Question

here

Ever since I heard about idea of integrating wikis and blogs I've been wanting to get such a set up for myself. (See related discussions at BlosxomWeblog and WebLog.) The approach that most appealed to me was one developed by LesOrchard and described on his web site (see link above). Rather then trying to fully integrate the two types of programs, he created a way to cross reference between the two programs.

Even with my very limited technical skills I was able to carry out the first part of his solution that involved patching MT to run blog entries through the TWiki engine. This in itself is totally cool since now I can:

1. Utilize TextFormattingRules in my blog entries.
2. Use simple WikiWords to link to my TWiki topics.

However, I got stopped trying to inplement the second part of his solution which involves including MT searches within twiki templates. All Les says on his site about this is:

"To link from TWiki to MovableType, I use TWiki's SSI feature in templates, combined with MTSearch, to display persistent MovableType searches based on the current wiki page topic name. The result of this, then, is that any given wiki topic includes a list of weblog entries in which the wiki topic has been mentioned. TWiki topics can now become both working summaries of a subject, and also present a mini-weblog of a subject."

I contacted Les and asked him for more information on this second part but he hasn't got back to me (yet - see further info here. I've also search TWiki about utilizing SSIs from other programs but didn't find anything that gave me a clear direction. Is there anyone who might understand better what he's talking about here who could help me to understand how to implement it?

Many thanks! If I do figure it out, I'll be sure to document the the whole solution here in simple terms for others to follow.

• TWiki version: 01Feb03
• Perl version: NA
• Web server & version: NA
• Server OS: NA
• Web browser & version: NA
• Client OS: NA

-- LynnwoodBrown - 20 Feb 2003

Answer

The SSI is the %INCLUDE{...}% feature, apparently used in a skin. See TWiki.IncludeTopicsAndWebPages. I am not familiar with Blogs, so cannot help you further.

-- PeterThoeny - 22 Feb 2003

Thanks Peter - that gets me a step closer! Looking through the MT documentation, I have figured out how to create a url with the MT search which I will insert with the INCLUDE feature. The last thing I need to do is design a minimal MT search template displaying the search results in a brief format.

You've basically answered my question but I'm going to leave is as "Asked Questions" a bit longer to see if anyone else has some suggestions for my final solution.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 22 Feb 2003 Not sure if you got my email, but I did reply. Here's what I wrote, in a nutshell:

Well, in TWiki's view.tmpl file in templates, I added this include:

---++ Related weblog entries %INCLUDE{"http://www.decafbad.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?Template=wikiblog&search=%TOPIC%"}%

And, in my MT directory, I have this template file, named wikiblog.tmpl:

<ul>
  <MTSearchResults>
  <li>
  <p><b><i><$MTEntryDate format="%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"$></b></i> -
    <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br />
    <$MTEntryExcerpt$>...<br/>
  </li>
  </MTSearchResults>
</ul>

Also, I added this line in the search section of my mt.cfg:

AltTemplate             wikiblog wikiblog.tmpl

That's pretty much it, hope it helps! Note that this applies to MovableType, as is, but with some modification, this form of include could be used to pull results from any similarly accessed search engine. (Say, Blosxom and Lucene for example.)

I really need to revamp things with a colophon sometime soon, to document all the little things I have going on at my site.

-- LesOrchard - 24 Feb 2003

Les - Thanks for posting the additional information you sent me here on TWiki.org. I was going to ask your permission to do so. This information was just what was needed to complete the cross-linking and it works like a charm. If I get a chance, I'll write up the whole process of installing this very nice wiki-blog set up for others to use.

I actually posted this question before I sent you the recent email - I thought I'd just try to figure it out on my own rather than bug you again. Anyway, thinks again for sharing your good work!

On that point, I'd like to really encourage you to document some of the things you've done on your site. You can't imagine how useful those working examples are for folks setting up a TWiki site!

-- LynnwoodBrown - 24 Feb 2003

It would be great if Les, Lynnwood or someone else packages this up and posts a new Add-On in the Plugins web.

-- PeterThoeny - 24 Feb 2003

Les put in the time to figure it out so the least I can do is write it up as an AddOnPackage. It'll be nice to contribute something to the TWiki community besides my opinions.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 25 Feb 2003

Les - If you happen to check this topic out again, I have a question regarding the MT wikiblog.tmpl you defined. When I reference in a TWiki topic as you describe, it works fine except that it inserts 3 charaters before the list (e.g. "1bc") and a single character at the end of the list (e.g. "0"). Any idea what causes this? Here's an example on my site.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 25 Feb 2003

I was having the same problem Lynnwood was having. I managed to eliminate the three characters at the beginning (e.g. "1bc") with the wikiblog.tmpl file I'm attaching to this topic. I'm still getting the 0 after the list of related entries. Anybody have an answer to the second part of the question? I have an example on my homepage.

-- JasonTromm - 24 Jun 2003

I integrated this in a Wiki to provide access and search to our (now depracated) MT blog. It workes quite well, but for my taste the template is too ugly. So I styled it a little bit using CSS and threw in a couple of additional MT info... So if you're lazy, then grab the template, if not, modify as you like.

-- NorbertSchoepke - 01 Apr 2005