kaseytraeger

Lisa, I just went to the site that Bruce posted. I'm confused by what I saw on that page when trying to match it to your explanation. The web site says that RSS 1.0 is recommended for use in RDF-based applications or if you need advanced RDF-specific modules. But you said that you deleted the RDF feed from your web site and stuck with the RSS 1.0 XML feed. I hate to be a nin-come-poop lame-brainer, but I'm not following the jargon. Are there actually two different types of RSS 1.0? That being one type that's RDF-based and another that's XML-based? I don't understand how you could delete the RDF feed but still have RSS 1.0. Of course, I may be misunderstanding the information posted on the page Bruce provided, which is probably the case. Ya know, I love learning new stuff, :Nerd: (that's brainy me trying to learn!) but sometimes the learning curve just kills me!

Which tag attribute is the best to use in an anchor tag ... alt or title? For example, <a href="htt*://www.mywebsite.com" alt="Go to my new web site!">Go Now</a> versus <a href="htt*://www.mywebsite.com" title="Go to my new web site!">Go Now</a> Is it best to use both alt and title? The only problem I can see with that approach is the moderate increase in bandwidth that would result from having extra characters in your anchor tag. It may not be much if you have a few links, but for a page of bookmarks, for example, you could have many, many links, and that would draw eat your bandwidth considerably, especially on a popular page.

I use Firefox, and I can honestly say it's the best browser I've ever used. My only problem is that when I try to read a PDF document, it hangs on me. My workaround is to right click and "save link as", then open it from outside Firefox. Anyone else have this problem? How do you get around it?

My question is about RSS, and since I don't really know what it is, I'm not sure which forum it belongs in ... Backend? Scripting? Forum moderators, will you please move this to a more appropriate forum? Thanks. OK, on to my question. I just installed the MT-Blacklist plugin to my blog. In reading the documentation about keeping MT-Blacklist up-to-date with current spammer info, there was discussion about using an RSS feed to keep it updated on my web site. I had no idea what RSS was, so I did a bit of reading about it on the XML.com web site. What did I learn? I learned that As it more closely pertains to my situation (blogs), I also learned that My questions... 1. Do I actively install an RSS feed into my blog, or is it coded within the XHTML? 2. Once an RSS feed is "installed," will I need to do anything to make it update, or is it automatic? I've had to clear some cache in my brain and create a new "RSS" subfolder, which I'm now filling with information. So please pardon me if I speak in newbie tones. But in my very simplistic view of RSS at this point, I see it as being a service that goes out and pings some other website, then does an "are you there"/"handshake" kind of thing which, if successful, will allow it to bring fresh information back to my web site. 3. MT-Blacklist offers RSS feeds in format 1.0 or 2.0. Which format should I use, and why? What is the benefit of one format over the other? From my reading, format 2.0 seems simpler while 1.0 seems more complex. Based on that numbering, that would seem backwards (you'd expect 1.0 to be simpler than 2.0), but from what I read, that's how I understand it to be. I'd appreciate any clarification if I'm wrong. 3. Does TCH have a beginner's tutorial on RSS? If not, does someone here know enough about it to give me an overview of it and what it can do, in kindergarten-like terms? What I read on XML.com was nice-enough, but it was just a teensy bit over my head until I have enough of a grasp of what RSS is and its uses. Thanks all TGIF!

Once again, Lisa to the rescue! Thanks for such a speedy response. Wow I appreciate all the advice and expertise you've got on the subject, so you can give me all the suggestions you want! (that's a hint!) Anyway, I've got some things to do this evening, so I can't play around with it anymore this evening. I'll try implementing your suggestions tomorrow. If I have any questions, I'll either PM you, or if it's after work and I'm home, I'll send you an IM on Yahoo. Thanks again, Lisa. I'll be talkin' with ya soon!

Glad to hear everything went smoothly and without a hitch for you! It sounds like you've got a much more stable installation this time around, which is a very good thing! Have fun with your company, then, when they're gone, get back to Simming!

Hi everybody! I've been doing a little bit of reading on how to make your Movable Type blog optimized for search engines like Google. A couple of things I've read are confusing to me, so I'm hoping someone here can clarify them for me. My first question comes from an article posted by Nicholas Carvan (htt*://www.nicholascarvan.com/blog/optimizing_your_movabletype_blog_for_google.html) He makes a comment that you should make the title of your blog entry a hyperlink to the individual entry. He even gives a piece of code you can use to make this happen. ><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"> <h2 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h2></a> My question is ... where do I put this piece of code? When I enter a new post for my blog, there are input boxes on the MT interface where you enter (1) the post's title, (2) the post's primary category, (3) the post's entry body and (4) extended entry text. Do I enter the code in the box that is for the entry's title? Or do I put it somewhere else, like in the template body for my main index page? Question #2: Mr. Carvan says that by default, the title of an individual blog entry in MT is the name of the blog followed by the name of the entry (e.g. Pudgy Puppy: How to Tie Your Shoes). He suggests getting rid of the blog name from the title. How would I do this? My next two questions are from an article by Anders Jacobsen (htt*://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/archives/2002/08/06/my_movable_type_installation.html). Question #3: Jacobsen suggest that you create an archiving strategy that stores each individual post in a folder nested as such ... /2004/05/04/filename.htm. To accomplish this, he offers that you should set your individual entry archives as ><$MTArchiveDate format="%y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.htm Again, as with my first question ... where do I put this piece of code? Question #4: Jacobsen says to set up your category archive to >categories/<$MTArchiveCategory dirify="1"$>/index.htm Once again, where do I put this code? Thanks all! Hope you're having an enjoyable evening

Yes, everything is compatible with Windows XP. You should have no problems by upgrading your OS. I say "should" because we know that in reality, and based on the little glitches that are inherent in the Sims expansion packs, you may come across a fumble or two. But my changeover from Windows 98 to Windows XP went very smoothly. Just to be on the safe side, however, I'd suggest doing a backup of your User Data files and any objects you've downloaded!

Thank you for the good laugh!

I didn't have any trouble with just The Deluxe Edition. But once I installed HD, and with every expansion pack since, the game has been unstable. The instability really kicked into gear with the release of SuperStar. I hope Sims 2 is a more robustly-developed game. Although I'm really looking forward to it's release later this summer, I hesitate to buy it until others have "beta tested" it for me. Considering the game costs $50, I'm hard pressed to spend that kind of dough if it's going to crash on me twice an hour.

bellringr, I've got all the Sims packs on my computer and I can tell you that I've had problems with the games from day one. My most recent install (several months ago) was Makin' Magic. Imagine my surprise when I tried to visit Magic Town and wasn't able to land the freakin' Zeppelin because there were no buildings! Turns out the install glitched on me. I had to remove ALL Sims games, do a defrag, system cleanup, then another defrag. Then I began reinstalling each game. I tested the game between installs by playing it with Bob and Betty Newbie for about 10-15 minutes. This process took me all day. The game still crashes on me occasionally, but not nearly as much as it used to. I just try to save my game every several minutes so I don't lose too much of my character's history. The weird graphics problems you're experiencing are new to me. Even with all the problems I had with my games, I never had a graphics or sound problem ... *yet*. Just make sure you back up your User Data files before you scrub the Sims from your computer. Otherwise you'll lose all your characters and their cummulative lives. Good luck!

Close, but you also have to add the hover decoration, so when the rollover with the mouse occurs, nothing shows up (unless you want it to). Therefore it should be: ><style type="text/css"> <!-- a:link { text-decoration: none; } a:visited { text-decoration: none; } a:hover { text-decoration: none; } a:active { text-decoration: none; } --> </style> That's odd because it's always worked for me this way. Anyway, I just tried it on Thomas' page, and used the single line CSS rule. It worked just fine, even on the hover state. I tested it in FireFox and IE. Both seemed to display it the way Thomas described. It's odd that you've observed one behavior and I've seen another. I wonder what we're doing that's different from each other?

Thomas, Thank you for the link to the page in question. I just downloaded your code and ran a simple test. I modified your code like this: ><STYLE> <!-- /*a:hover {color: #777777} U {text-decoration: none}*/ a { text-decoration: none;} --> </STYLE> and added the following html to the body of your page as a test. I've kept a lot of your html code as reference so you an see where I added mine. Just look for the commented section in your code to find what I did... ><img name='awmMenuPathImg-Tompasworld_sub' id='awmMenuPathImg-Tompasworld_sub' src='./awmmenupath.gif' alt=''><script type='text/javascript'>var MenuLinkedBy='AllWebMenus [2]', awmBN='520'; awmAltUrl='';</script><script src='Tompasworld_sub.js' language='JavaScript1.2' type='text/javascript'></script><script type='text/javascript'>awmBuildMenu();</script> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="75" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="VOID" RULES="NONE" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 WIDTH="75"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="16" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="75" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <!-- THOMAS, HERE IS WHAT I ADDED TO TEST THE CSS STYLE RULE --> <div> <a href="">Hello world</a> </div> <!-- END OF MY TEST --> <TABLE BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="767" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#BBBBBB" BORDERCOLORDARK="#EEEEEE" FRAME="VOID" RULES="COLS" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > I'm using Firefox, and this worked like a champ. The link color is still purple but the link is no longer underlined, even in hover, active, or visited states.

Thomas, Will you please post what page(s) you're working with and a URL to your style sheet? I'll take a look at it and see what's going on.

Thomas, What you are trying to do in your CSS code is to remove the underline property from the <u> tag. It kind of defeats the purpose, and may not even be allowed because the core definition/behavior of the <u> tag is to underline text. IE is very buggy and doesn't always follow CSS rules correctly, which may explain why it's obliging by removing the underlines for you. Truly standards-compliant browsers may not allow a base element like <u> to be redefined in this way. However, the good news is that because you are only concerned with removing the underline on hyperlinks, you just tell CSS to remove underline from all anchor links, not from the <u> tag. To do that, you only need one line of CSS properties. ><style> <!-- a { text-decoration: none; } // --> </style> I believe that should work with all anchor links. However, you could also try this: ><style> <!-- a, a:link, a:hover, a:active, a:visited { text-decoration: none;} //--> </style> Good luck!

All right Mike! Way to go! Thumbs Up

Ah, yes. Now I see it. Thank you, Mike!

Well, I did what you suggested, Mike, and it seems to have worked. The CSS style sheet for my blog is still able to grab an image using just the root absolute URL, which it was not able to do last night until we chopped up the .htaccess file fairly significantly. Also, there is no redirection to my main index.php page going on if you try to look at the picture by typing the picture's URL into a browser address bar. Here's the new .htaccess code as it was modified by cPanel. What's the difference between this and the original .htaccess code that gave me problems? ># <Limit GET POST> # order deny,allow # deny from all # allow from all # </Limit> # <Limit PUT DELETE> # order deny,allow # deny from all # </Limit> AuthName www.pudgypuppy.com AuthUserFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd AuthGroupFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp Options All -Indexes RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://blog.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://blog.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://kaseyscreations.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://kaseyscreations.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://moocowenterprises.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://moocowenterprises.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.kaseyscreations.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.kaseyscreations.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.moocowenterprises.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.moocowenterprises.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

Mike, Do I need to use a forwarding url? My cPanel says hotlink protection is disabled. I presume that's because I've removed the Rewrite rules from the .htaccess file and cPanel sees that there's nothing there. However, just above the box for allowing direct access is a line for URL redirection. Do I need to leave this blank so that other computers can access the graphics? I wonder if I would encounter the same problem of being redirected to an index page when typing www.domain.com/graphic.gif if I entered a URL for redirection.

Does this line allow anyone to have direct image access? I would think that if direct image access is allowed, then people could hotlink my images, which I certainly don't want. Also, when you say to add it, do I add it to the original .htaccess file or the shorter, new .htaccess file?

Last night, TCH-Lisa and I discovered a problem with the .htaccess file located in my public_html directory. The problem was that if I tried to access an image using a URL, I was redirected to my main index.php page instead of being able to see the image. For example, if you were to type htt*://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com/i/reddog.gif into your web browser's address bar, you would expect to see the picture that I've called "reddog.gif" show up in your browser, right? (As long as I didn't have any redirection turned on that would automatically redirect you to some other page.) Well, I don't have redirection turned on (or at least, I don't think I do ... I've never changed anything like that). The problem we noted was that when we actually tried to view the picture in our web browsers, we were both being redirected to the page located at htt*://www.pudgypuppy.com/index.php. Once we performed a 90% lobotomy on my .htaccess file, we were able to view the picture in the web browser as we would expect to. Here's a comparison of the two .htaccess files. ORIGINAL FILE (THE ONE THAT INCORRECTLY REDIRECTED US) ># -FrontPage- IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti* <Limit GET POST> order deny,allow deny from all allow from all </Limit> <Limit PUT DELETE> order deny,allow deny from all </Limit> AuthName www.pudgypuppy.com AuthUserFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd AuthGroupFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://blog.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://blog.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://kaseyscreations.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://kaseyscreations.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://moocowenterprises.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://moocowenterprises.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.kaseyscreations.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.kaseyscreations.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.moocowenterprises.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.moocowenterprises.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pudgypuppy.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pudgypuppy.com$ [NC] RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://www.pudgypuppy.com [R,NC] NEWLY LOBOTOMIZED FILE (WORKS PROPERLY AND SHOWS THE GRAPHIC IN WEB BROWSER WINDOW) >AuthName www.pudgypuppy.com AuthUserFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd AuthGroupFile /home/pudgy/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp Options All -Indexes We basically removed the FrontPage stuff at the front, the <Limit> sections, and all of the Rewrite stuff. Since I don't know how to write a .htaccess file, this stuff must have been inserted when I used the tools in cPanel to disallow hotlinking by all domains except pudgypuppy.com, moocowenterprises.com and kaseyscreations.com. I remember setting this up because I didn't want people hotlinking to my graphics and images. I'm currently using the shorter .htaccess file, so f you try to view the image in your browser now (htt*://www.blog.pudgypuppy.com/i/reddog.gif). You will be able to see the image without any problems. But I'd still like to disallow hotlinking. TCH-Lisa tells me that my file looks almost identical to hers (only the domain names are different). We can't figure out why her .htaccess file works but mine does not. She has graciously posted the Rewrite lines of code on her website as htt*://www.lisa-jill.com/htaccess.txt for easy reference and comparison. Will someone please review my .htaccess file and tell me how I can fix it to disallow hotlinking but still work properly? Thanks!

OK. So it worked when I used >background-image: url('http://www.pudgypuppy.com/i/reddog.gif'); which is the absolute URL. But I also tried using the relative URL of >background-image: url('/i/reddog.gif'); and it didn't work. I thought that putting the / in front of the i directory (i stands for 'images') would make it relative to the root URL. But the CSS didn't understand it, so the picture didn't display. Any idea why?

No, no ... not confusing at all. Thanks for straightening out my thinking. I'm glad to know that I at least had "relative" or "absolute" clear in my head. OK, I'm going to try removing the password protection on my image directory and using the absolute URL in the CSS file.

Yes, you're right about that. I had forgotten that they are loaded into cache on the user's computer. Don't ask my why I didn't remember that... it must have been a long day. Anyway, I will remove the password protection from the directory. As a side question (and because I always get them confused) ... can you give me an example of a relative URL versus an absolute URL? I always thought that something like ../i/reddog.gif was a relative URL but that /home/cpane_username/public_html/i/reddog.gif was an absolute URL.

I tried that, but it didn't work, either. Basically, here's how my site is structured. The blog is in a subdomain called "blog.pudgypuppy.com". So my Movable Type index file is located at public_html/blog/index.php while the image is located at public_html/i/reddog.gif. I also tried using the line background-image: url('../i/reddog.gif') but it didn't work either. Any other suggestions?