BG Views Developer Blog

BG Views Developer Blog - Daily Log This is a blog by Ken Edwards, Webmaster and project lead for the BG Views web site. You will find bits of code, project updates, and random technical information aimed at confusing the hell out of you. tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2009-04-01:/dev/201 2010-08-29T01:41:21Z http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-static/themes/bgviews/images/rss_logo.gif Do you use Google Reader? tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.14044 2010-08-29T01:33:24Z 2010-08-29T01:41:21Z

If you use Google Reader, we have a Bundle for you! This is a bundle of BG Views Network sites. It currently has seven feeds in it, but we will be adding more shortly.What I do not understand is this:...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 Bundle for you! This is a bundle of BG Views Network sites. It currently has seven feeds in it, but we will be adding more shortly.

What I do not understand is this: When I update the bundle, subscribers do not automatically see the changes to the Bundle. They must click Subscribe again. Why is this not automatic? A Google help forum post on this very subject has gone unanswered too, so I am not the only one seeing this as a problem.
]]> Housing Guide Update tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.14043 2010-08-29T01:02:14Z 2010-08-29T01:06:08Z

Another section of the site that was a priority this summer was the Housing Guide. I have made small changes to both the Mobile template as well as the standard template, mainly aesthetic changes.Also new is the Search box on...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1
Also new is the Search box on the right, and the Advanced Search page. Although the Advanced Search form is not complete, you can drill down to search by all the fields there. Look for more options to show up there very soon.
]]> Restructured Home Page tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.14042 2010-08-28T23:06:24Z 2010-08-28T23:18:21Z

For the start of this semester, we have introduced a restructured home page with a bigger carousel. Please let me know what you think! I have more work to do on the home page, but it needed to be simplified....

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1
There is still the problem that I have so many external scripts running, that when the page loads, the carousel takes a second to fully load. That is what causes the navigation buttons to "pop" in like that. Currently there is CSS in place to minimize the strange loading, and that "pop" effect is the best I can do for now.
]]>
The carousel itself is a Movable Type plugin that I wrote, and is based on the AnythingSlider jQuery plugin. More on that in a future post.

On a less technical note, I will be adding more carousel slides and community content to the bgnews.com home page soon, such as our Housing Guide and Housing Forum, which remain one of the most popular parts of our site.
]]> Summer means development time tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.13389 2010-05-12T07:45:17Z 2010-05-12T07:49:09Z

Summer is here, and Summer Session starts soon. Before classes ended for Spring I sat down with our Web Editor Shawn and our EIC Heather to outline the changes they would like to see on bgnews.com.The menu bar is going...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1
The menu bar is going to get a slight tweaking, moving things around. The layout of bgnews.com is also going to change quite a bit, going to a two-column layout.

There are a bunch of other things on the To Do list for the summer, but those I will get to in due time.
]]> BG News Archives Update Feb. 19 tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.12312 2010-02-19T05:59:27Z 2010-02-19T06:21:51Z

One of the biggest challenges in moving away from College Publisher has been the 10 years of archives we have had online. As I am sure you are aware, those were abruptly taken down in January.Simply put, there was no...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1
Simply put, there was no other way to switch from their servers to ours.

We are working tirelessly to get the archive back online, and today I would like to share (a new) update on that. I sent out an update on our Facebook Fan Page on Feb. 8, and I wish I could say we have made progress since then.

Hit the jump to hear the (somewhat condensed) updated info.
]]>
Luckily I still had the CP4 export I had gotten in January 2009 from College Publisher, which does have authors and categories. So the import process had to be started again, from scratch.

Then when the CP5 era posts (January through December 2009) were imported, they lacked categories, a small problem with the import script. There was another problem with the media field, thanks to inconsistencies with the CP5 data structure. These issues have been resolved.

So the CP5 era posts have to be deleted and re-imported, again. This has been a very long process and I figured it would be a bear - and I was right! :/

Hopefully by Sunday I will have the CP5 era entries to work with, with categories. My job then requires me to combine categories and authors (some instances occur that we have 5 or 6 of the same author). Once that is done, I can load the articles into the live site on bgnews.com.

That is the best I can do for an update. I apologize to those who are seeking clips for resumes and job applications, or just searching for a past article. The best I can do is point you to our Issuu account.

As always, I will post here once there is a significant update.
]]> BG News YouTube Now in Google News tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11850 2010-01-30T04:07:43Z 2010-01-30T04:11:34Z

I was just trying to find an example of our YouTube videos showing up in Google News. It did not take long, searching for "Obama Ohio" and look what came up. "Sweet!"...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1

"Sweet!"
]]> Project Update: Jan. 13 to 19, 2010 tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11801 2010-01-28T02:53:02Z 2010-01-28T03:43:50Z

I should have thought of this a year ago. What is the best way to keep updates on anything? Twitter of course. And what is the best To-Do list out there? 37 Signals Ta-Da List. So thanks to Twitterfeed and...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 Ta-Da List. So thanks to Twitterfeed and Action Streams, I now have a daily log of what I have done, and what needs to be done. Also handy as a running tally to show the boss.

Since Twitter is not an archive, it is not a Wayback Machine, so I will be posting week-by-week accounts here to this blog. Highlights here and all the super-dry stuff after the jump.

We re-launched bgnews.com on January 12, this is what got done in the first week publishing our own daily newspaper after the long nights of getting everything done for a smooth launch. Here are the highlights.

Setup RSS 2.0 feed for MyBGSU (BlackBoard doesn't like Atom I guess)
Started talks with Andrew Spittle at CoPress about our CP5 archives
Added ability to embed photo galleries in articles
bgviews.com domain finally under our control
Categorized the issue indexes
Got my carousel picker plugin working thanks to Byrne
Met with MediaMate talking about national ads and online ads

]]>

19 Jan 2010

@ 14:55 Earlier today I submitted The BG News to become an official Google News source, and replied to their automated email as requested.
@ 14:54 Met with MediaMate and Bob, Cindy, Tonya to talk about advertising.
@ 11:12 To-Do: Added: archive lists are messed up in Safari AND IE7. Fun.
@ 05:00 To-Do: Added: update Blog Search widget to hide if on an ErrorDocument
@ 03:42 Worked on getting more Issuu shelves in our PDF Archive by Month page. But it is too late to do any more.
@ 03:08 Basically the widgets now work 100% on every site in the network except for bgnews.com because of that Monster inline code. Still looking...
@ 02:38 Too bad falconscreech.com is taken, I looked months ago when we started running them in the paper.
@ 02:37 Add the most recent Falcon Screech to the home page. This is automated, and will always show the most recent entry.
@ 02:35 Now the accordion loads on document.ready so it works right away. Oddly enough when page finish loading accordion collapses.

18 Jan 2010

@ 21:54 Accordion now works in IE7. Found an issue where it will not fully load if there is an external script like Monster, which we make money.
@ 04:23 Working on an accordion script for the right sidebar for most popular/most comments, etc. Close to complete, still having IE7 issue.

17 Jan 2010

@ 19:44 updated the letters to the editor form.
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: add UTM tracking to Tweet This bit.ly script.
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: add UTM tracking to all RSS feeds, starting with BG News
@ 18:30 To-Do: Added: update network search results template
@ 17:22 The monthly archives are now broken out by category, with the date listed next to them, too. http://bit.ly/7zAdJg
@ 15:31 Issue index is done and looks awesome. has headings per category and hides categories with zero count for that day http://bit.ly/4qpFI4
@ 10:41 blah wrong account.

16 Jan 2010

@ 23:06 Was able to break out the Issue index by category. Hope I can figure out how to hide categories that have zero posts in them.
@ 15:30 To-Do: Completed: re-configure google apps for domains once bgviews.com is transfered.
@ 14:24 since we now control bgviews.com, deleted the add-on domains and created the real subdomains for m.bgviews.com and others.
@ 13:52 Google Apps MX and CNAME records have been entered for bgviews.com, hopefully that will propagate soon, though their TTL sucks.
@ 11:11 bgviews.com is still resolving to CP servers on campus, it has not propagated yet. works at home (TWC).
@ 08:30 To-Do: Completed: get bgviews.com transfered from college publisher.
@ 08:14 bgviews.com now redirects to bgnews.com with a 301 redirect. it will do that until I get the apache aliases setup.
@ 01:38 setup bgviews.com on our dedicated box. will be caching with CP for a while now, they have a large CDN. need to setup CNAME and MX records.
@ 01:36 bgviews.com finally transfered into our godaddy account. they could have quickly accepted it; but waited the five days. lame.

15 Jan 2010

@ 11:50 fixed one of the CSS issues in IE7, the one where the asset-meta was getting squashed in the carousel. displays correctly now.
@ 04:47 opened a ticket with 6A support about importing/exporting custom field data. going to need to import cp5_image not sure how yet.

14 Jan 2010

@ 18:55 got the photo gallery setup for article pages. now just need to write the documentation on how to do it. http://bit.ly/7p2c5h
@ 15:08 making headway on getting the photo gallery widget added to the Entry screen in MT.
@ 15:03 spoke with Andrew Spittle for about an hour about moving our CP5 data into WP XML or even MT compatible format. I need to provide samples.
@ 14:48 changed the photo gallery on the bgnews.com home page to load most recent not feature photos
@ 00:15 To-Do: Added: add custom field and code to add a gallery to an entry.

13 Jan 2010

@ 21:41 added code to my plugin to show/hide the breaking and updates spotlight boxes. need to add it to the template now.
@ 19:15 To-Do: Added: move all inline css to external files
@ 15:24 The @bgviews feed is back in MyBGSU now, thanks to Dong Chen for his help.
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: restruct use of byline name in MT code for profile view
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: configure bgviews.com for apache aliases /mt and /errors once transfered
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: once we get the database from college publisher, provide it to wordpress developer
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: re-configure blogs.bgviews.com when bgviews.com is transfered
@ 08:45 To-Do: Added: re-configure m.bgviews.com when bgviews.com is transfered
@ 07:22 updated comment policy to reflect zero tolerance for spam posts and comments. added direct link in comments block in MT templates.
@ 06:24 after many attempts, cannot get mt:entryid to output correctly as a variable in my carousel plugin. emailed byrne.
@ 05:15 Added: fix broken carousel plugin i wrote.
@ 05:14 added documentation to internal site for creating entries in MT
@ 05:13 added falcon screech to profile view template. posts/comments/favorites now show up.
@ 04:57 added easy way for bob, others to keep updated on project development history with twitter and to-da list accounts. setup public web page.
@ 04:15 updated carousel plugin is now live. need to modify code in MT template to work with variables.
@ 04:14 forgot to mention, bgsu summer session ad is now live on the site.
@ 03:55 working on fixing the carousel picker plugin for the home page.
@ 03:45 created rss 2.0 feed for dong chen
@ 03:43 bgnews site went live in movable type tuesday jan 12 at about 4 am.

]]> BG News in Google News tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11764 2010-01-26T06:49:49Z 2010-01-30T04:15:21Z

I must say I am impressed as to how fast Google added us to Google News. I am less impressed that despite the fact that I submitted our site name as The BG News (just so happens to be our...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1

This means my news sitemap XML file will not validate, because of the site name mismatch. So until Google gets around to answering my question, we will be known as Bowling Green News in Google News, and then when it is set to our proper name, I will have to change our news sitemap XML file again.

Nice of them to be quick about including us, kind of a pain in the ass they screwed up our name.

UPDATE: Good news! They got back to me today saying our name has changed. So we will see tomorrow once they pull our articles if the news sitemap throws an error.
]]> Update on BG News Archive tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11757 2010-01-26T05:48:43Z 2010-01-26T06:12:40Z

I have an update about our little problem of missing about 10 years of archives from our site. Since leaving College Publisher in December, we have been patiently, eagerly, relentlessly waiting for our archives and users databases. This past Saturday...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 leaving College Publisher in December, we have been patiently, eagerly, relentlessly waiting for our archives and users databases. This past Saturday College Publisher provided the archive database to us. Yea... don't get excited yet.

]]> CoPress to convert our CP5 data to something we can use, namely WordPress WXR format. CoPress seems to be the go-to place for refugees of College Publisher. I looked into them but have a fond liking for Movable Type, if you have not noticed.

Once I get our data in WordPress WXR and have it running in a WP site, I have a lot of manual data manipulation ahead of me. While CP4 had Sections, CP5 did not. While CP4 had both Author Names and Author Positions, CP5 did not. Not to mention there is over 4 years of data in there from before we partnered with College Publisher!

Once I can combine Authors and Categories in WordPress, I can export another WXR and then do the final import of my sanitized archive - from mid-2000 - into Movable Type. Then it will be time to have a geek dance.
]]> Wibiya Toolbar starts open beta, rocks tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11484 2010-01-17T11:31:33Z 2010-01-17T11:52:36Z

We have been testing the Wibiya Toolbar since June, and are happy with the results. The developers have been very open to our feedback and have even modified our toolbar to work directly with our Google Custom Search Engine. It...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 since June, and are happy with the results. The developers have been very open to our feedback and have even modified our toolbar to work directly with our Google Custom Search Engine. It has been great working with Dror and his crew, and are glad they have incorporated our feedback.

Although the closed beta was not exclusive (most beta requests were filled quickly) it is now open for anyone to setup a toolbar, so check it out.

A lot is new under the hood. First off they have a new CDN for the script, and new code to add to your web page. I can immediately see the difference in speed when loading the toolbar from the CDN script. The next big change is the default search widget is now fully extensible, and easy to work with. The RSS feed widget is extensible in this same way, too.

Lastly they have added a whole slew of new items you can put on the toolbar, and best of all, in my opinion, you can finally take off the "random" button - I always felt that was an eye soar.

Lastly, it looks like they finally fixed a bug they were having with Google Translate, where you would get a Google API error when you used the Translate widget. Nice update guys!
]]> The BG News is powered by Movable Type tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2010:/dev//41.11481 2010-01-16T19:53:53Z 2010-01-16T21:41:04Z

The launching of a web site is a stressful one, but the re-launching of one can be enough to kill you. Lucky for me things went smoothly in the wee hours of January 12 (and I am not typing this...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1
I would like to say the transition away from College Publisher has been a smooth one, but it in fact has not. Just today the domain name was finally transferred into our account, and it is still not resolving all over the Internets yet. And we do not have our database of past archives, last I talked to CP it looked like I would have them by Friday.

So if you are just tuning in, the entire BG Views Network of sites is running under Movable Type, including The BG News, which was previously partnered with College Publisher. We are by far not the first school to leave College Publisher in recent months, and no doubt won't be the last.

But this post is not about College Publisher, it is about Movable Type, and how we are using it to produce a daily newspaper online.
]]> The remainder of this post is going to seem a bit technical for some. Sorry, but you get no refund.

BG Views Network uses Movable Type Pro running under FastCGI, the actual BG News web site is made up of a number of "blogs." Movable Type Pro was required more for the Custom Fields than the community features, but those are a nice bonus. Here is the short list of MT plugins we use and rely on a daily basis. Some we could do without, some we could have gotten by with the "Lite" version, but in the end my goal in this re-launch was to not just match the feature set of our previous site, but exceed it - and we did that.

The Photo Galleries is built using Byrne Reese's Photo Gallery plugin, in a separate MT install that is not running under FastCGI. His template set switches menus and admin pages and because of how FastCGI caches the application, it just doesn't play nice. I hated to split Photo Galleries out like that, but it had to be done.

As with working with the Motion template set, it was much easier to port my existing BG Views design to Mid-Century (than incorporate it into my design), the theme the Photo Gallery plugin is built using. Using a secondary category archive and a Custom Field in the main BG News blog, I am easily able to embed a gallery within an Entry, such as here.

MT4 Custom Fields offer a lot, but I needed more, and as luck would have it, More Custom Fields by Dan Wolfgang offers just that. MCF is used a lot more in the Housing Guide, but the "Related Articles" you see here are one type of field the plugin provides. We actually use a lot of Dan's plugins; Better File Uploader is essential to sizing, thumbnailing, and lightboxing (in one fell swoop) photos for our Entry pages; Share is used for the "email to a friend" feature; and Poll Position is used for running polls in our blogs and in Entries.

The last "essential" plugin we use, and likely most important, is Byrne's Config Assistant plugin. Without it, updating things like the home page carousel, section pages, or breaking stories would take much more work for our news staff, and if I have one goal, it is to automate as much stuff as humanly possible. Config Assistant lets me do that, in spades. I need to do more with it, I just have not had the time.

There are plugins out there that will embed a Share This toolbar, but I felt it was much better to write my own, including using the bit.ly API for URL shortening.

The other plugin we rely on daily is Visitor Stats Pro, it provides our "Most Read" lists, and stats, referers, and search strings for our articles.

We use many more utility plugins from developers like Byrne and Mark Carey, too, they just makes my life so much easier.

The BG News has been online since 1998 and we have come a long way from hosting it ourselves in West Hall and doing the majority of the work in BBEdit. It is great to be publishing our site again, and Movable Type makes that a breeze.
]]> The Changing Face of Comment Spam tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2009:/dev//41.11136 2009-12-27T07:49:38Z 2009-12-27T08:57:22Z

It is hard to imagine, but I have been blogging for close to seven years now, and I have seen comment spam of varying degrees. It used to be pretty easy to spot. Services like Akismet and now TypePad AntiSpam...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 Akismet and now TypePad AntiSpam are there to help - and they do - but even trained computers fail at finding spam. Both Akismet and TPAS have been failing me lately, let me show you why:

Picture 113.png

If you read that, it is actually mostly literate English. This is one of dozens of spam comments we have been getting. They usually do not put links in the body of the comment, that is so yesterday's tactic, but do use the Author URL to link to their spam site. And some of the spam sites don't even look like spam site - they actually take a careful eye.

Spam is getting smarter. This is scary.

One solution is to use a CAPTCHA source, such as ReCAPTCHA, but these can be defeated, I have seen it happen. The drastic answer to this problem is to just turn off anonymous comments altogether, but for us, that is not an option. We want people to comment, and registration drives some people away.

The only good answer is that it takes a lot of hard work to combat comment spam, and having good policies in place help, too. See our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Comments Policy. You may think that is a lot of mumbo jumbo - and it is - but it is very important for our users to know where they stand.

Such policies are required to provide a safe, engaging place for the community to not only consume, but create and share content.

]]> Misc. Site Changes tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2009:/dev//41.10469 2009-08-28T10:50:00Z 2009-08-28T04:49:15Z

I have been getting a lot of things out the way lately, lots of little stuff that will make my life so much easier down the road.Setup Error Documents in MT, aliased across all domainsSetup .htaccess files in MT for...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1

Setup Error Documents in MT, aliased across all domains
Setup .htaccess files in MT for all domains, subdomains
Setup robots.txt files in MT for all domains

Like I said, little stuff, but very helpful to have them inside MT.
]]> YUI Editor 1.3 and Auto-tagging tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2009:/dev//41.10550 2009-08-28T04:52:48Z 2009-08-28T05:08:56Z

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1

Richard Benson has updated his YUI Editor plugin (one of my favorite Movable Type plugins), and it has two great changes/additions. First, and not so exciting for most people, is the configurable options, normally handled in a configure.js file, has been moved into Plugin Preferences. But hey, that does make it easier to change things.

The thing that people will notice most of all is the new Tag button which will analyze the current text and suggest tags for the article. This is great for people who don't know what they should use as tags. It does a really good job, and works on the text in the Body and Extended field without having to save the document first.
]]> Related Articles Added to Templates tag:bgviewsnetwork.com,2009:/dev//41.10425 2009-08-11T05:37:43Z 2009-08-11T05:44:01Z

I have added Related Entries, based on similar tagging, to both the normal Entry templates and the Mobile (iPhone) Entry templates. Check it out here and here. So far this is live on this Developer Blog and on the Sports...

Ken Edwards http://bgviewsnetwork.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=41&id=1 here and here.

So far this is live on this Developer Blog and on the Sports Blog. Soon it will be live on all the other blogs.]]>