DISQUS

I am a master at everything I do. If I am not a master at it, I keep doing it until I master it. This explains my 16+ year web obsession somewhat.

I've written out some functions that you might find useful. Rather than having to enter the image manually, and use that "details" separator, I thought it might be fun to have a separate field to store the URL. That's something Habari is good at after all.

Here's some code: http://pastoid.com/baz

What this lets you do also is add menu options to the media browser for images so that you can insert them into the photo field. So if you have photos stored in the Habari (local) silo or in Flickr, you just click the new menu thing and it copies the URL of that photo into the field.

The photo URL is available from $post->info->photo.

Enjoy! (ps- The theme looks spiffy!)

Heh. That's funny. Check out this video, which shows things that Habari can do with the posting page that WordPress can't.

See, there's a good idea. I had it back in 2006. That WordPress doesn't include such an obvious idea, even at the suggestion of its users (and developers), is one major reason why Habari exists.

I actually suggested several options for reducing the menu jumble that plugins inevitably produce. One alternate solution was a unified page of one-off options for small plugins. The trouble was, you had to install a plugin to display the unified options, and explicit plugin dependencies didn't exist, so if you didn't code an alternate way to display your plugin options, your plugin had no config!

Maybe you can get more traction for the concept and have it integrated into WordPress core code. It's hard to get developers to universally use something that requires more code because the core software won't support it for some reason.

Sorry to invade your WP with Habari, but reading your recent twitter exchange, I know where your ideas spawned from. ;)

Your efforts to create a hybrid Habari-WordPress theme are insane! I'm so glad you're going to continue to discuss Habari, even if just a category on the blog. Who knows, eventually there might be habari-fun.co.uk?

When I read your post on Mashable, which I enjoyed, I kept thinking to myself that it would be great in the first place to have a social media consultant to fire. That's why I'm so glad you're encouraging this discussion here.

Of particular interest to me - if anyone who's posting responses cares to address it - is how to get help with social media for projects that nobody is paying for (yet), like free open source software. It's great if you have VC money or are established, but being part of an open-source project, all of my expenses for travel, promotion, and social media expertise comes out of pocket. As you might suspect, it's difficult to gather interest for any potential funding without being already tied in tightly to social media, and it's even more difficult to develop the project and be a social leader all at the same time.

My fundamental puzzle is over what it would take to get a consultant involved in FOSS, and whether that can be of mutual benefit to both the project and the consultant. Perhaps this is fodder for another article.

In any case, I'm interested in how this post pans out, and look forward to the responses, which are bound to be educational.

Indeed. There is nothing wrong with the GPL. It's very altruistic, and that's a good thing to be.

It nonetheless virtually ensures that any downstream value in the sale of a theme or plugin is lost to its original developer. Meanwhile, Habari's use of the Apache license assures freedom for both the user and for the developer.

Thanks for plugging my post, Colin. I do think this issue is an important one, even outside of Habari, for protecting the rights of artists and developers who don't dwell on these legalities.

By the way, I don't "lead" Habari, I'm just one of the guys on a management team that anyone can work to be a part of -- another important distinction between Habari and WordPress.

One of the many design considerations when building the plugin functionality in Habari was explicitly that WordPress made you create whole options pages for your plugins when you might have one checkbox to configure things. We try to handle this in Habari by making the config of the plugin integrate better with the software as a whole.

Something you might have overlooked while you were describing this is the significance of this line in your Habari plugin:

if ( $plugin_id == $this->plugin_id() )

Yes, your plugin can actually add configuration options to other plugins. Users may appreciate this powerful feature when coupled with our upcoming dependency functionality. A plugin could require that another plugin exist, and then add to its functionality.

For example, you could install a core spam-checking plugin, and then extend its capabilities and configuration options without providing a separate interface to do so. Easily integrated, simple to code, fun to use.

I think it's great to emphasize that all of these forms are built programmatically, rather than using hard-to-alter, fixed templates. For the effort, plugins have a consistent look, validation, uniform storage, and the immediate ability to be modified and extended easily by other plugins.

The examples in this post are a good comparison of features. I hope that you might write something on the use of sub-templates in themes, where a plugin provides its own output by default, but can be overridden by a template in the current theme. This (output) would even be the next logical step for the plugin you've produced above!

I am pleased that Habari is giving WordPress a good showing. Thanks again for another great article!

Your Habari coverage continues to be exemplary. I had forgotten about the ascend and descend methods.

One thing that we're shooting for in an upcoming version is a set of features that make it easier to theme. So commonly-used functions like the one you've written would be accessible from the theme by default, rather than having to write them yourself. Yet you'd still have that capability if you wanted.

It's hard to know what these common functions are in advance of having the system in wide use, so the more people offer suggestions now, the more likely they are to see those good things added to Habari. One of the things I like best about our community is how we bring people and their ideas in. This is one area where I think themers can start to see some advantage in how Habari operates if they start getting involved now.

There aren't any concrete plans for this right now, but the idea I came up with and we had discussed a bit can be found in this recent mailing list post. The change would basically be to go from echoing $post->content_out to echoing $post->content->out, and would extend to more of Habari's intrinsic objects. But keep in mind that this isn't finalized, so it might change before it's implemented or not be implemented at all.

Nothing like writing about Habari and getting the PR squad showing up at your doorstep!

I have only a couple of minor thoughts to add to your excellent post.

Habari also allows you to manually register functions/methods as plugin sinks using the Plugins::register() method. This could be useful for when you want to do only one of multiple things based on a configuration option, and register only the correct function. Of course, you could just as easily do this with a switch() within the automatically registered function.

The filter_post_content_out() function is interesting in that it affects the output of $post->content_out. $post->content contains the actual post body content. Adding the "_out" suffix allows it to be modified by that specific filter.

Using this mechanism, you can create multiple suffixes that filter in different ways. You could, for example, output $post->content_summary and then code a plugin function filter_post_content_suffix() to alter just that output. If a filter for a suffix doesn't exist, it just outputs the full content, so nothing breaks. This can be useful for outputting post archive listings specially for just the archive pages, or on any page.

This bit of functionality is probably not documented well because we're (at least I am) expecting it to change slightly to improve filtering and output support, but that's how and why things are named as they are.

I'm looking forward to part 2!

It's certainly possible to replicate the look of Habari's admin elsewhere, but the power behind the interface itself is something that you'd miss by doing that.

Specifically, the Habari admin uses methods that allow plugins to alter the interface wholly, not just insert controls in certain places. The result is a cohesion of form and function that even plugins integrate with well.

You can see this at work in how well the media plugins (like the Flickr plugin) integrate into the posting interface. With this underlying "FormUI" feature, plugins can add additional fields and shuffle around existing fields to provide an arrangement of controls that makes the most sense for the task they're presenting to the user.

What you see in the Habari admin is not just a slick design by one of the best designers to influence blogging, but also evidence of Habari's desire to be deceptively simple, yet deeply robust.

Thanks for taking the time to review what Habari has to offer, and I hope you continue to keep up with our work on Habari.

Closing up shop and heading to the library seems a little reactionary.

I dropped by this post specifically because I thought you were going to talk about books. I read books. I read many books. Call me prejudiced for thinking that reading blog entries and link aggregation sites does not constitute "reading".

Nonetheless, I agree with your premise. I think there is even more of a dangerous edge to it than you've outlined.

In addition to reading little bits about everything and not gaining a solid foundation in any discipline, you're also exposing yourself to the echo chamber of the blogosphere. Think about the last time you talked to a blogging Luddite - someone who doesn't write them, doesn't read them, doesn't care about them - and you'll see that the world is rife with topics that are poorly covered online or when they are, they're so sharply opinionated as to obscure leagues of relevant information, not not mention alternate opinion.

All that said, I think that I don't read quite enough material online to keep up with the Joneses. I've got Amazon boxes coming in once or twice a week, and subscriptions to a couple of key news magazines. I could probably stand to augment that with some online news sources. I'm happy with my RSS reading now, down to about 30 feeds, of which about a third are aggregate feeds from multiple sites about specific topics I have interest in, rather than any specific blogs.

Do you find yourself using a particular service, not because you like it, but because your friends or “the masses” are using it?

email

Joyent's Strongspace and Bingodisk services have been down outside of expectations for a full week until today. I did not even realize that I was having a problem with backups to their system until Thursday when I tried to access it, couldn't, and then checked their status log.

Moral: Sending email to affected customers during downtime is absolutely essential because not everyone cares to read your site's status log.

I have yet to hear of compensation to users for this downtime. I expect that for me it'll be nothing, since I have one of their "lifetime" accounts and have the luxury of being screwed in every respect in regard to service.

Ack, there are ads!

This is sort of like what I'm doing on my own site, but with the added "no ads for commenters" idea. I think I might adopt that, too.

While struggling to avoid the reputation that Microsoft gained by allowing their operating system to be very permissive, and effectually insecure, we're trying to create Habari to be secure by default and demand that you knowingly make it less secure rather than casually providing an option without mentioning the ramifications.

By making staying logged in a default on shared machines, forgetting to log out is a very serious security matter, because you probably won't realize that it's happening. If this option is omitted at login, then you must remember to log out. Even when you know you should, you don't or can't always do it. This is not a very secure default.

Currently, without any plugin, Habari logins timeout after 20 minutes of non-use. (We are considering extending that to an hour.) Also, if you log out of Habari on one machine, it logs you out of any machine that might be using your login. There are also measures in place that prevent a hacker from re-using the cookie that keeps you logged in. There is no "remember me" option at all.

We've been talking this week about how we can make this easier on the user who is used to working with less secure but more convenient systems. I think many developers on the project are of the opinion that "most secure by default" is the way to go. We can't expect that every user of our software has a degree in computer security, and it's our responsibility to make some educated decisions for our users. Only if you really understand the ramifications should you install something that makes your site less secure.

With Habari we have some interesting tricks up our sleeves that might allow the software to be more permissive without completely compromising security, but as a rule, I am pretty emphatic about removing that checkbox, but not because it should remember your login by default; rather, because it shouldn't remember your login at all.

What gave you the impression that Habari was a WordPress fork? Actually, I'd even disagree that it's a WordPress "clone".

Sure, we want most of the same features - it's blogging software after all. But architecturally, we've made a lot of design decisions based on knowledge of how modern blogging works and what people may use their software for.

I think that users who try Habari will be pleasantly surprised by the subtle differences.

So where's the Habari? :)

habari-users or visit the #habari channel on Freenode IRC asking how to do it and someone will point you in the right direction. It might require a little effort with phpMyAdmin, but It shouldn't be a problem after it's set up.

Thanks for trying Habari!

My sporadic notes from BlogPhiladelphia contain only the word "Junto" about the Junto sessions, so I'm glad you have provided my research for me.

Also don't forget the blogging meetup, which doesn't have a dedicated "format", but there are plenty of folks to chat up about blogging if you missed (how dare you?) BlogPhiladelphia. That's this Saturday at The Ten Stone. http://blog.meetup.com/309/</p>

There are a couple of other Philly-area web/tech/design groups that organize via Meetup.com that are also worth checking into.

I use an excellent VPS-only host, which I'll be happy to pass on if you're interested, but the real good news I have is regarding email.

I searched everywhere for reliable IMAP service that I didn't have to futz with. GMail, as you know, is not the solution because it's not IMAP. If it's not IMAP, it's not email, IMNSHO.

What email service you're looking for is Webmail.us. Their reliability has been infallible. Their service has been extraordinary. And for what they offer, they are shockingly also the cheapest email host I could find. Use your own client with IMAP or their webmail client, which has some very cool additional features. Their server supports IMAP over SSL. They are very supportive of using just MX records to point at their services because they focus their services entirely on email.

Undoubtedly, Webmail.us is one of the best finds I've had on the web.

GoDaddy also gets my vote for registrar, but I learned my lesson and now host all of my DNS records away from my registrar and my host. I use DNSMadeEasy.com for that service, which lets me do all sorts of crazy things with my DNS records very easily.

We were happy in the first season not knowing what mysteries the island held, knowing that eventually all secrets would be revealed.

We were amused in the second season by additional mysteries. But we weren't given any answers to the big questions that sucked us in during the first season.

And now, the show is starting to show its fatal weakness: You can't perpetuate the mystery forever.

That's why these recent episodes that show some of what's going on are still drawing us in. But they're never going to reveal what everything is about. Think about it. If they did, the show would have to end within two or three episodes, just because the characters would have to know what we know, and that would be enough to know that either they are doomed or how to get home. There's irony in the idea that what makes us keep watching is what we hate about the show - we never learn the secrets. There is no prestige.

That said, this most recent episode was very well crafted. I love episodes where you see new characters integrated into old, familiar scenes.

I've been trying to capture some of my astronomy knowledge, but I'm a big slacker. I've got notes on how to find things in the sky without using a published ephemeris that I need to dig out.

The moon is cool, but the first thing you'll see in your 'scope that will really make you drag people out into the cold to share the experience (at least, it was for me) will be Jupiter. Very doable if you know what you're doing.

And if you get a good view of Saturn, you're kicking butt.

Weird. I don't even bother reading the Dashboard these days - my bookmark goes straight to the Write page. I didn't realize that what I was writing was appearing alongside this kind of thing. What is it, anyway?