THINGAMABLOG made simple&

Ouch!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:02:56 -0400

Working on my home page redesign recently, I wanted to have a link to the previous and next entries at the bottom of each entry page. I spent a couple of hours creating a PHP script that recursively scanned the archives folders and built an array of all the pages beginning with the words "entry_" and sorts them by entry id, and then another script within the entry template:

<?php

$entry_link = "<$EntryPermalink$>";

$key = array_search($entry_link, $file_listing);

$prev_key = $key...

Chapter 5 - Creating New Templates

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:05:28 -0500

OK, unfortunately it is here that I likely will lose half of my reading audience. Stated another way, one of my readers is destined to leave now, never to return. And the reason is that in order to continue with this book, you must have at least a passing acquaintance with HTML and CSS. (A little programming knowledge wouldn't hurt either.) If you have neither, you're not quite out of luck but I hope you are satisfied with the default pages Thingamablog is generating right now. Cause you 'aint be...

Chapter 4 - Posting and Viewing

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:21:19 -0400

In this, the third installment of the epic tutorial that is Using Thingamablog, let's get ready to do some serious work on some original templates of our own making, by creating one long test post that we can view in our browser(s), and modify in our editor.

The content of the post is unimportant, but it should be representative of what you are going to have in your posts when your site is fully up and running. I personally don't care to use the "Lorem Ipsum" text...

Chapter 3 - Configuration

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:28:59 -0400

"The dedicated team of TMS
staffers configure Thingamablog
prior to its third rewrite..."

In this chapter I will lightly cover the steps required to set up your first site and create your first post. Now, this is boring stuff people, since Thingamablog makes it so darn easy, but I'll try to hit just the high notes if only to help set you up for what's coming up...

Chapter 2 - Creating a New Weblog

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:51:45 -0400

Here's a mouthful: In Thingamablog, Articles, Posts, and Entries (APEs) reside within categories, which in turn reside within weblogs (or sites); all of which reside within your database - and you can have multiple databases scattered across your hard drive if you wish.

This hierarchy is pretty cool and well-thought out, but it does beg the question as to whether it is better to have all of your sites within a single...

Chapter 1 - Installing Thingamablog

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:18:08 -0400

When I wrote the first version of this tutorial back in 2005, I think I took an overly "granular" approach; I painstakingly created screen caps of each window you see when installing Thingamablog and captioned them with super helpful advice you'd never get anywhere else like: "Click Next". It took forever and didn't look too hot when it was done. This time around, I'm going to treat you a little better than that and instead focus just on what I think may be of interest. At least it makes...