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Movable Type tutorial — How to add a “sidebar” to your blog

This is a tutorial for those who would like to include a “Moblog” sidebar or section within their main blog, as I have done here on Hmmn. I wrote this initially at the request of Kevin of MFOP, for other mobloggers who were asking him how to do it. However, it doesn’t have to be used for a “moblog” sidebar only. In fact, my “Of Momentary Interest” sidebar of web links was done using the same method. At heart, what we’re doing is pulling the content of one blog into another one.

I really can’t take credit for this — I figured out how to do this after cobbling together various posts made to Movable Type‘s Support Forum. In particular, without a .php script widget posted by Kadyellebee (Kristine), I couldn’t have been able to do this. Thanks also goes to Jeffrey for answering some questions about .php.

Both jeansnow.net and VuDeja? are, as far as I know, sucessfully running moblog sidebars using the method described herein, so it should work for you, though obviously I make no guarantees. By all means, if you find something amiss in my instructions, or a better alternative, please leave a comment and I’ll continue to keep this page updated. To read the tutorial, click on the link below:
Continue reading “Movable Type tutorial — How to add a “sidebar” to your blog”

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Clubbed by my own club

For the last month or so, the commenting feature on my moblog has not worked, and several readers have emailed me over that time to let me know about it (very much appreciated, folks). When trying to comment on a moblog post, users would get one of those unbecoming “Internal Server Error” messages that needless to say didn’t leave a very good impression, to say nothing of the frustration readers must have felt after spending the time to craft a comment in vain.

However, for the life of me I couldn’t understand why they weren’t working, especially when comments to this site were working just fine. As I’m running both blogs off of one Movable Type (MT) installation, both sites were using the same mt-comments.cgi script. My host doesn’t offer support for cgi scripts that are not part of their standard package, so I was on my own, although they did provide me with access to the server error logs.

The error messages referenced a certain file called postproc.pm related to an MT plug-in I use, so naturally I figured the error was related to that file, but in the end, dealing with that file didn’t fix the problem. Then last night, after scrutinizing the mt-comments.cgi file and in particular the line of code on which the script was “dying,” I had an epiphany and I realized what the problem was. It wasn’t related to the postproc.pm file at all, that was just a red herring. The problem was due to my own haste in dealing with another problem altogether.

A bit over a month ago, after receiving some comments to this site that were of an obvious spam nature, I looked about for some type of solution to this problem, and found Burningbird‘s Comment Spam Quick Fix, which involves adding a field to one’s comment form, as well as some lines of code to the mt-comments.cgi script. I edited my comment forms for this site, but like a bonehead I never did the same thing for the moblog, and thus the comments cgi script was dying whenever anyone tried to comment on the moblog. In essence, my attempt to foil spammers ended up foiling everyone.

Shortly after Burningbird posted her quick fix, which she admitted wasn’t fancy and would only “keep out the lightweights,” Mark Pilgrim wrote a post about possible solutions to the spam problem in an piece entitled Club vs. Lojack solutions, wherein he proffered up the analogy that solutions like Burningbird’s were akin to using the The Club to protect your car against theft. They may deflect spam, or defer it, but long-term they won’t be very effective against actually decreasing it. I had read Mark’s post but still went ahead with the quick fix, figuring that while his long-term thinking was all well and good, Nigerians were about to spam my comments. As it turns out, my haste to use The Club solution kept not only the spammers at bay, but my own readers as well.

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Writing from a place far from simple

Andrew over at Jap|andrew has an interesting take on Moblogging and its parallels to the vision of sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein:

So what was Heinlein’s vision all about? Basically, implants would allow viewers access data, streamed live from the “actor” who would spend their lives living for their viewers, while their viewers spent their lives living vicariously through the actors. How far away are we from this? Not that far, I think. Technologically speaking we are probably still quite a long way away, but otherwise we are almost there. Moblogging is just not quite as sexy as Heinlein’s version….

Andrew goes on to write:

So will I ever moblog? No. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. Do I think we should ever do the Heinlein thing? No. And to be honest, I don’t think anyone should have the gall to think that their lives are so interesting that people actually would want to see through their eyes 24-7.

All well and good, though I’m not sure “gall” is the word I would use, as it implies that the person living the hyperexamined 24-7 life would somehow be imposing his hubris on a consuming public who presumably would have the choice to view it (or not).

However, there was something in Andrew’s post that did bother me:

When I go to a temple here in Japan, I don’t want to be thinking of what pictures readers of this journal will want to see and when I go out for the weekend, I don’t want to be thinking of what my “theme” is going to be so that I can write about it here. I would rather just enjoy the experience, write some random thoughts here and let anyone who is interested have a look.

Isn’t that better in the end? Does everything have to be a production? Show me the simple life.

This reminds me not a little of the argument I used to hear a lot from fellow students in art school, when I would dare to actually discuss a film or artwork we had seen in class. “Why can’t you just enjoy the film, instead of having to analyze it?” was the nagging plaint. It never occurred to my naysayers that analyzing the film and engaging my mind in critical thinking was supremely enjoyable to me.

I certainly don’t view my blog as a “production,” in the sense I feel Andrew is using the term, ie. with elaborate planning and preparation. But I do see it as a creative work, a creative outlet for me, and a creative extension of other things I do, such as my photography. I care about what I publish, spend some time considering whether or not it will be of any value to those who stop by (and sometimes I choose not to spend time on such considerations), pay attention to feedback and comments I get, etc. That is just me. Just one approach. It works for me (for now). I don’t presume it’s any “better in the end” than any other approach, or worse for that matter.

Given this approach, I fully admit there’s an element of “this would be good to blog about” to things I do and places I go, which to me is no different from the freelance writer who keeps a file of story ideas, or carries their notebook with them wherever they go. To me, envisioning how I might write about some outing or event (looking for the “angle” as it’s called in reporting) adds another element to how I experience said outing or event. (It also helps me get through things I don’t want to do, like visiting relatives!) But I don’t think I’ve yet done something for the specific purpose of blogging about it.

But even if I were to take that approach, I don’t see anything inherently wrong in it, nor do I see it as somehow less “simple” than “enjoying the experience, writing random thoughts, and letting anyone enjoy it” etc. I suppose what bothers me is this false premise of “simple,” as if there’s some sort of primordial essence of blogging, or writing, or of life for that matter, with which other manifestations get measured against. It’s a bogeyman, frankly. Whether you choose to leave your blogging hat at home or not, how we experience things is never simple, never pure, never unadulterated. Both Andrew’s and I’s approach to how we write about the events of our respective lives are refractions of reality, experiences distilled though our eyes, and further filtered through the multifarious lenses of those who read us, a process which locates whatever we write, however we have written it, in a place far from simple.