My service provider suspended the BlogTree.com site since it was apparently being used for hacking into the server. They suspect a vulnerability in the version of phpBB I was running. I’ve shut the forum down until I can find the…
Those little 15x80 pixel two-color buttons seem to have become the de-facto standard for common links. Sure, you can make them by hand, but why bother? Kalsey’s Button Maker let’s you whip out your very own buttons, colored and labeled…
The author of TeledyN pointed out that the Find page did not search for alternate URLs. I added that feature — first as a JOIN query which turned out to be very slow (since it has to do O(N*M) comparisons)….
Testing, testing, testing……
I like the way LiveJournal tracks “Friends” and “Communities”. I’m not too keen about adding communities to BlogTree.com, but the concept of Friends would be simple to implemente and maybe it would keep people from listing a gazillion parents….
Modified main page to show number of distinct languages (25 as of today) and show the language code next to the blogs in the right bar. I had to make these bars wider which might start to look funky on…
The author of mar.anomy.net (an Icelandic blog!) suggested that I also list “siblings” that are connected via children as opposed to parents: One thing that I’ve noticed is that many blogs don’t have any parents listed and thus there is…
Well, the blogtree.php script was one of the first ones I wrote for the site, and it definitely looked it. I have changed it now to use DIV tags for the different boxes being displayed (although it still uses a…
I’ve revamped the “Find Blog” page to allow the listing of blogs base on particular criteria. Some of the searches are a bit slow, but c’est la vie, I guess. I’ve also added a “Random Blog” to the main page….
I took the blog-claiming feature life. I wonder if I should make people put a claim tag in their blog in the first place. It would definitely cut down on fake ownerships, but it would be kind of a pain…
Started development on an admin tool for better administering the growing site. Sometimes phpMyAdmin just does not cut it for complex updates - though I couldn’t live without it. So far it allows me to search for and consolidate blog…
I took the URL consolidation code live. A user can now specify an alternate URL, even if it is registered. If it is registered, it’s checked that it has the same content as the main blog URL (and is nto…
Well, it has happened. Today blogtree.com exceeded the bandwidth I had allocated for it. I’ve never had a site that even came close to a limit. I’ve cranked up the limit and I hope it’ll be sufficient. If not, I…
I changed how searching for a blog URL works. The search will now strip leading “http://”, “www.” and trailing “/”, “/index.xyz” and “/default.xyz”. Hopefully this will decrease the number of duplicates. There probably already is a ton of duplicates, though….
I looked around to see how privacy policies are expressed on other web sites and finally cobbled one together for BlogTree.com. It’s difficult to put into “legal” words that I’m not collecting anything that I’m striving to keep all info…
Added a list of blogs that were “born” on this day. I meant to do it earlier but it kind of makes testing difficult if you only have a couple of blogs. At this point, with over 1500 blogs, there…
Someone suggested that specifying a user’s sex be option. I sort of agree with them, since I want the authors to be annonymous (that’s why I don’t relate blogs by author). I’ve added a third option besides male/female - although…
Installed phpBB2 forum for support and suggestions at forums.blogtree.com. Once again, I am amazed how easy to install and to configure that piece of software is. If I had more time, I’d make it’s appearance fit BlogTree’s look better -…
I was alerted of error dialogs popping up on the Link Generator page. It’s fixed now. Thanks for the email. I need to remember to test my Javascript code on multiple browsers and OSs. This time it was IE on…
I added a link generator page that creates HTML that users can use to link to a particular blog’s pedigree. I still need to add a link to this page from user info and from the page where they add…
I added a “New and Updated” list on the front page. A brave foray into DIV based layout. There are 8 blogs registered - all from people I know, of course. I need to add a FAQ list - some…
I’ve noticed that my signup script stored the author’s birth date incorrectly - always as 1969-12-31. It’s fixed now, but early authors should update it….
I need to change blogtree.php to use DIVs instead of a TABLE so that the columns don’t have to have the same height….
I cleaned up the look and hopefully covered all the links. I got rid of my test data and took BlogTree.com live. The first entry is going to be my very own nonplussed blog….
I need a “Terms Of Use” document for this site. Luckily, Pirated-Sites.com has a great TOU that is freely available and encouraged to be used. I’l nab is and modify it to fit BlogTree.com. I also need to find a…
Currently Available: Navigating via a blog’s parents/children/siblings. Future Ideas: Expand the number of degrees that you see at once, i.e. 1st degree shows parents/children/sbilings, 2nd degree also shows grandparents/aunts&uncles/cousins/nieces&nefews/grandchildren, etc. This could get a bit crowded and the SQL queries…
Added a reverse test for ancestry when selecting a new parent blog - this should avoid cycles. Also added support for receiving an email when a blog has a new child - still need to make the email “prettier”….
I’ve changed to look to a simple four-quadrant layout. It’s not pretty, but it’ll do for now. I’ll find someone more creative later once the database stuff is working. I’ve also added logging, and most of the functionality is now…
I noticed today that Movable Type now supports a MySQL backend. This is reason enough for me to use it for CM on this site….
I registered a domain and started on the database schemas
I think most blogs on the web are related in a family way.
