It's been a while since I tinkered with this little blog of mine. Today, I finally managed to update Serendipity to the most current version. And while waiting for the files to upload, I checked for new templates because a fresh look might do no harm. That's when I found out about Sagittarius-A, a very clean template that was ported to Serendipity not long ago. I fell in love (well, almost) with it instantly. And as usual, switching themes was hassle-free!
I will try to pay a little more attention to this blog in the future, blogging about a more diverse range of topics again, covering not only BarCamps and web stuff, but maybe something more personal, too. The World Cup 2010 will start in a couple of days, so why not share my thoughts on it here? I will keep up the peculiar German-English dichotomy, though, blogging about the more personal stuff in German and reserving English for web and technology related posts.
One more word to my readers: Don't expect everything to work perfect for the next couple of days. There seem to be some issues concerning some heavy modifications and the new layout. But it will smooth out soon over the next iterations. I will also try to implement a couple of new features if I find the time to. In the long run, I even plan to move this whole blog to a different server and even a different or second URL. I still own sperrobjekt.de (without the hyphen, that is) back from the old days. But I have to figure out how to publish that to Google first. Stay tuned!
My reason for attending this sessions: What can we, Serendipity users, learn from Movable Type 4? Any cool new features inthe backend and so on. Ok, here weg go:
- MT4 is open source (MT3 wasn't)
- Navigation menu at the top
- Media upload via a Lightbox like overlay
- Images can be tagged, too
- Extended entry via tabs, reduces space
- Rich text editor with the options to display HTML, Textile etc. (this might be useful for some)
- You can restrict HTML tags for comments
- Stats on the admin area frontpage: daily/monthly posts, comments, tags, visits (via plugin)
- Categorize audio and video media files ("assets")
- The multiblog functionality looks great; spam comments can be weeded out for all installed blogs with one click
Conclusion: There doesn't seem to be anything in MT4 that S9y can't do or can do even better ;O) But the backend is slicker than S9y's admin area, I must admit. Anway, I really should do a S9y session on my next BarCamp because almost noone knows about its great features. The plugin system (Spartacus) seems to be the stand-out feature and is connected to S9y by others. So we (S9y users and devs) should see to it that it remains this way, and we should try to improve the backend. But a lot of work in this field is undertaken right now, e.g. plugin administration.
Thanks to Jan Theofel for his presentation.
Users of Serendipity, the fine blog software, rejoice! Garvin announced that he is writing the first book on Serendipity, and it will most likely be a comprehensive manual of the world's best blogging tool. The Book will be published by Open Source Press in early 2008, and it's going to be in German. But, Garvin already plays with the idea to write an English version, too. That's very good news for the whole S9y community and, hopefully, is going to increase S9y's popularity even more.
When I attended the BarCamp in Frankfurt in April, I found myself listening to Christopher Laux and his interesting plans to create (i.e. to code in Common Lisp) a search engine for blogs. Now, a first beta of his brainchild is online at terraminds.de. The English-language version is still under development, but I'm sure it will take Christopher only a short while until it's up and running. Terramind is looking pretty clean and returns comprehensive hits, as far as I can tell from my couple of tests. However, I'm not sure if the results are sorted by relevance or some other criteria? Would be great if I could at least between relevance and time/recency. Unfortunately, neither of my blogs - ok, this one here is in English and doesn't really belong there - seems to be indexed by his busy spiders; but it will be just a matter of time until my NUMBlog will be found there. Right, Christopher? 