Best Blog 2: Proposed Workflow
working on: workflow dynamics
Because of the troubles I’ve had with integrating tumblr into my blog (mostly due to tagging. I’m not sure there’s a way to pull tags from tumblr into TextPattern), I’ve decided to reevaluate my workflow and see what I really need to do with my blog.
I’m looking into dropping tumblr and hacking together some kind of user-friendly photoblogging system, which I’m sure I can find/tweak/build for TextPattern. As much as I love the UI of tumblr client apps, I don’t need all the functionality, and I’d like to host my images locally on my server, rather than on tumblr’s.
As for commenting features, I’m looking into the Facebook API, so I can push my posts to it (the same way tumblr does) and receive comments. Hopefully there is a way to make comments sync between Facebook’s site and my own, which would be really super awesome.
Here’s my proposed workflow:
twitter --> facebook (comments)
twitter --> blog sidebar (simple feed)
photos (via tumblr) --> blog --> Facebook (comments)
long-form blog posts --> blog --> Facebook (comments)
I’m not sure I really need to share quotes, links, and other miscellany that tumblr wants me to post. Links I already share through Delicious, and interesting posts are starred and shared through my Google Reader. Video can easily be embedded in blog posts, and it would eliminate much of the hassle of getting Tumblr’s API to work with cURL and TextPattern.
· meta, tumblr, twitter, webdesign · Posted 61 days ago ·
UPDATE: Tumblr didn't work
mood: ACK! · working on: tumblr importing
So, I tried using a plugin called vag_tumblr_import to automatically route all tumblr posts to my blog, and it semi-worked. Here’s what didn’t:
Categories:
The plugin, when activated, created a tumblr category, with media-titled subcategories (photo, quote, &c) This is not in itself terrible, but royally messes with my organization. I show a category listing in my footer, and have filters in my CMS that display certain categories of posts (e.g. meta or musings).
I’d have to tweak the plugin code to not use the secondary category, and add posts to my already-created categories.
Titles:
Untitled tumblr posts get a default title slapped on them, and it’s ugly. This could potentially be avoided if I always use a title for my posts, but I’d have to retroactively add titles to things.
Sections:
Tumblr posts are automatically either added to the “about” or “article” section. The former royally screwed with my website, and the latter doesn’t exist (I use a section called “articles.” COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.) I could probably change that in the plugin code, though.
Images:
If I implement this, I need to figure out a way to automatically create a slimbox gallery and add the images to it (or simply resize them, but that doesn’t look as nice). Images / photoblogging is the hardest thing to automate with TextPattern, so I need to do more research in this area.
Tags:
Tumblr doesn’t import tags at all. This makes sense, as tags aren’t exactly a feature in vanilla TextPattern, but are made available through the tru_tags plugin. I’d probably have to write this code from scratch if I wanted to use tagging with tumblr.
· frustrations, meta, tumblr · Posted 61 days ago ·
WARNING: BLOG MAY EXPLODE
working on: KHI v2
Hey all. I just wanted to warn you that I’m going to be doing some dev stuff on the production site, so this page may look a little wonky. Please bear with me, and I’ll return you to your usual reality shortly. Cheers.
This has been a public service announcement from Keats Heavy Industries.
· meta, webdesign · Posted 61 days ago ·
