Colophon
Well, since you've made it to this page, I guess you're interested in learning what makes this site keep on tickin', eh? I have utilized several services, plugins and various techniques to bring this site to life and keep the gears turning smoothly. So, without further ado, here we go!
The Foundation
The Doggy Diaries is powered entirely by Movable Type 2.661 and is expertly hosted by Total Choice Hosting.
The Frame
Most of the functionality of this site is native to the Movable Type blogging system. To make the software truly customized for my needs, however, I've added the following MT plug-ins. For an extensive list of MT plug-ins, please visit MT-Plugins.com.
- MT Blacklist v1.64: Written by Jay Allen, this plug-in is an invaluable resource and should be your first line of defense to prevent spammers from laying seige to your blog's comments.
- DirifyPlus: This plug-in was recommended by the wonderful Lisa of Creatively Devious. It offers 60 different ways to convert a string to a file system safe path. I use it to store my archives in the form of www.doggydiaries.pudgypuppy.com/archives/my-first-post.php rather than www.doggydiaries.pudgypuppy.com/archives/000001.php. This technique is quite helpful for SEO.
- Regex v1.61: Regex allows you to define search and replace parameters for elements produced from MT templates. I have used Regex to remove the closing </p> tags from paragraphs in order to insert more text on the same line before finally closing the paragraph. For an example, see the "(more ...)" links at the end of each entry on my home page.
- Supplemental Category Tags v1.5: Brad Choate created this Movable Type plug-in to provide additional tags for MT categories. I use them to allow navigation and scrolling between different categories.
- Related Entries: Although not yet implemented on this site, the Related Entries plug-in by Adam Kalsey allows you to display or link to other entries in your blog that are in the same category as the current posting.
The Walls and Roof
Many of the pages in The Doggy Diaries have a consistent look and feel. Navigation is consistent throughout most of the site (exceptions include the track-back pop-up window and comment preview screen), including the use of standard header, navigational links and search box. To create this consistent feel and minimize errors from page to page, I have used PHP includes similar to <?php include("name_of_file"); ?> to insert common code into each page where appropriate. Movable Type's built-in template module feature allows this same method to be employed using the <MTInclude module="..."> tag. I have opted for the PHP method of including common code to eliminate the need to rebuild my included files with each modification.
Blogs I read on a daily basis are displayed using the Blogrolling program. In addition to simply displaying links to my daily reads, Blogrolling also allows you to insert a symbol to identify blogs that have been updated within a predefined time period.
To prevent my personal email address from being harvested by spambots as they crawl my source code, I have implemented a PHP-based formmail program to allow users to contact me without opening their email program. My contact form is located at http://www.doggydiaries.pudgypuppy.com/contactme.php. The underlying mail processing script is Jack's FormMail.
The Finishing Touches
In keeping with current web design standards, I have separated visual display from core content. Stuctural, semantic XHTML markup is employed for presentation of content while visual layout is controlled by CSS.
Unless otherwise stated, all graphics utilized are royalty free stock photographs and may have been modified with the use of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro graphic software. In the case where a photograph or graphic is not royalty-free, full copyright information is presented, including how to contact the creator.