November 1, 2005 – 11:22 am
Whew! The funkyness should be over now.
I still have a few loose ends to tie up, but for the most part the redesign is done. I have worked out all the quirks I could find. If you notice anything amiss, please let me know.
And a special greeting from my fellow CSS Rebooters who are visiting. I can’t wait to browse and look at some of the other designs.
A few notes about the redesign. I really started with the goal of transforming my old site’s fixed-width layout into an elastic one, which once I heard about the CSS Reboot turned into a full scale redesign. I took all of the header photographs during my various travels. One of my loose ends is to build some kind of AJAX-y widget to let visitors surf through the photos and to display some information about them, like the date of the photo and the location or identity of the subject.
Plus, while I was redoing things, I also rebooted my linkblog, Excursions, which was one of the more significant changes. I was using a second install of WordPress to run it, but I discovered a nifty plugin called wp-recent-links. A bit of hacking later, and I had a nice solution to eliminate one extra interface for posting.
February 21, 2005 – 4:40 pm
Last month, I added Mark Zeman’s Flash Photoblog World Map to my Photos section. When I originally put the map up, I used the admin tool which came with the map to add the map locations to a separate database. This required using two separate interfaces for each posting — not an ideal solution. So since then, I’ve been looking for a way to integrate the map with Movable Type.
One of the initial options I considered was to use an existing field for the extra information required by the map. This was the easiest option available. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really an option for me, since I was already using all of the fields for my posts. However, I’ve decided to explain how to do it, since it isn’t all that difficult. You can read the details about the more complex option I decided to use, but if the idea of adding columns to your database, or rummaging around in Perl code doesn’t appeal to you, then using an existing field is probably the solution for you.
The object of this post will be to help you implement this solution (using an existing field) for integrating the Flash Photoblog World Map into your MT installation. The main advantage to this approach, besides its simplicity, is that it requires no modification of your MT files or database. All that’s (possibly) required is an extra PHP file in the directory with your Flash Map and creating two templates. You’ll be using the PHP based version of the Flash Map, so you’ll need to have PHP on your server. If you don’t have PHP on your server you could try using Brad Choate’s Key Values plugin, which will let you store the data in one of your fields as key/value pairs and then extract that data into a MT template tag suitable for use in your MT templates.
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February 21, 2005 – 4:28 pm
Last month, I added Mark Zeman’s Flash Photoblog World Map to my Photos section. When I originally put the map up, I used the admin tool which came with the map to add the map locations to a separate database. This required using two separate interfaces for each posting — not an ideal solution. So since then, I’ve been looking for a way to integrate the map with Movable Type.
I initially considered two options:
- Using an existing field for the extra information required by the map. This was the easiest option available. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really an option for me, since I was already using all of the fields for my posts. Details on this method are available.
- Or, I could add the necessary data to the EXIF data of the image. But this was hardly ideal either. I would need to use another program to add the data to the EXIF fields, not much different from using the admin tool to add the data to a database — my original problem.
So, I went looking for another option. In the end, I decided to add some custom fields to the Movable Type entry interface. In the rest of this post, I will detail what modifications I made to my Movable Type installation. But first, most of the credit for this goes to Deane at Gadgetopia for the instructions on adding custom fields to the Movable Type entry interface and Mean Dean at Heal Your Church Web Site for the instructions on using the custom preferences of the entry form to show or hide the new fields.
One last thing before I get started. A warning: this not a simple hack — use it at your own risk. I am not responsible if you attempt to implement this and something goes wrong. I agree with both Deane and Mean Dean, this is not for the faint of heart. If the idea of adding columns to your database, or rummaging around in Perl code doesn’t appeal to you, you are probably better off if you don’t use this method. You might consider the simpler option of using an existing field.
So far these modifications have worked for me using version 3.15 of Movable Type and MySQL. Also, it goes without saying that doing this will probably create problems when performing any future upgrades to your Movable Type installation.
So with all that said, if you are still interested keep reading for all the gory details.
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October 19, 2004 – 11:39 am
If you are a web designer, no doubt you’ve heard of Eric Meyer. Eric is a CSS guru and evangelist. When I started my feeble attempts at web design, one of the resources I used to learn HTML was Eric’s HTML Tutorial at Case Western Reserve University.
Apple’s website has an interview with Eric Meyer, “Turning the Tables Using CSS“. In the article, Eric discusses when he recognized the power of CSS for web design and remarks on the advantages of using CSS.
