Rebuilding Movable Type blog completed just now. One simple stupidity (too stupid to mention), not myriad mistakes made this blog out of cyberspace last quarter. All the entries that I posted and maintained over the past ten plus years totally disappeared due to irrevocable backup copies.

Physical failure can be constant risk in server operation and maintenance. Backup as well as recovery plan is a basic and perfect measure in most of cases. However, the backup must be done properly. This is the lesson that I learnt.

Beginning April 19, 2005, I put more than hundred posts so far. The first and last (I wonder, though) blog platform, Movable Type always stayed with me since then.

The quality of blog contents or contents itself must be a source of spirit in daily blogging. On other hands, supporting techniques will polish the spirit effectively if they provide appropriate tools rendering whatever bloggers want to visualize on the Web. The Movable Type, called publishing platform, converts merely textual contents to prospective shining gems with its underlying techniques as well as with bidirectional data flow across most resources on the Web.

All blog platforms including Movable Type would conform to web standards in their respective resulting contents. Differences against one another comes from the ways how they control user contents from input to output, facilities they provide for users doing so, and design scheme users work on. Templates, widgets, and styles are what Movable Type can show regarding those differences.

1. Templates are logical frameworks where user entries enter directly and indirectly. There is no need to care about physical structure. Putting what one wants to put is enough! Template contents may be frequently used codes/strings, just logical layout (for example, article title will be followed by contents, then comments, blah, blah), and whatever commonly used excerpts.

2. Widgets are building blocks helping users place contents (including entry) here and there over a blog plane. User can group contents from various sources of user defined templates, existing Movable Type templates, and direct input. User can construct widgets independent from those sources. Once widgets are ready for use, users can drag and drop to place them wherever preferred. That is, only mouse movements are required.

3. Styles are facilities to generate browser ready outcome from user entry incorporated with templates and widgets. HTML/CSS aware definition will make your entry look more beautiful and understandable from the Web. Style modification may need patience to test outcomes with trial and error repetition, a sort of intensive manual labor. However, concentration on style design is the only time consuming and hard work because templates and widgets will relieve bloggers of chores.

More technical details with examples will soon appear showing how those three will enhance flexible blog publishing. Of course, there are many more features available apart from above mentioned

Over the last three years, I aimed at putting as many articles on this blog, then improving quality of articles as information hive. Good accessibility to this blog to pick a certain post was beyond my scope. One day, I recognized that even I can not easily access my old archives only with several clicks.

The core problem was that blog links shown from a browser could not cover all paths to a specific post. Search function may take the place. However, one should enter a search term. This way is not feasible in case of visitor's first look-up or peeking purpose. For example, I had no way to pick an article without search function because pre-defined templates just showed several recent entries; defaulted behavior. Changing attributes to show more or all entries made blog plane occupied by too long list.

Forging all available measures using templates, widgets, and styles, I could generate archive page as shown below. The key function from the archive page is monthly category dropdown lists.

Dividing a plane into four columns was the first step applying my own design.

Then, I created category monthly dropdown list template by modifying existing dropdown code as below. (pick code from here)

Forming a category monthly widget showing all four category monthly dropdown lists was the final step as below. (pick code from here)

That's all!

Done it! MT 4.2, as committed, did not impose any chores on me. Complete as well as perfect automated process made me stay away from detailed installation. Now, MovableType 4.2 is with me only after a whole day endeavor to migrate my own styles and templates (inevitably and intrinsically manual labor by blog owner)

Attractive publishing perforamce is a great plus. Wrist watch read more than three minutes upon the last build on MT 4.1 right before the migration. MT 4.2, on the other hand, gives out around one minute or so in seconds from publishing result window.

Endeavor to control columns layout in this blog made it possible for me to transit from three columns environment then to land in flexible (four or more columns) publishing platform. Old one shown below accommodated so big sized picture at the portal that there was no enough room to populate and rearrange additional widgets.

The renovated home page now has four columns to try its best to give you core and summarized information available from this blog. You can confirm that additional style sheet and layout code in HTML work well on both of Windows and UNIX box with FireFox as shown below while there may be redundancy in code pieces :)

MovableType의 Action Streams과 유사하게 동작하도록 설계된 서비스이다. Social networking과 블로그를 포함한 사용자 서비스 사이에서 양방향 통신을 가능하게 해준다. 일단 현재 사용중인 블로그와 facebook을 연결했고 facebook 상에서 글을 올리고 있다. 결과가 어떻게 나올지... 자세한 사항은 여기 참조.

(요기서부터 수동으로 수정/추가한 부분)

아래 그림 처럼 facebook 상에서 글을 입력하면 자신의 블로그에 글이 올려집니다. 아직은 facebook에서 MT로 글 올리기만 가능한 상태이고, Action Streams는 지원하지 않는 것으로 보입니다.

A blog renovation completed just ago. Purchase of professional pack, thought of as one of idiot action by blogging gurus, boosted it accordingly. A combination of the adaptation to MT4.1, brand new features from professional pack, and cutting edge plug-ins available only from MT4.1 made me confused to set up a blog sphere keeping the entry link consistency with new features at my hand. However, the fact that I paid for commercial software for the first time in my life gave me more inspiration to maximize its functionality. Big changes include,

• Application of Universal Web Templates from professional pack to incorporate non-blog web pages which used to exist in form of external links from blog
• Installation of Action Streams plug-in to trace events from elsewhere

How about a new face of kokeb.net?