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Entries for April 2005The Collapse of Free Speech in the USWell, as if you hadn't already guessed, your Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech has been thwarted once again. Have a look at this article over at Time Magazine to see how our Chief Executive (President) and his underlings are mucking it up again. You have a seat on an international organization and represent the United States in any way? Only if you live and breathe the party line. Einstein's Head Scientists exhume Einstein's head and discover that it too, like the universe, is expanding. Keith's Step-By-Step Departmental Blog Branding GuideCase Branding A Movable Type BlogThis page should provide all the information you will need to apply a Case branded template to your departmental or organizational blog. The primary incentive for branding your blog is to maintain consistency with the appearance of your departmental web site. The example I provide here uses the Advanced template but, I will provide notes along the way for the few considerations you will need to make when using the Normal template. The process for blog branding is straight forward. In these steps you will actually make your blog easier to maintain and modify through the use of templates and modules you will create in the Movable Type administrative interface. Movable Type is well documented so any questions you have about the proprietary tags should be answered by the online help files via the link at the top of the administrative interface. OutlineWe will follow this outline for the major steps in this process.
Continue reading "Keith's Step-By-Step Departmental Blog Branding Guide" Mapping Your Blog@Case Directory on XP SP2A big shout out to Jeremy Smith for locating the information on how to make Windows XP play nice with WebDAV. For those of you who have installed SP2 the solution lies in re-enabling basic authentication. Follow the trackback to Jeremy's post for details. Mapping Your Blog@Case Directory on XP SP2A big shout out to Jeremy Smith for locating the information on how to make Windows XP play nice with WebDAV. For those of you who have installed SP2 the solution lies in re-enabling basic authentication. Follow the trackback to Jeremy's post for details. Draft "Branding Your Blog" Word DocToday's project was to organize the information in the last several posts into a single, coherent document. Download file and submit your comments here. Be specific and identify document content specifically when commenting. WebDAV Java GUI ClientAs many of you in the Case Geekdom know, Windows is flakey when it comes to authorizations and client connections to WebDAV hosts. Thus, no native DAV connection to Blog@Case folders for you. If you've ever uploaded a file to your blogspace and wish to delete it, the only hope for you without a third party client, or access to a Mac/Linux box is to contact the Blog.Case administrators and beg them to delete the file for you. Not acceptable. So, this morning I went on a search for a Windows WebDAV client that would allow me to do some remedial fial management. Thanks to the folks at U. Cal. Irvine ICS there is a Java based WebDAV client that gives you access. You can download the archive from their site. Now you can delete that badly munged test image you uploaded while tweaking your templates. Roll Up Your Sleeves! It's Time ForThe Index Template!If you've followed me this far you should now have all of the pieces in place to paste in your new Index template. Assuming you used the 'Advanced Cranberry' stylesheet, when we're done your blog will look just like mine only with 4 exceptions.
Continue reading "Roll Up Your Sleeves! It's Time ForThe Index Template!" Blog Branding: The FooterCreating the footer is virtually identical to creating the masthead. You'll be creating a module in your template config page. Once again, this code is an HTML fragment with none of the HEAD.../HEAD, yadda-yadda-yadda that a well formed document would have. Continue reading "Blog Branding: The Footer" Blog Branding: Sidebar ContentSidebars can exist on both sides of the branded template. My Index template places my links block on the right along with some other stuff I've custom coded into it. Where you place specific content in each of your templates is up to you but the process for creating each block of content is the same. For this post I will be discussing two specific pieces of your existing Index template that are re-used all over your Blog@Case site. You will be creating/updating two more items on your Templates page. One for your Links, the other for your Main Menu. My 'Main Menu' is done as a module but, my 'Links' block was done in the 'Index Templates' area. It makes more sense to me for both of these to be done as modules but they will work as either. Continue reading "Blog Branding: Sidebar Content" Blog Branding: Loading The StylesheetsOnce you've built those first two modules you'll want to prepare the ground by installing your stylesheets. Being the cautious coder that I want to be I left the old stylesheet in place and made plans to work around it. That made it possible for me to discard a lot of stuff from the default template that just didn't map over to the new, branded template. Working from the "Templates" page again, you'll be creating three new templates in the top-most set of files. These will be your general stylesheet and two media based stylesheets for print and screen. Continue reading "Blog Branding: Loading The Stylesheets" On Approach for 3000This Saturday marks 10 weeks of driving the new hybrid Escape and I'm still loving it. I'll cross the 3000 mile mark sometime tomorrow morning on my way in to Case. I'm now averaging (combined highway and city) 33.6 MPG. I'd be doing better than that if I didn't do so many highway miles but I'm still doing 33.2 on the highway in a light truck with the pick-up of a V6 that will tow half a ton. With gas prices on the up-swing I'm saving more money every week. The Branded MastheadTo brand your blog, and keep it manageable... you are going to want to break certain parts of your template into separate Moveable Type "modules." The first of these is the page masthead. I have broken the masthead into two files,
Remember, I'm working with the Advanced template here so I'll be using that navigation bar. Continue reading "The Branded Masthead" Crossposting to LiveJournal enabled!WooHoo! I just reduced the number of places to post by 1 without reducing the number of places that actually get posted. Thanks to Jeremy and whomever he has working with him on blog.Case.edu for getting the LJPost extension working. Case Branding Your Blog : The SeriesPart 1 - The Planning PhaseThe first item in your 'To Do' list is to suffer through a bit of planning. There are some key decisions you will need to make that will make this entire process much less painful if you just do a bit of up front thinking. You are going to need the following resources which I will discuss in more detail separately for the sake of keeping things organized. Your planning process may vary slightly but this should get you started. If you don't mind your main index getting a little whopperjawed for a little while you can update that MT template first. Otherwise, you will want to identify an alternate first template for branding and proceed accordingly. I did the main index template first because it uses just about all of the variable elements and makes the others into a copy+paste project.
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