Radio Pop Action Streams Profile [36KB .zip archive]

As you’d expect, it’s a profile for Action Streams that will add the radio programmes you ‘pop’ to your ‘lifestream’.

To install the profile, download and unzip the archive, edit the file ‘config.yaml’, replacing the word ‘Username’ with your own Radio Pop username, and upload config.yaml and radiopop.png to the right places on your server, eg.:

/cgi-bin/mt/plugins/radiopop/config.yaml

/web/public/mt-static/plugins/radiopop/radiopop.png

Then you’ll need to activate the profile in the usual way, by logging into Movable Type, navigating to the Other Profiles section, clicking ‘Add Profile’ and choosing ‘Radio Pop’ from the drop-down menu.

To get the little Radio Pop logo to show up in your lifestream, you’ll need to edit your Action Streams CSS file. Assuming you’re using the default templates that ship with the plugin, adding a declaration like this should do it:

    .service-radiopop {
        background-image: url(http://yourwebsite.com/mt-static/plugins/radiopop/images/radiopop.png);
        }
    

If you’d like the profile to track everything you listen to via Radio Pop, rather than just the programmes you pop, change line 25 of config.yaml from

url: 'http://www.radiopop.co.uk/users/Username/pops.rss'

to

url: 'http://www.radiopop.co.uk/users/Username/listens.rss'

All this messy editing business isn’t ideal, but I couldn’t work out how to get the profile to ask for your Radio Pop username when you activate it, then configure itself accordingly. If I do get around to making a cleverer version, I’ll update this page straight away.

And, just in case anyone is wondering what on earth I’ve been wittering about, here’s what happens on my homepage when I pop a programme:

1. To be honest, it’s pretty likely that I’m the only person in the whole wide world who uses both Radio Pop and Action Streams, but I thought I’d make the files available on the offchance I’m not alone!↩

1. Get some simplified Movable Type templates. I used Chris Vannoy’s Simpler Movable Type templates , which are stripped of all the gubbins included in the default templates to ensure compatability with LiveJournal and TypePad.

2. Link your templates to files on your server. This speeds things up no end, since you have all the features of your text editor to play with, and can save and rebuild templates without having to faff about navigating to them inside Movable Type. This also makes it easy to quickly back up your templates via FTP before making major changes.

3. Use TextWrangler. Since it has FTP built in, editing those linked template files is a doddle, and being able to access them all in the Documents Drawer makes it easy to move chunks of template code between templates. It’s free, too. (Also, John Gruber’s release of his CSS Syntax Checker for BBEdit and TextWrangler was a timely one for me. It does what it says on the tin.)

4. Break everything into tiny little pieces. You’re likely to be tinkering a lot, so it’s a good idea to break down your templates into reusable chunks, either by making use of Movable Type’s Template Modules or by keeping snippets in custom Index or Archive templates and including them with PHP. (I did the latter while setting up the site, as it means less rebuilding, but will probably go modular when I’ve finished the enforced redesign.)

5. Install SafariStand. Another timely release, and another freebie. The latest version of SafariStand adds a sidebar to Safari with thumbnails of every tab you have open, which you can reorder, in the manner of OmniWeb. Very handy for keeping track of all the pages of your site you have open, ready to be refreshed each time you make a change, and keeping them separate from the various parts of the Movable Type interface you need open.

Obvious stuff, maybe, but since I started with the default templates, randomly switching between editing in SubEthaEdit and within Movable Type, using Transmit for FTP and hitting the W3C CSS validator every five minutes (when I could find it in the jumble of open tabs and windows in Safari), I thought some future searcher might find the above handy.

1. Log into MT
2. Click on your username in the top navbar to go to your profile
3. Scroll down to the bottom where you see “API Password”
4. Input the password of your choice and save. For security reasons, it should be different from your normal password
5. Use that password in your client software

I imagine the same goes for Ecto and other remote clients.

The above instructions are taken from the XML-RPC and Atom client setup page in the documentation for the beta version of Movable Type 3.2. Funnily enough, the beta documentation would seem to be the best resource available, since the official User Manual for 3.2 is, er, still in beta.

From the TypeKey page linked above:

> What is it good for?

> TypeKey enables you to verify and protect your identity on the web. Enabling TypeKey on your own site increases accountability for the content that appears on your weblog and stops comment spam cold.

Not any more it doesn’t. The screenshot below shows a comment, since deleted, left on this post, by a spammer registered with TypeKey as goldyy. (The little icon next to the poster’s name indicates that they’re signed in with TypeKey.)

I’ve already had one scary moment - Safari really doesn’t like the new UI, and I had to install mysterious things with names like DateTimePPExtra.pm that didn’t come with the upgrade package - so hopefully this entry will appear on the front page without causing any hideous problems. If you spot anything untoward, do send an email.

I’ll update this placeholder later with a few thoughts on the new software.