I could take this site completely dynamic, completely php. It worked for Erica. But it would be a big step to take -- it would mean bye-bye MT tags, hello total dependence on the efficient working of my mysql database. Dare I mess around? Maybe someday, when I get up the nerve...
Update: well, it worked on my test blog -- kinda. There are still some kinks to work out, but they (and all other site tinkering) will have to wait until I take care of some other business.
Posted by Andrea Harris at July 10, 2003 12:50 AMThere's more than a few things I like about it. I hated rebuilding. No more of that crap. With straight PHP running the show, I can write my own hacks and mods without running afoul of a language (Perl) that I don't get. I don't have to rebuild anymore. It saves a ton of disk space. I don't have to rebuild anymore. I can use a client like Zempt and never have to see the MT interface again.
Did I mention that I don't have to rebuild anymore?
(I really hated it. That much.)
If you decide to go for it and need help, I'm more than willing to help. Brenna's templates are good, and the hacks I added allow me to use Textile (hooray!). I'm working on getting it to display number of comments, etc. Once I got it working on the weight loss blog, it was a matter of copying a few files to the main directory and editing a couple lines in one file to get it working on the main one.
Last hack I hope to work on: limiting a special category of private posts to be only viewable to a select range of IPs. Cause, yaknow, not everyone wants to hear about my period. :-P
Posted by: Erica at July 10, 2003 at 05:54 AMOh, and I'm going to work in better photologging capabilities. Once I figure out how, that is. :-P
Posted by: Erica at July 10, 2003 at 05:55 AMYou should just set up a test blog, and see how it goes. It's easy enough to experiment with.
Man, Erica -- how many rebuilds did you have to do?
Posted by: Scott at July 10, 2003 at 08:54 AMWhen I go to that site, and scroll to the bottom of the page, it just tops in the middle of a post. This may not be the panacea you are looking for.
Posted by: blaster at July 10, 2003 at 09:04 AMIt saves a ton of disk space.
Okay, I've been using MT for about three months now, and I had to dump individual archives and categories because the multiple copies of each post in each archive format were eating up my server space.
I'm not sure if I can convert (Is MySQL necessary to do PHP? Do I have MySQL? What the heck is MySQL?), but I'm sure interested in learning more...
Posted by: McGehee at July 10, 2003 at 09:20 AMScott: Four years of blogging times seven blogs times individual, category and monthly archives--it got out of hand quickly.
blaster: mine or emptypages?
McGehee: let me know if I can help. If you're using Movable Type, there's a good chance that you're using MySQL. I can help you figure it all out.
And Andrea: You don't actually have to change your templates to use the dynamic method. Just copy those templates into files with the names given in a separate folder, then edit the header1.php file to reflect your site stuff. You'll be able to see the results without changing a thing in Movable Type.
Posted by: Erica at July 10, 2003 at 09:36 AMErica: thanks! I think I will try it soon.
Blaster: the cut-off problem you experienced is an IE 6 bug having to do with the stylesheet Erica is currently using, it has nothing to do with the other changes. The way to deal with it is to expand your browser to full-screen moded and then back to normal, this usually takes care of that problem.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at July 10, 2003 at 09:46 AMI'm sorry, but I thought you said seven blogs. Must be something wrong with my hearing aid.
Posted by: Scott at July 10, 2003 at 12:03 PMI wrote mine from the ground up in PHP - there are some areas of functionality I don't have in the background that I could not care about but it works, its mine, and its nice to say you did it yourself. I say this having never used a blog service in my life. The only one I have ever had is the one I made myself. I say go for it.
Posted by: Phil at July 10, 2003 at 12:22 PMNever mind me guys, just testing a hack. (Not this one.)
Posted by: Andrea Harris at July 10, 2003 at 10:16 PMHmmmm. There's certainly something seductively efficient about the whole idea.
Hmmm.
Posted by: *** Dave at July 10, 2003 at 11:18 PMHey look at my site!
</exhibitionism>
Done with smoke, mirrors, CSS, and JavaScript.
I have a question though. I can understand why a mega-site like Blogger needs archives. If they didn't have archives, every visit to every blog would require an sql query, which is more intensive than just pulling a pre-written file.
But why would small sites using MT (or whatever) need archives at all? Or am I misunderstanding this thread?
P.S. Thanks, Andrea. I didn't see your comment on my blog design til later because the new blogger interface required an update to the YACCS code which if you didn't get it your posts looked just like no one commented so I didn't open the comments window til after I happened to go to the YACCS control panel and see that the latest comment was quite a lot more recent than my blog itself indicated.
Posted by: Brian O'Connell at July 11, 2003 at 12:12 AMI'll send you an email with the mod I made to make Textile work. :)
Posted by: Erica at July 11, 2003 at 06:40 AMErica, how do I contact you? I looked over on your blog for an e-mail address and didn't see one.
(Andrea, if Erica doesn't respond to this, I'll go ahead and leave an OT comment on her blog...)
Posted by: McGehee at July 13, 2003 at 08:18 AM