Userland

Radio UserLand: This way lies madness

For Chapter 21 of Radio UserLand Kick Start, I'm working on a gateway tool that posts weblog entries via HTTP POST to any Web CGI script, even if it requires cookie-based authentication. As a demonstration, the tool is mirroring the last five Workbench posts to my Metafilter user page (login required to view). Radio gets knocked for being maddeningly complicated when you venture beyond the "five minutes to first post" features, and in some ways working with the software promotes Apocalypse ... (read more)

2003/06/14

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

UserLand guru editing Radio UserLand Kick Start

News to me: Brent Simmons, a former UserLand developer whose initials are all over Radio UserLand and Frontier, is tech editing Radio UserLand Kick Start. This is a relief. Though, of course, as the author of the book I must claim deep expertise in the subject matter, Simmons has forgotten more about UserLand products than I know. The odds that this book will be a disgrace to my good name and that of the UserLand community just went down considerably. ... (read more)

2003/05/28

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

Pycs offers access control for Radio weblogs

Georg Bauer is extending the XmlStorageSystem API to support access control for the Python Community Server, the open-source clone of the Radio Community Server. ... (read more)

2003/05/15

Student exchange program offers Radio weblogs

An unusual Radio weblog community is being offered by AIESEC, a 50,000-member student organization that facilitates international work exchange programs in 80 countries. The weblogs, which are all run by AIESEC members, are part travelogue and part extremely multicultural college newspaper, such as Herry Purwanto of Indonesia's Ganggotri Hotel, which is named in honor of a friend's experience in India. This word means flowing water in the river (Hindi) but not because of that meaning, I use ... (read more)