MT Blogroll 1.0

By Arvind Satyanarayan on February 26, 2005 | Filed under Plugins » MT Blogroll | Comments (66)

You now know why there hasn't been any updates in nearly 20 days! I'm very proud to announce MT Blogroll 1.0. Basically MT Blogroll is a blogroll manager, similar to blogrolling.com. You are able to store various details about a link including its URI, Name, Description and Relationship and assign them to various categories. If you have been using another blogroll manager like blogrolling.com or blo.gs, you can use the Import OPML tool to import those links into MT Blogroll.

I would suggest reading the README first which describes the installation process and includes some example code. Other documentation includes the Tag Reference which describes the template tags that MT Blogroll offers.

Thanks to the kind folks over on ProNet, MT Blogroll has been through beta testing. I believe that it was tested mostly on MT 3 or above and am not sure how it will react with versions lower.

So without further ado, download MT Blogroll v1.0

Currently on the todo list is to have some sort of recently updated mechanism so that you can indicate which links have been recently updated. I'm also deliberating an export tool to export both as OPML and FOAF. What are your views?

I've also found it convenient to have a link in the left hand side menu to access MT Blogroll. If you want a similar feature, open up tmpl/cms/header.tmpl and search for

<li><MT_TRANS phrase="Utilities"><br />
<ul class="sub">

and add right after it

<li><MT_TRANS phrase="Utilities"><br />
<ul class="sub">

<li><a style="background-image: url(<TMPL\_VAR NAME=STATIC\_URI>images/nav-blogrollit.gif);" title="<MT\_TRANS phrase="MT-Blogroll">" href="plugins/Blogroll/mt-blogroll.cgi?\_\_mode=<TMPL\_IF NAME=BLOG\_ID>view&amp;blog\_id=<TMPL\_VAR NAME=BLOG\_ID><TMPL\_ELSE>bookmarklets</TMPL_IF>"><MT\_TRANS phrase="MT-Blogroll"></a></li>

66 Comments

rowan said:
on Feb 27, 2005 12:19 AM | Reply

What would happen if ... You set up a separate blog as a blogroll blog as was recommended back in 2003 by King of Fools had a set of directions on making a blogroll blog . If one did that and established the blog rolls, then that would create the table. MT-Blogroll could then run inside the blogroll blog, and be included in other blogs with either a php include or using something like the multiblog plugin. I have no idea whether that would work,.

Could you then use sub categories with MT-Blog roll?

Would subcategories work with MT-Blogroll under any circumstance?

salguod said:
on Feb 27, 2005 1:33 AM | Reply

Cool plug in! I appreciate the easy to follow instructions.

One question: I've installed it into my MT 3.15 blog and I'm trying to drag the 'Blogroll It!' link into my links bar (IE 6 on Win XP), but nothing happens. I found I had to right click on it, select copy link, paste it into a folder and then drag it onto my links bar. IE then gave me a warning that the link might not be safe and I said OK. I then tried the link and my Google toolbar blocked the Pop up window! I held control down and it worked OK.

Not a huge deal, just thought you ought to know.

salguod said:
on Feb 27, 2005 3:30 AM | Reply

OK, despite my troubles above, I'm loving this plug in. Very nicely done. I currently do my blogroll manually, so this will be much better.

I know it's less thatn 24 hrs old, but I have a couple of suggestions:

1 - How about the ability to make some links on hold or something, like 'draft' posts? Some blogs go inactive for a time and then resume, it would be nice to be able to remove them from my site without remving them from the database.

2 - How about a way to link the blogroll entry to a blog post? Whenever I add a link to my blogroll, I post about what it is and why I'm adding it. I then include a link to that post next to the entry in the blogroll so people can check out why I've linked them.

Thanks again, this is very cool.

Michael Hanscom said:
on Feb 27, 2005 7:04 AM | Reply

The '500 Server Error' popped up for me to, but it's one that I've run into before, so I knew how to fix it. The issue is simply that the Blogroll.pl and mt-blogroll.cgi files have DOS-style line endings. Once the file's been uploaded to a Unix (or, in my case, Mac OS X) server, the extra characters at the end of each line bork things up.

For me, the fix was fairly simple -- I just opened each of those files in TextWrangler and used the 'File Options' button/menu to switch the encoding from DOS to UNIX and then re-saved the files. After that, they worked fine.

I'm running into other issues, though.

Firstly, should the link from the main MT screen really be set to the bookmarklet screen rather than the main configuration screen?

Secondly...well, things just aren't right for me. :) When I go into MT-Blogroll (hand-editing the URL to load the .cgi script without any arguments, or by just clicking and going to the main screen), the options menu on the left only has two buttons: 'Main Menu' to go back to the main MT screen, and 'Blogroll it' -- no way to actually input or import any items.

The main center column of the interface is shoved all the way to the left and underneath the options menu, and the version/copyright notice is underneath that. Perhaps an unclosed <div> somewhere in the interface?

Lastly, what interface there is on the main screen merely tells me that I have no links in my blogroll, but doesn't give me any way to add links, either manually or by importing an OPML file.

Screenshot here.

I'll keep an eye out for v1.01. ;)

Arvind Satyanarayan said:
on Feb 27, 2005 10:08 AM | Reply

Hi Michael.

I'm sure you read the README file then that I instructed to read first in the entry above! It would have told you that from the main MT page that it would take you to configure a bookmarklet and to add links etc. you have to go into your blog main menu and click Edit My Blogroll!

Please read all the docs before posting any bug reports/problems

Above the UI issue, I'm not entirely sure why that is happening because its fine over here (but I'm on Windows)

Michael Hanscom said:
on Feb 27, 2005 2:03 PM | Reply

With all due respect, Arvind, I did read the readme file, both on this website and in the archive I downloaded. In fact, I'm looking at the readme right now, and here's what it says in the post-installation section:

ACCESSING THE INTERFACE

Each blog in your installation of MovableType is allowed to manage an independent Blogroll.

To access the Blogroll interface, visit the main menu for your MT blog. At the bottom of the center column you should see "Edit My Blogroll" in a "Plugin actions" table. Click on "Edit My Blogroll" to access your instance of Blogroll for that blog.

Nowhere does it say that using the bookmarklet to add a link is the first step. Instead, it says that when I go in to the Blogroll interface, there should be a link titled "Edit My Blogroll" under a heading titled "Plugin Actions" — however, neither of these items exist.

I hate to sound too bitchy, as I am looking forward to using this plugin (now that I know what I need to do to get it working properly). I'm just a little taken aback that my being able to provide a solution to the 500 Server Errors that some people were getting was ignored, and instead I was accused of ignoring the documentation (which doesn't even say what you claim above) and annoying you unnecessarily with spurious requests for help.

Be that as it may, I'll try adding a link with the bookmarklet and see if things continue normally from there.

One last piece of debugging before I go, though: the interface oddities I'm seeing appear to be caused by a missing </ul> in the unordered list that builds the navigation menu in the left hand column. Safari's probably just a little stricter in its HTML parsing than whichever browser you're using, which is why you're not seeing the error. While I've never mucked around with the code for plugins before, I'll see if I can't find the right file to drop that into to get the interface quirks evened out.

Michael Hanscom said:
on Feb 27, 2005 2:10 PM | Reply

Ack — okay, yeah, nevermind (some of) what I wrote above. I misunderstood the instructions and was expecting to edit the blogroll through the MT-Blogroll interface (going in from the main MT entry screen), not by going in through an individual blog's main screen.

(sigh) I do hate it when I'm stupid.

Perhaps a slight re-write of the docs to make it more clear that the entry link is within an individual blog's main page, and not through the MT-Blogroll link on the main MT page? Now that I know what I'm supposed to do it makes sense, but it sure didn't read that way the first (or second) times I read the docs.

Still, my bad, and my apologies. :)

Jake said:
on Feb 27, 2005 11:35 PM | Reply

First off, awesome as always. My ONE request would be a change in the OPML import: I can export my blogrolls out of my blogrolling.com account to local file (you can't link directly to the OPML files for your blog that I can see), but the only option you give is to import an OPML from a remote server. A simple form-based upload from local system would kick butt (meanwhile, I just dumped the files back onto a remote server, and we're good to go, but it'd be easier if I didn't have to do that).

Jake said:
on Feb 28, 2005 12:02 AM | Reply

Another suggestion: Since I display my links seperately by category, I have to create several container tags -- one for each category. Don't know the best way to do this, but maybe make it so that I could do one master tag that I could have a way to output data like automatically like so:

Category #1: Link 1 Link 2 Category #2: Link 1 Link 2

That way if I add another category, it would just add it to the list without me having to add another entry on my master template.

My brain isn't here right now so I can't describe what I want better, nor can I refer to existing MT tags that work because I can't think of anything.

Anyway, it works very slick otherwise.

Joe D'Andrea said:
on Feb 28, 2005 6:22 AM | Reply

Congratulations on this latest effort! Looking forward to trying it out.

Alas, I'm getting a "500 Server Error" plus "Premature end of script headers: /home/dandrea/joesapt.net/mt/plugins/Blogroll/mt-blogroll.cgi" in the logfile ... but it matters not whether the cgi/pl/pm files end with LF or CR/LF. Same issue. Reinstalling it - same issue. (mt-blogroll.cgi is at 755 perms.)

If I enable warnings in mt-blogroll.cgi (-w) and then run the CGI from the command line, I get this:

"my" variable $iter masks earlier declaration in same scope at
   lib/arvinds/Blogroll.pm line 806.
Useless use of a constant in void context at
   /home/dandrea/joesapt.net/mt/plugins/blcitations.pl line 40.
Status: 200
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
[blank line after headers]

Next comes the blogroll markup - this part looks fine - but then at the very end we get:

</html>
<pre>Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at
   ../../lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 245.
</pre>

Meanwhile, setting DEBUG true in the module file, then running mt-blogroll.cgi gives us this before the headers:

> Initializing Blogroll
  > Testing extenal prerequisites
    > Testing for HTML::Template
  > Using SearchPathHack
    > Original TemplatePath: /home/dandrea/joesapt.net/mt/tmpl
    > Overriding TemplatePath, setting to: /home/dandrea/joesapt.net/mt/plugins
  > Setting template_dir to Blogroll/tmpl
  > Setting plugin_template_path to Blogroll/tmpl
> Finished initializing Blogroll.

Thoughts? Let me know if you'd like me to try anything else ...

Arvind Satyanarayan said:
on Feb 28, 2005 9:31 AM | Reply

Hi Dave

In a respect, yes it does support multiple blogrolls. You can create categories (in your case something like Science, General, Gone but not Forgotten, Geekdom, etc...) and assign links to those categories and then use the template tags to sort thru those categories and display them.

I'll be improving the template tags in future versions to match feature requests -- similar to the MTCategories/MTEntries combination, but for the moment you can use MTBlogrollEntries category="foo"

salguod said:
on Feb 28, 2005 9:54 PM | Reply

One other thing I noticed. I'm using HTML tags in my 'description' field to provide a link back to the blog post where I introduced the new link. For example:

<a href="http://www.salguod.net/weblog/archive/000028.shtml">?</a>

That works fine, unless I edit the entry. Then my browser (IE 6) interprets the tags in the field turning them into gibberish. I'm left with just the <a href= and the last part of the code outside the box. If I re-enter the same HTML in the box again, all is OK, but if not then it get's botched.

If you want some screen shots, email me and I'll send them to you.

jim steed said:
on Mar 3, 2005 9:26 AM | Reply

Very nice plugin! Ditto on needing to remove the Window's ^M's for my Linux server. I did it using the dos2unix tool.

My suggestions would be 1) timestamp and option to sort by time and 2) author-stamp and option to filter by author. My blog has 15 authors and I want to list the last 5 links from each person. I can pretty much do that by giving each author their own category and using lastn=5! But it would be nice to be able to do it more directly (and use the categories for actual categories).

jim steed said:
on Mar 5, 2005 5:38 AM | Reply

Did a little hack of Blogroll.pl to get it to do what I want. Added a sortby="modified" and a sortorder="random". Just replace lines 106-115 of this file with

    if ($sort_by ne 'modified') {
      if ($sort_order eq 'ascend') {
        @entries = sort {
            uc($a->data->{$sort_by}) cmp uc($b->data->{$sort_by})
        } @entries;
      }
      elsif ($sort_order eq 'random') {
        my @t = ();
        while (@entries) { push(@t,splice(@entries,rand(@entries),1)); }
        @entries = @t;
      }
      else {
        @entries = sort {
            uc($b->data->{$sort_by}) cmp uc($a->data->{$sort_by})
        } @entries;
      }
    }

Jake said:
on Mar 7, 2005 12:32 AM | Reply

Don't know if this is on the to-do list arvind, but noticed quite a few of these in my activity log:

Plugin error: /home/utterlyb/public_html/cgi-bin/plugins/Blogroll/Blogroll.pl Can't locate arvinds/Blogroll.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ./plugins/Blogroll/lib plugins/Blacklist/lib ./plugins/Blacklist/lib ./lib /home/utterlyb/public_html/cgi-bin/extlib /ho

I'm also having trouble with other scripts that use MT's libraries that end up calling it as well.

jim steed said:
on Mar 8, 2005 9:00 AM | Reply

Arvind,

Re: my sortby="modified" hack, you embed the date in the key. I was looking at the mtplugindata in phpMyAdmin and an example entry is

plugindataid = 1 plugindataplugin = Blogroll plugindatakey = 20050302234309http://www.demiurgic.net/23productions/ plugindatadata = (a lot of info)

so in your code in Blogroll.pl, lines 83-85

my $iter = MT::PluginData->load_iter({plugin    => 'Blogroll' },{ sort      => 'key', direction => $sort_order });

will sort the data by key, which has the effect of sorting it by time.

In your original code you undo this by sorting alphabetically in lines 106-115. So my hack of adding sortby="modified" just disables your re-sorting if sortby is "modified".

ambimb said:
on Mar 15, 2005 8:56 AM | Reply

Love the plugin! Thanks! A couple of feature requests (even though I see you're already hard at work on an update):

1) If I edit a link on anything but the first page of my list of links w/in the MT-Blogroll interface, after I make the change the list reloads to page one. This means that if I was on page 10, I have to click "next 20" nine times to get back to where I was. Can you just make it reload to the point in the list where I started from? (Let me know if that doesn't make sense.) Also, if you choose to view more than 20 entries (50 or 100), once you've edited a link the list also seems to default back to showing only 20 links. It would be nice if it just returned to whatever view you were working in before you edited the link.

2) Some way to show multiple categories in one blogroll, but exclude others. Can you do this with MTBlogrollEntries category="foo"? Can you list multiple categories there?

Thanks!

wildheart said:
on Mar 15, 2005 8:38 PM | Reply

From the sounds of it, this is a great plug-in -- unfortunately I'm one of those who gets the 500 Internal Server Error despite trying all the suggestsion listed above.

It's great that you're open to implementing so many new features -- I'm just wondering if you'll have a cut-off point soon so those of us who are unable to use your plugin at all will be able to try it out soon :)

Thanks again for this great plug-in! I look forwad to using it!

Conor Boyd said:
on May 6, 2005 1:51 AM | Reply

Hi,

I've installed BlogRoll 1.0 on my 3.16 installation. (I couldn't get BlogRoll 2.0 to appear under the list of Active Plugins).

When I click on BlogRoll, v1.00 under Configure Active Plugins, I get a 500 internal server error.

On reviewing the logs, it appears that BlogRoll can't open a log file somewhere.

Can you advise where BlogRoll is trying to create that log, so that I can check that the folder exists and is writable?

Many thanks,

Conor

Name

Email Address

URL

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

Remember personal info?

Movalog Blog

Making Movable Type Jump Through Hoops

MT Blogroll 1.0

66 Comments

Leave a comment

Preview

Categories

Resources