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Posts from the ‘Wordpress’ Category

30
Mar

Markdown, Quotes and Source

Another little thing that I did not know about Markdown is to write quotes and source code.

In all IT there is always someone smarter than the smartest one you know
and always someone dumber than the dumbest one.

Me

Here is some Java code:

public class Test {
    public statif voir main( String[] pArguments ) {
        // doing nothing as usual
    }
}

Have fun – Andy

29
Mar

Markdown and Images

As mentioned before I am still figuring out how to make Markdown work with MarsEdit and my WordPress blog. The last big issue is how to deal with images. Images in Markdown are simple by just adding an exclamation mark in front of the Image URL.

There is an image of my new back Pepple Watch which is got last week.

So far the workflow was:

  • Open MarsEdit

  • Open Media Manager of MarsEdit (not really necessary but helpful)

  • Open Upload Utility

  • Drag an Image from the Media Manager onto the Upload Utility

  • Adjust the properties and upload the file

  • Go to WordPress, Media Library and obtain the URL to the image

  • Add it the post

It would be nice tough if MarsEdit could do everything from within the Media Manager. On the Media Manager below the Image properties should be a button to upload the image and on then on the Published Image there should be a right-click context menu entry that would provide the URL for it. That would make it a two step process.

Cheers – Andy

29
Mar

First Step with Markdown

Update: after making the decision to go with Markdown and installing Markdown on Save Improved Plugin for Workdpress it was pretty easy. The only thing to remember is to add two spaces at the end of a paragraph to end that paragraph and not to forget to add the reference links at the end of the document. I could also preview the page as formatted Page in the MarsEdit Preview Page when selection the Markdown Filter at the bottom.

After buying and reading MacSparky’s Field Guide to MarkDown I wanted to see how difficult it is to use Markdown together with MarsEdit to write my posts and WordPress on Madplanet.com. There are few things that I am not sure if it works:

1) Using Markdown on future Posts but using Blogtext on my older Posts
2) Using Links within a Post
3) Displaying Source Code
4) Integrating Images

So far I am pretty happy if I just can use Markdown for simple posts now and later us it more advanced posts or tutorials.

Cheers – Andy

19
Aug

Pelican: Another Way for Madplanet.com Inc. Site?

Lately Bluehost.com gives me some grief and so I am thinking about changing my provider.
So I started to think that maybe this would be a good opportunity to also switch from WordPress to an easier setup.
What I would like to do is to use Markup to write by posts and pages but also wanted to see
if it is possible to avoid having to deal with a DB. Not that I hate to use a DB but backing
up the data and exporting the content is not that simple. But then again what should I use and is it ready worth the effort.

Then I found this page from [http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/08/pelican-guide-moving-from-wordpress-and-initial-setup.html|Macdrifter] talking about Pelican which would just do that.
But instead of plunging right into it I wanted to do an intermediary step by having the Site
first running on my local Mac (Apache, Python already there) and when it is working as expected
I will go ahead and push the content from my Mac to the ISP.

First step was to just get Pelican installed and up and running before going ahead.
Afterwards I would recreate Madplanet.com’s website on my local Mac so that I don’t have
to bother my ISP or damage the installation. From there I will migrate the content over
and when it is done I will push the content out and pull the plug on the old site.

Pelican Installation ∞

To my surprise the installation and configuration of Pelican was straight forward:

sudo -s
easy_install markdown
easy_install pelican
easy_install pygments

mkdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican

pelican-quickstart

Now don’t waste too much time on the questions. Just answer what you can and leave the rest
blank or accept the defaults. It is only generating a configuration file for most parts.

The only important thing is that the location for pelican is at the previously created
directory (/Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican). You can select any directory you
like but this is the default given by Apple and so I used this.

Apache configuration ∞

The Apache Configuration can be different on every computer and so here I only describe
the simplest solution to set Pelican to be the root document root. For that I just set
the Apache Document Root to the Pelican’s Output directory:

#
# DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your
# documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but
# symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations.
#
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican/output"

and then define that Directory:

<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican/output">
    #
    # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
    # or any combination of:
    #   Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
    #
    # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All"
    # doesn't give it to you.
    #
    # The Options directive is both complicated and important.  Please see
    # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options
    # for more information.
    #
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

    #
    # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
    # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
    #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
    #
    AllowOverride All

    #
    # Controls who can get stuff from this server.
    #
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

</Directory>

Last two steps are to check if the configuration is OK and then restart the Apache server:

sudo apachectl -t
sudo apachectl restart

See Pelican in Action ∞

Before we can go ahead we need to generate the site in Pelican. For that we go to the
project’s home directory (/Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican) and use make to generate
the site:

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents/pelican
make pelican

Finally we can open the site with this url: localhost.

Conclusion ∞

I am not done here by a long shot. First I need to have both the WordPress and the Pelican
site running on my Apache Server and then I need to export my WordPress site and install it
locally. But for now that’s all.

– Andy

25
Oct

MarsEdit, WordPress and BlogText All In One

Today I wanted to see if I could use MarsEdit and BBEdit to post a Post or Page to this WordPress site using BlogText plugin for WordPress.

BlogText is a simple markup language so that I don’t have to write HTML in order to post a Blog. Now with the HTML editor of MarsEdit that maybe isn’t necessary but I am going to edit the posts / pages through the Web Interface or iOS App and then I want to make it as quickly as possible.

Initially I ran into a lot of issues because MarsEdit did create HTML around the BlogText effectively rendering BlogText mute. Then I tried to use the HTML view and voila it would send the content as is. So I changed the default editor back to the HTML editor and now I can edit my posts like this one with BBEdit using BlogText through MarsEdit.

BTW I like MarsEdit because it is faster to navigate and has a better overview than the Web interface of WordPress.

– Andy