Here are a few plugins I wish were installed on this blog…
Pro.Apps
Blogroll
Delicious and Digg Integration
Maybe Custom Fields could be useful… the author archiving thing sounds neat, especially when/if we all end up posting together on the motherblog…
Cool link(s) found in my perusing (read: procrastinating)
( Movalog is a great blog with Movable Type plugins and resources…)
A quick link posting page, where links can be left for later discussion, creating a newsfeed of sorts… basically what del.icio.us does, but automated. Not sure how the tags would enter into it…
Though this would be more for things like interesting blog posts, and news articles, which I’ve found difficult to have any sort of repository for. So far I’ve been blogging them, but I’m usually on the run and don’t have time to do much of a post. And often there are just too many! A kind of linkroll might work…
So, yeah… basically just wanted to throw that out there…
So, if you don’t have to deal only with the annoying web interface… using so-called “third-party clients” (made by other software companies other than Six Apart, who make Movable Type) can make blogger a much more pleasant experience. It also allows you to author entries offline, then post them later, as well as a host of other features. (I’ve only tried SharpMT so far, but it works great!)
EDIT: update! I’d now recommend you try MTClient. It’s light and easy to use, and is the only one so far that actually lets you post drafts to the server…
Here are two pages to read for more info…
This link is a list of several clients known to work with Movable Type blogs. I’ll try out a few and then post which one I think is best, probably by tomorrow or maybe this weekend. I’m using SharpMT right now and it’s great, just a little hard to install.
BUT, you must first go here and follow the instructions to create a separate password to use with third-party clients for added security. (Basically, just log into mt, then click your name at the very top right where it says “Welcome ____”. Then, scroll down and enter an “API Password”, you may have to enter a password hint as well (though I think this hint is supposed to be for your regular password, not the API one.)
Then, when you get around to setting up the software, enter “http://mt.middlebury.edu/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi” in the application settings where needed. (or if it asks for the cgi-bin directory, only enter “http://mt.middlebury.edu/mt/”)
To mix things up a bit here are a few interesting links on the current state of the blog spam universe.
The State of Spam [Karma]
This first link is a blog post by the developer of the Spam Karma anti-spam plugin. He talks about how until now, the programmers behind all the spam-post-bots (almost all spam is created by automated programs, hence spam being an attractive proposition) have been largely “stupid”, and thus their bots relatively easy to stop. However, a new breed of spam has emerged, and the bots behind this spam appear to have grown immensely in sophistication and code quality.
His writing style is easy and fun to read, and gives an interesting perspective on the issue. After all, he is both a coder and a blogger.
Mark on Weblog Spam
This next link is much older, from November of 2003, and is much more about the nature of Spam as an industry; and spammers as a group of particularly unscrupulous businesspersons.
Akismet Eats 2 Million
Last is a quick link to the post on the Akismet blog celebrating their spam plugin’s two-millionth piece of spam. They write that it took two months to block one million, and only twenty days to reach two. This is of course also due to their plugin’s growing popularity, but still, that’s a lot of spams! (I use Akismet on my other blog and it performs flawlessly– farewell spam… for now)
