Feedback on BlogAddOn

The latest update (1.1) addresses a number of issues:

• The Comment header now has an "Edit" link to directly edit the comment page
• New posts get a timestamp prepended, as is done here on the Blog web
• Posts with a period in the title now can be created - the period will be converted to an underline

-- ArthurClemens - 26 Jan 2008

I'm a little worried about the RSS output from BlogAddOn (which I otherwise rather like). I 'm having a hard time seeing any mention of this before, so forgive me if it has been touched on. The problem I have is that the default WebRss shows the actual title of each topic, which includes all the nasty underscores and dashes. I have modified the generated titles to use a dash instead of an underscore for slug names, but it doesn't seem to do anything special to handle underscores either. (example here).

I'm not too knowledgeable on TWiki yet but I think it would be good if the BlogAddOn provided a custom WebRss view that somehow showed the actual human-friendly titles of topics ("TWiki is pretty awesome" instead of "2008-02-12_TWiki-is-pretty-awesome"). Do you think that would be possible?

• yes, see [CN1] below

-- IsaacRaway - 12 Feb 2008

PLEase tell me how to use Blog plugin

• BlogPlugin is a different extension. It has more functionalities than this simple add-on. Installation instructions are on the BlogAddOn page. Basically you need to copy all files in the folder into the Web you want the blog in. Then visit Yourweb.BlogAddOnHome topic for further instructions. -- ArthurClemens - 11 Mar 2008

-- NitinHajare - 11 Mar 2008

BlogAddOn users: the new version has an incompatibility change. Version 1.2 uses WIKINAME instead of WIKIUSERNAME in the Author form field. This change is not compatible with existing blog topics. If you have existing posts, you must change all author names from Main.UserName to UserName.

-- ArthurClemens - 07 Apr 2008

[CN1] To Isaac: just replace in WebAtomBase the $title by $formfield(Title) I guess this change could be made safely to the standard distrib, what do you think Arthur?

-- ColasNahaboo - 13 Apr 2008

hi, can i know how to install & configure Blog in TWiki? from pankaj parmar

-- PankajParmar - 30 Jun 2008

This is in the Installation Instructions in BlogAddOn.

-- ArthurClemens - 30 Jun 2008

I just installed on 4.2.0, and it seems to have a bug - the BlogPost topic has the heading for each post rendered as [[Newsletter.New_test_post_by_sven#BlogPosts][]] the $formfield(Title) does not work on 4.2?

I've replaced it with $percntFORMFIELD{$quotTitle$quot topic=$quot$web.$topic$quot}$percnt , but i'm wondering more if that means we've found a bug in 4.2.0?

• (edit 16 Aug 2008) yes, see http://develop.twiki.org/~twiki4/cgi-bin/view/Bugs/Item5922

-- SvenDowideit - 25 Jul 2008

I like this add on!. Thanks. However, I am concerned that duplicate topic names are not handled well enough. When I used BlogPostCreator with a blog topic that already existed, the original post was replaced silently. Of course version control still had the original version, but by looking at the second posting, it was impossible to tell that the original post had ever existed.

-- JimCrum - 15 Aug 2008

That looks a bug in the BlogPostCreator form. It should have a hidden form field onlynewtopic, in the line:

<input type="hidden" name="onlynewtopic" value="on" />

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Aug 2008

In the BlogPostCreator version that I have, that line is present in the form.

-- JimCrum - 16 Aug 2008

That is strange. In my test setup I get the expected "this topic already exists" warning.

-- ArthurClemens - 17 Aug 2008

I am upgrading to 4.2.2 this weekend. Let me get it installed on that platform and report results.

-- JimCrum - 17 Aug 2008

I am pleased to report that the AddOn is honoring the onlynewtopic directive in release 4.2.2. Thanks for looking at this.

-- JimCrum - 17 Aug 2008

Could you add a bit more information about the installation process? I'd like to get all the way as to the screenshot example you show, where all the blogposts are shown on the same page - ideally the webhome page. After having copied the need content to my webhome folder, I can create a new post etc. but the webhome page itself doesnt give any clues as how to get all of the blogposts shown on it. Could you give some advice as how to achieve this?

• You simply include BlogPost on your homepage. This is what I use:

  %INCLUDE{"BlogPost" section="simple" sortdirection="ascending" sort="created" limit="10"}%
  

  -- ArthurClemens - 24 Sep 2008

-- JohsDolb - 24 Sep 2008

I've installed BlogAddOn and it seems to work fine. However, after installing it, I sometimes get corrupted TOC entries in unrelated topics. I've describes my problem in CorruptTocAfterBlogAddOnInstall. Any ideas?

-- MartinKaufmann - 20 Oct 2008

There are problem with UTF-8 topicName in BlogPostCreator.txt. All non-latin characters removed by twiki.String.removePunctuation(topicName) as soon as new topic created.

Solution follows:

• edit %PUBURLPATH%/%SYSTEMWEB%/TWikiJavascripts/twikiStringUnicodeChars.js and add there twiki.StringConstants.prototype.LOWER_ALPHA_CHARS string with actual values gotten from var LOWER_ALPHA_CHARS in file unicode_chars.js

• edit twikiString.js and replace two following lines:

twiki.StringConstants.prototype.UPPER_ALPHA_CHARS = "A-Z";
twiki.StringConstants.prototype.LOWER_ALPHA_CHARS = "a-z";

<script type="text/javascript" src="%PUBURLPATH%/%SYSTEMWEB%/TWikiJavascripts/twikiStringUnicodeChars.js"></script>

How can I include old topics to BlogPost, which are generated before I installed BlogAddOn? I can't find anything about that on the internet.

-- Peter Krüssel - 2016-03-30

Peter, do you mean how to convert existing topics to blog posts so that they show up in the blog index page? If so add the BlogPostForm to existing topics.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2016-03-30