BlogBuilder Update 24/08/05
A new version of BlogBuilder was released this afternoon, with the following changes:
Zip File Uploads
Rather than the cumbersome method of uploaded each image individually to a gallery, you can now upload a collection of images at the same time to a certain number of galleries if they are in a Zip file (a Compressed Folder in Windows XP). This allows you to upload a number of images that are all related to each other to the same gallery.
For example, if I had 40 photos from Final Fling, I could put them all into a Zip file and upload them all together into my Final Fling gallery, tagging them (see below) as "final fling final_fling". All the images in that Zip file will then be put into the Final Fling gallery as Final Fling 1, Final Fling 2, Final Fling 3… and all of them will have the tags specified.
Movie and TV Reviews
You can now make reviews of tv shows and movies in the "Write Review" option when you create an entry. This is not quite as easy as other types of review as you cannot get the picture of them from Amazon – but you can place a link to a related web page (say, at imdb) and also provide an image, say if you found a movie poster and then uploaded it to your gallery.
Tags
You can now tag images and entries with a series of keywords that are related, allowing you to find related entries on Warwick Blogs. For example, if you write an entry about your work at the University of Warwick, you might tag it as "work warwick unitemps university_of_warwick", and then this entry will appear on aggregate pages relating to these tags. This will also help your search rank on services that check such tags, such as Technorati.
Gallery/Image RSS Feeds
You can now get RSS feeds of a gallery by going to that gallery and clicking the RSS 1.0 / RSS 2.0 buttons that appear on the bottom left. This allows you to keep up to date with images that have been posted in this gallery.
Technorati Pings
A few teething problems with Technorati pings have been fixed, and these should also now be aware of any tags that you put on an entry.
Mathew Mannion
24 Aug 2005 15:26
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Tags: BlogBuilder
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23 comments by 5 or more people
[Skip to the latest comment]Hooray
24 Aug 2005, 15:28
Ace.
24 Aug 2005, 15:35
Chris May
Tags Rock . Nice work
24 Aug 2005, 16:10
Mathew Mannion
Phew, just finished tagging about 100 posts on my blog… muwahahahhaa
24 Aug 2005, 16:15
Chris May
43-things style zeitgeist page, please :-)
24 Aug 2005, 16:59
Mathew Mannion
Wouldn't it have been easier to link Closer to home ? :)
It's on my TODO list…
24 Aug 2005, 17:01
Woo. And indeed Hoo.
24 Aug 2005, 17:01
John Dale
I wonder if we should start to try and suggest some "recommended" tags that might make people's lives easier in the long run. For example, I'd suggest "uow" as a tag for people writing about Warwick, rather than "university_of_warwick".
24 Aug 2005, 17:16
Hmm just thought of something.
Would it be easy to change the review system so that if say you reviewed a film/tv show that wasn't on Amazon and then a few months later came out on DVD or whatever, would it be possible to change from say a TV/movie to DVD review or something along those lines. JUst to make it future proof if you see what I mean.
24 Aug 2005, 17:56
Mathew Mannion
In short… probably not. It's a hell of a jump in the database from one type of review to another, you'd have to generate new IDs and whatnot… That's why we're not allowing users to "upgrade" their old movie reviews to a new style movie review
24 Aug 2005, 18:01
Anon
It would be great if there was a way to get some statistics on people viewing the blog. Just a simple counter might do.
25 Aug 2005, 00:59
Bloody Hell, I go on leave for a few days and the whole blogisphere changes… Hmmm.
25 Aug 2005, 08:44
(Well done!)
25 Aug 2005, 08:45
Mathew Mannion
For the moment, this isn't planned, for a few reasons:
25 Aug 2005, 10:10
Not many people have started tagging yet, and we've not converted old categories into tags yet either…but…
Tag (count)
humour (43)
angst (29)
rant (17)
review (16)
china (12)
blogs (12)
work (11)
…
25 Aug 2005, 11:39
Mathew Mannion
That's all me…. how bad :)
25 Aug 2005, 11:41
A list of 20–50 "recommended" tags would be a good starting point – otherwise there will be almost as many different tags as authors on the blogs.
Can I also reiterate my (and Nick's) request for alumni to be added to the "Make entries visible to…" categories? Please? The ideal would be for us still to be counted as students, although I can see there may be reluctance to do that.
25 Aug 2005, 13:38
Mathew Mannion
The reason why you're not currently on the categories list (as I understand it) is that your usercodes aren't real, they're "spoofed" usercodes which are basically just logins for the blogs and don't give you access to anything else. Kieran is working on something that would interface the WGA's systems with our own, allowing you to be more "real" – the usercodes you have at the moment are an inbetween stage.
25 Aug 2005, 13:59
Steve Rumsby
Showing tags on the "admin entries" page would help a lot in tagging all the old ones – any chance?
31 Aug 2005, 09:56
Mathew Mannion
Since it's a stupidly easy fix… yeah. I'll put it in the next release
31 Aug 2005, 10:21
Steve Rumsby
Another thing that would make the whole process easier is a button that pops up a list of all the tags you've used in your blog. Going through lots of entries adding the same tags is kind of tedious. It would also make you think a bit more when tagging new entries, since you'll be prompted with all the tags you've used before.
31 Aug 2005, 10:26
Steve Rumsby
And the WarwickBlogs home page now needs a tag cloud:-)
31 Aug 2005, 10:28
Mathew Mannion
Ajax-y magic things will come in time, but there are higher priorities right now :) The tag cloud Will Happen though.
31 Aug 2005, 10:36
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