indica 2.0

server racks
what a server looks like, sorta

I moved indi.ca to a Textdrive server, which took forever.  On a fast connection it’d take 30 minutes, but it took a whole day here.  Some of the apostrophes are a little screwed up and I lost two comments.  This is an upgrade after a year, so there are a few changes.  There are a few features that make commenting easier, and hopefully more fun. Now you can choose a graphical avatar, and respond directly to other people.  One can also subscribe to comments via email, and say Cialis and Viagra to your hearts content, cause I don’t need to filter out Spam words anymore.  This post is to detail the new features here, and on two other sites, and to explain why I’ve been so AWOL.
indi.ca
This is my personal site.  Never really got many comments, but now it sorta does.  I’ve tried to adapt it to that, without getting too bloated with features.  On the new server I upgraded to WordPress 1.5 and added…

  • Threaded Comments: Under each comment there’s a link that says ‘reply to this comment‘.  The comment will appear nested under the exact comment it’s referencing, rather than at the bottom of the queue.
  • Gravatars: A gravatar (global avatar) is a little icon that represents you across blogs.  It connects your email to an image so that it follows you around the web.  I’d say that about 50% of the sites I read use them.  You can get one via this link, and I added a checkbox to the comments that can automagically sign you up.
  • Bad Behavior Spam Filter: Before I was automatically deleting anything with words like ‘Cialis’ or ‘incest’, etc.  That, however, also deleted some legitimate posts without warning.  Apparently Bad Behavior stops spambots before they can write anything, using some server analysis I don’t understand.
  • Flickr Photos: The server-side galleries I was using were stupid and cumbersome.  I’m hosting everything on Flickr now.
  • Recent Comments: now displays the text of the most recent comments.

educationforum.lk
This is a site I’ve been doing for Amma.  Right now it’s a few papers and some data, but it’ll hopefully expand to include some of the Excel/Access data she has.  Not launching it, just something I’ve been working on.  Only a few notable features so far,

  • Sortable Tables: Under institutions and courses, if you click the table header it’ll sort according to that.  The tables are copied in from Excel.  Uses javascript, so the sort is instant.
  • PDF Creation: This can dynamically make a PDF out of any post, category or month/year.  Kinda half works, but could be cool.  Can also generate PDFs including Sinhala/Tamil fonts, which the user wouldn’t have to download.

webhamuva.org
Again, not ready to launch cause the data isn’t in yet.  This is a collaboration between Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia.  Sarvodaya holds these Pavul Hamuvas (family gatherings) in villages across Sri Lanka.  The goal of Webhamuva is to transcribe/translate some of these Pavul Hamuvas and put them online.  As of now there are only reports from Kalutara and Hambantota.

  • Collapsible More Link: The front page shows only an excerpt.  When you click the ‘more’ link it instantly loads the full post on the very same page, no reloading.
  • Word-Style Text Editor: Using this everywhere else too, but it completely takes the code out of blogging.  Makes it like typing a word document.

Been trying to make sites that are more interactive and faster, using AJAX/Javascripting.  Basically, to make sites that respond like Flash – without sucking.  Will try to do something further when I redesign LIRNEasia. 
To Do

5 Comments

  1. Interesting set of tools you’re using here, and for the projects. Wonder what that Freebase thing is – a WP plugin?

  2. Freebase isn’t anything really, just an idea. I want make WordPress capable of handling database management, where you can set your own fields. Descriptions of Vocational Courses, for example. There are like 8 fields (location, cost, etc), and it’d be nice if people could leave comments. The options I ‘ve found are

    1. Copy the table directly in from Excel. Works OK, and not hard to update. However, it’s not especially searchable and I can’t add comments cause each entry is just HTML, not a database-driven post. It’s basically not scalable.

    2. Use Structured Blogging (structuredblogging.org). These lets me hack in fields like cost, rating etc. However, it outputs as XML, which leaves out some of the benefits of using a database – like advanced search.

    3. Use Custom Fields. This is what I’m working on. There’s a plugin to draw out Custom Fields, the only problem is getting a user interface where the same custom fields will appear every time. That is, you’d have access to ‘Write Post’, ‘Write Page’, ‘Write Course’ and ‘Write Institution’. Write Post gives you ‘excerpt’, ‘content’, category, etc. Write Course would give you ‘name’, ‘cost’, location, etc.

    Dunno if these makes sense, and I don’t actually know enough code to do it. Something like it would enable WP to be used for any type of data beyond blogs – classifieds, retail listings, hotels, etc.

  3. If you can make Freebase happen, I think it would be one of the most useful plugins for people who use it as a CMS (not just as a blog tool). I would love to contribute to such a project, but programming is not exactly my league. However, if you’re interested, I think we’ll be able to get some guys from Vesess to assist.

  5. Be not indignant that you cannot create others as you desire them to be, since you cannot prevail upon yourself as you long to be

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