David Raynes

I am now knee deep in development of the next major version of MultiBlog and I would like to know if any of your MultiBlog users out there have any special requests for the plugin.

For starters, here are my current development goals:

• Completely rework the interface
• Expand the rebuild trigger options (trigger on comments and trackbacks in addition to publishing entries)
• Add the option to transfer entries and comments from one blog to another
• Add in more permissions checking to prevent users from altering rebuild and access settings for blogs to which they do not normally have access

And here are some things I would like to do, but are not as high priority:

• Dynamic template code (may not be possible to use the blog access controls in this situation though)
• Add permissions checking for the list of active plugins in the MT interface (not my idea)

Recently, I discovered a new callback I can make very good use of in MultiBlog: AppPostEntrySave. It was introduced with MT 3.1, and solves the exact problem I had to work around with MultiBlog.

So, implementing use of this callback will most certainly drive some big changes in MultiBlog including:

• Cleaning up the interface
• Hopefully fixing some of the weird bugs that have come up

Before I get started on that, though, I think I want to work up some of the ideas I have had for a plugin permissions plugin (yeah, try to wrap your head around that one). Once that is complete, I can hook MultiBlog into it , as well as any of my other plugins with configuration interfaces that need to be protected.

This fixes a couple bugs:

• Accidentally used perl's default alphabetic sort for blog_id in MTMultiBlog tag (e.g. so blog_id 10 would appear before blog_id 9)
• Fixed the logic error involving the addition of the category argument to MTMultiBlogEntries that was causing it to fail completely

Download:

• multiblog-1.1.0.tar.gz
• multiblog-1.1.0.zip

Follow the MultiBlog instructions for installation and setup.

Just a quick bugfix version. There was a minor hiccup in the access control checking routine.

Download:

• multiblog-1.0.1.tar.gz
• multiblog-1.0.1.zip

Follow the MultiBlog instructions for installation and setup.

Well, here it is. Hopefully all the bugs have been ironed out.

Download:

• multiblog-1.0.tar.gz
• multiblog-1.0.zip

Just following the MultiBlog documentation for installation and setup instructions.

Enjoy!

Changes since RC 2:

• Blogs are removed from the rebuild and access control lists when they are removed from MT itself.
• Fixed a bug in the access control checker that made all blogs but the current one come up as the default.

Download:

• multiblog-1.0rc3.tar.gz
• multiblog-1.0rc3.zip

Just follow the MultiBlog instructions and report any bugs to multiblog-bugs AT mt-forge.org.

The documentation is still in the process of being written, but I figured people would be wanting to get their hands on this as early as possible. So, I present to you, MultiBlog 1.0, Release Candidate 2 (1 was fairly short lived).

Download one of the following files:

• multiblog-1.0rc2.tar.gz
• multiblog-1.0rc2.zip

And follow the installation instructions in the MultiBlog documentation.

To give you a brief overview:

• Tag-wise, MultiBlog is a combination of OtherBlog and GlobalListings with the following exceptions:
  • Acesss to other blogs is controled by the Access Control portion of the configuration script for MultiBlog. No errors are currently generated if a blog attempts to access another blog that it is not allowed to. The default access control settings allow every blog to access every other blog.
  • I added a category attribute to MTGlobalEntries. It should be matching against category labels across all the blogs that the current blog may access, but it has not been tested yet (to my knowledge at least).
• The Rebuild feature can work in one of two ways: Entry and Placement. This is assigned on a rule by rule basis, but there can be only one of the two for any given post-rebuild blog pair (i.e. you cannot set a blog to trigger a rebuild in another blog on both Entry and Placement, only one or the other).
  • Entry will trigger the rebuild when the entry is saved, but before the category is assigned to it.
  • Placement will trigger the rebuild when the category (primary only) is assigned to the entry.
  • If the blog you wish to trigger the rebuilds from does not use categories, you will want to use the Entry option. If it does, and if the categories carry any signficance, you will want to use the Placement option.

If you encounter any bugs or any other problems with the plugin, please send email to multiblog-bugs AT mt-forge.org, with the subject as a summary of the problem, and the body of the email as the full description. I am still tinkering with the bug tracker, so I apologize in advance for any hiccups that might happen. Still, I encourage anybody that has a problem to send it in so I can start working out the kinks in the tracker.

I would appreciate it if anybody out there could read through what documetation I have written so far for the complicated portions of the upcoming MultiBlog, Rebuild Control and Access Control. I want to make sure that I am as clear as I can possibly be, as I can imagine some people getting fairly confused quickly if those concepts are not explained well enough.

Assuming no bugs show up between now and Wednesday evening, there should be a release candidate for MultiBlog 1.0 out then.

I have nearly completed editing of the Blog ACLs, but I still need to implement actually using them. Because of the new feature, however, MultiBlog will be out a few days later than I had originally anticipated. With any luck, I should have a public release ready by Monday.

First of all, I heard back from Stepan and he gave me the okay to integrate GlobalListings into MultiBlog, so MultiBlog will be one step closer to being the one-stop shopping spot for all of your multible MT weblog needs.

True, working in Stepan's GlobalListings plugin probably makes MultiBlog exempt from the plugin contest, but I think adding in this type of functionality is more than worth it.

And I would also like a little feedback on another idea I just had for MultiBlog: Blog Access Control Lists. Basically, since MultiBlog is pretty much guaranteed to be run in installations with multible blogs, access control becomes a concern. For example, Author A maintains Blog A and Author B maintains Blog B in the same installation of MT, but normally Author A cannot access Blog B through the MT interface and vice versa. With the current setup of MultiBlog however, Author A can include content from Blog B in their templates for Blog A as well as Author B with Blog A. I imagine this is something I would want to prevent.

What do you folks think?

Here is a quick preview of MultiBlog while I start putting together the testing release. Let the drooling begin.

I have finally sat down and started working on the web interface for MultiBlog tonight. So far so good. With what I learned while working on the Parent Category Archive Rebuilding feature for the latest version of SubCategories, I think I have got the rebuilding code fairly well nailed down (though I still consider it experimental).

Anyways, assuming all goes well, I should have a testing version of MultiBlog out to the few testers I have left by the start of the weekend. It will only have the rebuilding features, but that is the big feature for this version. Everything else I have planned is fairly minor. :)

I did some initial testing, and MultiBlog is working great. Unfortunately, I am not 100% comfortable release to the public the code that triggers the rebuild for other blogs. It works for me so far, but I am not certain that it will not cause problems at a later date. I put in a feature request with 6A, which was promptly taken care of, and with the next release of MT, I will be releasing MultiBlog.

For the time being, I will just be working on the setup interface (defining which blogs will trigger rebuilds of which other blogs, etc) and trying to come up with more features. Anybody have any requests? The only thing I have come up with is the ability to move entries (including comments and trackbacks) between blogs.

The changes I have planned for OtherBlog are so extensive that I am going to change its name to MultiBlog. In addition to the basic capabilities provided by OtherBlog, MultiBlog will hopefully finally solve the rebuilding issue (i.e. rebuilding Blog A, which includes content from Blog B, when a new entry to Blog B is posted) thanks to some of the new features of MT 3.0.

More infomation to come as design and development progress.