step!

3. Making Your First Entry
The hard work is all done and all that’s left is to make a few entries to the weblog. Referencing the above template, here’s how you should make your entries.

Title = Link Name
In the “Title” field, enter the name of the site you’re linking to. For example, if you wanted to create a link to the Palm OS User Council, you’d enter “Palm OS User Council” in the title field.

Category = Category
In the category field, create a category for this link. In the example we’re using, you might want to the category to be “Palm OS”.

Body = URL
In the body field put the URL of the web site, for example http://www.usercouncil.org.

After you’ve made your first entry, check the page to ensure you’re getting the results you were hoping for. Make changes to the template as needed, remembering to rebuild the page when you’re done.

The End Result
What’s great about using MT to manage your links is that now you can quickly and easily manage your growing list of links. If you need to remove one, you simply delete it from your list of entries. Adding one takes nothing more than filling out two fields and selecting a category. The best part is that you never have to mess with the HTML side of things again. All you’re doing is managing entries just like any other weblog.

Expanding On A Good Idea
With the links page, we’re only using 3 fields and it’s a pretty straightforward affair. I expanded on this concept and created a “WishList” here at mashby.com. All I did was use the Excerpt field for the price and added that to the template. Now I had a links page with a price next to it. Pretty cool huh?

There’s no end to what you can do with MT if you put your mind to it and add a little imagination to the mix. In the near future, I hope to show some other examples of how I’ve used MT in fun and interesting ways, such as using MT as a task management system for small work group. If you are using MovableType in a new, or different manner than it was intended, please post a comment on what you’ve done!

Ben and Mena G. Trott have created a fantastic product. It’s so well thought out and documented that I would guess that 95% of what you’d like to do on your weblog could be done with MT ‘right out of the box.’ To help you discover all that can be done with MT, there is excellent documentation. Whenever I’m thinking of adding a new feature, or tweaking an existing one, I always turn to the documentation first. Chances are MT already has what I’m looking to add built in.

MT Plugin Directory
However MT was created so that users could expand the abilities of what the software can do by enabling the use of Plugins. If I can’t find what I’m looking for in the documentation. The next place I check is the MT Plugin Directory. There’s a wealth of easy to add plugins that add a new dimension to the software. In most cases, all that’s required is to upload a small file into your /plugins directory. Once installed you simply use special tags that activate the Plugin and you’re all done. I’ve been able to install, configure and use most plugins in under 15 minutes.

My favorite Plugin is called Amputator. I’m a bit of a compliance code freak, meaning that i like to make sure that my code is always 100% compliant with the W3C. I’m not going to go into all the reasons why I think everyone should validate their code, but suffice to say that if it’s compliant then all browsers should be able to view it. What I discovered is that I was having to check my code with almost every entry. I added a button on the navigation bar that would allow me to validate any page on the site. What I discovered is that 99% of the time the error was due to an “&” in a link. I don’t think validators should validate URLs, but that too is another story. The solution I found was to replace “&” with “&amp;”, but that is a colossal PITA to remember to do that with every URL you use in an entry. Luckily I’m not alone in my need to have valid code because Nat Irons wrote the Amputator Plugin that automatically converts the “&” found in a URL to the appropriate “&amp;”. It may be a small thing, but I can’t tell you how much time this simple little Plugin has saved me.

MT Forums
But what if you need help beyond the documentation and the Plugin directory? That’s where the Forums come in. The MovableType Forums offer a wealth of support; anything from install issues to tips and tricks. What’s great about the forums is the ability to see what other people are doing with their weblogs. After reading someone’s post about how to add Winamp playlists to their weblog, and the accompanying solution from another reader, I was able to easily add it to my weblog as well. What I like best about the forums though is the ability to get answers to your own unique problems.

An Example
One Saturday, I was sitting at the kitchen table typing up an entry for the day when the thought occurred to me, “I wonder just how many words I’ve typed thus far?” I was already counting the number of entries and comments – a feature built in to MT – but I was curious about how many words I had typed. I found a Plugin called WordCount that would do just that, so I installed it and in no time I had a word count for each entry. That was great, but it didn’t give me a total for the entire site.

Technically speaking, I’m running 4 individual weblogs here at mashby.com. The reason for this is that MT doesn’t support subcategories. This is the only blemish I can find with MT and I can’t wait for MT Pro to come out to resolve this problem. In the meantime, the workaround was to simply create multiple weblogs for each major section of the site: Main, Photos, Travelogue, and Workout Log. it works just fine, but it presented a unique problem. Each weblog would have it’s own total in counting words, but how could I combine them all?

That’s where the MT Forums really shine. I posted the question to the community and asked for their help. I wanted to know how I could total all the words for all 4 weblogs as well as total all entries and comments while I was at it. Who says beggars can’t be choosers? Thanks to the kindness of maddy, she posted the solution to my problem. By using PHP, she gave me all the code I needed to do exactly what I wanted! How great is that? All I had to do is copy and past the code where I wanted and bingo, it was all done.

If you’re considering running MovableType, or if you’re already running it, I suggest you browse the MT Forms and MT Plugin Directory every now and again. You’ll find all sorts of interesting things that you can do with your weblog that you may have never thought possible. There’s a plethora of tips, tricks, and code snippets that can really make your weblog fun and if nothing else, remember that you always have a lifeline should you need it.

Note: For those that are curious, listed below are the plugins that I use here at mashby.com
   » Amputator
   » IfEmpty
   » Macros
   » MTAmazon
   » NetFlixSuite
   » RemovePings
   » WordCount

It’s been quite awhile since I submitted my site, but yesterday it was reviewed by ODATT and I was given a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I would have preferred a 5, (who wouldn’t?), but I have to admit that the feedback was quite good. I even had to laugh at some of the comments, because they were on the money. I’ve always said that if you ask me what time it is, I’ll tell you how to build a watch. That point was not lost on ODATT. My favorite comment of his was, “… there is certainly loads of material to be found here, all well presented and written, which will keep the avid blog reader happy for hours, maybe even days.”

If you agree, or disagree with ODATT’s review of my weblog, I’d appreciate it if you’d post your own rating at this link. In addition, I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions as well, so don’t be shy about posting a comment to this entry.