by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 19, 2005 | Photography
So as I have been saying here I am hoping to launch a photoblog, I am now doing just that. It can be found at http://photoblog.devco.net/.
The idea is to post a photo a day, now I cannot take a photo a day, I am just too busy at work for that kind of thing. So I will get stuff from my 25gig or photos archive and will post new things as they come. As it is now there are posts for almost 2 weeks that I created.
It is powered by Movable Type 3.14 and making the templates was much easier than I first expected. My other sites are done from templates that I found on template sharing sites etc, this one I made myself so I’d appreciate any feedback on the design.
I like MT 3.x, I will be upgrading my other blogs to it, for now though I will need multiple installs of it unless I want to go and buy a full version of it, but I do not think this will break their T’s and C’s, I will just give each individual blog owner their own install which should be the same as someone on a shared hosting service installing their own copy, this should be well within the bounds of whats allowed.
On the comments question, I allow non registered comments but they need to be approved and I left TypeKey there in case people want to use that. Comments via TypeKey authenticated people will not need approval.
There are some changes I still want to make to the site:
1) Implement another RSS feed. Dave wants me to link to the full image in my feed, I guess this may annoy some people so I will make it a choice between thumbnails and full images.
2) Create some kind of people link section, like the one on this site, where I will link to other photoblogs that I like.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 16, 2005 | Front Page
I set up a photoblog as I mentioned previously, I will put a more detailed item about it here when I am 100% happy with it. The main thing I am not 100% happy with is the comments situation.
If I allow open comments like I do on this site I will be battling comment spam all day and this will really annoy me. The alternative is to allow open comments but to moderate them, this will be even more work or I could use TypeKey.
TypeKey is MovableType’s single signon comment authentication service, you sign up once for an account with them and once logged in you can post comments on all TypeKey enabled blogs.
From the TypeKey Website:
TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment on a site have a verified identity, keeping conversations on track and helping to prevent abusive or offensive content (comment spam) from being posted. Sites that enable TypeKey have better accountability for the content that’s being published.
As a TypeKey user, you get your own free TypeKey Profile Page, displaying only the information you choose to share. Those who are interested in finding out more about the person behind the comments on a site can visit the identity page to see what information is publicly available. You can even publish a TypeKey Profile Page while remaining completely anonymous.
It sounds all fine and well, but will forcing people to use this service prevent them from commenting on my blog? I suspect it will, I know it was my first reaction when confronted with blogs that insists on TypeKey login.
If anyone has any views on this, I’d really appreciate some comments.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 14, 2005 | Usefull Things
There has been some talk in the last while about Project Honeypot. Their aim is to provide addresses on websites for email harvesters to get in order to catch them. The addresses that get served up are unique for each visitor, so should one of them receive spam they will know which IP is to blame for the harvesting.
Some articles mentioning them are on tech:knowledge and on Security Focus, read those for a much better overview of what is going on, also check out their FAQ.
I signed up, so should you.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 14, 2005 | Uncategorized
Shutterbug has a nice article about photoblogs, not much news there for people who are already into blogging but a nice article with some good links.
I’ve been thinking of doing my own photoblog for a while now, maybe one day I will get off my back side and bother with movable type templates again to put one together, maybe even try the new MT as well while I am at it.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 12, 2005 | Usefull Things
Mozilla Sunbird is making progress to their next release by doing a few release candidates. The most recent one – RC2 – was released yesterday and can be found here
I have been using Sunbird for a few months now and I enjoy having a proper calendar but the inability to sync iCal files to my iPaq is really getting the better of me. I hope if I do go ahead and buy a Mac I can get Apple’s iCal to sync with my iPaq and still see the same files via Sunbird and keep serving it up off my Apache machine – sounds like a bit much to hope for really ๐
