Hello! Long time no speak!
Well, as my thesis is nearly done I thought I'd possibly start up doing this blogging thing again...
So, the first thing I decided to do was to get up to date with my blogging software. I'm now using Movable Type 4.1 rather than version 2.661 which is what I've been using for ages and ages.
I had worried that upgrading would have been a real pain in the backside - which is why I'd left it ages to do it (missing out version 3 altogether - although that was also because of the licence with MT3 which I wasn't happy with!). I had considered converting to WordPress, however given all my customisations that'd have been a bigger pain to do.
Anyways, hopefully the blog is pretty much as it was in the old days... the major change being commenting... you can still post as before (after entering in the CAPTCHA) but now the post won't appear straight away... I'll have to moderate it. This means I might take it upon myself to not allow through crap comments. Not that my avid readers ever posted crap comments, but have you read the chavs post recently?
The other option is that you authenticate yourself somehow... then you won't have to fill in the CAPTCHA and your post will (currently) be posted 'instantly' without me having to moderate it.
Authentification is très simple. You can sign in with a Typekey account if you've got one - feel free to get one... it's used by many blogs for authentification...
You can also use OpenID to authenticate... OpenID, what's that? Well, there's quite a large chance you already have one without knowing... here's a list of things on the web you could be signed up for that will have already given you an OpenID... now to be honest... I've tried, my AOL, Blogger and Yahoo accounts... and only my AOL (AOL of all things) worked. This is exceptionally poo. I don't think it's an issue at my end as I've tried signing in using the same OpenIDs on the Movable Type website too and it fails... no idea where the problem lies! I'll let you know if the methods miraculasly start to work.
If you're serious about commenting (and don't want me to have to moderate it) I'd go down the TypeKey route at the moment if I were perfectly honest - TypeKey gives you an OpenID too... bonus (at http://profile.typekey.com/username) it's up to you to find another use for it :)
So, there we go... maybe I'll post a diary style entry a bit later!
Wooo... a comment... looks like it worked ;-)
Feel free to say "Hello" if you still read the blog :-)
Ed
Yeah i'm still here. Was a bit of a shock to get the notification email . Thought you'd dropped off the planet!
Posted by: Rob on March 26, 2008 9:04 PMI'm going to take advantage of having a TypeKey account to post a thoughtful and heartfelt comment.
Sod it, no I'm not.
First!
Posted by: Joe Williams on March 26, 2008 10:41 PMI'm going to take advantage of having a TypeKey account to post a thoughtful and heartfelt comment.
Sod it, no I'm not.
First!
Posted by: Joe Williams on March 26, 2008 10:42 PMHmm.... having signed in using TypeKey, my insightful comments aren't appearing. Still set to need moderation?
Posted by: Joe Williams on March 26, 2008 10:43 PMThe key was in the quotes around 'instantly' ;-)
The plan is that any pages that are to be rebuilt will be rebuilt every 5 minutes... so when you post a comment it'll appear within the next 5 mins if it's been automatically accepted.
This is so that after you post a comment you don't have to wait for the post to be rebuilt before it'll return...
That was the plan... however... I found this in my syslog...
Error: bad minute; while reading /etc/cron.d/blogs
Not good... it happened because there was a newline where there shouldn't have been...
Hi Ed,
Glad you've blogged again - gives me something new to read when I have a look :)
Rosie
Posted by: Dozy Rosie on March 29, 2008 3:19 PMMarvellous, another TypeKey comment (Rosie's in case it's not obvious!) :-) Proving the the auto moderation thingy does actually work without me having to prod it :D
Interesting... is there an American and a proper way of spelling Marvelous/Marvellous? Or are there just two ways?