The occasional scrivener

Contact me

The easiest way to contact me is by email: gerikson@gmail.com.

I spend an embarrisingly large amount of time on IRC. You can contact me, gustaf, on irc://irc.freenode.net/mobitopia. If I'm not there, leave a message with Monty.

AIM? ICQ? MSN? You must be kidding.

Colophon

This is a Blosxom weblog. It's hosted at symbiandiaries.com.

Timestamps are in my timezone (CET).

Plugins

The following plugins are used:

• Markdown -- automatic formatting of plain text to (X)HTML.
• archives -- builds a tree view over past posts by month.
• blosmail -- enables blog entry submission via email.
• categories -- builds a tree view over past posts by category.
• config -- per-directory configuration.
• date_fullname -- nicer date formatting.
• entries_cache -- caches timestamps, allowing for editing of posts without changing their internal order.
• file -- include contents of files in your blog.
• find -- search plugin.
• flavourdir -- keep your flavours in a separate directory.
• hide -- hides files and directories from display, but not from search.
• rss10 -- implements a RSS 1.0 feed. Used because the built-in RSS flavour chokes on Swedish characters.
• timezone -- sets the timestamps to a local timezone.
• wbnotify -- sends email when a comment is posted.
• writeback -- enable comments.

Customizations

archives plugin

Added a CSS identity to the subordinate <ul> tags to achieve the same look as in the category list.

blosmail

Not really a plugin, more a helper script. Don't put the script in the $plugins_dir!

You need procmail for this to work.

The script checks against a configuration file to ensure that the sender is authorised to post. The email address in the "From" line must be enclosed in <>, otherwise the address won't be matched.

I've modified the script so that all entries submitted by email are filed under /moblog.

categories plugin

Changed the spacing between the category name and number of entries to match the formatting of the archives plugin.

Wrapped each leaf <ul> in <li> to ensure XHTML compliance. Unfortunately, this makes the tree look funny. This is alleviated by setting the same class indentity to all the <ul> tags and then removing the bullets with the help of CSS.

config plugin

This is used to vary the number of posts shown per category.

The front page is limited to 10. However, if you choose a category, you should be able to see all the entries in that category.

This plugin takes care of this. Create a file config:

 package blosxom;
 $blosxom::num_entries = ($blosxom::path_info ? 999 : 10);

and place it in your data directory. If the $path_info variable is populated, we're in a subdirectory -- show all posts (if you're category has more than 999 posts, adjust accordingly...), otherwise show 10 entries.

Thanks to Stu MacKenzie on the Blosxom list for this.

TODO list for this installation

• Implement an Updated feature
• Exclude certain entries from handling by entriescache
• Filter out QP from moblog posts
• Find a way to automatically document categories
• Implement site in XHTML-MT
• Redirect MT archive links
• Blosxom graphic link
• Fix writeback css layout
• Implement a backup plan
• Links for validation of XHTML and CSS
• Separate flavours from content
• Use the config plugin to vary the number of displayed posts
• import comments from MT
• posting via email
• redirect MT index.html and RSS feed
• writeback notifications
• writebacks

About the author

Gustaf Erikson lives in Stockholm, Sweden, in a house with a wife and three children. He's a graduate of Sweden's prestigious KTH and works with internal support at a large e-commerce company.