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Content management

I find it hard to believe that I haven't written on this topic before, but if I haven't, it's about time. I'm gone completely mad on content management systems. I just love Movable Type - starting my first blog was a huge impact on my web site and all of my web site creation, really.

In November last year or so I started a project I had thought about a lot. My game site would get a content management system. It's just too weary to write HTML pages with an editor, FTP them to the server and so on. Making changes to the layout of the pages requires changing every page, one at the time... That's something I just don't find that interesting. It also binds me to one computer, if I want to change my pages I must be on my computer where I store them.

That's all different now. Instead of my computer, the articles I've written (game reviews and other related stuff) are now stored in a MySQL database. Instead of serving the pages dynamically from the database, which is the standard option, I adopted the mechanism used by Movable Type. After I've finished editing a page, I build it from the database. Building creates a HTML file that can be accessed as usual.

This approach has certain advantages. Rebuilding is a pain, kind of, but I can control when the changes I make appear on the public site. If a database is down for some reason, the pages are still accessible. Also, as the contents of the pages change quite rarely, building the pages saves time - serving static HTML pages is faster than building the same pages on the fly every time. I'm not sure if processor time is really an issue, but neither is disk space.

Updating the pages is a breeze, now. Writing new reviews is more fun, as I just fill a template and I don't have to worry about doing the HTML stuff, I can focus on the content. Playing with new layouts is also more fun, as I can apply the changes to all hundred or so reviews I have at the same time.

Because I'm using completely custom-built software, I can do whatever I want. If I need new functionality, I'll just whip it up. Adding something is often done in no time, as writing stuff in PHP is fairly straightforward - I've had lots of practise.

Most of the additions work towards more automation. Recently I, for example, reduced the amount of HTML coding I need to do by adding easier wiki-like codes for creating headlines in the reviews. I'll probably remove most need for HTML code eventually. I also made the automatical creation of indexes possible, so I don't have to maintain them by hand.

I just love my new system. Actually, I love it so much that my once-so-important music review site is slowly dying - it's been a year from last update. Well, there are other reasons, but lack of content management system is one of them. Why I haven't done such a system is another thing - there can be seen my lack of motivation to do anything with that site. I did add an ad banner on the site, though... Anything to make my creative work create money.

30.03.2005 klo 15:13 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Incredibles and Sky Captain

The Incredibles: how conservative can a super-family be? Dad's superstrong, mom's super-flexible. Son has lightning speed, daughter turns invisible. Boring! However, the movie was rather brilliant nonetheless. I just loved it's style and graphic design, it's a brilliant job. It was also hilarious, with lots of laughs stemming from the action, not words. Highly recommended!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was another thing. Filmed completely against a blue screen, the movie looked bizarre. It reached for certain old-fashioned style, and captured it perfectly. Still, it looks a bit alienating perhaps. The plot is a classic adventure movie stuff and thus quite old-fashioned as well. I don't know - it's certainly worth seeing just for the unique style, but I wouldn't still consider it a top-tier movie.

28.03.2005 klo 14:48 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Ring 2

Large movie theatre full of idiots: giggling girls, jackass guys - both talk through movie, which is worse, I can't tell. From now on, we'll stick to smaller theatres and untypical screening times.

Decent movie, much better than Ringu 2 but inferior to original Ring which we loved. Not as scary, but this one certainly had it's moments. There was also pretty heavy stuff in the end - Rachel is faced with a very tough task in the end. There's also really weird deer, which was odd, in a good way (and not hilariously funny, as some seem to think).

Ring 2 is worth seeing, if you enjoyed Ring and can keep your expectations low enough.

25.03.2005 klo 09:43 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Sad state of album promotion

I understand not everyone speaks or writes fluent English. However, if I was in a position where I'd have to send lots of promotional information to receivers around the world, I'd put some effort to writing well.

Here's an example I got from Austrian CCP Records. "The songs are very varied but very catchy and will be hooked in your auditory canals, although they are a manifest of hardness. Thy Nemesis are still immune against commerce and will always stand for the old spirit of Black Metal."

I mean, that might sound perfectly alright in German, but in English it's just silly. And what's that, the band's still immune to commerce? How on earth they've gone and published their album and even try to sell it to people, then?

I think the most outrageous claim so far was made of Entwine's album, which was declared as a superbly original masterpiece - which was simply a ok-if-not-exceptional attempt to ride on HIM's success, with absolutely nothing original about it.

24.03.2005 klo 09:45 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Blog spam control

My anti-spam combat system has two new weapons. I read Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse (New anti-spam plugins) and found two new plugins for Movable Type.

First one is Chad Everett's MT-Moderate, which adds TrackBack moderation to Movable Type. That's neat. Perhaps that will block the TrackBacks that go through MT-Blacklist from showing up, as they are an embarrassment for me - most of them are nasty porn, which I don't want in my blog.

Second simple and useful tool is MT-Ban-Numeric-Entities, which blocks all comments with characters replaced with HTML entities. Blocking is the way to go, as that's almost 100% certain sign of spam.

21.03.2005 klo 16:45 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)

Village

Earlier this week we watched M. Night Shymalan's The Village. It was a curious choice, as Johanna had already seen it and spoiled the plot to me (by my own request). We watched it still, and why not - it's a good movie.

Good, indeed, and not exceptional. The basic idea of the movie (which I will not spoil for you) is interesting. It wouldn't stand for closer scrutiny, but if you don't think too much about it, it's just fine. I also enjoyed the use of colours in the movie - it was a pleasure to watch.

The Shyamalan movies I've seen this far rank this way: The Village and Unbreakable are the best, then comes Sixth Sense and finally Signs in the bottom. None of the films are very good, but even Signs wasn't complete crap.

4.03.2005 klo 08:13 | Be the first to comment | TrackBack (0)