Archive for the 'Blosxom' Category

Metadate 0.0.2

Friday, January 23rd, 2004

A new version of metadate is available. This version changes the paths in the external metadate file. They used to be the full path of the file, now they are the path starting from $blosxom::datadir. This should make it easier to relocate the $blosxom::datadir (or have a blosxom installation on your desktop machine for testing)

Download metadate 0.0.2 Be sure to rename it to “metadate”

Documentation is available here.

Metadate 0.0.1

Friday, January 23rd, 2004

This plugin lets you put metadates in an external file. This is especially useful when you want to specify metadates for files which can’t contain metadates themselves, such as directories, images, binary files, etc..

Download metadate 0.0.1 Be sure to rename it to “metadate”

Documentation is available here.

URIs - Moving documents

Friday, January 16th, 2004

I came across one of the first tests of my new URI format today. I wanted to post an update to the timezone plugin, but I wanted to keep the previous version around. Hmmm…multiple stories on the same topic? That sounds like a job for a category. Sadly, the obvious category for this (/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone) was already taken by my previous version, which was sitting on these URIs:

  • /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone: the perl plugin
  • /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone_about: the blosxom article about the plugin
  • /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone_pod.html: documentation for the plugin

I’m not using the full date in my URI, so I only get to reuse a path once a year. Fortunately I got lucky because we just entered a new year. That means /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone is available for me to use. Here are the new URIs I laid out:

  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/: the category (main URI for the timezone plugin)
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/about_0_0_2: the blosxom article about version 0.0.2
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/about_0_0_3: the blosxom article about version 0.0.3
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/pod_0_0_2: the documentation for version 0.0.2
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/pod_0_0_3: the documentation for version 0.0.3
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/timezone_0_0_2: version 0.0.2 of the plugin
  • /2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/timezone_0_0_3: version 0.0.3 of the plugin

So, I moved the old files to the new locations, added the new files, and updated my metadates so they were all correct. I then updated my .htaccess to add 301 redirects for the old URIs:

...
Redirect permanent /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone_about \
   http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/
RedirectMatch permanent /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone_about\.(.*) \
   http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/index.$1
Redirect permanent /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone \
   http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/timezone_0_0_2
Redirect permanent /2003/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone_pod.html \
   http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/timezone/pod_0_0_2.html
...

Finally I posted the new version. Overall it was a fairly simple task. I got lucky with the new year, in the future I’ll have to be more careful when I post stories I know will turn into categories in the future.

Update: Found one more gotcha: my internal links are generated using the absolute plugin. When I move files, old references to them need to be updated in my blosxom stories, otherwise absolute can’t find the files and doesn’t generate the right links.

Update 2: It really makes more sense to set the directories up like this:

http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/fullcategory/v0_0_1/about.blosxom
http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/fullcategory/v0_0_1/fullcategory
http://zovirl.com/2004/software/blosxom/plugins/fullcategory/v0_0_2/
...

Timezone 0.0.3

Monday, January 12th, 2004

Version 0.0.3 is now available. This version adds the ability to use the server’s default timezone and a new variable, $timezone::offset. This gives the offset from GMT (for example, for PST it will be -0800).

Download timezone 0.0.3. Be sure to rename it to “timezone”

Documentation is available here.

Timezone 0.0.2

Monday, January 12th, 2004

This is an update to Raffi Krikorian’s timezone plugin. In addition to the previous functionality (which allows Blosxom timestamps to use a different timezone than the server), the plugin now exports a variable, $timezone::name, so flavors can display the timezone next to times.

For example, this bit of flavor:

$mo_num/$da/$yr $hr:$min $timezone::name

might produce this output:
12/25/2003 11:19 PST

Download timezone 0.0.2. Be sure to rename it to “timezone”

Documentation is available here.