Welcome to Vasudevaservice.com

Getting Rid of Ads

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:52:22

To view sites without ads

Use Firefox web brower
Download Ad Block Plus
Use one of the recommended lists of ad providers

Prague Joy Sprint

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:43:16

Recently, six members of Vasudeva Server visited Prague to sample the local cuisines and work on various projects.

Eating Pizza.

Villiam and Atmasamarpan

Manavasu and Tejvan tuck into some pasta

Nirbhasa blinded by the light.

It wasn't just pasta and non-alcoholic beer. During the weekend, with help of Atmasamarpan we set up a new server. Villiam showed us his great progress on the new Library site. Manavasu helped the site admin of the new Centre site and fixed the Czech Centre. Petr worked on various scripts to import a Plone site into a drupal site. And Nirbhasa worked on various issues about migration of new centre site. A great weekend and much thanks to our hosts and Madal Bal offices, Prague.

Finding Images in Public Domain

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:07:42

If you wish to use images, you need to be careful of copyright. These sources make sure that the images you use are in the public domain and free to use. However, you still need to check licence agreement, you will probably need to acknowledge source e.t.c.

1. Wikipedia Commons

If you wish to find an image of a person or place which is in public domain, Wikipedia or Commons Wikipedia is a good source.

E.g. for Nelson Mandela :

2. Flickr Creative Commons

If you visit advanced search at Flickr You can search through images which are licensed under a creative commons licence. Just click the box 'search by creative commons'

N.B. Creative Commons means you need to still acknowledge author.

3. EveryStock Photo

Everystock Photo - searches through different public domain sources. But, you still need to check licence and rules for each image and site.

Notes on Copyright Law

Acknowledgement of the source does not mean an item can be copied. Giving the name of the photographer or author may help, but it is not sufficient on its own.
A photo agency may licence a website / newspaper to use an image. But, they may be very strict in not letting others use the image. The newspaper may not mind if you copy image, but, the photo agency will.
An image on an unimportant website may have taken an image from somewhere else, so be careful.

Fair Use of Images

Generally, using images does not fall into the category of 'fair use'. However, under certain criteria images of dead people can fall into this criteria.

Fair use rationale - For US copyright Law

This image is a significant photo of a famous dead individual.

This image is of much lower resolution than the original (copies made from it will be of an inferior quality).

The image is being used for informational and educational purposes only by a not-for-profit organisation.

Its inclusion in the article adds significantly to the article because it shows the subject of this article.

There is not a free image available.

Royalty Free

Royalty Free means under a certain restrictions you can use the image without having to pay. But, note that the license may be restrictive for certain purposes.

Vasudeva Server in NY and Italy

Tejvan Pettinger — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:38:19

Vasudeva Server show when it comes to making signs, you can't beat old fashioned pen and paper. The Four Muskateers, Tejvan, Nirbhasa, Jwalanta and Atmasamarpan.

Nirbhasa tries to convince he comes into Panaroma Cafe 'to get things done' rather than for the tea and chocolate cake.

In Italy

Priyadarshan in great shape by Lake Garda

During our three days, we pondered great and weighty issues -

mysql vs posgres databases

managed dedicated hosting vs VPS,

and of course how to choose 3 different ice cream varieties....

We did our share of testing as well. Here Tejvan does his testing of Italiano ice cream.

Embed Video

Tejvan Pettinger — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:15:06


<object width="400" height="274">
<embed src="http://www.srichinmoybio.co.uk/movies/preview320.m4a" 
href="http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/video/tv/75/75-1-2.mp4" target="myself"
 type="application/quicktime" wmode="transparent" width="400" height="274">
</embed></object>

gives to show a different video change the video url http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/video/tv/76/76-1-2.mp4

Show all Draft Posts Plugin for Wordpress MU

Shane Magee — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:03:33

This plugin will show the draft posts created in all your WPMU blogs. To activate, just download the PHP file and put it in your wp-content/mu-plugins folder. The file can be downloaded here....

To view all posts, click on 'Site Admin' and then on the 'Posts for moderation' submenu.

To do: make 'view' and 'edit' links, a bit like the Wordpress 'manage' interface actually. In any case, it's probably best if each theme you supply has an 'Edit this post' link, so the moderator can first view the post and then edit it if necessary without going back to admin screen.

Use cases for the JW Media Player

Shane Magee — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:15:44

Playing an album list


<embed
src="http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/player/mediaplayer.swf"
width="300" height="380"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
flashvars="height=380&width=300&displayheight=0&showstop=true
&showicons=false&repeat=list&backcolor=0xCCCCFF
&frontcolor=0x000066&lightcolor=0x3333FF&screencolor=0x6666FF&thumbsinplaylist=false
&file=http://www.radiosrichinmoy.org/c_/audio/radio/102/playlist-102.xml"
>

gives you

As you can see, the playlist is stored in the same filesystem location as the music files (see sample playlist here).

The flashvars set all the tweakable aspects - color, positioning ect. You can view all available flashvars here on Jeroen Wijering's site, and there is also a setup wizard where you can throw in various combinations and see how the code turns out

Playing a video - with youtube-like recommendations!


<embed
src="http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/player/mediaplayer.swf"
width="300"
height="220"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
flashvars="height=220&width=300
&file=http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/video/tv/260/260-1-2.mp4
&showicons=false&image=http://www.srichinmoy.tv/images/tv/260-1.jpg
&displayheight=200&searchbar=false
&recommendations=http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/player/recommendations/rec-lifevoices.xml"
/>

gives

When the video is finished, a list of recommended videos are displayed. Just like the playlists above, the recommendations are also generated from an xml file (see sample).

Note:

The front preview image and the recommendation images already exist on the site. The Flash Player allows them to be jpgs instead of having to convert to mp4
Again, the colour of the controlbar at the bottom can be modified by playing with the flashvars
The controlbar is on the bottom because we set the displayheight 20px less than the height. If they are the same there is a nicer effect where the controlbar is inline, but then it gets in the way of the recommendations if you want to include them

Custom playlist from different albums


<embed
src="http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/player/mediaplayer.swf"
width="300" height="200"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
flashvars="height=200&width=300&displayheight=0&showstop=true
&showicons=false&repeat=list&backcolor=0xCCCCFF
&frontcolor=0x000066&lightcolor=0x3333FF&screencolor=0x6666FF&thumbsinplaylist=true
&file=http://www.radiosrichinmoy.org/c_/audio/custom_playlists/playlist1.xml"
>

gives you

Here is the link to this playlist - note how we now have a 'creator' and 'album' tag added. We have also switched the thumbsinplaylist flashvar to true to include creator

Custom TV playlist


<embed
src="http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/player/mediaplayer.swf"
width="300" height="400"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
flashvars="height=400&width=300&displayheight=200&showstop=true
&showicons=true&repeat=list&backcolor=0xCCCCFF
&frontcolor=0x000066&lightcolor=0x3333FF&screencolor=0x6666FF&thumbsinplaylist=true
&file=http://www.srichinmoy.tv/c_/custom_playlists/playlist1.xml"
>

gives you

Here is the link to this playlist - the 'image tag allows images to be displayed in listing, I just used images already on site.

Thanks to Jeroen Wijering for creating such a great player

Meditation for Tech Guys

Tejvan Pettinger — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:44:23

Meditation for Techies.

Google Analytics

Tejvan Pettinger — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:49:16

There are many statistics programmes which track web visitors. Google analytics is one of the best free statistics programmes.

To add Google analytics

Visit Google analytics - you will be instructed to get a google account.
Add your site and then add the code they give you into your web pages.

Blogger Template.

If you have a blogger (blogspot.domain). You would edit the blogger template and add the code.

Wordpress Template.

In a wordpress, it is good to add the analytic code into the footer file

It will look like:

<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-17xxxxxx-6");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
</body>
</html>

6. Giving Access to Others

Click on access manager, when you have logged in. This allows others to have access to your stats.

With Google Analytics You Can

Track unique visitors, page loads.
Find sites sending you traffic.
Find the keyword searches that are sending people to your site.
Find which countries people are coming from.
Where People enter your site, how long they stay and where they exit.
Many other features.

Embedding Quicktime videos with preview picture

Shane Magee — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:47:08

To embed a quicktime video, use the following code:

<object width="400" height="274">
<embed src="video.mp4" type="application/quicktime"
  wmode="transparent" width="400" height="274" autoplay="true">
</embed></object>

The autoplay argument determines whether the video plays or not immediately the page is loaded.

There are also other arguments you can add just like autoplay:

loop="true"/"false"— the movie plays once or continuously.
controller="true"/"false" — toggles the playback controls e.g. pause, fast forward, or mute.

The full range of options are available on the Apple Quicktime site:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/embed2.html

Preview Picture

With the above, what you get is basically a black box with a grey control bar below. Perhaps you would like to have a preview picture that loads the film when it is clicked on, just like Youtube embeds

The first thing you need to do is create the picture to be the same size as the video + 16px height to allow for the controllers. If you don't do this the image gets squeezed/expanded to fit the video screen.

Then you need to save your image as something quicktime can deal with (eg .mp4). For this you need Quicktime Pro (costs $30) or for Mac you can use QTAmateur, available here:

http://www.mikeash.com/?page=software/qtamateur/index.html

Open up your image with either of these and then click File -> Export, and save to MPEG-4 (mp4), I think .mov also works

You can then use this code to embed

 <object width="400" height="274">
<embed src="images/preview_image.mp4" href="video.mp4" target="myself"
  type="application/quicktime" wmode="transparent" width="400" height="274"
  autoplay="false"></embed></object>

where preview_image.mp4 is your created image and video.mp4 is your video

How To Set up A Blogger Blog

Tejvan Pettinger — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:07:50

It is fairly straightforward to set up a blogger blog. Just follow the instructions at:

http://www.blogger.com/home

You will need to Create a google Account
Then click on Create Blog.
Give it a Title and choose domain e.g.

Title: "How to Grow Potatoes" Blog URL: howtogrowpotatoes.blogspot.com

Choose A Theme.
Your blog is created! http://www.howtogrowpotatoes.blogspot.com

To Use Your Own Domain Name

If you would prefer to have www.howtogrowpotatoes.com rather than http://www.howtogrowpotatoes.blogspot.com You need a few extra steps.

Click on Settings.
Click on Publishing
Click on Switch to Custom Domain
Buy A Domain with Google. They will then switch your blog to your new domain name.

You can do this at any stage, google will automatically redirect your old .blogspot domain
You can buy a domain name elsewhere, but you will need to switch cmod or something like that. That starts to get a little more complicated.

The fifth maintenance release of Plone 3.0 is out

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:57:06

Plone 3.0.5 came out on January 7, 2008.

Full release announcement

Keeping More Visitors

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:06:20

I watched a fascinating video about how to keep visitors on your site for longer.

One thing that stood out is that web viewers get confused and bored with reading long lists. If you have a navigation bar with many items, people can't be bothered to read through it, so they leave the site.

If you make the navigation bar shorter, they are 25% more likely to click on something.

The optimal number of text blocks is 5-7.

This is a problem if you use Plone navigation bars - they can become very long and unwieldly

Compare these 2 examples of a navigation bar at Sri Chinmoy Poetry

Hopefully, you will find the navigation bar for happiness makes it easier for the eye to choose a page.

This fits neatly in with the principles of Don't Make Me Think

BTW, I like the principles of: USEit.com

Having paged comments in Wordpress

Shane Magee — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:01:51

If you have a very popular blog it might be worth dividing your comments into pages for easier viewing. Fortunately there is a Wordpress plugin called Paged Comments to do just that, thanks to Keyvan Minoukadeh. However it needs a bit of tweaking to work on your site.

Installing and configuring

Download and extract plugin files to a folder locally.
You can change the number of posts per page and some other useful settings by editing the paged-comments-config-sample.php file (its all fairly well explained in the file), then save the file as paged-comments-config.php.
Upload the whole paged-comments directory to /wp-content/plugins/ and enable the plugin through the WordPress admin interface.

Template hacking (yuck)

We need to include the comment 'pager' in our template. If you are using a common theme, it might already be taken care of: just go to /wp-content/plugins/paged-comments/themes, open your theme folder, and then copy the comments-paged.php file there into your theme folder at /wp-content/themes
If you are not using any of the themes listed in /wp-content/plugins/paged-comments/themes then go to your theme and copy the comments.php file to comments-paged.php

We will then modify the comments-paged.php as follows:

In the code at the start

<?php // Do not delete these lines
    if ('comments.php' == basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']))
        die ('Please do not load this page directly. Thanks!');

change comments.php to comments-paged.php

To add the pager, place this code

  <!-- Comment page numbers -->
<?php if ($paged_comments->pager->num_pages() > 1): ?>
 <p class="comment-page-numbers"><?php _e("Pages:"); ?> <?php paged_comments_print_pages(); ?></p>
 <?php endif; ?>
 <!-- End comment page numbers -->

before the <ol class="commentlist"> line and again after the </ol> marking the end of it

If you want to make comment number visible on the blog, add this line of code

<div class="comment-number"><?php echo $comment_number; $comment_number += $comment_delta;?></div>

You can add it anywhere between <?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?> and <?php endforeach; / end for each comment / ?>, but the best place is probably before the author name (<cite><?php comment_author_link() ?></cite>). In practice, this hasn't worked too well for me, so use with caution.

Customising wordpress templates

Shane Magee — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:06:03

Here are a few nice things to add to your wordpress template in case it doesnt have them. The important templates to modify are index.php (the full blog view), single.php (shows single posts) and comments.php (for comments)

Show author and date

Adding the following :

<p>Posted by <?php the_author(); ?> on <?php the_date('F j, Y'); ?> at <?php the_time('g:i a'); ?>
</p>

will give something like

Posted by Tejvan Pettinger on October 12, 2007 at 7:35 am

The arguments for the the_date and the_time functions tell you what format the date and time is in, you can read a full list of them here...

Show category

<?php the_category(' , '); ?>

shows the category; the comma in the brackets tells you what separates the categories if there are more than one of them.

Edit post link

Very handy to be able to edit posts from the actual post itself:

<?php edit_post_link(__(' Edit this post')); ?>

The stuff between the apostrophes is the wording of the link

Migrating Blogger blogs to Wordpress, and setting up 301 redirects to ensure no links are broken

Shane Magee — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:36:28

Ok, basically if your blog is a new Blogger blog (after it was acquited by Google and Google usernames introduced) first step is to be sure have Wordpress 2.2.

If you have an old version of WP, you can always upgrade:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended

Wordpress 2.1 allows you to upgrade from Old Blogger blogs, but not New ones.

If your Blogger blog is hosted via FTP, go into the settings of the blogger blog and turn it into a blogspot blog (this change is reversible if anything goes wrong). Your blogger blog url will now be at (some name you choose).blogspot.com
Go to your blog admin on your WP blog. Go to Manage -> Import and select the 'New Blogger' option. You will be asked for your blogspot url, blogger username and password. And hey presto, the job is done! (You might want to verify that before we go on)

Some recent users may have trouble signing into their Google account from Wordpress due to the fact that Blogger changed their hostname API:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/131952?replies=2

As you can see here, you just need to make a simple change in wp-admin/import/blogger.php file, changing www2.blogger.com in line 84 to www.blogger.com. This will be automatically fixed in Wordpress 2.3.

Ok, here is the time consuming job, setting up redirects from the old posts to the new, so that if someone clicks on a link to the old address they are automatically forwarded. Make sure you first are happy with the permalink structure on your WP blog (Go to Options -> Permalinks to change this)

Now open up some text editor to write the redirects. Suppose your old blogger blog was at
http://www.mysite.com/{old address}
and your new WP address is at
http://www.mysite.com/{new address}
basically all you do is type
redirect 301 /{old address} http://www.mysite.com/{new address}
301 is basically a code that tells Google that the item has permanently moved to the new address and you aren't trying to pull any funny stuff on them. For each entry, type in the proper 301 redirect on a separate line. You can still get the old url address by looking at the blogspot blog.
You need to type in the full URL of the new address. Why? Basically, it allows you to redirect your posts to entries on a completely different site if you so choose!

Now you need to use an FTP client to go into the filesystem of where you host your blog. At root there should be a file called .htaccess; if not, create one (all files with . in front are system files and might be hidden unless you tell your FTP client to show hidden files). Then just copy and paste your redirects into this file, save, and try it out by typing in an old blogger address

I've heard (although i don't know the logic behind it) that its good to keep the FTP site going for a couple of days. So go to your Blogger blog and move it back to ftp, and then delete it after a few days.

vsCore, vsPloneLibrary, vsPloneSongs projects listed on ohloh.net

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 05:26:20

Our vsCore, vsPloneLibrary and vsPloneSongs, have been listed on http://www.ohloh.net.

vsCore

Home: http://www.vasudevaservice.com/products/vscore/
Download: http://www.vasudevaservice.com/products/vscore/download

Project: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6714
Commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6714/commits
Individual commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6714/contributors

vsPloneLibrary

Home: http://www.vasudevaservice.com/products/vsplonelibrary
Download: Download page is missing

Project: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6714
Commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6717/commits
Individual commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6717/contributors

vsPloneSongs

Home: This project doesn't have a home page.
Download: Download page is missing

Project: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6718
Commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6718/commits
Individual commits: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6718/contributors

It even rates two of them as "Extremely well-commented source code" :D

Programs to help you build your website from scratch

Shane Magee — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:45:29

This is actually an email response I sent to a friend who was asking about this sort of thing. It kind of complements Richard's blog post below.

There are a number of programs out there to make the life of people designing websites much easier. Choosing the right one depends on what kind of website you want - so you need to ak yourself the following questions:

1. Are you designing a completely new site, or are you putting a new design to an already existing site?

2. Is your site big (greater than 30 pages) or small (less than 30 pages)

3. Do you see the site as a project that will take a finite amount of time (15-20 pages and then stop) or will it be an ongoing project and pages will be added as time goes on?

For small, finite sites we recommend using a very easy to use design program called Dreamweaver, which is expensive. There are also free equivalents of Dreamweaver which Richard mentioned in his blog post.

However, these programs can be a little inefficient if you want to add lots and lots of content very quickly - there are specialised programs called Content Management Systems that handle this much better - for example the Plone program used to manage content on this very site (there are also other programs like Wordpress (used primarily for personal sites and blogs), Alfresco and Drupal. The only problem is sites using Content Management Systems often start out looking not quite the way you envisioned them (and perhaps even a little ugly). With some technical expertise you can also make these sites as beautiful as Dreamwaever sites, but it will take longer to learn, especially if the people you have in mind to work on the project have no computer experience.

Evaluation of Blogger Software

Tejvan Pettinger — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:24:27

If you are looking for a blog for your website, or just want a blog, the 2 most popular choices are: Wordpress and Blogger.

Advantages of Blogger

Owned by Google; the biggest blog software, and it is Free
Easy to install and add to your exiting website. At Blog set up choose - "Advanced Set UP". You will need your FTP password e.t.c.
Can also be used as a standalone and hosted on Blogger's servers, e.g. www.yoursite.blogspot.com
Easy to use and customise template.
Indexed very quickly by Google (not too surprising, since it is owned by Google. This is good for SEO
New features of www2.blogger include: blog labels. There are also hacks available, such as, teaser blog pages.
Google support group

Disadvantages of Blogger

With new blogger software hosted on external sites, I have frequently had blog publishing problems. (Sometimes takes a long time to publish, and then with errors - can be avoided by not having lables) Hopefully, these are problems which will be overcome soon, but it makes me reluctant to start more blogger blogs.

Other Blog Software to Consider:

Wordpress - Good reviews, more features and plugins than blogger. Reliable software.

Example of Wordpress Blog by Vasudevaservice CSS expert - John-Paul Gillespie
Free but does need installation, make sure your web host supports it. Not all do, some make it easy.

Type pad - Premier blog software, does cost though.

Web Hosting

Tejvan Pettinger — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:09:17

Finding a good, reliable web host is not easy.

It is important to bear in mind:

How much traffic will your site have? - Most sites start off small, but if traffic increases, you may need an option with more bandwidth available. E.g. small packages may start from 2GB per month.
Do you need optional extras? For example, wordpress blog.

Some Web Hosts worth Considering

SiteGround - $6.00 per month.

Supports Wordpress, High Bandwidth and disc space capacity.

Small Orange tiny packages from $25 per year.

Supports Wordpress and AWStats, Tiny package has small bandwidth, but can upgrade to higher bandwidth.

Pow Web $6.00 per month

Supports Wordpress, AWStats, High Bandwidth.

Heart Internet from $5.00 per month

Wordpress not available on cheap package, but is on more expensive.

Streamline.net from $28 per year.

Cheap if you want unlimited bandwidth and disc space. Wordpress is supported, but need to install yourself.

HTML Editors

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:39:00

If you are building a website from scratch you will want a HTML editor to help create webpages.

Some of the best HTML editors.

Dreamweaver - The market Leader but quite expensive. Dreamweaver at Adobe
Microsoft Front Page - One of the most popular editors, it is now being superceded by Microsoft Expression Available for trial download.

Free HTML Editors

NVu - OPen source html editor How to build a website using NVu
Mozilla Composer

These HTML editors will enable you to upload your webpages using FTP transfer. However for optimal FTP transfer you may wish to make use of a dedicated FTP programme.

Cute FTP

Cheap Hosting and Site wizard - cheap webhosting with editor built in.

Tidy language folders with LinguaPlone

Shane Magee — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:47:38

Photo: Projjwal Pohland .

In Linguaplone, the one thing that you can't translate is the portal itself. Hence if you have any documents or folders at site root, then they will be translated into documents or folders also at site root. It is easy to see how (especially with more than two languages) things can get very messy indeed.

However there is a way around this if you have your site address directed to a folder at the root of the portal, public_home, say (in my opinion this should be Plone default behaviour to stop user content from being scattered around portal tools in the zmi). You can then translate the folder and the translated folder will show up on the same level as public_home. (You can even translate some content inside the folder before you translate the folder and LinguaPlone will put the content inside the folder for you)

However, perhaps you want all content - including translations - to be inside the public_home folder for ease of maintenance. Well, after you translate the folder, you can go into the zmi, cut the folder and paste it within public_home. This doesn't seem to have any effect on the links between original and translated folders, or on any content translated after you move the folder, and you now have all the content for each language inside their respective folders inside public_home.

Displaying body text of a news item in sdotnews

Shane Magee — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:11:17

Who says a technical site can't have pictures? (Photo:Kedar Misani )

Sdotnews by default displays the description of a news item. However, sometimes you will want to link to another page direct from the front sdotnews page, so it might be better to display the body text instead of the description, and in the body text of the news item you can then insert your links.

In order to implement this change we have to change the sdotnews_view template; specifically, replacing the bit that says

<p tal:content="result/Description">

At first I tried to call the text of the page body using

<p tal:content="result/getText">

<p tal: content="python: result.CookedBody()">

But this doesn't work, because once sdot has batched the news articles in groups so they can be displayed on different pages, the page results can access the metadata listed in the catalog, (so result/Description or result/Title is ok, but result/getText isn't).

Now, to get around this, you can include the page body in the catalog metadata (which would defeat the whole purpose of having a catalog in the first place), or else you can use the getObject method to access the obkjct and all of its attributes, rather than just the ones specified in the catalog.

tal:define="resultObject result/getObject;
            resultText python:resultObject.CookedBody(stx_level=2);

 <p tal:replace="structure resultText">

Note that sdot news already has defined resultObject, which it needed to access the news item image. Also note the structure command, this converts the HTML or ReStructured text. If you just put in

<p tal:content="resultText">

you will just get all the HTML tags.

Adding images to a csv-table in restructured text

John Gillespie — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:49:00

Anyone who has tried to add images using the csv-table directive in restructured text may have come to the following conclusion: it can't be done. Well certainly not using any of the existing attributes or syntax for tables (an oversight?), but it can be done with the replacement directive.

Firstly, a csv-table in restructured text looks like this:

Currently Held Records

No Category Details Record Date Photo

1 Somersaulting Longest continuous distance 12 miles 390 yards Apr 1986

Currently Held Records
No	Category	Details	Record	Date	Photo
1	Somersaulting	Longest continuous distance	12 miles 390 yards	Apr 1986

And would created with the following code:

.. csv-table:: Currently Held Records
  :header: "No", "Category", "Details", "Record", "Date", "Photo"
  :widths: 42, 270, 270, 220, 119, 119

  1, "**Somersaulting**", "Longest continuous distance", "12 miles 390 yards", "Apr 1986", |green_face.jpg|

Ignore the first three lines—it's the table structure info, similar to the way you would define an image, but instead defining table column titles and widths. Should be pretty obvious how to change anything there, but in case not, let's recap a few csv-table fundamentals, as it is important in restructed text that formatting is followed precisely—right down to the space and comma:

a single space after each comma—no other spaces
bold text like **this**
all text inside "quote marks"
numbers don't need to be in quote marks, unless together with text: "12 miles 390 yards"
return at the end of the line

The last line is an example of a row of the table, and more importantly contains the image:

1, "**Somersaulting**", "Longest continuous distance", "12 miles 390 yards", "Apr 1986", |green_face.jpg|

The image is the complex, for “|green_face.jpg|” (without quotes) is actually a “replacement” for the image definition, somewhat akin to an ID in css or a variable in pretty much any programming language you could name.

The image url, link and any other image parametres pointed to by the replacement id then get defined below the table (ie at the bottom of your reSt document):

.. |green_face.jpg| image:: green_face.jpg
  :target: green_face.jpg

Note:

The spaces are important as usual, as is putting the info on two lines
the name of the replacement/id can be anything, but it makes sense to me to use the image name
you can use the same image two times (or more) but only define the replacement once.

Example

You can view an example of a resturctured text csv-table including images here: Ashrita.com

Tips for faster speed in Plone

Shane Magee — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 04:16:09

Plone, like any content management system, has slower page load speeds than static pages. Ensuring a fast enough page load speed so users won't get turned off is therefore a big concern of Plone site maintainers. Here are some tips:

1. Avoid missing page components

If a part of a page (most commonly an image) returns a 404 or 301, it can slow down the page to more than half the speed. No matter what one does on system level you cannot make up for that kind of speed loss.

301 errors are particularly tricky since it is basically a bad link, but some code (most probably RedirectionTool) finds the requested object somewhere else and redirects the original request to the correct url. The url is served correctly, but that 301 makes the page load slow.

Actually the standard use of RedirectionTool (aliases) has the same effect, so it should be used just temporarily.

The Tamper Data extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/966/) to Firefox is a great tool because it allows you to quickly inspect headers of all the page components, not only the page itself. After installation, you will be requested to close the browser completely and start it again. Now Open Tamper Data from Tools menu in Firefox, and open a page you want to check out in Firefox. You can now see that Tamper Data window is being populated. Each line is one individual component of the requested page that has to be loaded in order to render the page. The most important column for us is "Status". We are looking for 404 and 301 errors. 200 means you accessed site content without error and 304 means your local content is the same as in the squid, which is even better.

2. Page content - sometimes less is more

A page with twice as much content will most probably load two times slowly. Understandably that we want put as much possible into every page, but quite often less is more. Things that have to be generated by Zope (smart folders ect) will obviously take longer to load than static content

3. Caching

Most speed improvement on a system level involves caching - storing site content in easily accessible areas. Most large sites run a proxy cache like squid to serve up static content and keep Zope from doing the work. Other static content is cached in the browser itself. The most import thing is to make sure all pages and their components have correct caching headers; this is done by the CacheFu product, which now ships with Plone.

The whole plone caching business is described in http://plone.org/events/regional/nola06/collateral/make-plone-go-fast.pdf and CacheFu product documentation.

Obviously, any caching issue we fix has a double effect. The page is served from cache much faster and it does not create any load on zope server. Then the pages that have to be served by zope (cache refresh, editors) are much faster.

Another crucial point is to evaluate any new feature or product we are going to use from the caching and performance perspectives. Then we should document what adjustments have to be done when a product or a feature is deployed on a particular site. For instance if EasyBlog is installed on a site, the CacheFu will have to be set; if sdot is installed, the CacheFu will have to be set and icon image will have to be created, etc.

(Thanks to Atmasamarpan for all his help with this article)

Benefits of Writing with Lists

Tejvan Pettinger — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 09:42:53

The Advantages of Writing in Lists.

Easier to Read. People don’t have time or the interest to read long sections of text. Writing by bullet points or numbers makes it easy to read and skim through. Picking up on the points which look most interesting.
Easier to Write. Writing lists tends to be easier. Writing by bullet points means that you focus on one point at a time. It also tends to encourage simpler writing which is a good habit to encourage.
Discussion. Lists provide an opportunity for discussion. For my next blog post I am going to choose my top 13 books that changed the world. It engages the reader because they start thinking what they would have chosen. If you want people to add comments to your blog this is a good strategy to employ.

Look Authorative Lists have a certain authority. People give a lot of respect to top 10 Bestsellers. If you give top 10 tips for writing a blog, it gives your points an added force.
Grab Attention. People skim read the internet. Surfing the internet is not like reading a book. When you a buy a book you know what you are getting. When you come across an internet page, 95% of people move on after less than 60 seconds. Lists and subheadings are a way to grab people’s attention before they move elsewhere.
Use Bold Text. As well as writing lists it is helpful to use a small amount of bold text. This makes it even clearer what the point is about.

(To create Bold text in reSt use ** Text to be made bold **

Create Content Lists are an easy way of creating content. Top 10 favourite books. Top 7 Reasons to write a blog Top 7 reasons to write lists...

Of course this doesn’t mean you have to write everything by lists. But some subjects work very well through writing by lists.

Interesting Links for building web traffic

Tejvan Pettinger — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 07:40:29

Archetypes and ATContentTypes, part 2: Templates and customization slots

Shane Magee — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 04:33:08

We will now look at how these schemas are called by the edit templates, and point out slots and hooks which Archetypes have left for customization.

Let us return to our Image type: selecting this type in portal_types and looking at properties will show that atct_edit is the default editing form, as it is for all ATContent Types. There is only one line in atct_edit, calling the master macro in the base_edit template. The main function of this macro is to call other macros for different parts of the page: most of these macros are located in the edit_macros file"

the top slot gets filled by edit_macros/topslot
javascript is looked after by archetypes_custom_js/macros/javascript_head
css: edit_macros/css
header,description, body,footer all in edit_macros.

So, let's take a closer look at some of the macros in edit_macros:

Macros in edit_macros

header generates document actions like print, rss ect via the document actions macro and generates a title for the edit form with the name 'Edit (Content Type)'
byline generates the byline, via the document_byline macro
archetypes_schemata_links: not sure what this bit does yet :)
typedescription returns the description of the content type, which will appear at the top of the page under the title. It can be edited in portal_types without customizing, but the resulting edit will only appear in the 'add item' listng and not the edit form where you want it.
body: This is where the main action happens: for us, the interesting part of this macro is:

<metal:block define-slot="extra_top" />

        <metal:block define-slot="widgets">
          <tal:fields repeat="field fields">
            <metal:fieldMacro use-macro="python:here.widget(field.getName(), mode='edit')" />
          </tal:fields>
        </metal:block>

        <metal:block define-slot="extra_bottom" />

If we look at the above piece of code, it is essentially asking us to go through each field of the image schema and get its widget (For more on schemas and widgets, see part 1). Note the two slots 'extra-top' and 'extra-bottom' if you want to put something above or below the image widgets without changing the template.

The body macro also contains a good bit to do with sending the form, and the buttons. It contains a block defining Previous, Next (these automatically appear if there is more than one page in the edit form) Save and Cancel buttons. There is also a slot called 'extra-buttons' if you need to make any more buttons for your form, so you can make them in another template.

Whilst Archetypes does have a range of customization slots, one cannot make any easily reversible customizations to the schema as one might with a page template, as the files containing the schema are not stored on the zodb.

One is then left with the prospect of defining a new Archetype derived from your old one, either in a new product or as part of an existing one. Then in Extension/Install.py the portal_types tool can be manipulated to use the new type, or alternatively you can set that the old type can be just not globally allowed while the new type would be. Before you run into that course of action, there might be extra hooks for customization I havent found: for example, Villiam pointed out a post_validate hook for validators.

I am very grateful to Villiam Segeda, our resident Archetypes expert, for teaching me what little I know.

How do they do the navigation on the plone.org site?

Shane Magee — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 04:29:08

When you visit the plone site (http://plone.org) you see that the side navigation bar (viewable at any page besides homepage) contains only the root folders, the item and its immediate ancestors. A very nice behaviour, and one I spent a while fiddling with navigation properties trying to make happen.

But actually the solution is much simpler. Every version of Plone since 2.1 comes packaged with two identical states 'public draft' and 'published' - items in either of these two states are available to the general public. Why two identical states? Well, it does enable the user to choose which items he wants public but not available in navigation by putting the items he wants available in navigation 'published' and the ones he doesn't 'public draft', say. Then he can go to navigation properties in preferences, check filter workflow states, and put in published into the box below.

That's what Plone have done on their site: in addition, only the folders at site root are published, and all other content is visible, so that it will only appear in navigation if the actual page is selected.

Hide email address from spammers

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:23:14

hide email

<p>Send your comments and questions Richard

<script language=javascript>

 <!--

 var contact = "Joe Blogs"

 var email = "joebloggs"

 var emailHost = "vasudevaservice.com"

 document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + email + "@" + emailHost+ ">" + contact + "</a>" +   ".")

 //-->

</script>

</p>

NOte many plone sites have javascript automatically disenabled. to see what it looks like press more

Send your comments and questions Richard

Archetypes and ATContentTypes, part 1: The Archetype Schema

Shane Magee — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:58:49

All the default types in Plone - file, image, folder - are part of the ATContentTypes product, and are examples of archetypes. Archetypes were integrated into Plone 2.1, and allow you to create content types easily by providing a range of readymade tools so you can generate edit forms without using any HTML.

An example will perhaps best explain how Archetypes works - lets look at the familiar 'image' type. The edit form of an Archetype is generated using a schema, and the schema for image can be found in Products/ATContentTypes/content/image.py: here we've taken out some of the code to focus on the essentials:

ATImageSchema = ATContentTypeSchema.copy() + Schema((
  ImageField('image',
        required=True,
                ....(lots of other stuff here, to do with image sizing and such).....
        validators = (('isNonEmptyFile', V_REQUIRED),
                      ('checkImageMaxSize', V_REQUIRED)),
        widget = ImageWidget(
                   #description = "Select the image to be added by
                                   clicking the 'Browse' button.",
                   #description_msgid = "help_image",
                   description = "",
                   label= "Image",
                   label_msgid = "label_image",
                   i18n_domain = "plone",
                   show_content_type = False,)),

  ), marshall=PrimaryFieldMarshaller()
  )

That's all a bit of a mouthful, so we'll break it up and isolate the essential parts:

ATImageSchema = ATContentTypeSchema.copy() + Schema((
     ImageField(

Every schema contains a collection of fields; in the edit form the short name is one field , the Title is another and so on... The reason we don't see the title, id, or description in the above schema is they are already defined in ATContentSchema (they are common to all types); the first line of the code joins ATContentTypeSchema to the schema we are creating above.

For an image, there is only one extra field, the ImageField. Lets say we want another field to specify the camera the image was taken with; our schema will then look like:

ATImageSchema = ATContentTypeSchema.copy() + Schema((
      ImageField(   # all the stuff above
           ),

       StringField('camera',
                  required=1,
                  widget=TextAreaWidget(),),

   ), marshall=PrimaryFieldMarshaller()
       )

Archetypes provides many different kinds of field you can include - TextField, BooleanField (for yes/no values) ect. In plone.org there is a list of available Archetypes fields....

OK, lets look at the arguments of ImageField:

ImageField('image',
       required=True,
               ....(lots of other stuff here).....
       validators = (('isNonEmptyFile', V_REQUIRED),
                     ('checkImageMaxSize', V_REQUIRED)),
       widget = ImageWidget(
                                # whatever goes here we'll explain
                                # when we talk about widgets
        )),

 )

The first argument 'image' is the title of the field, the required=True puts the little red 'required' dot beside the title. Now, the next two are important:

validators: these are classes which check that whatever we've entered into the field satisfies a set of conditions, and it won't accept it if it doesn't. For example, ImageField calls instances of two validator classes: one of them makes sure the uploaded file isn't empty, and the other rejects the uploaded file if it is too large. There is some readymade validators at Products/validation/validators, although quite often people have the need to add extra ones of their own.
widget: the widget is the graphical layout that the field will take; it defines how to render the field into HTML/XML. For example a StringWidget will set out a one-line box; a TextAreaWidget will set out a bigger box, like what is used for the Description. On plone.org you can see pictures of all the available Archetypes widgets ; it is very unlikely you will need to make your own. In many cases, the field type suggests what widget type to use: an ImageField will use an ImageWidget, for example.

The arguments of ImageWidget are quite straightforward:

widget = ImageWidget(
       #description = "Select the image to be added by clicking the 'Browse' button.",
       #description_msgid = "help_image",
       description = "",
       label= "Image",
       label_msgid = "label_image",
       i18n_domain = "plone",
       show_content_type = False,)),

The _msgid label is used by the internationalization (i18n) mechanism to generate translations in other languages.

Ok, one final thing to deal with, the marshaller, this makes Archetype fields understandable to clients such as WebDAV. As you can see above, the schema took two arguments, the field and the marshaller.

Schema (    (ImageField( all the stuff we discussed ),),
                                    marshall=PrimaryFieldMarshaller()
     )

PrimaryFieldMarshaller is the most common marshaller used, apparently.

Ok, so that's the first part of my ATContentTypes exploration; the second part will deal with the question I first asked when I saw a type schema: how does all this called by a template and end up on our screens?

Selecting content item as default view of a folder (including the /Members folder!)

Shane Magee — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:03:11

I always wondered why the 'Display' tab containing the 'select content item as default view' was sometimes clickable and sometimes not. Well the answer is simple (it always is after you've found it): if you have an item in your folder called index_html, Plone will automatically recognise that as the default view item, and you have to rename it before you can access the 'Display' tab....

This also goes for the Members folder. By default, index_html will bring up a 'search for members' template, which I never found very useful, and always wanted to replace with a nice smart folder. First go into /Members in the zmi, select index_html (it's in there somewhere amongst all the members), and rename it to something like index_html.old. Now, somewhere outside of Members, create the item you want to have as default view, and paste it into Members with title (guess) index_html.

This is a rather contrived way of going about things, I admit: Atmasamarpan tells me there is an index_home python script which calls index_html as the default view for the Members Large Plone Folder (which I have yet to find). Rename this script and you can access the display tab as normal. (Note: if you dont rename the script and there is no index_html item, you will get a site error when you try to acess the Members folder in Plone),.

Inserting content of Plone document into Zope template

Shane Magee — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:21:44

As explained in an recent article titled 'Edit ZPT content through Plone ' on plone.org, we can insert the content of a document called my-document, say, by inserting the following into your template:

<tal:block tal:condition="exists:here/footer-content/my_document"
             tal:replace="structure here/footer-content/my_document/getText">
              Document content here</tal:block>

Perhaps one of these days Plone can use this method so that we can edit footers and colophons directly through Plone; ive submitted a ticket to Plone here... ...

Perhaps we could even extend it to things like bylines, although that's a harder kettle of fish as we're dealing with variables like creator and modification date. Any ideas, anyone?

Negotiating the Plone security maze

Shane Magee — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:07:26

If, like me, you have been trying to resolve permission problems by checking and unchecking boxes in the ZMI Security tab in a trial-and-error fashion, there is in fact an easier way (I never doubted Plone for an instant :) )

Before going to the Security tab, you should first find the Actions tab for the process you want to control permissions for. By default, things like the top navigation tabs and the buttons at the bottom of the folder listing are controlled in the Actions tab of portal_actions.
Things like the edit, properties and sharing tabs are defined seperately for each item type in portal_types: i.e to access the actions for an image, one would go to portal_types->image and click on the Actions tab. (The Content tab is defined globally in portal_actions).
Scroll down to see the action you want to change the permissions for, and you will see the permission you need to change (there are cases where you might want to change this permission: for example, to stop object owners from accessing the properties tab, you would have to change the permission from 'modify portal content' to something like 'manage properties' and restrict that permission).

Plone Screencasts

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:19:06

Plone have some screencasts which are an excellent introduction to Plone and how it works

Plone Videos

Includes Screencast Editing with Plone

"How to use the Plone content management system to edit both images and text in a site. Demonstrates Plone's built-in image manipulation and rescaling, as well as its rich text editing capabilities." 12 mins

4 Second Rule for Websites

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:57:11

Users abandon sites that take longer than 4 seconds to load

Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

The research by Akamai revealed users' dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

More at BBC

CMFLinkChecker

Shane Magee — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:19:26

This promises to be a very useful tool for webmasters of large sites or sites with many users. Sure, one could always check broken links using server states, but by having a link checking mechanism in the UI you can let each user in a multi-user site be responsible for keeping their own section 404-free.

The CMFlinkchecker program comes in two parts; the user interface (CMFLinkchecker) and the bit that actually crawls the site (LMS). These are distributed as two seperate programs. You can however, just install CMFLinkChecker and then go to 'link management' in plone preferences panel and register your website to access LMS on a server kindly provided by the authors somewhere over in Germany. After a couple of goes (the server might have benn down) I eventually got through and was given an id and password via email to enter in the 'link monitoring server fields' in the aforementioned 'link management' page. After that, I srolled down to the bottom of the page, hit 'crawl my site for all links', and got the ball rolling....

For a small site (around 200 links), about 20% of the links were evalusted straight away, the rest were queued up on the server and were ready the next time I logged in. The process probably goes a lot faster if you have LMS installed on your own server.

Looking at LinguaPlone

Shane Magee — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:06:36

LinguaPlone is the standard multilingual translation solution for Plone, and is used to generate translations of websites like Oxfam .

Upon first hearing of LinguaPlone, I was expecting a scenario where the whole page - page body, tabs, portlets, the lot - would obediently translate given the necessary words and a couple of clicks of the mouse. Then again, the open source community was not made for demanding types like me who expects everything without putting in some spadework himself (I am only making my first forays into Python now...:) )

What LinguaPlone offers (so far) is a very easy way to translate the page body. Simply choose what languages you are going to have your site in in Preferences (they are pretty much all there), do up a page in your default language, and access the 'translate' tab at the top of the document to translate into the language of your choice. In addition, uninstalling Linguaplone doesn't affect this translated content, it only removes the links between the different translations, which can be restored by reinstalling the product.

All the same, it's a little hard to know if LinguaPlone offers all that much more convenience and functionality over manually creating new content for each language yourself. I'm sure it does, else it would not be so widely used, but the lack of decent documentation doesnt help much to illumine me. For example, a cool thing would be if LinguaPlone used the IP address of your computer to automatically serve you up the content in your own language - its a rather intuitive thing and one might reasonably expect a multilingual solution to have this facility. It's not an easy thing to test (unless you have access to a private plane), and so I dont really know if it does this.....

(If my interest in Linguaplone persists over the next couple of months, I promise I will document answers as I find them here)

One thing that would really enhance LinguaPlone, in my view, is if translated objects could inherit the properties of the original object. Perhaps I want to use a couple of portlets in left_slots: in current LinguaPlone, I put the portlets in for a page, but they are not there for their translated counterpart. Not everyone will want this of course, but it would be nice if it were included as an option, along with an option to automatically update translation properties if the default properties are changed. Perhaps all the contents of the ZMI properties tab could even be displayed in the 2-column 'translate' page, and the user could pick which ones he wants to keep.

The top navigation bar tabs are a known issue with Plone multilingual sites, but if property inheritance were allowed the subsite feature of our vsCore product could then be enabled for those sites whose tabs bear the names of the content they point to.

Mozilla 2.0

Tejvan Pettinger — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:55:48

This week Mozilla released the latest version of its popular Firefox browsers. Among the main benefits of Firefox 2.0 include:

Enhanced security Features new anti-phishing functionality, (identify's scam sites)
Improved tabbed browsing.
Recovers your opened tabs if computer unexpectedly crashes. This will also save a half finished blog entry. - could be very useful.
More efficient use of memory. (Old versions could be heavy on memory use, causing my relatively small memory computer to close down) It is also worth pointing out that it is often "add on" products which use a lot of memory. Mozilla are trying to encourage these developers to use less.

very slowly internet explorer seems to be catching up with mozilla in terms of features. IE 7 has (for the first time) tabbed browsing and also boasts improved security settings. It will be interesting to see whether Mozilla is able to gain more market share.

Current market share

2006           IE7     IE6     IE5     Fx      Moz     N7/8    O7/8/9
October        3.1%    54.5%   3.2%    28.8%   2.4%    0.3%    1.4%


2003           IE6     IE5     Moz     N3      N7      N4      O7
November       71.2%   13.7%   7.2%    0.5%    1.6%    0.5%    1.9%

Generally Mozilla remain more popular with more experienced computer users with IE being first "choice" for most first time users.

How Viewers read a web page

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 18:02:21

Interesting blog entry about how viewers read a screen. What I learned from Eye Tracking Using an eye tracking programme the video plots how people scan across a screen. Often people go quickly from one thing to the next. There is little evidence of people actually reading the text. Most people are scanning for a subheading or picture that interests them.

What people look at:

Headings
pictures (including thumbnail
Buttons and Menus
Lists are popular - blocks of text aren't.

A useful idea discussed in a previous blog entry is the idea of "don't make me think " Users of a website don't want to have to work anything out, they certainly don't have time to read instructions. (I think even contributors to websites are a bit like this as well)

An interesting comment that Seth Godin made is that if a website is a little different it catches peoples attention.

Good Documentation - some musings

Shane Magee — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 11:07:45

A 'speed is better than perfection' philosophy might be applied to many areas of life, but documentation is not one of them. Unfortunately the standard of documentation needed so that 90% of people can follow it is, well, 90% perfect.

It actually doesnt take all that much longer to write good documentation once you sit back and think for a moment about what it was like when you had to perform the task for the first time yourself. Its no coincidence that much of the better documentation written on this site comes from things the documenter just recently found out how to do.

Documentation doesnt have to be austere, the tone can be warm and conversational, especially if the user is not all that au fait with computers.

However the most important things are still the obvious ones: check after each sentence and see if if you have relayed to the user exactly what he needs to do (and where to find things - screenshots can be of enormous help) and lastly, get your completely computer illiterate auntie/uncle/person-dragged-in-off-the-street to try using your documentation!

Two directives: sidebar and figure pt.2

John Gillespie — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:54:08

Sidebars

We recently covered the use here of two very handy features of reStructured Text (reST): namely the sidebar and figure directives. Sidebars and figures are very useful features for adding additional content styles to documents using reST, for example web diaries created using the EasyBlog product...

A sidebar is a useful way of either highlighting some content from your article, or more commonly exploring a related topic in further depth, where it wouldn't be appropriate in the body of your article. The sidebar will always float to the right of your feature, and may often—but it is not all compulsory—be deployed at the very beginning of the article body. Like all floated elements, it will align to the top of the header or paragraph that it immediately precedes. It is also possible to have an image in your sidebar:

As demonstrated in this very article, a sidebar is an area for highlighted content which floats to the right of the actual article. The code for a sidebar in reST is as follows:

.. sidebar:: Sidebar Title
   :subtitle: Optional Sidebar Subtitle

   The sidebar content text would go here.

   .. image:: image.jpg (an optional image)

Those who would like their sidebars to float to the left or middle are out of luck—it's to the right only for reasons of taste and aesthetics.

And for those interested in such things, the sidebar directive makes use of the following CSS:

.documentContent .sidebar {
       float: right;
       margin: 0 0 10px 20px;
       padding: 15px;
       width: 250px;
       border: &dtml-borderWidth; &dtml-borderStyle; &dtml-globalBorderColor;;
       overflow: hidden;
       }

.documentContent p.sidebar-title {
       font: normal 150%/150% <dtml-var headingFontFamily> !important;;
       background-color: &dtml-globalBackgroundColor;;
       padding: 4px 15px 2px 15px;
       margin: -15px -15px 10px -15px;
       border-bottom: <dtml-var globalBorderColor> solid 1px;
       }

p.sidebar-subtitle {
       font: normal 110%/110% <dtml-var fontFamily> !important;;
       padding: 0;
       margin: 0 0 4px 0;
       }

.documentContent .sidebar img {
       border: none !important;;
       }

#vs-scheme1 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme1 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme1;;
       }

#vs-scheme2 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme2 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme2;;
       }

#vs-scheme3 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme3 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme3;;
       }

#vs-scheme4 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme4 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme4;;
       }

#vs-scheme5 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme5 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme5;;
       }

#vs-scheme6 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme6 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme6;;
       }

#vs-scheme7 .documentContent p.sidebar-title, #vs-scheme7 .documentContent p.sidebar-subtitle {
       color: &dtml-vsScheme7;;
       }

Close observers of the above will note there are several optional dtml calls in this CSS. The dtml in this particular example is designed to work in conjunction with the vsCore product default stylesheet, alongside ploneDefault base_properties.doc, both of which we have modified to create customisable portal_tab colours. The dtml above acquires the colour values of the portal_tab active in a particular location, changing the sidebar title and subtitle colour to match. The sidebar would of course work equally well with a single "hard-wired" title and subtitle colour value for an entire site.

Figure floats

Floated to the left.

CSS styles have also been created to combine image float styles with the figure directive. There are now three CSS classes which can be applied to the figure directive: float-right, float-left, and float-centre, and what they do should be fairly self-evident—floating an image to the right, left and centre respectively. Keen observers of CSS will point out that there is no such thing as a float-centre command, which is quite correct, but in this case it seemed more consistent to name the class "float-centre" for the sake of users.

Floated to the right.

While the reST figure directive has always allowed a caption to be added along with an image, with a little additional CSS trickery the captions here have not only been styled with a little font-sizing and colour, but have also been positioned in a more aesthetically pleasing way at the bottom left corner of the images, without using the depracated align="left" html tag, which is the default method in reST.

Floated to the centre.

The reST code for these styles is as follows:

.. figure:: image.jpg
   :alt: float-left
   :figclass: float-left

   An image floated to the left.

.. figure:: image.jpg
   :alt: float-right
   :figclass: float-right

   An image floated to the right

.. figure:: image.jpg
   :alt: float-centre
   :figclass: float-centre

   An image floated to the centre

And the CSS employed is as follows:

.float-right {
     position: relative;
     float: right;
     text-align: left;
     border: &dtml-borderWidth; &dtml-borderStyle; &dtml-globalBorderColor;;
     margin: 0 0 23px 20px;
     padding: 0;
     clear: right;
     }

.float-left {
     position: relative;
     float: left;
     text-align: left;
     border: &dtml-borderWidth; &dtml-borderStyle; &dtml-globalBorderColor;;
     margin: 0 20px 23px 0;
     padding: 0;
     clear: left;
     }

.float-centre {
     position: relative;
     text-align: center;
     border: none;
     margin: 0 0 23px 0;
     padding: 0;
     clear: both;
     }

.documentContent .float-right p.caption, .documentContent .float-left p.caption {
     margin: 0 0 -18px 0;
     padding: 3px 0 0 0;
     bottom: 0;
     left: 0;
     font: normal 11px/13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;;
     color: #000;
     }

.documentContent .float-centre p.caption {
     margin: 3px 0 0 0;
     padding: 0;
     font: normal 11px/13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;;
     color: #000;
     }

Note that a small amount of dtml is again used to style the images with the border colour, width and style, as defined in the site base_properties doc—thereby matching the border around your floated images with the style of your portlets etc. Of course it may be more appropriate in some cases to hardwire this value.

Also of note is the fact that the floated-centre image doesn't have a border, for the reason that without a fixed width defined the image container is via the block properties of CSS defaulting to 100% width, giving you a border that expands to the full width of your content column no matter the size of the image. Should there be a way to get the border to match the size of the image (the CSS attributes display, width and margin: auto were of no avail) the class will be updated to have a border.

Error reporting and screenshots

Shane Magee — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:15:31

Here is a very good article on bug reporting, discovered by Atmasamarpan:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

It certainly helped me sympathise with poor developers and curb my linguistic excesses when reporting problems.

Whenever possible, screenshots really help to pinpoint the problem by making the developer or Plone admin see what you're seeing. Below are some instructions for screenshots for both Windows and Mac.....

1. Windows

You can capture the screen and paste it into any graphics program: by pressing the 'print screen button' (up there somewhere to the right of F12). This appears to do nothing when you press it, but the screen is then stored in memory. One can then open any graphics program like Photoshop or even Microsoft Paint and paste in the image. (For Photoshop one should first create a new document)

If you dont want to save the whole screen, pressing 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' together will capture only the window you have open.

This is a slightly clumsy way to do it; there are freeware programs out there which do the job much quicker (and which personally I'm happy enough with, for example MWSnap) but I understand the words 'windows' + 'freeware' together can be enough to send a chill up the stoutest of spines......

2. Mac

The keyboard shortcuts are:

Apple-Shift-3: Capture the entire screen
Apple-Shift-4: Capture a self-selected portion of the screen
Apple-Shift-4 then Space: Capture a window

Both options automatically create an image for you named "Picture 1.png" on your desktop.

There is also an application named "Grab" in the Utilities folder which allows screen captures with more options. Grabs features can also be accessed from the "File" menu within the application Preview.

Further in-depth information on screen captures in Mac OSX 10.4 can be found here: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2005/09/tigerscreenshots/index.php

(thanks to John-Paul for the info)

More unearthed tips....

Shane Magee — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:06:25

Again from my email clear out, I have found a few more tips, this time suggested by Priyadarshan.....

Drag and drop item reordering in Plone 2.5

You can just reorder the order items have in a folder just by dragging and dropping them around. This is of course of great usefulness, since the order in a folder dictates the order in the navigation.

Making a static copy of a Plone Site

This is an excellent recipe to make a static copy of a Plone site: http://www.zopelabs.com/cookbook/1103609775

Searching for Code in Google

http://www.google.com/codesearch allows searches for source code on the web. Allows filtering for programming language, license etc.

Plone Navigation and Google Images

Shane Magee — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:31:18

I was cleaning out my mail account today and discovered this rather interesting tip from Richard which he divulged to me decades ago...if you want to boost the standing of an image on your Plone site in Google Images, one way would be to make images viewable in navigation (via preferences -> navigation settings).

This is by no means an aesthetic solution; however you can always use workflow to filter out images you do and don't want displayed in navigation.

ReStructured Text Guide

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:49:43

Another Guide to reStructured text which consists of the 7 functions I find most useful (plus three others which Shane found useful but was too lazy to write his own article).

Not comprehensive but good to make a start.

Also, for a listing of links to other articles and guides on restructured text, see our ReStructured Text blog category

Changing to reStructured Text

Shane Magee — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:03:45

We've written lofty paeans in praise of reStructured Text without bothering to tell people how to select it; we've now updated our Changing your Content Editor page to do the needful...

BTW, the excellent reStructured Text primer is a bit scarce on adding links; we've also updated the adding links page too...

Polaroid effect using css and reST

John Gillespie — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:59:50

Those who are not familiar restructured text may initially bemoan it's lack of power and flexibility when compared to XHTML, but as often the case in life, initial appearances can be deceiving.

Although the use of CSS for styling and presentation is "best practice" in XHTML, it is not yet mandatory, which allows anyone with knowledge of such "deprecated" tags as "align=center" or "font", to illegally wreck havoc with your beautiful CMS-based site.

Outside of a mandatory 2 month course in basic XHTML and CSS, one solution which desperate webmasters have often deployed is to force site editors and contributors to work with WYSIWYG editors configured to strip out any and all illegal tags. Not only is this a somewhat draconian solution, and immensely frustrating from a user point of view, but it still doesn't bring your site any closer to being beautifully or correctly formatted. Just not illegally so.

And don't get me started on tables...

Restructured text on the other hand forces compliance to XHTML best practise precisely because it is not XHTML. By allowing users to work in an environment much closer to the simple text notepad which almost everybody is familiar with, and without a single (more often than not forgotten) tag in sight, the simplicity of ReST leaves the site contributor the concentrate on content, as God would have intended it, and takes care of the parsing of said content into strict XHTML for them.

But that's not all. Presentation is still possible via CSS—also as God intends it—yet much to the relief of the site designer and webmaster—outside of the control of a user whose obsession with "beautifying" one little plant can be to the detriment of the wellbeing of the entire garden.

And not just the presentation of your basic paragraph and heading tags, but, watching closely, the ReST figure directive, which in combination with a little CSS jiggery-pokery detailed below is capable of deploying some quite remarkable effects.

The Polaroid Effect

Through deployment solely of the class "float-right-360" to the figure directive below, it is possible to add a polaroid effect to a photograph in the following manner:

As reStructuredText:

.. figure:: /images/the_moon.jpg
   :alt: the moon
   :figclass: float-right-360

    The moon during a lunar-eclipse. Pretty!

To produce the following image and caption:

The moon during a lunar-eclipse. Pretty!

Which is achieved with the following css:

.float-right-360 {
       position: relative;
       float: right;
       text-align: left;
       background-image: url(polaroid_360_270.png);
       background-repeat: no-repeat;
       margin: 10px 0 10px 20px;
       padding: 1px 8px 8px 1px;
       border: none;
       }

.float-right-360 img {
       border: #fff 7px solid;
       border-bottom: #fff 36px solid;
       width: 247px;
       height: 308px;
       }

.float-right-360 p.caption {
       position: absolute;
       font: normal 11px/13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;;
       color: #000;
       margin: 0;
       padding: 0 10px 0 0;
       top: 321px;
       left: 10px;
       }

Note there is one limitation to this effect—the image used must be exactly 308px H by 247px W, because there simply aren't enough "hooks" inside the figure directive to deploy the necessary number of background images to allow scaling.

As a work around to this limitation, one could create a variety of classes for pre-determined image sizes and orientations, which would also have the added benefit of forcing your users to stick to creating images in sizes complimentary to the overall site design.

Which raises another sore point about CMS's which don't employ image-sizing engines—but that would be another topic...

Editing old pages in reSt

Shane Magee — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:14:03

One problem with changing from HTML (or a content editor) to reStructured Text in Plone is that the text editor doesnt convert your old HTML docs to reStructured Text.

However, my experience so far is that if you copy the text of the page (not the code), click on the edit tab, delete the HTML code and paste the content of the page back in, it does a pretty good job of keeping the layout of the page. Paragraphs, bullet points and numbered lists are largely mantained. Of course, links images and preformatted text all have to be put back, but what can you do...

Creating proper internal links

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:05:40

Internal Links

Plone has been standardising internal links without a trailing slash "/" at the end. It is good to follow that standard, for both SEO reasons and data collection.

Links to pages and images should be like this:

/plone_basics/adding_internal_links, and NOT like this:

/plone_basics/adding_internal_links/ (in the first case, the terminating "/" is not there)

See also Plone Basics
We also have an updated page on internal links

Note 1: when linking in blog entries which can have different urls it is best to add the full link like e.g /blog/archive/2006/08/26/atimage-tips

Note 2: Plone wysiwyg content editors can automatically change the format of links to: ../../blog/e.t.c which is very bad. It is advisable to either use reStrucutredText, or Dreamweaver if you really need to use HTML still.

Images

Images are the same: .. image:: /images/vasudevaserver.gif

This is bad: /images/vasudevaserver.gif/

The bottom line is: Never add a trailing slash!

Also, please make sure images always have the type of file at the end (.jpg or .gif)

Please read: "WYSIWYG Considered Harmful"

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:30:37

A really good article: http://kopsis.blogspot.com/2004/09/wysiwyg-considered-harmful.html

A reStructuredText Primer

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:10:01

This is an on-going post. Please forgive the "work-in-progress" feel.

Contents

Structure
Text styles
Lists
Preformatting (code samples)
Sections
- Document Title / Subtitle
Images
What Next?

The text below contains links that look like "(quickref)". These are relative links that point to the Quick reStructuredText user reference. If these links don't work, please refer to the master quick reference document.

Structure

From the outset, let me say that "Structured Text" is probably a bit of a misnomer. It's more like "Relaxed Text" that uses certain consistent patterns. These patterns are interpreted by a HTML converter to produce "Very Structured Text" that can be used by a web browser.

The most basic pattern recognised is a paragraph (quickref). That's a chunk of text that is separated by blank lines (one is enough). Paragraphs must have the same indentation -- that is, line up at their left edge. Paragraphs that start indented will result in indented quote paragraphs. For example:

This is a paragraph.  It's quite
short.

   This paragraph will result in an indented block of
   text, typically used for quoting other text.

This is another one.

Results in:

This is a paragraph. It's quite short.

This paragraph will result in an indented block of text, typically used for quoting other text.

This is another one.

Text styles

(quickref)

Inside paragraphs and other bodies of text, you may additionally mark text for italics with "*italics*" or bold with "**bold**".

If you want something to appear as a fixed-space literal, use "``double back-quotes``". Note that no further fiddling is done inside the double back-quotes -- so asterisks "*" etc. are left alone.

If you find that you want to use one of the "special" characters in text, it will generally be OK -- reStructuredText is pretty smart. For example, this * asterisk is handled just fine. If you actually want text *surrounded by asterisks* to not be italicised, then you need to indicate that the asterisk is not special. You do this by placing a backslash just before it, like so "\*" (quickref), or by enclosing it in double back-quotes (inline literals), like this:

``\*``

Lists

Lists of items come in three main flavours: enumerated, bulleted and definitions. In all list cases, you may have as many paragraphs, sublists, etc. as you want, as long as the left-hand side of the paragraph or whatever aligns with the first line of text in the list item.

Lists must always start a new paragraph -- that is, they must appear after a blank line.

bulleted lists (quickref)

Just like enumerated lists, start the line off with a bullet point character - either "-", "+" or "*":

* a bullet point using "*"

  - a sub-list using "-"

    + yet another sub-list

  - another item

Results in:

a bullet point using "*"
- a sub-list using "-"
  - yet another sub-list
- another item

definition lists (quickref)

Unlike the other two, the definition lists consist of a term, and the definition of that term. The format of a definition list is:

what
  Definition lists associate a term with a definition.

*how*
  The term is a one-line phrase, and the definition is one or more
  paragraphs or body elements, indented relative to the term.
  Blank lines are not allowed between term and definition.

Results in:

what: Definition lists associate a term with a definition.
how: The term is a one-line phrase, and the definition is one or more paragraphs or body elements, indented relative to the term. Blank lines are not allowed between term and definition.

Preformatting (code samples)

(quickref)

To just include a chunk of preformatted, never-to-be-fiddled-with text, finish the prior paragraph with "::". The preformatted block is finished when the text falls back to the same indentation level as a paragraph prior to the preformatted block. For example:

An example::

    Whitespace, newlines, blank lines, and all kinds of markup
      (like *this* or \this) is preserved by literal blocks.
  Lookie here, I've dropped an indentation level
  (but not far enough)

no more example

Results in:

An example:

  Whitespace, newlines, blank lines, and all kinds of markup
    (like *this* or \this) is preserved by literal blocks.
Lookie here, I've dropped an indentation level
(but not far enough)

no more example

Note that if a paragraph consists only of "::", then it's removed from the output:

::

    This is preformatted text, and the
    last "::" paragraph is removed

Results in:

This is preformatted text, and the
last "::" paragraph is removed

Sections

(quickref)

To break longer text up into sections, you use section headers. These are a single line of text (one or more words) with adornment: an underline alone, or an underline and an overline together, in dashes "-----", equals "======", tildes "~~~~~~" or any of the non-alphanumeric characters = - ` : ' " ~ ^ _ * + # < > that you feel comfortable with. An underline-only adornment is distinct from an overline-and-underline adornment using the same character. The underline/overline must be at least as long as the title text. Be consistent, since all sections marked with the same adornment style are deemed to be at the same level:

Chapter 1 Title
===============

Section 1.1 Title
-----------------

Subsection 1.1.1 Title
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Section 1.2 Title
-----------------

Chapter 2 Title
===============

This results in the following structure, illustrated by simplified pseudo-XML:

<section>
    <title>
        Chapter 1 Title
    <section>
        <title>
            Section 1.1 Title
        <section>
            <title>
                Subsection 1.1.1 Title
    <section>
        <title>
            Section 1.2 Title
<section>
    <title>
        Chapter 2 Title

(Pseudo-XML uses indentation for nesting and has no end-tags. It's not possible to show actual processed output, as in the other examples, because sections cannot exist inside block quotes. For a concrete example, compare the section structure of this document's source text and processed output.)

Note that section headers are available as link targets, just using their name. To link to the Lists heading, I write "Lists_". If the heading has a space in it like text styles, we need to quote the heading "`text styles`_".

Document Title / Subtitle

The title of the whole document is distinct from section titles and may be formatted somewhat differently (e.g. the HTML writer by default shows it as a centered heading).

To indicate the document title in reStructuredText, use a unique adornment style at the beginning of the document. To indicate the document subtitle, use another unique adornment style immediately after the document title. For example:

================
 Document Title
================
----------
 Subtitle
----------

Section Title
=============

...

Note that "Document Title" and "Section Title" above both use equals signs, but are distict and unrelated styles. The text of overline-and-underlined titles (but not underlined-only) may be inset for aesthetics.

Images

(quickref)

To include an image in your document, you use the the image directive. For example:

.. image:: /images/vasudevaserver.gif

results in:

The images/biohazard.png part indicates the filename of the image you wish to appear in the document. There's no restriction placed on the image (format, size etc). If the image is to appear in HTML and you wish to supply additional information, you may:

.. image:: /images/vasudevaserver.gif
   :height: 100
   :width: 200
   :scale: 50
   :alt: alternate text

See the full image directive documentation for more info.

What Next?

This primer introduces the most common features of reStructuredText, but there are a lot more to explore. The Quick reStructuredText user reference is a good place to go next. For complete details, the reStructuredText Markup Specification is the place to go [1].

Users who have questions or need assistance with Docutils or reStructuredText should post a message to the Docutils-Users mailing list. The Docutils project web site has more information.

[1]	If that relative link doesn't work, try the master document: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html.

reStructeredText (ReST) default type on Vasudevaservice.com

Atmasamarpan Novy — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 14:17:34

reStructeredText (ReST) is now the default content format for all the standard ATCT objects (Pages, News, Events) and EasyBlog, for all sites on this server.

For now, if you still have Kupu as your editor then the default will be overriden by Kupu to html.

Be aware though, that since we are going to use Vasudevaservice.com as testbed for reStructuredText, Kupu has been uninstalled there.

Two directives: sidebar and figure

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 20:03:28

ReStructuredtext has a "sidebar" directive. See a good example of a sidebar here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev

Sidebars are like miniature, parallel documents that occur inside other documents, providing related or reference material. A sidebar is typically offset by a border and "floats" to the side of the page; the document's main text may flow around it. Sidebars can also be likened to super-footnotes; their content is outside of the flow of the document's main text.

Sidebars may occur anywhere a section or transition may occur. Body elements (including sidebars) may not contain nested sidebars.

If you would have the following css inside your Plone skin:

.sidebar
{
color: red;
font-weight: bold;
float: right;
width: 10em;
}

The following code:

.. sidebar:: Sidebar Title
   :subtitle: Optional Sidebar Subtitle

   Subsequent indented lines comprise
   the body of the sidebar, and are
   interpreted as body elements...

   .. image::  /images/vasudevaserver.gif

Would be rendered as a sidebar of text floating on the right.

Now, for what concerns images, reStructuredText has a wonderful directive, "figure", which also support a "class" attribute.

Let's assume we also have this css:

.float-right
{
float: right;
border-style: dashed;
border-width: 1px;
border-color: red;
}

The following reStructuredText:

.. figure:: /images/vasudevaserver.gif
   :alt: logo
   :figwidth: image
   :figclass: float-right
   :align: right

    This is the caption.

Would produce the following:

This is the caption.

That is for today! We saw how easy it is to employ the two powerful directives "sidebar" and "figure".

See you next time!

change color tabs vscore

Tejvan Pettinger — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 14:25:19

vsCore which is used on Vasudevaserver has a few new features. Firstly colors of tabs can be changed through ZMI.

Change colours Tabs

when caching has expired the tabs will change at top.

subskin feature - Very useful, when you want to have many plone instances and still keep the same main_template

These features are not included in the current vsCore tarball; a new tarball will be uploaded shortly.....

Evaluating Plone form mailer

Shane Magee — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 09:56:55

With Plone Form mailer, you can design email forms through the web. We at Vasudeva Server have had occasion to use them a lot.

Their best point is the ease with which you can actually get a form drummed up and ready on your site. The 'edit' tab lets you enter text before and after the form, configure who to send it to, sort out what the email is going to look like, and design a 'thank-you' page. The 'modify form(zmi)' tab lets you work on the form itself.

The edit tab

The fields to enter in the 'edit' tab are pretty intuitive (and have been made more so in recent versions). There are a couple of times where you have to enter a TALES expression, like the mail recipient or the email address of recipient. For example, if your name is Mr Happy and your email address is happy@happy.com then enter string:Mr Happy and string:happy@happy.com in the relevant fields. One nice feature is they warn you what bits not to touch if you haven't a clue what youre doing!

The 'modify form' tab
By default, the form has a field for name, email and message. One recent improvement to Plone Form mailer is that the whole form doesnt fall apart if for some reason you delete the email field. Clicking on the tab takes you to a ZMI interface where you can see a menu containing each of the fields. You can add more fields by clicking on the top right, including checkboxes, radiofields, you name it.

Issues
Sometimes we have had problems implementing PloneFormMailer using scripts other than Roman (eg Cyrillic). Sometimes the checkboxes dont work and the characters are not correctly interpreted in the email.

One issue is that form mailers invariably always present problems when migrating Plone, and usually have to be deleted and recreated again. However PloneFormMailer is quite young and we would expect this to be sorted out in the future.

You can read more about Plone Form Mailer on their section of the Plone site

Owner permissions in Plone

Shane Magee — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:55:57

Factoid of the day: Owners can add images and files in Plone but by default they can't edit them once the save button is pressed.

ATImage tips

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:17:37

The default Image type in Plone (ATImage from the ATCT Product) is capable of scaling:

large : (768, 768)

preview : (400, 400)

mini : (200, 200)

thumb : (128, 128)

tile : (64, 64)

icon : (32, 32)

listing : (16, 16)

To access these sizes, append /image_XXX to the URL, where XXX is one of the above sizes.

Choosing 'photoalbum view' in the new 'display' menu when inside a folder containing images will result in a different view.

Example: if you reference /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif on this site you will have:

Listing: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_listing

Icon: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_icon

Tile: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_tile

Thumb: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_thumb

Mini: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_mini

Preview: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_preview

Large: /images/EasyBlog-Logo-1.gif/image_large

An EasyBlog screencast

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 14:02:19

EasyBlog is probably the best blogging tool available on the Plone platform.

Our very own Richard Pettinger has recorded today a very nice EasyBlog screencast.

It is targeted to beginners who have never used EasyBlog before.

More screencasts will come for more advanced functions soon.

EasyBlog, the best blogging on Plone

Lisp and dinosaurs

Priyadarshan Bontempi — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 13:13:32

I really like Philip Greenspun's contributions to the developer's community and Internet world at large. His posts are usually witty and have about them a sharp vision that is quite rare to find.

Here is a post I liked about LISP. It is not really concerning Plone, but I think it concerns us as seekers of beauty and simplicity in our project.

From "Lisp diehards = Holocaust deniers"

Hmm… it seems that the “Java = SUV of programming languages” posting has stirred up a bit of controversy over at Slashdot and right here on this server. Some people read it as a personal endorsement of PHP, VB, and other semi-baked programming languages. Actually my personal preference is a much darker, uglier, and more shameful secret: Common Lisp, CLOS, plus an ML-like type inferencing compiler/error checker (with some things done in a sublanguage with Haskell semantics and Lisp syntax). Common Lisp dates from around 1982 and ML from 1984.

I try to keep this preference concealed from young people who’ve been raised on a diet of C, Java, C#, Perl, etc. They just wouldn’t find it credible that 20-year-old systems and ideas are actually better than the latest and greatest from Microsoft and Sun.

Imagine my delight in running into a friend yesterday. She’s a 23-year-old graduate student in computer science at Harvard. Conversation rolled around to programming tools. Unprompted she said “What I think would be best is Common Lisp Object System with a modern type system”. I was stunned. I thought it was only dinosaurs like me that clung to Lisp.

I had a second ephiphany for the week… Believing that Lisp circa 1982 plus some mid-1980s ML tricks thrown in is better than all of the new programming tools (C#, Java) that have been built since then is sort of like being a Holocaust denier.

It is also interesting to read the numerous comments to that post:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/09/22/lisp-diehards-holocaust-deniers/

Plone byline issues

Shane Magee — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:50:38

One of the bees that's been buzzing around in my bonnet recently is the issue of bylines in plone.

To me, any text that appears on a Plone page should be editable via a UI rather than having to edit a template. Ever since 2.1 the byline has been right at the top, so it might be one of the first things a new Plone user will wish to modify. An option to turn on/off the last modified date would be welcomed, some of our content contributors find it ugly and also a little misinformative if you have a site with contributors from all around the globe. At least it's simple enough to remove the byline entirely, see here.

The same issue also applies to the colophon, the bit at the very bottom....

But to me the main issue is that to move the byline somewhere else requires a main template modification. I know its only cut and paste, but when you're using other products with modified templates you kind of want to keep the clutter to a minimum. Since there's only four places where 99% of sane Plone users will want to put their byline why not just have the ability to make that choice in a UI also?

Until things change, we are modifying the main template of our vsCore product to put the byline on the bottom right. We are also working on skin changes so that a photo of the page creator appears on the bottom right.

Easy Blog

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:06:03

Easy Blogs are now being used by community members at sites such as Sri Chinmoy Races. For members who are new to the idea of using blog a basic introduction to using Easy Blogs has been created.
The guide is quite short as it will hopefully prove relatively straightforward to use.

Using Easy Blogs for the First Time

Advice for writing Blogs

Tejvan Pettinger — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 03:33:31

1. Include Short biography and photo. - People like to know who they are reading. It gives the blog a personal aspect. (Me)

It is easier to trust someone with a real name and photo.

2. Make your blog easy to read. A good feature of "easy blog" is the option to have an introductory paragraph and then more.

If its a very long article you can link to the article from your blog. See this article on "Don't make me Think"

3. Links should be descriptive of where they go. e.g How to add internal links to a website

4. Make your best postings easily accesible. Don't let them get buried in archives.

(Here easy blog may need a new feature)

5. Focus on a certain niche. This blog at Vasudevaservice will focus on websites, Plone and blogging. If you post on too many diverse subjects it is unlikely people will share all your own tastes.

6. Try to stick to a regular publishing schedule. Little and often is better than all at once and then nothing for several months

However don't post for the sake of it. ( Not every one may share your enthusiasm for an in depth account of your recent visit to the local supermarket. )

7. Use good Headings which are descriptive of content. This is good for Search Engines and makes it easier for visitors to know what the blog entry is about

8. Good photos help. (preferably related to the blog of course...)

9. Look for ways to promote your blog. Try to find people with similar interests. Use services like Ping o matic.

Hopefully Easy blog will have this feature as automatic soon.

10. ... Please leave a comment if you have a 10th idea.

How to Write Good articles for web

Many of these ideas came from "Top 10 Design Mistakes"

See also "Guide to Starting Websites" by R. Pettinger