Plugin Revisions

Sorting
Moving to a non-hacked blosxom meant making a few plugin changes. There's no real need for a sorting plugin anymore, but I've come to like the idea of switching views. So, sort_order is out (reserved for the hacked blosxom), and sort_by_date is in. Similar operation, but the sort choices are now by date, by file name, or by category name; de/ascending.

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css overhaul

Hand-in-hand with cleaning up the site was an overhaul of the Waldo css, which had become a bit...cumbersome ;-) The basic two-column layout was retained, but without the messy hacks (Tantek box-model, etc.) — pushin' electrons is so much simpler with robust, viable alternatives to Explorer! Here's some of the nitty-gritty:

The layout is meant to be zero- or low-graphic, with visual color coming from links, heads, and a couple of block classes, and textual color coming from content face, weight, and leading. (For instance, the large navigation "buttons" are purely text-based; no graphics, no pre-loads, easy editing.) Full justification dramatically reduces "text rivers."

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site overhaul

Other than uploading plugin updates, I hadn't touched the site in almost a year; not too much bitrot, but a fair amount of cruft. No fixed abode has too often meant no modern Mac — making it increasingly difficult to test plugins with the site's hacked blosxom. So the first order of business was to convert the blog sections over to stock blosxom:

1. configure and install a clean blosxom
2. add entries_cache plugin to fake file modification times
3. hack entries_cache to do what it should ;-)
4. process entry files to proper blosxom format:
   • title on first line (was date)
   • mod time meta- tag on second line (was title)
   • blank third line to conform to meta plugin standard (unneeded, but standard)
   • modify story templates to use blosxom's $mo, $da, and $yr vars (was my hacked $dato)
   • modify .dl templates to mimic the old name-based hack
5. write a fulldatenames plugin to get full month names
6. fiddle with load order

It was all quite tedious, but I just kept tellin' myself, "This makes it easier. This makes it easier. This makes it...." Geez, this better make it easier! ;-)

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