June 2003 Archives

It's a work in progress...

MT's comment feature hasn't been working quite right in one way: it wasn't able to remember the user's name and e-mail address from one invocation of the comment form to the next. I think I've fixed that now: there was a discrepancy about the host names associated with cookies.

Sorry for the downtime, folks.

The machine that hosts stblogs.org suffered a disk failure this week. It started with a crash on Monday, and by the time the device failed again on Tuesday, it was clear that a replacement was needed. Our hosting company restored files from Monday night's backup tape to a new disk. That's why we lost a couple of Tuesday morning posts on CL until the authors re-entered them. I think Page-Zone did a reasonable job dealing with the trouble.

Maybe it's a good thing I haven't exactly been swamped with interested inquiries from St. Bloggers looking to join us on the new machine yet! With all the grousing about Blogger and Blogspot I figured I'd hear from quite a few people wanting to move to our new digs; but nope. (sfx: crickets)

I guess this just confirms my utter lack of salesmanship!

So I've got this domain stblogs.org, and a web hosting account big enough to support a few blogs. What the heck am I gonna do with 'em?

Well, maybe we can work out some ways to open this up for more participation.

Who?

Who's eligible to participate? Let's start with the simplest approach: if you have a weblog already running, and it's listed on the register of St. Blog's Parish, consider yourself probably eligible. (I say 'probably' because I haven't read absolutely every weblog on that list, and I reserve the right to turn anybody down if I don't happen to want to host your blog here.)

What?

What service is available? I have an installation of MovableType running, so you'd be able to make use of that. If you aren't familiar with that product, go to its web site and look at the screenshots to see the interface.

All the data for the blogs here is stored in one MySQL database, and the server is hosted on a Linux system by page-zone.com. But you don't need to know about that stuff. MT makes it pretty easy.

When I create a new MT blog, it initially looks pretty much like this one: vanilla. Good enough to get started. Then you can edit the templates (XHTML and CSS) to customize it. That's your job.

Page-zone provides statistical reports for each host name (i.e., for each blog), generated by the "webalizer" and "analog" software packages; so you'll be able to read those reports.

How?

How can you use the space? For weblogs, and that's it: no streaming media or other disk- and bandwidth-intensive uses, please.

Is there censorship here?

I have some standards, but they're low. I couldn't let an author commit crimes or slander people or lie about the Faith. If there's a dispute, I'll accept a majority vote (procedures to be determined later).

How much?

Well, basically it's free, but I will ask participants to donate from time to time when I have bills to pay. The cost is currently under $200 a year, so I think we'll be able to manage it together. If more than that comes in, wahoo, I'm off to Rio -- oops, I mean: I'll be able to pay for more space and bandwidth.

What if you take in too many blogs and overload the server?

Yep: gotta watch out for that. I'll have to keep track of traffic. If our usage gets up to 50% of our disk quota or of our bandwidth limit, it's time to stop taking in new folks for a while. We do have the option of paying for service on more than one machine. (Pass the hat, please). If some particular hog-blog takes much more disk space or much more bandwidth than others, I reserve the right to terminate the service; I'll give 30 days' notice, which is plenty of time to relocate. (I relocated CL in two days.)

Can I bring in my Blogger posts?

Yes, there is a procedure by which you can export your Blogger database into a text file and import it to Movable Type. It worked pretty well for Catholic Light. However, it's your job to do it. It involves changing templates on your old blog.

Can I move my MT posts to some other place later and get my own domain?

Yep; MT has an export feature.

Are you responsible for all this, RC?

Responsible in the sense of liable? I sure hope not. If something goes wrong some day and the computer gets lost, or if I accidentally wipe out the whole darn thing, you'll have to agree not to sue me. Caveat blogger. Besides, I'm in Massachusetts, and the machine's in -- I dunno, Ohio, maybe -- so I'm taking the web hosting company's word for how good their service and equipment is, and how good their backups are.

What makes you capable of running this thing?

Humph. Computing is my life (well, except for Jesus). I've worked in it for 20 years, ten of them as a Unix system administrator and applications programmer. My web experience goes back to 1993, when NCSA released its first web server and web browser software. Ever since then, I've been building internal and external web services for my job at a big engineering think-tank.

My other personal net projects include Catholic-themed e-mail discussion lists such as cathmoms (250 members) and the website catholicartists.org.

How do I get started?

Apply by e-mail to chonak@yahoo.com.

Does your browser slow down when loading web pages with lots of little graphics that you don't want?

Maybe the web site owner thinks that the "guest map", the "web ring logo", and the "traffic counter" are all cool features.

Those toys are usually implemented by making the web page load an extra graphic image every time you view the page. The images usually reside on slow, heavily loaded servers, and, in the case of the counter, the image has to be generated anew for every user!

What to do? Get some ad-blocking software, and use it to block these graphic images as well as the advertising banners and popups that such programs normally block.

The blocker program will contain a list of advertising URLs (or URL patterns). Before you install a program, make sure it lets you add your own choices to the list.

Then you can make your own list of URL patterns representing unwanted images. Save it in a file on your system. Add those patterns to the "block" list, and the ad-blocker should now start to make the web-counters, "Blogger" logos, and other junk disappear from the pages you view, just as it makes ads disappear.

If you're in my position, acting as a system administrator, and able to install system-wide web proxy software with an ad blocker (such as "adzap" to accompany "squid"), you can do a favor for your users! Of course, give the people a choice: some of them may prefer to keep the ads.

The speed-up you get as a web user may be amazing!

Victor wonders whether any other blogs can or will be hosted at stblogs.org. Well, that is certainly part of the idea.

It's looking pretty good; the old posts are imported.

Update: CL has launched!

I've started building templates for the Catholic Light weblog.

I've installed MovableType and created a first blog, for general use in describing what's going on here at stblogs.org.