Tag: blog

Article dans Migros Magazine [fr]

J’ai été interviewée pour un article dans Migros Magazine. Cet article est maintenant en ligne. Quelques mots de bienvenue à  ceux qui arriveraient sur ce weblog via Migros Magazine, et un commentaire ou deux sur Climb to the Stars et les weblogs en général.

[en] I was interviewed for an article in a widely distributed swiss weekly newspaper. A few words of welcome to all the extra visitors it is bringing here these days.

Avec quelques jours de retard (la faute à  une petite expédition parisienne), je tiens à  souhaiter la bienvenue à  tous les lecteurs de Migros Magazine qui me font l’honneur d’une petite visite. Eh oui, vous êtes assez nombreux pour ne pas passer inaperçus dans mes statistiques de visites!

Une heure et demie d’interview en face-à -face au Manora avec un sympathique journaliste, puis trois heures de séance photo avec une non moins sympathique photographe, et voici le résultat: Née pour bloguer.

Je suis très très contente de cet article. Le journaliste a fort bien su restituer l’esprit de mes paroles. Je commence (mine de rien) à  avoir une certaine habitude des journalistes et des articles, et je dois vous dire que ce n’est pas toujours le cas. De plus, il a même réussi à  accéder à  ma demande (un peu pinailleuse, je l’admets fort volontiers, mais bon, on ne se refait pas!) de veiller à  ce que mon prénom ne soit pas affublé d’un accent qu’il ne possède pas (on est née britannique ou on ne l’est pas).

Donc, chers visiteurs qui découvrez peut-être les blogs, voici un peu le menu: pour creuser chronologiquement dans mes écrits, amusez-vous avec les liens indiquant mois et année que vous trouverez dans la colonne de droite. Plus intéressant peut-être, utilisez également le classement par catégories (je dois encore y mettre un peu d’ordre, un blog comme le mien étant un chantier perpétuel, mais il y a déjà  de quoi vous divertir pendant un bon moment). Pour les plus aventureux d’entre vous, tapez un mot-clé dans le champ ‘Search’, frappez une fois (mais avec légèreté) la touche Entrée de votre clavier, et retenez votre souffle en attendant de voir ce que vous offre le Grand Oracle.

Un accessoire courant des blogs que vous ne trouverez pas ici, c’est le fameux blogroll, la liste de liens vers d’autre weblogs que le blogueur lit ou apprécie. J’en avais une, mais elle a passé à  la trappe lorsque j’ai refait le site: trop compliquée à  maintenir, elle ne rendait jamais compte de mes lectures et menaçait de devenir bien trop longue si j’y incluais toutes mes fréquentations blogosphériques.

Si l’envie de découvrir d’autres weblogs vous prenait toutefois, je vous aiguillerais sans hésiter chez Laurent Gloaguen, qui, outre un blog tout à  fait recommandable, possède une jolie liste de liens vers d’autres weblogs également recommandables. De là , commencez vos périgrinations, mais n’oubliez pas de quitter l’écran lorsque viendra le temps de souper!

Vous désirez vous lancer? Je ne peux que vous encourager à  tenter l’aventure. Si ça vous plaît, tant mieux (n’oubliez pas de faire enregistrer votre blog chez BlogTree et de m’indiquer comme blog parent si c’est le cas!) et sinon, vous aurez au moins essayé…

Comment on fait? J’allais oublier! Plusieurs solutions s’offrent à  vous, et à  moins que vous soyez déjà  un peu technicien dans l’âme, je vous propose de vous diriger illico du côté des solutions hébergées (gratuites ou non, cela dépendra de votre budget): Blogsome, TypePad, Mon-blog.org, ViaBloga… et bien d’autres encore.

Enfin, si vous désirez de la lecture “papier” sur le phénomène et son histoire, je vous recommande de vous procurer Blog Story. J’ai commencé à  le lire et il me fait très bonne impression. (Voir aussi les critiques écrites sur ce livre.)

Voilà , je vous laisse pour le moment. Comme toujours quand je reviens d’une rencontre de weblogueurs, j’ai des tas de choses à  écrire, mais ça va venir petit à  petit ces prochains jours (et pas seulement en français).

Encore merci de votre visite!

Hosted Blog Platform Test Write-Up [en]

I’ve tested 13 free platforms, and this is a write-up on the experiment. The ones I preferred were Blogsome, running Wordpress, and Mon-Blog (in French), running DotClear.

Edit 26.12.2006: For those of you trying to choose a free blogging platform, I’ve now been recommending WordPress.com without hesitation for some time now.

As the people I hang out with on Freenode are painfully aware of by now, I’ve been on a blog platform testing binge. In total, 13 free* platforms tested. Here is a quick list of my test blogs — you’ll find detailed comments about each platform on the test blogs themselves, and a general overview below. The ones I preferred were Blogsome and Mon-Blog.

The platforms were tested with FireFox 1.0 on OSX, Javascript enabled, set to block pop-ups and force links opening a new window to open in the initial tab/window (we’ll see this setting seems to have caused problems with many visual editors).

My main interest was to have a peek at what existed (personal curiosity) and see if it was possible to claim the blogs on Technorati. What follows is an account of my personal user experience on these different platforms. It is not the result of a battery of systematic “benchmarking tests”, though here are some of the points I paid attention to:

  1. was it easy to create an account, or did I have to fight?
  2. how easy was it for me to sign back in, afterwards?
  3. overall, did I find the features I expect from a weblog? (note how subjective that is)
  4. how did writing a post go?
  5. could I add images?
  6. could I change the template?
  7. could I add links to my other test blogs? (linkroll management)
  8. could I claim the blog as mine at Technorati?
  9. did I bump into availability problems?

Lets get the last point over with first. I succeeded in claiming blogs on all platforms except three: NRJ blogs, Skyblog, and LiveJournal. The reason for that is that the last two platforms limit links in the blogroll to weblogs using the same platform. This prevented me from using the blogroll to add the Technorati code necessary to claiming the weblog.

Note, by the way, that I am talking about the free version of LiveJournal, as the paid version does not have this limitation. NRJ blogs, by far the worst platform amongst those tested, does not permit linking at all (even in posts!) I’m not even sure if it deserves to be called a “blogging platform”.

As far as linkrolls or blogrolls are concerned, ViaBloga gets top marks for their “almost-automatic linkrolling”. You can simply type in the URL of the blog/site you want to add, and it retrieves title and rss feed, and also creates a screenshot and thumbnail of the site. It really makes you want to add links to your sidebar. One-click blogrolling, if you like. Otherwise, most link management systems are pretty standard.

Some, like MSN Spaces, make you click “Add Link” between each links, instead of systematically presenting you with a form allowing you to add a link each time you go in link management. This is one of the minor but irritating usability problem which plague MSN Spaces. There are major ones too, but I won’t list them too (no paragraph breaks for me, login problems, timeout problems, clunky interface, ugly permalinks, horrible markup) — they are detailed on my test MSN Space.

Visual editors are neat when they work, but they are a great pain when they do not work. Because of my browser settings, I failed adding links to my posts at ViaBloga, for example. I also failed to add photographs at CanalBlog, HautEtFort, and 20six because of this. BlogSpot is clear enough about the fact you need an external service like Flickr if you want photos on your blog, and both LiveJournal and U-blog seem to fail the photo test for various reasons.

Both Skyblog and NRJ blogs are very limited blogging services, the latter being a very pale imitation of the former. Skyblog focuses on making it easy for teens to put photos on the web with brief comments, and, despite many other shortcomings (no permalinks, interface issues, server overload at peak times), I’m forced to admit it does it pretty well — which partly explains its success (it’s the main French language blog platform in blog numbers). The other services passed the photo test with more or less ease (don’t forget I’m a geek, so uploading a photo first, copying the URL and inserting it into a post isn’t an issue for me — it could be for some).

At some point, I had trouble connecting to the following services (or timeouts): Skyblog, MSN Spaces, and 20six (I can’t remember any others, but my memory might be failing me. NRJ blogs distinguishes itself by refusing to publish certain posts, or waiting a day or two before being so.

Now, before I get lost in random comments, I’ll give you a quick low-down on each of the solutions tested, as well as links to other people who have recently reviewed some of them.

Blogsome
  • Pros: WordPress, very easy to sign up
  • Cons: might need to be a bit of a techie at times

Being an avid and enthusiastic WordPress user, the idea of a hosted WordPress-powered blogging platform was very exciting to me. No bad surprises as I already knew the interface (I’m biased, of course), and no major bugs that couldn’t be addressed after posting about them in the forum. I didn’t try the visual editor there, but I assume it will make it more newbie-friendly. Definitely the platform I recommend for the moment.

MSN Spaces
  • Pros: none
  • Cons: way too beta (buggy)

After Roland Tanglao, Robert Scoble, and a dirty word test at Boing Boing, let me add my two cents by saying I am unenthusiastic about MSN Spaces. It’s still way too rough around the edges. Not usable as far as I’m concerned.

LiveJournal
  • Pros: community, well-established
  • Cons: lots of settings, limitations of free accounts (no Technorati claim possible)

Well, LiveJournal is LiveJournal, and I know that to get a good idea of what it can do you need the paid version. My first impression was that it seemed to have lots of options in the admin part (a bit confusing), but other than that, it was pretty easy to get going and posting. Google will point out to you many more complete reviews of LiveJournal, so I’ll stop here. My main point was, however, to see if I could claim a free LiveJournal as my blog at Technorati, and that was not possible (short of adding the code via JavaScript in the head of the page, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to go that far for my test.)

BlogSpot
  • Pros: well-established, nice admin interface
  • Cons: lack of categories, trackbacks, and image hosting

No big surprise here. I used Blogger for years (though not BlogSpot), and I liked the interface I found during my test a lot. They should wake up and get categories and trackbacks though. We’ll be in 2005 in less than 3 weeks. A good, solid option for people who can live without categories, trackbacks, and hosted photographs.

ViaBloga*
  • Pros: great link management, wiki-like features, active development
  • Cons: some usability issues and minor bugs; not free

ViaBloga has many good features. The “configurable blocs” system (invented by Stéphane for Joueb.com), which allows you to easily move about elements of your page, is just great (once you’ve figured it out). The platform has real wiki-like capability via keywords, and “cross-links”, which work like a kind of automatic trackbacking system. On the shortcomings side, I would say that although the features are great, the usability and user-friendliness of the administration aspect, which is a little confusing, could still be improved. I’m not a beginner, and it took me quite some time to figure out a certain number of things (and I know Stéphane and Delphine, so it’s easy for me to get direct help). And no, it’s not just because I’m “used” to other systems — I should still be able to figure things out easily.

Joueb
  • Pros: well-established, community
  • Cons: community (!), some usability problems (cf. ViaBloga)

Joueb is ViaBloga’s community-oriented little sister. The first French language hosted blogging platform seemed to me a little more kludgy than ViaBloga, but there is a happy community there, and Stéphane is an active developper, always ready for feedback and making improvements to his babies. If you’re looking for a French weblogging platform with a strong community, I’d say this is a good choice.

Skyblog
  • Pros: great if all you want is upload your phone photos, spit out a comment, and allow people to comment (though Flickr does it better)
  • Cons: no permalinks or trackbacks, limited server availability, teen-sms-talk and link-whoring comments

I remember when Skyblog was launched, the francoblogosphere was boiling over in horror at this kind of bastardized blogging solution where teens posted pics of their friends and commented in sms-speak. (Sorry, can’t find any posts right now, will add links later if I do.) As I said, Skyblog does not do much, but it makes publishing photos and short texts easy, and it’s pretty successfully targeted at a certain audience. My pupils have Skyblogs and they are obviously all the rage. Lots of photos, hardly any text, and comments abound which either say “ur 2 kool”, “u suck”, or “com visit my sky http://somecoolnick.sykblog.com/”. Not very interesting as a blogging platform, as far as I’m concerned, but obviously successful.

NRJ blogs
Edit 18.12.04: it seems confirmed that NRJ blogs hasn’t launched yet, and Google caught them by surprise.

  • Pros: none
  • Cons: sucks (I mean, some posts don’t even get posted, and finding your blog URL demands a thorough investigation)

I’ll say it loud and clear, NRJ blogs suck, and as a pretty obvious consequence they aren’t taking off really well: less than 50 blogs created since they launched (and NRJ is a major popular radio!) However, I can’t find a link on their home page, so there is a possibility this was a preliminary soft launch. In any case, I’m getting my few days of fame as an NRJ blog star. Neuro, Mr_Peer, and Kwyxz also tried NRJ blogs and were all but impressed. See their posts or my test blog for detailed complaints.

CanalBlog
  • Pros: has the usual set of features you expect from a blog
  • Cons: admin interface can feel a little rude at times

CanalBlog was a pleasant surprise. The admin interface takes over your browser, but it works pretty well and it’s user friendly enough in a “MS-Office-lookalike” way. The layouts you can choose from are clean, and they have comments and trackbacks. They have ads, though. I’d say they are a viable platform (er… a viable choice of platform).

HautEtFort
  • Pros: nice admin interface
  • Cons: no trackbacks

Too bad they don’t have trackbacks! I like what I’ve seen of the admin interface, nice and clean and uncluttered. As many other platforms do, they force me to go through the home page to log in (which I dislike), but honestly, like CanalBlog (and maybe more, if it wasn’t for the lack of trackbacks), I’d say they are an honest French language blogging platform.

20six
  • Pros: has the set of features you expect from a blog
  • Cons: ugly, cluttered admin interface, server downtime

I really didn’t like 20six. I find their layouts ugly, the admin interface is hell, and their server was unavailable for hours at one point when I was about to do my photo upload test. Even though they know what trackbacks are, I wouldn’t recommend them (go CanalBlog instead).

U-blog
  • Pros: community, features more or less ok
  • Cons: probably doomed

Well, I’ve spoken a lot about U-blog already, but more in a blogo-political context. When there weren’t so many French language blogging platforms around, U-blog used to be my recommendation. On trying it now, I can’t help saying that it feels a little broken, or abandoned. I was faced with an error when trying to upload a picture, and some of the links in the admin section tell you that this or that feature is only available with the paid version. Given the platform doesn’t seem in active development anymore, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Mon-Blog
  • Pros: DotClear (clean, beautiful, all functionalities)
  • Cons: launched three days ago

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, was a last-minute and very pleasant surprise. Mon-Blog is based on the weblog engine DotClear, which I have long held in high regard. For the first time, I’ve had a chance to see the DotClear admin interface, and let me tell you, it’s as beautiful as the themes they provide to dress your weblog in. Nothing really missing feature-wise, though it seems templates won’t really be customisable at Mon-Blog for the moment. The service has just launched and some creases need ironing out, but the forums and the developer are reactive. Just go for it. This is clearly my first choice for a French blogging platform.

I hope this will have been of interest to some. Thanks for your attention, and I’m glad to be over with the testing!

Edit 16:20: I’ve just add quick pros/cons bullet points (thanks to acrobat for the suggestion and the proof-reading).

Edit 13.12.04: ViaBloga was included in this survey although it is not a free platform. It is free for non-profit organisations, however. The mistake is mine — being an early tester, I was offered six months free, and in my mind had not switched ViaBloga to the “paying platforms” category. See my comment and Stéphane’s on the subject.

Ferme à  weblogs sous DotClear [fr]

Si vous voulez ouvrir un weblog en français, ne ratez pas Mon-Blog.org

[en] A really neat hosted blogging platform in French. Runs DotClear.

Si vous cherchez une plateforme “hébergée” pour ouvrir votre blog, allez jeter un oeil du côté de Mon-Blog.org.

C’est tout frais (un peu vert encore, mais l’aide sur les forums est réactive), c’est beau, c’est DotClear sans l’installation. J’y ai ouvert un weblog test, allez voir.

Merci Julien pour l’info — tu as su comment?

Testing Hosted Blog Solutions [en]

I’ve set up a few test blogs on various hosted blogging farms. Nasty feedback for some of them.

[fr] J'ai ouvert des blogs-tests à  divers endroits qui offrent blogs et hébergement. Voici une liste de mes blogs-tests avec quelques commentaires.

I’ve started setting up test blogs here and there to try out hosted blogging solutions, as I’m eager to encourage people to start blogging, but I’m aware that getting server space, a domain, and installing WordPress isn’t something the casual user will do.

So, very brief review here, more details on the blogs themselves (which tend to be lists of complaints and problems I ran into while functioning in my lazy-lambda-user mode).

ViaBloga

My test blog is Chez Steph. ViaBloga is a cousin of Joueb.com, minus the community emphasis, which appears repulsive to some. (Think LiveJournal.)

I’ve run into a few bugs and usability problems there, which have always been quickly responded to and addressed by the staff. I should add that I’ve known Delphine and Stéphane for quite some time now, and that the latter personally asked me if I was interested in testing ViaBloga when they were starting with it.

ViaBloga has got wiki-like features I haven’t really managed to get into. One thing that really has me enthusiastic (and I discovered that today) is the list management system. Just add the url, it fetches the title of the link, the rss feed, and creates a thumbnail. Here is an example of what it can look like — look at Delphine’s blogroll, too. I’d love to see something like this rolled into a plugin for WordPress — it makes me feel like adding all sorts of links to my blog.

Skyblog

I’ve decided to go public with my skyblog, and I hope you appreciate my courage. Skyblog is clearly aimed at a very young public (teens), and even the language in the admin interface reflects that. Many of my pupils have skyblogs on which they post photos of their friends and make brief comments in sms-talk.

I find the blogs themselves ugly, and the admin interface is kludgy, though it seems it works, because my pupils always complain that WordPress is so hard to use and that skyblog is so much better and easier. One thing to be said, skyblog makes it really easy to upload photographs, so many of these skyblogs ressemble a vaguely commented photo album.

I hardly posted anything to my test blog, and upon checking it out again today I was amazed at the amount of (a) visits (nearly 1000) it had had, and (b) nasty aggressive comments complete strangers had left me. I’ve added a photo of my cat, I wonder what the reaction to that will be.

Blogsome

Blogsome is clearly my favourite. Here is my Blogsome test blog, complete with a Pink Lilies theme. It took me less than 30 seconds to open my weblog (a username, an e-mail address, and a title for the weblog — done.)

It’s WordPress, so I’m in known territory, and I’ve been busy posting bugs and comments in the forums. Blogsome is still young, and my biggest gripe for the moment is the caching problems — for example, changes to the template or links are not immediately reflected on the blog (though “publishing” a post helps).

If you’re looking for a free hosted blogging solution right now, Blogsome is the one I would recommend, along with Blogger, of course. I used Blogger for years, before Blogspot existed. I left mainly because it lacked certain features I wanted (like categories) — and I’d say that still now, it’s a little bit poor on the feature side. But it’s a good, reliable service which has been around long enough to be trusted without too many second thoughts.

MSN Spaces

I just opened a test blog at MSN Spaces. My first two posts complain quite a bit (my biggest gripe for the moment being that it doesn’t convert line breaks into paragraphs — a showstopper, if you ask me). My positive experience was changing the template — that worked fine.

So, if you’re interested, keep an eye on those blogs. I’m always happy to try things out and complain about all the problems I run into.

Edit 06.12.04: Got another test blog at NRJ blogs — though in my opinion you can barely call it a blog. I had to log out to figure out what my blog address was, and it seems totally impossible to make outgoing links. Keep an eye on the individual test blogs for comments on the different systems.

Edit 2: OK, got one at CanalBlog too. The admin interface completely takes over the browser, but it seems really usable (I didn’t run into any problems!) and the default layout is clean enough. Just an ad banner on top. That’s enough for tonight, folks!

Edit 3, 07.12.04: Add a 20six.fr test blog to the list. Follow-up post coming.

Edit 4: HautEtFort, and I think I’m done with creating test blogs. Gah.

Edit 5, 08.12.04: Hopefully the last bunch, but you never know. I seem to be suffering from some obsessive-compulsive blog opening disorder. LiveJournal, BlogSpot, Joueb and U-blog. Have I forgotten someone? I count 12 test blogs. Now let me go and update all my blogrolls.

Edit 6: A fresh new French service, open since yesterday: Mon-Blog.org, based on DotClear.

Paris Carnet [fr]

Je serai certainement présente au Paris Carnet du 5 janvier.

[en] I'll certainly be present on January 5th in Paris for the weblogger meetup "Paris Carnet".

Chaque mois ou presque, je lis les comptes-rendus (dans un nom composé, l’élément s’accorde si c’est un nom ou un adjectif et si le sens le permet — oups navrée, déformation professionelle, mais c’est le sujet d’orthographe du moment) de Paris Carnet et je regrette de ne pas habiter plus près de la capitale française.

C’est donc (quasi!) décidé, j’irai passer quelques jours à  Paris début janvier, histoire de montrer le bout de mes oreilles au Paris Carnet du 5 janvier. Il paraît même que Guillermito sera là  — raison de plus!

Et vous, y serez-vous? On a le temps, mais il faudra aussi que j’organise mon hébergement. Si vous avez un lit propre et non-fumeur (de préférence) à  me proposer, faites signe!

(En passant, j’ai créé un canal Paris Carnet sur TopicExchange.com. Il suffit d’envoyer un trackback à  cet adresse lorsque vous écrivez un billet concernant Paris Carnet pour qu’il apparaisse sur la page.)

Des weblogs à  l'école [fr]

Weblogs à  l’école (8VSG). Le projet a démarré et peut être suivi sur la Centrale des weblogs (le weblog du projet).

[en] I'm doing weblogs in school with two of my classes. The project blog is open, but in French, unfortunately.

Le “Projet weblogs” a démarré la semaine passée avec mes deux classes de 8VSG. Toutes les informations sur le déroulement de cette aventure se trouveront dans la Centrale des weblogs, le weblog de projet.

Pendant qu’on est dans le sujet, ne ratez pas cet intéressant article Blogs et enseignement (via Corinne, via MediaTIC, merci Ollie.)

Scripts for a WordPress Weblog Farm [en]

A first step to WordPress-farming: a shell script and a PHP script which allow you to easily install a whole lot of WordPress weblogs in only a few minutes (I installed over 30 in less than 5 minutes). Scripts require adapting to your environment, of course.

Update 03.11.06: Batiste made me realise I should point the many people landing here in the search of multi-user WordPress to WordPress MU. All that I describe in this post is very pretty, but nowadays completely obsolete.

Here is the best solution I’ve managed to come up with in half a day to finally install over 30 WordPress weblogs in under 5 minutes (once the preparation work was done).

A shell script copies the image of a WordPress install to multiple directories and installs them. A PHP script then changes a certain number of options and settings in each weblog. It can be used later to run as a “patch” on all installed weblog if a setting needs modifying globally.

Here are the details of what I did.

I first downloaded and unzipped WordPress into a directory.

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
mv wordpress wp-farm-image

I cleaned up the install (removing wp-comments-popup.php and the import*.php files, for example), added a language directory (as I’m wp-farming in French) and modified index.php to my liking; in particular, I edited the import statement for the stylesheet so that it looked like this:

@import url( http://edublogs.net/styles/toni/style.css );

The styles directory is a directory in which I place a bunch of WordPress styles. I don’t need the style switcher capability, but I do need to styles. Later, users will be able to change styles simply by editing that line in their index.php (or I can do it for them).

Another very important thing I did was rename wp-config-sample.php to config-sample and fill in the database and language information. I replaced wp_ by xxx_ so that I had $table_prefix = 'xxx_';.

To make it easier to install plugins for everyone, correct the language files, and edit whatever may be in wp-images, I moved these three directories out of the image install and replaced them with symbolic links, taking inspiration from Shelley’s method for installing multiple WordPress weblogs.

mv image/wp-content common
mv image/wp-images common
mv image/wp-includes/languages common
ln -s common/wp-content image/wp-content
ln -s common/wp-images image/wp-images
ln -s common/languages image/wp-includes/languages

I also added an .htaccess file (after some painful tweaking on a test install).

Once my image was ready, I compiled a list of all the users I had to open weblogs for (one username per line) in a file named names.txt, which I placed in the root directory all the weblog subfolders were going to go in.

I then ran this shell script (many thanks to all those of you who helped me with it — you saved my life):

for x in `cat names.txt`
do
cp -rv /home/edublogs/wp-farm/image/ $x
cat $x/wp-config.php | sed "s/xxx/${x}/" > config.tmp
mv config.tmp $x/wp-config.php
wget http://st-prex.edublogs.net/$x/wp-admin/install.php?step=1
wget http://st-prex.edublogs.net/$x/wp-admin/install.php?step=2
wget http://st-prex.edublogs.net/$x/wp-admin/install.php?step=3
done

This assumes that my WordPress install image was located in /home/edublogs/wp-farm/image/ and that the weblog addresses were of the form http://st-prex.edublogs.net/username/.

This script copies the image to a directory named after the user, edits wp-config to set the table prefix to the username, and then successively wgets the install URLs to save me from loading them all in my browser.

After this step, I had a bunch of installed but badly configured weblogs (amongst other things, as I short-circuited the form before the third install step, they all think their siteurl is example.com).

Entered the PHP patch which tweaks settings directly in the database. I spent some time with a test install and PHPMyAdmin to figure out which fields I wanted to change and which values I wanted to give them, but overall it wasn’t too complicated to do. You’ll certainly need to heavily edit this file before using it if you try and duplicate what I did, but the basic structure and queries should remain the same.

I edited the user list at the top of the file, loaded it in my browser, and within less than a few seconds all my weblogs were correctly configured. I’ll use modified versions of this script later on when I need to change settings for all the weblogs in one go (for example, if I want to quickly install a plugin for everyone).

In summary:

  1. compile list of users
  2. prepare image install
  3. run shell script
  4. run PHP script

If you try to do this, I suggest you start by putting only two users in your user list, and checking thoroughly that everything installs and works correctly before doing it for 30 users. I had to tweak the PHP script quite a bit until I had all my settings correctly configured.

Hope this can be useful to some!

Update 29.09.2005: WARNING! Hacking WordPress installs to build a farm like this one is neat, but it gets much less neat when your weblog farm is spammed with animal porn comments. You then realise (oh, horror!) that none of the anti-spam plugins work on your beautiful construction, so you weed them out by hand as you can, armed with many a MySQL query. And then the journalist steps in — because, frankly, “sex with dogs” on a school website is just too good to be true. And then you can spend half a day writing an angry reaction to the shitty badly-researched article.

My apologies for the bad language. Think of how you’re going to deal with spam beforehand when you’re setting up a school blog project.

Bloggy Friday: Lausanne, 03.09.04 [fr]

Rencontre de weblogueurs vendredi 3 septembre à  Lausanne. Venez nombreux et faites circuler l’info! Merci de vous inscrire dans les commentaires pour simplifier la réservation.

[en] Weblogger meet-up planned for Friday September 3rd in Lausanne. Please come and join us, and pass the announcement around! Thanks for letting me know in the comments if you're coming, so that I can book the place.

Comme début septembre approche à  grands pas, je prends le risque d’une initiative non-démocratique pour annoncer que le premier Bloggy Friday aura lieu vendredi 3 septembre dès 19 heures au Café Romand, à  Lausanne. (Virginie, ton repas est offert.)

Merci de vous inscrire dans les commentaires afin que je puisse réserver, et faites circuler l’info! Cette rencontre est ouvert à  tout weblogueur qui s’y rendra — que vous soyez autochtone ou de passage pour l’occasion.

Sinon, je vis en ermite pour cause de rentrée des classes. Peut-être plus sur le sujet dans quelque temps, mais là , j’ai encore des cours d’anglais à  préparer… donc pas de panique (ni de mauvais sentiments) si je n’ai pas répondu à  vos mails ou appels 🙂

Inscriptions (mis à  jour régulièrement):

Requirements for a WordPress Installer Script [en]

To install 30+ WordPress blogs on a server, it would be nice to have an automatic installation script. Here is a list of what this script should do for me.

[fr] Pour installer plus de trente weblogs WordPress sur mon serveur, il serait utile d'avoir un script d'installation en PHP. Quelqu'un a offert d'en écrire un pour moi. Ce billet récapitule ce que devrait faire un tel script, de mon point de vue (installation et configuration de WordPress en fonction d'un nom d'utilisateur).

As you may know, I’m shortly going to install 30+ WordPress blogs on my server. Noderat on #wordpress kindly offered to have a go at writing a PHP script to automate WP installs. I sent him this list of what the ideal script should be able to do for me, but on second thoughts, I’m posting it here so that everybody may see it. Of course, if you know of an existing script which already does this, let me know!

  • take $username + $password as input
  • install wordpress in a subdir named “$username”, using table prefix “$username_” and with an extra user (on top of admin) named “$username” (password=”$password”), user level 3
  • mysql user should be “$username” too (password “$password” also), with grants only on the tables belonging to this weblog
  • set permalink scheme to
    /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ for monthlies and /categories for categories
  • generate .htaccess in directory, based on this template, with “blog” replaced by “$username” everywhere
  • in wp-config: define (‘WPLANG’, ‘fr’) and edit appropriate lines
  • wp-includes/languages and wp-content/plugins should be symlinked to directories I can specify in the script
  • blog admin password should be reset to something I can specify in the script

I should be able to edit the script config file to provide mysql root user + pass, wordpress database name.

It would also be interesting if the script was built in such a way that it could be further modified/developed to allow installation of blogs on separate subdomains rather than subfolders. From the point of view of the filesystem the blogs live in, this wouldn’t change much — but some extra WordPress options would need editing (e.g. blog address), as well as the Apache and Bind config files necessary to set up the subdomain. This is not mandatory, but could be useful at some point (if we’re thinking in the line of WordPress-farming).

Rencontre régulière de blogueurs romands [fr]

Je propose une rencontre romande de weblogueurs, tous les 1er mercredis du mois, à  Lausanne. Prochaine rencontre le 1er septembre, venez nombreux!

[en] I suggest a regular meet-up for bloggers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland (and others, if they are around), the first Wednesday of each month in Lausanne. Next meet-up on September 1st!

Bon, ça fait un moment que ça me démange, la dernière LBN a eu lieu il y a bien longtemps, et suite à  un petit sondage avec quelques autres blogueurs “romands ou habitant la romandie“, je me lance.

Sur le modèle de Paris Carnet ou des rencontres YULBlog, je propose qu’on se retrouve:

  • Le premier mercredivendredi de chaque mois, dès 19h (20h?)
  • A Café Romand à  la Place St-François à  Lausanne (c’est bien central — oui, on en a débattu hier soir, et les autres n’étaient pas lausannois!)

Ouvert à  tous, bien entendu, blogueurs résidants ou de passage, sans contraintes de régularité, etc. Faudra juste qu’on organise de vagues “pré-inscriptions” sur une page wiki ou dans les commentaires pour que je puisse réserver.

Reste à  trouver un nom. Jérôme nous a avoué ne s’être jamais senti vraiment concerné par les Lemanic Bloggers Night. J’ouvre donc ici un concours pour trouver un nom sympa, potable, explicite mais néanmoins rigolo pour ces rencontres. A celui ou celle dont on retiendra la proposition, on offrira gracieusement bières et croûtes au fromage (ou autre) lors de la prochaine rencontre (plus toute la gloire qui va avec).

La prochaine rencontre ne sera donc pas demain (ça fait un peu court!) mais le 1er3 septembre. Vous pouvez déjà  vous pré-inscrire dans les commentaires, en attendant qu’on se décide sur une page de wiki…