website

I spent some time last night working with the search software I have installed on djwudi.com, tweaking and improving it so that it gives much more useable results.

While MovableType does include its own search function, I’ve chosen not to use it for djwudi.com because I have a number of pages that live outside of my weblog, which MT would not be able to search. However, I’d run into a bit of a problem with the search engine I am using, and I think I’ve finally got it solved.

The issue that came up was simply that because the search software had indexed the text of every page on the site, there were certain words that were essentially useless to try to search for, because they’re repeated on so many pages. For instance, I was trying to find a page where I’d written up a short description of the MT TrackBack functionality — unfortunately, a search for ‘TrackBack’ returned hits for every single page on my weblog, because they all had the word ‘TrackBack’ on the page.

Digging through the documentation for the search software yesterday (yes, I know, actually reading the instructions is so uncool, but it really does help sometimes…), I discovered that there is a very simple way to tell the search software to ignore certain areas of a webpage. So, some tweaks to my templates to ensure that the software only pays attention to the actual content of each page, and ignores all the navigational or presentational mumbo-jumbo, and I’ve got a far more useable search feature than I did previously. Woohoo!

This is only a test.

If this were a real post, there would be some actual content worth mentioning.

Thank you for your patience.

Another test: View image.

I’m having a hell of a time getting Image::Magick (a command-line set of Unix tools for manipulating graphics) installed and working on my system so that MovableType can see it. Been banging my head against this for most of the last two days, without much success so far.

On the off chance a more-knowlegable-than-me Mac OS X/Unix guru stops by here…anyone want to give me some help?

[A plea for help has been issued on the MT support forums. Hopefully that’ll help.]{.underline}

Looks like I was popular today — probably for all of about two minutes, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

I stopped by the Wander-Lust homepage a bit ago, skimmed over the ‘Popular Destinations’ sidebar, and realized that I was number 16! I have no idea how I managed to pull that off, but it must have been a fluke — as I write this now, I’m number 47. Heck, I’m rather surprised to be on their top-50 list as it is, 47’s impressive enough. But 16?

People must have been really bored this morning. ;)

Okay, now I’m number 4. Bizarre. Cool — but bizarre. I’m guessing I’ll be in my rightful spot completely off the list by morning, but this is fun for the moment!

I’m getting closer to settling down with my design fidgeting again. For a bit, at least. I’m pretty happy with the blue-tone scheme I’ve got right now.

I’ve also managed to get the hide/show smileys function when leaving comments working, thanks to a new Scriptygoddess script (that I even helped debug — go me!), and I think (though feel free to correct me on this) that I’ve got the ‘Remember Me’ function when leaving comments fixed too. Just so all five (actually, I might be up to eight!) of my regular visitors won’t have to keep entering their information into the form. ;)

Grrrrrr!

Would everyone mind too terribly switching over to web browsers that actually support CSS layout declarations properly? Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, whatever.

I’m working on redesigning WudiVisions, my photoblog. I’ve got the basic concept for the main page right how I want it, save a little bit of tweaking on the fonts…

…as long as you’re viewing it in a browser that has some idea how to render things correctly, at least. Notably absent from this list is Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari — dammit, pretty much any browser that doesn’t use the Gecko layout engine.

Not sure where I want to go from here. I like the concept I’ve been working with, dammit, and don’t really want to have to find something else. So for the moment, I’m just going to stomp around, whine, bitch, and moan for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll feel better after a good tempertantrum.

I’m experimenting with different colorschemes for the site. On the bright side, this is very easy to do — just a few changes in the CSS for the site and the whole thing changes.

On the downside, colors outside of black and white just aren’t my strong suit. ;) So this may go on for the next few days until I find something I settle on. Bear with me…

Hooray for people smarter than me! Or, at the very least, more knowledgable of all sorts of javascripty goodness and magic.

A couple days ago, Phillip found my ‘Live Comment Preview‘ and incorporated it into his blog. However, not satisfied with what I had, he improved the code so that it recognizes and inserts linebreaks correctly!

So, I’ve gone and snagged the improvement, and tossed it into the script on my site. Better and better all the time…thanks Phillip!

I’ve just signed on with GeoURL, a web service that ties a weblog to a location, so that you can find out who your blogging neighbors are in a true geographic sense. For a quick example, to see who’s close to me, just check GeoURL. Just another fun toy to play with.

(Found via Jeremy)