Radiouserland

Redirecting Radio UserLand URLs with PHP

This weblog uses Python Community Server (PyCS), an open-source version of the Radio Community Server, to host visitor comments and trackback links. It's a reliable service that adds a few new features beyond the ones offered by UserLand's comment server: Comment deletion, RSS feeds for every discussion, and the ability to download all of your comments as a single file in RSS 2.0 format. If you inspect the comment and trackback links on this site, you'll see that they appear to be hosted here ... (read more)

2003/12/03

Displaying XML Data on a Radio UserLand Weblog

Peter Backx has created a UserTalk script that displays random pictures on the homepage of his Radio UserLand weblog. The script's a nice, straightforward example of how to use UserTalk to read XML data from a file and do something with it. I have modified his script to create a random text link that can be displayed on any Radio Web page. The link will be updated each time the page is republished, displaying a different link from an XML file called randomtextlinks.xml Here's the script: on ... (read more)

2003/05/11

Adding a Date Countdown to a Radio Weblog

On the West Highland Way weblog, James McReady is counting down the days until a sponsored charity walk is talking place. Right now, he's providing the countdown manually by editing the text himself. I wrote a short UserTalk script that can count down to any specified date in the future: on daysUntilEvent (targetDay, targetMonth, targetYear, targetHour=0, targetMinute=0, targetSecond=0) { «Created 2/21/03; 9:51:05 AM by RC local (day, month, year, hour, minute, second, target, ... (read more)

2003/02/21

Publishing Files to a Second Server with Radio UserLand

Scott Johnson is running out of space on Radio UserLand's server, which creates a dilemma because UserLand doesn't offer a way to buy additional space. Once the 20MB limit is reached, most users delete files or move to another server. Another way to save space on your weblog: Set up Radio to publish some of your files to a second server. If you have an FTP account on another server, it's easy to publish a folder to that server. The steps: 1. Create a new folder in your /Radio Userland/www ... (read more)

2003/01/29

Radio Userland Format Driver for NASA News

I have written a Radio Userland format driver to read news from NASA, which is offered as an XML feed. Because this feed is not in RSS format, you must install a special format driver to read it with Radio Userland's News Aggregator.  To add the driver to Radio Userland: Download formatDrivers.newsfeed.fttb and save it to a folder on your system. Open Radio Userland (in Windows, right-click the RU icon in the System tray and choose Open Radio). Choose File, Open and open ... (read more)

2002/08/14

Publishing a Category to a Private Location

Brett Morgan wants to publish a Radio Userland category to a private "behind-the-firewall" location. If you can upload to the location using FTP, you can accomplish this by creating the new category, adding your FTP password to Radio Userland, and putting an #upstream.xml file in the category's folder that contains your FTP settings. For example: Create a new category. I called mine Private. Choose the "render this category in HTML" option and do not choose the "notify Weblogs.Com" option. ... (read more)

2002/08/03

Posting a Category as a Salon Blog

Disclaimer: I have only tried this once, so I can't vouch for it's reliability in all situations. I'm offering these notes as a guide for people who are comfortable with Radio Userland and the Radio.root database. It's possible to publish a Salon Blog as a category of your existing Radio Userland weblog, but it's a pretty messy process. I publish the Workbench weblog on one community server and paid for a Salon Blog earlier this week. I'd like to publish both using a single copy of Radio. ... (read more)

2002/07/25

Posting to Radio Userland from Different Places

A visitor to Workbench asked how you can post to a Salon Blog from Radio Userland on several different computers. There isn't an easy way to do this, unless you have an always-on Internet connection and can keep Radio running on it. When you post an item, Radio saves it on your computer in a database file called weblogData.root in the software's Data Files folder. Any time your weblog is published, Radio reads data from this database, produces HTML files from it, ... (read more)

2002/07/25

Moving Outline Items in Radio Userland

Radio Userland tip: Items in an outline are moved using drag and drop. When you're moving an item, you don't have to grab it by the item's triangle, which is small enough that it's a challenge for fumble-fingered users like me. An easier way to grab the item: Click any empty spot to the right or left of it. To show this, I've added yellow boxes to the outline below. If you wanted to move Item 1a, you could click anywhere in those yellow areas (which aren't visible in Radio Userland) and hold ... (read more)

2002/07/13

Radio Userland Access Control

Radio Userland doesn't offer access control at the present time, so your weblog's open to the public from the moment you set it up. Using Javascript and a custom User-Agent string on my browser, I devised a workaround that let me view my weblog but sent other people somewhere else. It uses Windows and Internet Explorer 6, but the technique can be adapted to any browser where you can set the User-Agent string. It only keeps out people who have Javascript turned on in their ... (read more)

2002/04/16

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