Creating a Sideblog in MT
Having seen some great “sideblogs” across the internet (Christine’s Crumbs, Movablog’s Asides, and many others) I’m inspired to add a Sideblog to my own MT-powered blog. Anders created a short “how-to” for those who are not using php and it has inspired me to create a php version here.
What is a Sideblog?
First, I guess it would be important to understand the “what” of the whole Sideblog phenomenon. A Sideblog could have many purposes, but is generally used as a quick link repository. For me, if I see something that was really interesting, but I didn’t feel connected enough to blog it - I would post it in the Sideblog. The Sideblog would then be included in the main blog.
How to create a Sideblog in MT
A Sideblog is basically a new weblog that gets included in your original blog. The steps are very painless. The creation steps are universal. The include steps presume you are using php. Anders has an SSI version of these instructions as well.
- Create a new blog in MT’s main menu. I’ve called mine “Sideblog”.
- Create a basic index template that shows just the html that you want to include in your main blog. I strongly suggest that you implement some type of limit on the number of entries displayed. For example:
<MTEntries lastn=”15″> <MTDateHeader> <br /> <$MTEntryDate format=”%Y-%m-%d”$>: <br /> </MTDateHeader> <$MTEntryBody$><br /> </MTEntries>
- Exit the Sideblog and edit the main index template for your existing main blog. We want to include the index page from the Sideblog, so we’ll use a php include. For example:
<?php include(”http://www.to-be-simple-just-use-full-web-path.com/sideblog/index.php”);
?>
That’s it! Now you can post to your Sideblog and (if you use the template I’ve shown) the 15 most recent posts will show up in your main blog.
How to use the Sideblog
There are a lot of variations on using the sideblog. Some people post the interesting link in the excerpt and use the extended entry to include a brief little message about it. I suggest posting the interesting link in the entry body and then any other comments I have on the link in the extended entry. That works for me in my testing. Your mileage may vary.
Variations
There are a lot of ways to “spice up” the sideblog. Since we just included the index template from the Sideblog into the main blog, all of our template tags are available to us. For example, Christine’s Crumbs show the number of comments for each Sideblog post as a link to the Sideblog entry itself. This is a great way to allow your visitors to interact with your Sideblog. If we modify the template in #2 above as follows to mimic Christine’s Crumbs:
<MTEntries lastn=”15″>
<$MTEntryBody convert_breaks=”0″$> (<a
href=”<$MTEntryLink$>”><$MTEntryCommentCount$></a>)<br />
</MTEntries>
You can additional spaces to separate the interesting link from the comment count or modify the code to include any detail you like. I like the way Christine’s works, so I plan to use the comment count on my own Sideblog.
That’s all there is to it. Again, we just include the MT tags directly from the index template of the Sideblog. There are other ways to accomplish this, but I think this is the simplest of them all!
July 1st, 2003 at 11:19 pm
Some things to do this summer: 26 Things: The International Photographic Scavenger HuntThe Mirror ProjectMake a Photography WeblogRe-design this siteMake my Linux ServerLearn JavaGet a JobRead moreUpdate: Create a sideblog…
July 2nd, 2003 at 12:21 am
can’t you do this with MTOtherBlog?
July 2nd, 2003 at 11:19 am
I just added a sideblog here (thanks to ) — it’s basically a running list of links that I find on the ‘net with a comment feature in the event such a link sparks discussion. I may change the name…
July 2nd, 2003 at 11:28 am
Yes, as David pointed out, OtherBlog is intended for those without Php or SSI. I haven’t worked with that plug-in, so I couldn’t say if you have to rebuild both blogs after creating an entry or not. IMHO, this is the no-muss, no-fuss way of doing it - and it is always updated.
July 2nd, 2003 at 11:36 am
And remember, if you dont want to convert all your files to .php you can add html as an extention to be parsed by the server as a php file.
July 2nd, 2003 at 12:33 pm
I’ve tried this and MTOtherBlog, and this is much , much faster!
July 2nd, 2003 at 1:26 pm
scriptygoddess SG has a cool way of adding a “sideblogs” to your blog. Something I have been considering for a while now…….
July 2nd, 2003 at 4:11 pm
I’ve implemented a solution like this but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how to get rid of those annoying extra spaces between links. Forgot all about convert_breaks=”0″. Thanks!
July 5th, 2003 at 5:55 pm
I was toying around with Chris’ Sideblog tool on Planet Neutral, but I’ve noticed a few different ways to accomplish the same goal in Movable Type without external applications. The central benefit of this for me is the ability to…
July 7th, 2003 at 4:44 pm
HI there,
I run a small blog about/for students at http://www.vritti.net I have been working on the photo site http://www.vritti.net/mt/photo/ and its pretty much done, but I need to get these three things done and I just can seem to get it done:
i. Show the thin border around the pictures in both ie and netscape/opera. Right now, I can only get it work in opera. ii. When you click on the title like abhi or W, it goes to that category page, here I want below the menu and before the title, a previous and next category. iii. When you click on one of the photo thumbs, it goes to the individual entry page, here I want it to show a previous and next photo, only within that category.
How do I get this to work? I have been trying all the combinations I could think of, nothing works. Hope you can help somehow.
abhi
p.s. I dont know if I am supposed to post this here, but couldnt find another place to do it.
July 7th, 2003 at 7:40 pm
1) I’m not sure exactly how you want your “border” to appear, but there are plenty of cross-browser, border tags that you can set to images. Glish.com has some good references and links, but there are plenty of others out there - just google for css image border and go nuts.
2) Next/Previous category is a little trickier. Brad has a plugin here and I know Kristine had a php solution here on Scriptygoddess at one time, but there may be others ways of doing it. This should be a start. Then just paste the tags into your template where you would have them appear.
3) If you’re using individual archives, which you seem to be, then next/previous within categories should be pretty easy too. I think you’ll find the answer here on scripty by searching for next previous.
July 7th, 2003 at 8:42 pm
I didn’t even think of looking for an MT plugin when I set mine up - I’ve used similar tricks for over a year to get the thumbnails on Pixelog over to my BPC site, so setting up “Cookie Crumbs” the same way was just fast and easy. PHP is my friend!
July 8th, 2003 at 12:49 am
Amazing.everything is up and running. the category and indi entry links are perfect.
this site rox.
July 8th, 2003 at 4:00 am
Problem: I cant seem to get the img border to work. I use two css. one for the main site and one for the photos. Yet, I cant get it to be ok in both browsers. Can anybody gimme a cut and paste solution here?
sorry for the inconvenience.
abhi
July 8th, 2003 at 4:21 am
HI,
I have got them to border my images, but the layout is still messed up. http://www.vritti.net/mt/photo/new.php
if one of you would be kind enough to take a look at this code and let me know. I need to arrange my images, next to each other and some padding between with and vertical-align:middle. I dont know if this is asking for too much, but hopefully somebody can help me out.
July 8th, 2003 at 8:38 am
Hi,
I searched a lot but couldn’t get hold of this thing.
I want to be able to show something like this below each post.
Comments(5) | Last by someone
I already have this “Comments(5)”, but how do make it to show “Last by someone”
someone - is the name of who commented last.
Please help…
July 9th, 2003 at 3:53 pm
Vin, I’m new to making MT hacks, but I think this is what you want…
Last by
<MTComments lastn=”1″ sort_order=”descend”>
<$MTCommentAuthor$>
</MTComments>
And you can use other MTComment tags to include more info like links or dates.
July 10th, 2003 at 5:06 pm
Now that i’m totally addedicated (thanks to bezempje for the new word) to BlogShares, I wanted to show this website’s worth, but also the total worth of my portfolio. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite show up yet. Also, as you can…
July 11th, 2003 at 4:26 pm
scriptygoddess: sideblog…
July 11th, 2003 at 8:23 pm
Hi, on Jan 16, 2003 you had an entry about the “expand/collapse” code for MT…I don’t use PHP for my current layout and was wondering if you ever wrote that extra code because I know that it won’t work for my site. I’m going to look again because I’m probably just being blind like I usually am. Love the site you have here though, it’s quite helpful and enjoyable.
July 11th, 2003 at 8:34 pm
Nevermind, after I kicked my lazy arse in the behind and switched to php, I got it working. =)
July 12th, 2003 at 1:46 pm
nachdem ich bei scriptygoddess und im MovableBLOG über sideblogs gelesen habe, musste ich mir doch auch gleich einen einrichten. ist…
July 13th, 2003 at 9:50 pm
Saw the idea and implemented it courtesy of scriptygoddess. I wanted a way to quickly post links and such to my blog, and a sideblog may just be the way to do it! We’ll see how it goes ;)…
July 21st, 2003 at 10:22 pm
If you’re extra lazy, you might try Sideblog. One line of HTML does the trick.
Yes, I realize that most MT hackers won’t want something like this, but I thought I’d mention it.
And, yes, I’m the clown running it.
July 22nd, 2003 at 1:57 pm
UP
July 23rd, 2003 at 7:56 pm
Some directions.
July 23rd, 2003 at 11:07 pm
If, like me, you don’t want (or already have) 100 blogs listed on your Movable Type main menu, you can easily implement this without creating another blog.
If you think about it, a sidebar blog is probably the same type of content as your main blog except without a lot of commentary. Hence, why not use your main blog?
In order to do this, you simply set up a category called something like “sidebar” to hold your sidebar entries. Then, you set up the sidebar blog using <MTEntries category=”sidebar”>…</MTEntries> and your main blog using the MTEntriesExCat plugin with <MTEntriesExCat category=”sidebar”>…</MTEntriesExCat>.
For commentary, you can use either the MTEntryMore Or MTEntryExcerpt (my favorite) field…
July 24th, 2003 at 7:20 am
Another excellent example. As noted, there are a lot of ways to accomplish this. Jay’s suggestion does require the installation of at least one plugin - so that may be the path for you if you are wanting to take those steps! Thanks, Jay, for the good idea!
July 25th, 2003 at 2:31 am
I’ve been wrestling with the idea for several weeks now. Recently, while trying to figure out how to best store a bookmark I was interested in, rather than fill up my Bookmarks list in Firebird, I decided to create a…
July 28th, 2003 at 2:54 pm
FYI: I detailed the method here.
August 15th, 2003 at 12:34 am
August 18th, 2003 at 2:23 am
Thanks for the info Jay - I found it handy to read through even if I don’t change the way my microblog works.
Chris, you have posted on the sideblog site the very reason why I won’t rely on other services. “Sideblog soon to be either: a) ad free or b) turned off entirely.” I hope you find a way to keep it up and running.
August 25th, 2003 at 10:38 am
Ummmm, not to be too dense here, but why not just use a “Quick Link” Category. That’s all I do, granted, I have to muck around a bit an make sure that the “Quick Link” category isn’t in my main MTEntries declaration, but that’s not too tough and I don’t need to install other extensions.
August 25th, 2003 at 11:11 am
Gary - It’s not a matter of “why not just use”… I think it’s a matter of personal preference. I think that’s why Kevin said at the end “There are other ways to accomplish this” - these are just a few ideas.
In any case, thanks for sharing your method as well.
August 29th, 2003 at 8:35 pm
scriptygoddess…
August 29th, 2003 at 8:47 pm
In the sidebar of my main blog I am getting this:
Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /home/chism/public_html/index.php on line 749
September 3rd, 2003 at 7:15 pm
I have finally made a sideblog (with helf from a tutorial from ScriptyGoddess) so that all interesting links I come across that I don’t feel like blogging about will have a new home. I did this so my main page…
October 19th, 2003 at 10:10 am
scriptygoddess How to’s: Creating a Sideblog in MT…
October 19th, 2003 at 10:27 am
I am getting the same error on my page…
Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /home/virtual/site74/fst/var/www/html/mt/index.html on line 2642
How do I fix that please?
October 19th, 2003 at 11:37 am
Jonathon - you’re really going to have to help us with some code or an example somewhere. What type of server are you on? Is your sideblog working as it’s own independent blog? If not, that’s your first project. If it is, a simple include shouldn’t be that tough. Are you using an include? PHP or SSI? Are you using a category method? Thanks!
October 19th, 2003 at 11:54 am
It’s my own site hosted on a shared linux box. I am pretty sure that php is php is supported as I use Textism’s refer which runs as php script.
I set up a sideblog - http://www.atmasphere.net/links.
I’ve tried the php and include method, but neither seems to be working correctly. As I noted in my previous comment, the php method left me with an error:
Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /home/virtual/site74/fst/var/www/html/mt/index.html on line 2642
The include method did not leave any error, but did not include the links.
October 19th, 2003 at 12:08 pm
OK. This is good. Presuming you can use PHP includes, then it’s simply:
<?php
include(”http://www.atmasphere.net/links”);
?>
wherever you want it to appear.
October 19th, 2003 at 12:13 pm
If that’s not working for you, then we would certainly want to know what exactly is in
“/home/virtual/site74/fst/var/www/html/mt/index.html on line 2642″
October 19th, 2003 at 12:31 pm
Just changed back to the php bit and got the error again-
Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /home/virtual/site74/fst/var/www/html/mt/index.html on line 2643
My index file only goes to line 312
October 19th, 2003 at 12:46 pm
OK - feeling a bit dense… Just viewed source on my own page (not the MT template) and found this at line 2643:
Warning: main(): stream does not support seeking in /home/virtual/site74/fst/var/www/html/mt/index.html on line 2643
seems odd that it is a self-reference…
October 22nd, 2003 at 3:07 am
I hope this isn’t off topic, but I am trying to make a homegrown sideblog using php, and I am looking for a function that takes a long string (a weblog entry) and truncates it at a certain number of words or characters AND makes sure that it is html safe — e.g. no unclosed open brackets. Basically I’m looking for the php equivalent of the MT Plugin “MTFirstNWords”, but I want something that doesn’t depend on MT.
I’ve googled truncate+php, browsed php.net and all the places I could think of, but haven’t had any luck.
Any ideas?
TIA
November 2nd, 2003 at 3:43 pm
How to’s: Creating a Sideblog in MT…
November 10th, 2003 at 11:04 pm
I tried exactly what this said, but when I look at the page, I can’t see anything. The actual sideblog is located at http://www.myaimistrue.com/sideblog/index.php
The main index is at http://www.myaimistrue.com/test/blog/index.html
The code I used was
<?php include(”http://www.myaimistrue.com/sideblog/index.php”); ?>
What am I doing wrong? Does it have to do with the fact that I put it in a table?
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks,
Amber Nussbaum
amber@myaimistrue.com
November 11th, 2003 at 7:50 pm
Amber- The php code you’re using needs to be on a php page. You’re home page is an html page. You can either convert your homepage to php or having the server parse you html page as php. After that it should work fine.
December 8th, 2003 at 2:06 am
Found a great article on Scripty Goddess’s blog about creating sideblogs. Thanks to a hint from Ken, I’m going to use this to make my own blogroll. Ha-HA! I have the basics down, which you can see on my links…
December 11th, 2003 at 10:53 pm
In the process of moving, I had to re-do a lot of stuff I had done before but didn’t keep a record of. The most frustrating, so far, has been re-creating my “Reading” head (which should appear to the right)….
December 12th, 2003 at 2:00 am
I’ve had several inquiries how I created the photolog sidebar, so I offer this link… How to’s: Creating a Sideblog in MT. I will also document exactly what I did to create and display my photos in the photolog sidebar,…
December 22nd, 2003 at 1:25 am
我人笨，常忘記æ±è¥¿ã€‚所以è¦æœ‰é›»å秘書，一個行事曆。 åƒè€ƒScriptygoddessçš„How to’s: Creating a Sideblog in MTé€™ç¯‡æ–‡ç« ä½œæˆçš„。…
January 1st, 2004 at 10:07 pm
Even with all my indexes in php, I was still getting the main stream warning. Placing the ‘at’ sign in front of ‘include’ cleared it up. Here’s where I found the tip: http://www.onaje.com/php/article.php4/43.
Hope this helps.
January 1st, 2004 at 10:16 pm
Have managed to finagle my links blog to serve as a sideblog or blogroll for the Geek blog, as viewed in the links section. With a little help from the tutorial on scriptygoddess, of course. Lo and behold, it was…
January 11th, 2004 at 8:39 am
Hello,
I think I have a *very* trivial problem but I can’t solve it.
The index file of my weblog is a php file, so it should work fine. Anyway, the include does not work, and I get the message [an error occurred while processing this directive] in the home of the primary blog.
I think the problem is with the characters, but I’m just guessing. Any idea ?
Thanks
January 12th, 2004 at 2:55 pm
New sideblog listing the things I’ve recently watched, read or listened to compliments of scriptygoddess.com….
January 15th, 2004 at 7:14 am
I’ve changed my side mini-blog coding from HTML to PHP, using this scriptygoddess article as a guide. I was previously using the MTOtherBlog plugin to update the mini-blog, but I felt it was a bit too much of a pain…
February 19th, 2004 at 11:26 pm
第一次看到「sideblogã€æ˜¯åœ¨”文森咖啡館”:http://winsoncafe.com/archives/000126.html，後來”奶爸也æ到了”:http://tamshui.typepad.com/yuchang/2003/09/sideblog_1.html。本來還ä¸è¦ºå¾—有æ¤éœ€è¦ï¼Œå¾Œä¾†ç™¼ç¾æœ‰æ™‚候想找æŸäº›…
February 25th, 2004 at 6:54 pm
Can you tell me a bit about the performance of the sideblog? If I update my sideblog (say with kadyellebee.com’s winamp hoverable playlist), does it force the main blog in which the sideblog is embedded to rebuild? I’m trying to speed up my posting time as it can take 60+ seconds to make a post.
March 1st, 2004 at 6:43 pm
BB’s Script, Plugin and Hack Archive as of 3/1/04: Collapse…
April 1st, 2004 at 3:59 pm
scriptygoddess…
April 2nd, 2004 at 7:56 pm
I discovered at least four or five different ways to…
April 15th, 2004 at 12:44 am
I discovered at least four or five different ways to…
May 1st, 2004 at 7:20 am
Just some website updates….
May 1st, 2004 at 7:23 am
Just some website updates….
May 2nd, 2004 at 5:16 pm
I am fascinated by the idea of using MT as a full content management system, and therefore using it to…
May 20th, 2004 at 8:50 pm
Roll your own Sideblog — ScriptGoddess never fails at providing the simplest means to add features to Movable Type….
May 30th, 2004 at 11:08 pm
درست کردن لینکدونی برای وبلاگ راههای مختلÙÛŒ دارد ولی یکی از راØتترین روشهای آن استÙاده از Server Side Include یا SSI است. Øقیقتش تا دیروز از روشی Ú©Ù‡ د…
October 18th, 2004 at 10:31 pm
Creating a Sideblog…
October 18th, 2004 at 10:31 pm
Creating a Sideblog…
October 19th, 2004 at 9:19 pm
Creating a Sideblog…
October 21st, 2004 at 8:09 pm
Creating a Sideblog…
October 25th, 2004 at 7:52 am
Me geeking it up on Jimbo’s PC in his spare room. I was playing with sideblogs. Jimbo was geeking it up in the living room, comfy on his recliner, with his laptop on a chair in front of him, the…
October 31st, 2004 at 9:47 pm
How can I make my main index page a .php without making all my archives .php. I ask because it seems a waste of server resources to have all my pages parsed by php when all I want is the index so I can do this sideblog thing.
The only place I see to change the extension is under archives in the preferences page.
What am I missing?
TIA
November 30th, 2004 at 7:40 am
æ©å¸«ãƒšãƒ¼ã‚¸ã«ãƒŸãƒ‹æŽ²ç¤ºæ¿ï¼ˆå®Ÿã¯åˆ¥blogã€21コ目）を付ã‘ã‚‹ã¨ã„ã†blog移行時㋅
April 25th, 2005 at 10:53 am
The advantage of a separate blog for links is that sideblog entries don’t show up in your blog’s search engine when people perform a search and they don’t show up in your RSS feed. Both of these can either be a good or bad thing depending on what you want.
Personally, I’d rather that sideblog entries not bother my RSS subscribers since it has minimal content and input from me.
though they may be a way to exclude this content from the RSS feed using the MTExCat plugin. If so, let me know.