Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY


	Posts tagged with "updates"

Baumblog.com
posted by Marc on April 7, 2009 @ 8:58PM

Just as a quick notice, we have acquired http://www.baumblog.com. This is yet another way to reach the baumblog and it will make it much easier to let the extended family know how to get here once we reach out to them.

9 comments | Tags: updates

Small Baumblog Update
posted by Marc on December 5, 2008 @ 8:17PM

It's been a while, and that's a good thing! Surprisingly we haven't need many updates to this blog, but feel free to suggest any features anytime and I'll look into it. So anyway, this update includes:

Fixed search paging. Thanks to GJ for pointing out this little diddy. Now you can happily page your way through the search results, even though if your search terms are good, it should be on the first page anyway. :)
YouTube Widescreen support. Many of you probably didn't notice, but YouTube moved to Widescreen a couple days ago. Since we tend to post lots of videos, we should be showing them as you would see them on YouTube. You don't need to do anything to make sure the video is widescreen, all YouTube videos are now widescreen and therefore all new videos you post will be as well. I may go through our old posts and fix them, but I'm a bit lazy to write a script at the moment.
Tags can now be modified in the Admin area.

So that's it, let me know if you see any problems or have suggestions for any features.

6 comments | Tags: updates

GJ said about 3 hours later

Thanks for the update Marc. I'll go try to break something else now. :)

Other features: some way to embed more types of media. We can't seem to do much beyond YouTube, and if I script embed code in as raw HTML the smarty pants blog corrupts the entry and I get a blank embed window as a result. That's not critical...just a pet peeve of mine.

Utilities: something to edit tags--be nice to correct tag misspellings and apply the change to all affected posts.

Tags: any way we can support multi-word tags?

I'll stop now. :) Keep up the awesome job, Marc!
Marc said about 4 hours later

I added the ability to edit tags, you can do so in the admin area under tags now. Multi-word tags are actually supported (albeit, I didn't even know that!). The trick is to surround the multiple words with quotes. So separated_at_birth would be "separated at birth". I looked into modifying the user interface to use separated by commas, but I don't wanna go in and modify the plugin I'm using to get free tagging support for a relatively small use case.

In terms of more types of media, do you mean the ability to post pictures via a simple upload right here on the blog? You should be able to enter the HTML mode of the blog editor and add in your own code. Let me know if you have a better example of it corrupting the code, it's possible that little editor is cleaning up certain tags that we can actually enable. That editor also has plugins, so most likely whatever you'd like to do, I can find a plugin for it.
Geoff said about 5 hours later

it would be nice for an image upload. I can't imagine we don't have enough server space to host 'em
GJ said about 13 hours later

I think it was non-youtube flash (and non-flash) video that it'd choke on. I'll see if I can get you an example soon.
Geoff said 3 days later

Cool feature...On the right side where it says (#) new post(s), (#) new comment(s)....it would be cool if I clicked on either one and it showed me just the new post or the post with new comments.
Marc said 4 days later

I made the widescreen videos a bit bigger now too (hence all those edited posts to your post GJ) :)

The feature you mentioned Geoff is actually something I have been thinking about doing for a while now. There's some headaches surrounding that, but it's certainly doable. I'll see if I can get to it in the near future.

Baumblog.org
posted by Marc on July 24, 2008 @ 11:51AM

Ever forget the URL to the Baumblog? Forget no more. Yesterday SlickDeals.net had a deal to receive a free domain name, so I took advantage and grabbed one for us. Unfortunately, someone already had baumblog.com, but we're more of an organization anyway. :)

The new domain, http://www.baumblog.org, will simply redirect you to the correct site.

2 comments | Tags: updates

Why Is This Post Yellow?
posted by Marc on October 14, 2007 @ 10:32PM

Well, at least hopefully it is yellow! I just made an update to the Baumblog tonight which will now display recent activity. I'm hoping it's completely functional, but it is a large thing to test. So hopefully you guys can help me test it. Basically, this is what you should see whenever changes happen on the site:

When there is a new post, new comment, edited post, or edited comment you'll see a notification on the side under recent activity. You'll also notice things turn yellow when they've changed. New posts will be highlighted, the "# comments" link at the bottom of a post will be yellow if a comment is new or changed, and new comments will be highlighted yellow in the comment thread.

Let me know if you don't see these updates, see any errors, or have any problems. Another issue I'm concerned about is speed of the site, hopefully there isn't a slow down but the recent activity is rather intensive so there might be. If it's too bad, I'll just turn it off. Eventually I hope to make the Recent Activity notifications links so you can see the changes on one page, but I'll save that for another night.

14 comments | Tags: updates

GJ said about 3 hours later

Slow? That'd be my men's league hockey team. And I'm not talking about how fast they skate. Hey, maybe we can get a color code for totally off-topic comments? :)
GJ said about 3 hours later

I added that comment above, then noticed that Recent Activity didn't update. Hmm. So I refreshed the screen..and it went from 1 new post, 4 new comments to No recent activity. That how it's supposed to work? Oh, and this post ain't yellow no more.
GJ said about 4 hours later

Btw, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.7 on XP.
Marc said about 11 hours later

Well, I decided that your recent activity wouldn't show updates for anything you had done, I figured you would know you posted a new comment/post :) I could add that functionality in very easily if it seems like a better idea. Basically, once you've viewed the page, all the recent activity that went on goes away, hence why it disappeared on refresh.

As a good test, it picked up all the new comments for me this morning. :) Let me know if that yellow stands out too much, Geoff could probably provide a better color, but maybe it's ok as is.
Geoff said about 13 hours later

Maybe use the orange from our logo at the top, to keep it consistent :) Another Gestalt principal.
Marc said about 13 hours later

Hey, I've heard of Gestalt in my Usability class! Obviously that class stayed with me. :)
GJ said 4 days later

Improvement idea: when you click on recent activity, it lists the posts with that activity. Those posts would be links to the actual post entry.
GJ said 4 days later

And I dunno about the orange highlight. Works this month (Boo!) but is looking more and more funny to me over time.
Marc said 4 days later

The improvement you speak of I kinda mentioned in my post GJ. Clicking on it would simply narrow down the blog's view to posts that were modifed or had comments that were modified (It would be the actual post, not just a link). One reason this could potentially be handy is in case someone were to modify a post or comment that wasn't on the front page.

I've also been tinkering with the idea of making a Recent Activity Atom/RSS feed, so anyone who is using RSS feeds will get notified of post edits and new/edited comments. I may be the only one using the Atom/RSS feeds though. :)

As for the orange color, I kind of have to agree, maybe color just isn't the right means of show changes. Perhaps some kind of icon/image, but I'm not sure. Again Geoff might have some good ideas there.
GJ said 4 days later

Actually, I used the RSS feeds with the last blog. Haven't set them up with the new blog yet, other than thru my yahoo.

Sorry, I kinda didn't read that in your original post. Great minds think alike, no? LOL.
Geoff said 4 days later

Yes the orange is, well orange. An Icon would be a great idea. Like a fireball or something haha. You could still keep this highlight, but make it far more lighter. Perhaps a pale yellow that is almost white, but has enough contrast to distinguish it from the background.
Marc said 4 days later

I made the changes, instead of orange backgrounds, you'll see a NEW icon next to the corresponding things. The "# comments" link is now orange font color. I decided the post title and comment titles as orange was a bit gaudy.
GJ said 6 days later

Yep, I like the icon approach--much better. The orange in the icon is far better than highlighting half the page orange.
Geoff said 7 days later

Icon look cool.

YouTube/Google Video Integration
posted by Marc on September 8, 2007 @ 1:59AM

Ok, so it looks like the plugin I installed to give the blog a nice YouTube integration was causing more headaches than necessary. I have updated the editor and removed that plugin. With the upgrade, we got even better video integration.

There is now one button in replace of the YouTube button. It looks like a film strip and lets you specify all sorts of things for integrating Flash, Quicktime, etc. The best part about it is it automatically recognizes YouTube and Google Video URLs. So just click the film strip and paste the URL directly from your browser into the File/URL field and it should automatically setup the values for you.

Let me know if you guys have any questions/issues with this way. Happy blogging!

No comments | Tags: updates

Big Blog Updates
posted by Marc on May 9, 2007 @ 11:29PM

I finally got around to putting in some of the much needed features, and this is being typed in one of them. Here's a run down of the features implemented:

Rich Text Editor for posts - You can now change alignment, styling, bullets, links, etc. (Ignore the picture stuff for now though)
YouTube integration - As part of the Rich Text Editor, you'll see a YouTube link. Click on it and put in the URL to the YouTube video and it will automagically put in player.
Editing/deleting Comments - Pretty standard, but we need to talk about this

You'll notice now on your comments there's a trash icon near the bolded section. Clicking on that will "delete" your comment. At this point, it simply means that your comment will now say "Comment deleted..." Do we want to keep it this way or do we want it to disappear completely? If we do want it to say Comment deleted, do we want to be able to edit that comment down the road. Currently you can, but all of this is easy to change.

Editing a comment is very different. You'll notice there's no pencil icon or anything to indicate you can edit the comment. Naturally, I've implemented a much cooler way of doing it. Simply mouse over your comment and you'll notice it highlights in yellow. Now click. Whammy, you've got an editor to change the comment in place and then save your changes without ever leaving the page. Suck on that Blogger.

Feel free to post answers to my questions in the comments and expect the next big feature to show up be the Recent Activity, which will change your blogging experience forever.

14 comments | Tags: updates

Quick Baumblog Update
posted by Marc on April 24, 2007 @ 10:35AM

I did some quick Programming Kung Fu and defeated Internet Explorer (While keeping all the other browsers happy too!). Anyone using Internet Explorer will now notice the comment box works now, no more of that silly expanding.

More updates will be on the way shortly, some things include:

- Finally getting a nice rich text editor in for blog posts.
- Editing/deleting comments
- Easy YouTube integration.

Happy blogging!

13 comments | Tags: updates

More Updates
posted by Marc on March 29, 2007 @ 11:39AM

Sorry for the delay, but I had some issues with my source code for a week.

Anyway, we've got some new updates. First off let's talk about the sidebar additions/changes. I made the tag cloud smaller, as we get more and more tags, the smaller size should help display as many of them as we can. You'll also notice the Archives section works now. Clicking on the specified month for a year will get the posts for that time period. You should also take note that the contributors list is now links as well. Clicking on a contributor name will display all posts by that person. Finally, I added a Syndicate section which links to the RSS feed for the blog. There has been an RSS feed for the blog for a while, but now there's an easy to access link.

The comments section has received a huge overhaul. First off, I expanded the comments box to be as wide as possible (Thanks Kristen!). Also, I made it so that when you add a comment, it simply pops up right before your eyes, without having to reload the page (Thanks GJ!).

Sorry I didn't get the cool editor for posting blog posts, but I'm working on that. I want to make sure there's no confusion with the new editor, so I'm really customizing it. I'd expect this update to come next week.

I think that's it for the moment, let me know if you notice any bugs or want to recommend any changes.

17 comments | Tags: updates

GJ said 15 minutes later

As always, you rock, dude! I'm testing your comment changes right now. :)
GJ said 15 minutes later

Cool, that worked. Now let's see if I can do multiple line comments:

Like this should be on a new line, without those br tags.
GJ said 16 minutes later

Awesome. Now I'll go try to break something else. Hehehe.
GJ said 16 minutes later

Aaha...first bug! When you submit your comment...the comment box is not cleared.
GJ said 18 minutes later

Hey, the tag cloud works now! Good job!
Geoff said about 2 hours later

Most Excellent! Suggestion for the Tag Cloud...I think it would be cool for the very large words (or maybe the word with the most hits) gets super highlighted, like the color orange or something. That'd be neat.

Also the search appears to be working somewhat, but I'm getting some text display issues.
Marc said about 2 hours later

I was thinking about highlighting them, as this is a common feature seen in many tag clouds. But I was worried of horrible design due to bad color choices.

And the search is fixed now. :)
Steve said about 6 hours later

When I type something really long, like this really really really really really really really long run on sentance, I can't see about the last 7 or 8 characters of the line - they go out of the box.

Steve
Marc said about 22 hours later

Steve, what browser and version are you using? This problem doesn't occur on Firefox 2.0.0.3 or IE 7.
Steve said 1 day later

IE7
Steve said 1 day later

IE7.0.5730.11
GJ said 3 days later

Anybody notice that Kristen's comments seem to wrap earlier than anyone else's?
Geoff said 3 days later

I see one of her posts does that (the one that is repeated in the website posting), but the others appear to be normal.
Marc said 4 days later

Maybe she's hitting enter at the end of the line instead of allow the text area to wrap it automatically. I'm not sure why Steve's is doing that, as I tried IE7 with no problems. I do have version 7.0.6000.16386 though, so maybe Steve you should try an automatic update, but it could be because I am using IE7 on Vista.
Geoff said 5 days later

Hey Marc, Steve is correct on the problem. The text field stretches beyond the limits of the windowpane on IE7 in XP.
Marc said 5 days later

Ok, I know the problem now then, it's not that the text is being hidden as it is IE7 ignoring standards again. I guess I'll come up with a hack!
Geoff said 5 days later

What else would you expect from Microsuck, er soft.

Baumblog: Updates
posted by Marc on March 13, 2007 @ 11:43AM

We've got some new updates available now. Some things smaller, some larger.

First off, the tag cloud should be working fine. We just need to tag posts with similar tags. So far the tagging has been on par, we just haven't had similar posts. After this post, you should notice the "updates" tag is larger in the cloud. (If not, oopsie!)

You'll now notice there's a "Remember me" check box in the login over there on the right. It works and it should keep you logged in for about 5 years. I figure that's a pretty good amount of time. (I'll be adding a log out button in the future just in case, but you can log out from the admin section).

The search engine works and is better than Blogger's by leaps and bounds, mostly because it works. Check it out, you'll notice it highlights the keywords in the returned posts, so finding things should be super easy.

For those of you people posting, there's no need to put in special HTML tags to make your posts separated in paragraphs. I do this automatically for you now.

Also for those of you people posting, you can now preview your posts. There's a new "Preview" button which will show you exactly what it will look like once you post it to the blog.

Here's what to expect this week:

A nice rich text editor for posting and possibly comments. The rich text editor is heavily JavaScript and kinda sluggish, so I may leave it out of comments.

Kristen suggested a bigger comments box, does everyone else agree?

Archives, working tag links, and permalinks (I'll explain these when they're released).

Editing/deleting comments and posts. Right now this is done through the admin system, but I'm going to make it a bit easier.

The recent activity is a big maybe. Most of the work is already done, but this is actually a pretty complex feature, so it may be rolled out with limited functionality and then added to, but no guarantees.

That's it, enjoy the updates, let me know if there's any bugs.

12 comments | Tags: updates

Baumblog: Renewed
posted by Marc on March 7, 2007 @ 12:16PM

Welcome to the new Baumblog, version 2.0. We've got a nice new look (thanks Geoff!), and a bunch of new features (you're welcome). So, for a first post, I'm going to give you an overview and how to use the shiny new interface.

First things first, the right side of the page is where you're going to need to login. For now it doesn't remember your login, but that will be changed shortly. After you have logged in, you will see a "NEW POST" link at the top right of the blog.

Let me explain the new post form briefly, as there's a new feature there. The title and body are fairly obvious, but the tags are a whole new thing. The tags are a way for you to mark the post as being categorized by certain keywords. This will be extremely helpful for finding posts later on if you ever need to (Or if others need to!). Basically, you simply write words separated by spaces that describe the post. For instance, this post is marked "updates tutorials" because it relates to updates to the baumblog as well as a tutorial for how to use it. Try to reuse tags as well as use tags you think can be reusable and are relevant, otherwise we'll just have a bunch of tags linking to one post. :) These tags will be shown on each post as well as will make an effect in the Tag Cloud.

What is this cool Tag Cloud, you say? The Tag cloud over on the right there will slowly evolve into this cloud of words (tags). As the same tag is used more and more often, the word will get bigger. The idea here is that the cloud will show what topics are talked about the most, which will make for finding those topics again easier. It's cool, you'll see.

Comments work pretty much the same way as they did on Blogger. Simply click the "No comments" or "# comments" link under a post to see the comments for the post. If you're logged in, you'll be able to leave a comment.

Finally, let me just explain that there's a bunch of features that are very close to being ready, but with the untimely death of the old blog, we needed to get this up fast. So be patient, you'll be seeing some rather large updates this week.

2 comments | Tags: updates, tutorials

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