scriptygoddess

[links found via web-graphics.com] <- Have I mentioned recently how cool I think those people are? They find the neatest stuff!!! MT-RefSearch will help out your visitors coming in from Google by showing them a listing of what they came to your site searching for. (I'll get it working here soon if I can – we get a LOT of google searches here!) Apparently this isn't a new script, but I just found it and think it's really neato!

Also mentioned in that same post on web-graphics was a javascript that will highlight the search terms on your page: searchhi

Someone asked me to post a tutorial on how I did the custom colors, and font sizes. I can't take sole credit for it, it's a very simple solution based completely on a combination of methods.

In fact, in some ways, the "a list apart" way is better because you can let your users select which stylesheet they want to use… My reason behind the way that I did it was that maintaining skins was too much trouble, as was maintaining mulitple stylesheets… I want to add a style… gotta do it in every location… and with the way I did it here, users can enter in their own hex value for color, so it upped the value even more… I was then able to use the same basic idea for the font size.

I'll describe the color part, but you can technically use this to customize MANY other values in the CSS:
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Here's the script I'm using for that "hotlist" feature. Probably it's best use is on something like this site – an information blog, where posts are not as time-sensitive and may need to be referenced by a user at a later date.

Download it here

Here's a quick rundown of what this does, what the requirements are to implement this script, etc.
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I'm about to implement a major redesign… I'm aiming to finish 95% of this tonight… but we'll see… I apologize in advance if things get really funky.

UPDATE Well I think I have to pack it up for tonight… I think I did get most of the design in place. I plan to add a "user-friendly" FAQ – which will explain the icons below (just mouseover them for now to see what they are, in case you don't know – yeah, I know, bad UI design… commonly referred to as "mystery meat" navigation… well there's a lot I put in here that followed more traditional "rules".. I had to break them SOMEWHERE!) 😉

In place of a FAQ – here's a quick rundown on what's here… This is a CSS-only layout. I've done away with the traditional "skins"… but you can customize the colors… (scroll down – on the right side bar – you can select one of the "presets" or enter in your own hex value)

I tried to keep this design as "simple" as possible. I've also tried to take into consideration some of the feedback I've gotten about the site over the past few months. For example – one complaint was the font size… you can now scale the font – using the font size menu in your browser…

The sidebar uses that "gadget" script… minimize boxes, move them up, etc.

I'm also using that "hotlist" script I had out as in beta testing last week. I'll be releasing that script in a few days. What a hotlist is; you can add posts (from this blog) to it… either because you want to reference it later, or because you want to "bookmark" it… Click on the "hot pepper" with the "+"… to remove a post from your list, click on the "hot pepper" with the "x".

The rest should be relatively self explanatory… let me know if you see anything that's broken…

'Nother update: Just tweaked the code a bit so you can change the font on this site only (ie. so you don't have to go and change it in your browser). Also fixed Amy's and Kristine's Tip jars so they actually work now.

Still on my list to be fixed:
-trackback pop up page
-send entry pop up page

(anything else??)

Thanks to Lynda and Jenn there is a way to navigate between next and previous entries only within a category. But there has been many requests on the forums for a way to go between the category archives with next and previous like the date-based archives have.

This script will show the linked title of the previous and next categories, alphabetically, on each category archive page.
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This is more of a "Heads Up" post than anything else.

This past weekend I was working on a blog entry and saw I suddenly had 128 comment notifications in my inbox. At that moment I knew either my e-mail server had regurgitated all my deleted mail or I was suddenly extremely popular.

I was wrong on both counts. A spammer had created a way to use the MT comment tool on my site to enter the same spam-filled comment in my archived entries, one post at a time. Thanks to the consecutive numbering nature of MT, I assume they just picked an archived entry number and started counting up.

They had sent 220 comments before I stopped them, and I shudder at the thought of what could have happened had I not been sitting there when it began.

Thanks to Phil (who was spammed as well) and his tip on mySQL I was able to delete all the comments at once.

I find it had to believe Phil and I were the only blogs touched by this, but I have not seen anyone else mention it. But, it seems to me that any MT blog that allows unregistered commenting could be hit by this method. I just wanted to bring this new spamming method to light and, hopefully, begin a discussion on possible solutions.

I found a nice, free and very basic in-browser WYSIWYG editor at devArticles.com. The tutorial "Building a WYSIWYG HTML Editor Part 1/2" is very interesting but the nice thing is they provide the finished code. Just grab the "Support Material" at the bottom of the last page. It is all done with JavaScript & CSS. Plus it supports "drag-and-drop" from MS Word-ish programs.

There also exists a more robust version called EditWorks Pro, available for php or asp for a mere $19.99.

At the moment, I haven't had a chance to figure out how to merge this with the MT entry screen, but my Spider Sense tells me it will be pretty easy. I am more of an "Idea" person anyway (just ask goddessJenn about my crazy suggestions).

You could probably also strip some features out and allow it to be used in the comment entry form.

In "Part 2/2" article author Mitchell Harper details the method he uses to process the form data.

If anyone is able to make use of this tool, please post a note about how you implemented the editor.

Enjoy!

Allowing for multiple stylesheets has never been so easy! Mozilla has a built in style changer (when you reference the alternate stylesheets correctly), but the other browsers don't. A List Apart put together a tutorial and a javascript styleswitcher a while back, and more recently, they added a PHP switcher.

Alternative Style: Working with Stylesheets – it explains how the script work, and then allows you to download it. It also gives examples of how to use it in your coding.

Build a PHP Switcher – gives a full tutorial on how to write up the code and the stylesheets to work with it. I originally saw a less polished tutorial of this on my css-d list: Backward-compliant style switcher (in PHP)

I have the javascript version working on the sidebar of my 1st skin on my blog: check out alt:colors on the sidebar. I look forward to playing with the PHP version because it will work even when Javascript is turned off on the browser.

Since I've been learning so much PHP over the last 3 or 4 months, I've been collecting a lot of bookmarks to help me out. Althought PHP.net is the most helpful of them to me, I've gotten a great array of other links in my bookmark files too. Most of these are aimed at people just starting out with PHP (or still a bit of a newbie needing a tutorial to learn more).

If you'd like to learn how to include files and show the current date, and maybe just see what else PHP does, these links are for you. If you are already doing that stuff and want to get more advanced, then you might check out HotScripts and The PHP Resource Index – download some scripts and pick them apart until you understand what they do!

And if you are looking for a good editor for your PHP, I tend to use EditPadLite most of the time (mainly because I can open multiple files and it has a line counter which is helpful for debugging), but Zalary linked to PHP Coder Pro the other day, so I'm trying that out and really like that it color codes my syntax – easier to see when you miss a comma or quote!

Feel free to add your favorite links in the comments, too!
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Is your Monthly Archive list getting kinda long in your sidebar? Would you like to be able to show and hide it easily, with a few of the months still showing? Someone on the MTForums asked about this today, and I figured it out and thought I'd share it here.

The javascript for expanding/collapsing is a modification on Aaron's original tutorial and Jenn's version of it over here. I changed the variable names, so it shouldn't conflict with either of those options if you already have them installed.
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