Radio Userland

Tuning in to Radio's wavelength

Computer book reviewer Thomas Duff has covered Radio UserLand Kick Start, my unofficial manual for the software. Because Duff doesn't use Radio to publish his own weblog, his interest in the subject is mostly academic, but I appreciate the scrutiny. Radio's extremely tough to categorize. Though most people think of it as a weblog editor and newsreader, Radio's actually an innovative Internet development environment with a built-in object database, scripting language, and content management ... (read more)

2004/04/18

Creating text date links in Radio

While redesigning Workbench, I learned that Radio UserLand macros can be used in customized images for permalinks and other icons. Using this feature, I created text-only date links: Change the Day Level Permalink field to <%longDate%> In the Day Template, remove the <%longDate%> macro. Add an <%archiveLink%> macro to the template. The macro will be replaced by the long version of the date, linked to a daily archive page. ... (read more)

2004/03/19

Storing graphics in a UserLand database

A UserTalk tip inspired by Marc Barrot: If you need to store a graphic in a Radio UserLand or Frontier database, use the Quick Script window to call html.commands.loadImageFile(). A file open dialog box appears. The graphic you choose will be stored in the user.html.images table. ... (read more)

2004/03/16

New Radio tool: Workbench.root

I have released the first beta version of Workbench.root, a Radio UserLand tool offering simple scripts that extend the functionality of the software. My goal is to offer a bunch of scripts that Radio UserLand users of all skill levels can put on their Web pages and Web site template files. The first release offers two scripts: Workbench.viewCategoryLinks, a script that displays a list of links for all of your weblog's public categories. Workbench.viewPostIndex, a script that displays a list of ... (read more)

2004/03/12

Upstreaming in Radio UserLand

The most common source of confusion for new Radio UserLand users is upstreaming, the process that turns a bunch of text files in Radio's www folder into Web pages on UserLand's Web server. If you can spare a couple minutes, I'll show you a simple exercise from Radio UserLand Kick Start that makes upstreaming easier to understand: Open Radio's www folder and create a new subfolder. Copy the file #template.txt from www into the new folder. In the new folder, create a text file called ... (read more)

2004/03/11

Exploits found on UserLand comment server

Two security exploits for Radio UserLand were published last night on the Radio customer support board. The first exploit allows an attacker to execute scripts on a Radio weblog's comments page. This can be used to redirect visitors to another Web site, transmit cookies to a third party, open pop-up windows, and the like. The second exploit allows an attacker to post a comment to an entry that doesn't exist yet. These exploits affect users who host their comments on UserLand servers. If you'd ... (read more)

2004/03/11

Rebuilding the bridge from Radio to Blogger

Radio UserLand's Manila-Blogger Bridge tool can be used to mirror weblog posts to a Blogger or BlogSpot site. The tool stopped working last month, as described by several frustrated Radio users on the software's support forum. The problem was caused by a change on Blogger's servers that moved it to a new URL. To fix the problem: Open the Manila-Blogger Bridge preferences page. Change Server from plant.blogger.com to www.blogger.com. Change Path from /RPC2 to /api/RPC2. Click Submit. New posts ... (read more)

2004/03/07

Translator converts Atom feeds to RSS 2.0

The RSS portal site 2RSS offers an Atom-to-RSS translator that enables Atom feeds to be read by RSS software that hasn't been extended to support the new format yet. Here's an example that turns Anil Dash's new Atom feed into an RSS 2.0 file. ... (read more)

2004/03/05

Changing comment servers in Radio UserLand

Radio UserLand tip: If you offer comments on your weblog, your pages will load slowly when UserLand's comment servers are experiencing high usage. One way to eliminate this bottleneck is to change comment servers to Pycs, an open-source clone of the Radio Community Server. Pycs can be used as your comment and trackback server even if the rest of your weblog remains on the UserLand or Salon servers. Because Pycs.Net hosts dozens of weblogs instead of thousands, the response time is usually much ... (read more)

2004/03/04

Publishing Multiple Sites with Radio UserLand

I'm using Radio UserLand to publish several Web sites: Workbench, Orlando Vacationer, and the Bizarro-world news site Drudge Retort. The latter two sites use Radio's categorization feature -- posts sent to Orlando and Drudge categories are upstreamed to their destination, the former as rendered HTML files and the latter as RSS feeds. This system works pretty well, but one drawback is that posts sometimes end up in the wrong place, as a few did this morning. I'm beta-testing the UserLand editor ... (read more)

2004/03/02

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