Category: Burningbird

Thanks to Laura and Michelle in comments, I’ve downloaded and installed the Durpal comments RSS module. I don’t have header links yet, but you can access the comments feed at http://realtech.burningbird.net/crss. I also created a global comments syndication feed. I really prefer Atom, but there is no Atom comments feed for Drupal. In addition, the existing Atom feed needs tweaking, so I figured I’d take a crack at both when I finish Learning JavaScript 2.

A point was made in the comments to my last post about what did the post have to do with Drupal, and why was it on Planet Drupal. I thought the timing on the comment was good, because it helped me decide to get rid of the Planet Drupal feed, as well as the Planet RDF feed.

I decided not to actively send material to these two planets because I don’t typically write on a single topic with my posts. I might cover Drupal comments in a writing, but I might also include a reference to fireflies, or my favorite frozen fruit bar. I’ll mention RDF, but I’ll also throw in some stuff on content management systems. My writings don’t easily fit within the rigorous categories Planet Drupal and Planet RDF require. I’ll miss the people I’ve met through these two planets, but hopefully they’ll be by directly.

Another change—oh, stop groaning, it’s not that bad—is that Just Shelley will not be part of my global feed. If you’re interested in my writings at that site, you’ll have to subscribe to that feed directly. My main feed is included in some public aggregators, primarily because of my tech writing, and I just wasn’t comfortable having the writings at Just Shelley smooshed in with a rant about Adobe 9, and the latest news about Google. I don’t want anyone feeling burdened about having to go through my writing, when they were expecting to read the latest on Firefox or Steve Jobs.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll have my first post at Secret of Signals. SoS is focused on my interest in online video, video hardware, electronics, gadgets, and even an occasional movie or TV show review.

I was explaining to my Mom about the upcoming change from analog to digital signal, when I realized that what I was telling her could make a good book, or at least a fun web site. Who knows, maybe I’ll turn the site’s entries into a Kindle book, make enough to buy more frozen fruit bars.

The SoS feed is automatically a part of both the global feed and the tech feed, so you don’t have to lose your frash to get the entries.

That’s it, site is organized, pages branded, feeds corralled, and the ornery varmint that has been sniffing around now has a butt full of buckshot.

My last few posts at my various sites have been created using the ecto Mac-based web publishing tool. I’m still working out the kinks, not the least of which I do my own HTML, when most of the world seems to be WYSIWYG by default.

What I like about ecto is that I can create accounts for all of my Drupal installation, and control all aspects of the publication. The only type of post that seems to be a problem is creating a new image, using the images module. The ecto application persists in telling me that I have to add an image before publication, and this after adding an image.

The other popular Mac-based editing tool, MarsEdit, seemed to have problems just connecting with Drupal and doesn’t, as far as I’ve seen, seem to be able to handle multiple Drupal accounts. Besides, ecto was cheaper.

Though I detailed my move from WordPress to Drupal in Live, on Drupal, I wanted to provide a short summary of the changes made at all of my sites.

I’ve implemented the three phase 1 sites, Painting the Web, RealTech, and my personal site, Just Shelley using Drupal. The main Burningbird feed will list entries from all of the sites, while the Tech Only feed is for the tech-only sites (if you don’t want to deal with all that oogie personal stuff). You can, of course, just subscribe to the individual sites, or even individual categories.

The main main Burningbird page is now a portal, maintained by the aggregator software Venus, listing all of the entries from all of my sites. It’s the only page that’s using SVG as part of the theme, though I probably will end up changing the design, eventually. I also need to add links for my books, especially the newest, Painting the Web which was released to the streets in May.

I’ve only enabled comments here at RealTech, and only within the newly created Burningbird forum. All of the sites, except for Just Shelley, have their own forum category, and several forum topics. Using this approach, I can aggregate all discussions in one spot, while preventing some of the problems I had with XHTML and comments in WordPress.

You don’t have to register to comment. If you do register, and you’re someone I know, I’ll assign you “trusted” user status and you’ll be able to create your own forum topics, in addition to the ones I create. You can also use OpenID to register for the forums.

My RealTech site design is pretty conservative, and is based on the Drupal Garland theme. Painting the Web and Just Shelley are quite different in that neither site has sidebars, both use vertical images placed to the left, fixed in the case of Just Shelley. I just got tired of header images and multiple columns, and wanted to try something new.

I’ve given my Browser Shots membership a real work out, and all of my sites should show up in all of my tested browsers: Firefox 2.x/3/x, Opera 9.x, Safari 3.x, IE 6 and up, as well as several others. Do provide feedback, especially if you run into browser specific problems. At a minimum, I provide print only pages, which strip out all markup, if you run into problems.

Enjoy.