Too Many Cooks

Opiate of the masses

That's this Friday's theme (and the last of those we came up with at the AGM).

Given the encouraging rates of participation, can I assume this experiment is a success and we should continue?

Suggestions for further themes welcome. If there are none, I'll just make them up as I go.

Friday theme 2

Well, that went well. Excellent posts from all. Yay!

Shall we do another?

Alright then. This week's theme is blogging. A chance to get meta.

(Btw, I think we need a better name for this. How about Starting Point or something? Or does that sound too much like a religious organisation? Any suggestions?)

Friday themes

We had the stonesoup AGM-type thing yesterday and one of the things coming out of that was a resolution to try out having themes on Friday. Like, a topic you can write about if you wish. Anyone can join in or not, as they see fit. No notice required. And if you do, you can trackback to the entry here in Too Many Cooks so that we have an index of participating entries and can read them all.

For this Friday, the topic is Wellington. If you're not a stonesouper and not connected to Wellington but still want to play, you could do your own hometown.

Pick an aspect, a corner, or a memory and post it Friday. Then trackback to here. That's all.

Also, we're seeking suggestions of other topics.

How to add a 'Recent Comments' list to your MT blog

This procedure is specific to Moveable Type. I wrote it late last night. Anyone wanna try it out and see if it works?

First add the anchor to your template:

1. Go to templates (by clicking on Templates in the left-hand menu bar).


2. Under Archive-Related Templates, click on Individual Entry Archive.


3. Copy the template into a text file and save, so that if this doesn't work, you can paste the current template back in, rather than being left with a bewildering mess on your hands.


4. Scroll down to <MTEntryIfAllowComments>. Beneath that, next to <div class="comment-body">, type <a name="<$MTCommentID$>"></a>.


5. Save.

Then add the code to your Main Index template:

1. Go back to the template index (by clicking on Templates in the left-hand menu bar).
2. Click on Main Index.
3. Copy the template into a text file and save.
4. Before <div class="sidetitle">Archives</div>, paste the following:
   
   <div class="sidetitle">Recent Comments</div>
   
   <div class="side"><MTComments lastn="10" sort_order="descend"> <MTCommentEntry> <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID$>"> <$MTCommentAuthor$></a> on <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br /> </MTCommentEntry> </MTComments></div>
5. Save and rebuild your site.

That should do it. :-)

Posted by iona at 09:11 AM | Comments (5)

New blood

(Not that I want to sound all vampiric or anything.)

Welcome to Jenni and her new stonesoup blog, Talula! Yay!

A Recipe for Stonesoup

I've finished the first draft of my dummies' guide to stonesoup. It's very basic and also quickly put together (disclaim, disclaim :-). It contains:

1. About Stonesoup
2. Posting Your First Entry
3. Editing and Deleting Entries
4. Adding Pictures to Your Blog
5. Changing the Look of Your Blog
6. Getting More Readers (or How to be a Traffic Ho)
7. Changing Your Add/Edit Entry Form
8. Adding Links to Your Homepage
9. About Me, 100 Things, and Other Extra Pages
10. Configuring It (or Comments, Trackbacks, & Other Bits)
11. Backups and Exports

I tried to upload it last night, but it was 3 meg (too many screenshots) and the site barfed, so I took out nearly all the pictures. Here's the text-mostly version:

Edited to say that Carla's successfully prodded me to replace the Word version with a PDF, which will in theory keep its formatting better.

Download Recipe.pdf (127k PDF document)

If you want the screenshot-ful version, email me.

If you have comments, questions, suggestions, or editing notes, comment here or email me.

Homepage

Some of us were talking a while ago about rearranging the homepage so less scrolling is required. This inevitably leads to scrunchiness, and Reb had a go at making my somewhat illegible version more workable. Even though this is not a democracy ;-) I thought I'd run her take on it past you guys and garner opinions. (It's currently flat HTML, which is why it's got old entries.)

Thoughts from our viewing public would also be welcome. :-)

IP Banning

I've had some spam comments (links to porn sites) and have banned the IP address in question. Thought I'd mention how to do this:

1. If you're emailed the comment, the IP address is in the email. Otherwise from your blog maintenance screen, click on the link to the comment and find the IP address for the evil spammer.

2. Open Weblog Config (click the button in the lefthand toolbar).

3. Click IP Banning.

4. Enter the IP address you want to ban and click Add.

That's all. :-)