Salon Blogs

Restoring a Radio weblog from HTML files

The worst-case scenario for new Radio webloggers is to delete the Radio UserLand installation folder or lose it in a crash without a backup. Many new users believe that because their weblog is still on the Web, it can be easily restored from backup. Unfortunately, this is only true if the user has turned on nightly backups. Otherwise, there's no automated way to grab the entries from HTML Web pages and save the data in weblogData.root, the database in the Data Files folder where the entries and ... (read more)

2003/06/14

Preventing RSS exploits with Radio

I'm working on a Radio script that addresses RSS exploits. Mark Pilgrim's suggestion of weeding out the unsafe HTML seems futile. Instead, the script removes all HTML tags and attributes other than a small subset that can't be abused: P, B, I, BR, and BLOCKQUOTE (all without attributes), A (with HREF only), and IMG (with SRC, ALT, HEIGHT, and WIDTH only). I'm hoping the script also has the side benefit of making RSS entries easier to read. The script works on the text of entries, but I can't ... (read more)

2003/06/13

Displaying category links on Radio weblogs

New Radio UserLand macro: viewCategories() displays a list of links to a weblog's categories. The script supports Cascading Style Sheets and the placement of HTML before and after each link. ... (read more)

2003/06/11

Some Radio users downcast about upstreaming

Several people on the Radio UserLand customer support board are trying to find the cause for intermittent upstreaming problems. One theory is that people who use Radio with sometimes-on, sometimes-off Internet connections are more likely to have problems publishing. If any experienced Radio users can offer some assistance on this subject, there are at least a dozen people you can help pull back from the brink of madness. ... (read more)

2003/06/01

Radio Hackers Becoming Hacked Off

Some Radio UserLand hackers are becoming discouraged by the sheer weight of the program's UserTalk code and the bugs, quirks, and complexities it contains. Mark Paschal, who offers help frequently on the customer support discussion board, says that it is "as jury-rigged a Rube Goldberg device as ever." Jeremy Bowers believes it need a "serious housecleaning." For those who haven't looked around Radio's object database yet, the program runs atop one of the most intricate, fascinating, and ... (read more)

2003/05/25

Restore a Radio weblog from a server backup

I'm working on a Radio UserLand Kick Start chapter about backing up a weblog and restoring it over a new installation of the software. I ran into a Catch-22 problem: You can't restore a weblog without updating Radio.root so that it is current, and doing that prevents the weblog from being restored correctly. As it turns out, Radio creates a new www/backups folder when Radio.root is updated. When you try to restore a weblog, Radio sees this folder and uses its files, rather than looking on the ... (read more)

2003/05/21

Radio UserLand tech support via RSS

The Radio UserLand discussion group, the best place to receive user-to-user technical support on the software, now is available as an RSS newsfeed. ... (read more)

2003/05/13

Help filling a Radio weblog's sidebar

Julie Wiggins has written up some useful Radio UserLand newbie tips on "how to use the blank space under my calendar for phrases, other links, mysubscriptions (and anything else that I didn't want to put or couldn't figure out how to put into my navigator links) and how to align/center the text and change the font size of mysubscriptions.opml with a little help from the discussion boards and a friend at radio." ... (read more)

2003/05/12

Displaying random XML data with UserTalk

Peter Backx has created a UserTalk script that displays random pictures on the homepage of his Radio UserLand weblog. I created a modified version of his script to display random text links and am using it here on Workbench. If you're new to UserTalk, Backx's script is a nice short example that demonstrates how it can be used to read XML data. ... (read more)

2003/05/11