About apf_pop.cgi

MrRat's amazon_product_feeds.cgi script (APF) is a marvellously useful script. It's robust and nimble interface provides rich opportunities for exploitation. Here's a script most webmasters of APF sites will find useful. The apf_pop.cgi script searches your website's access log for specific kinds of APF calls that indicate a user clilcking on an item and grabs the Amazon ASIN's from them. The ASINs are counted and sorted, then one or more documents are constructed to display them. In addition to the data formatting templates available through APF, apf_pop adds an additional templating layer with its own variables. The type of document apf_pop can generate is virtually unlimited: HTML, SHTML, PHP, CGI, even output an APF template, if you like. As this implies, through apf_pop you can display data generated by APF in either dynamic or static documents. Continue reading "Amazon Products Feed: Display the Most Popular Items"

How to display inline searches in your templates and pages

A Newbie Tutorial

On my HTML pages I figured out how to use SSI to display the results of amazon_product_feed searches on my web pages. However, Neither the SSI or PHP methods described in the documentation will work if placed within the templates. I've got this great sidebar in my page design but very few of the useful Amazon Product Feed variables are available at the page template level. What to do?

There are two HTML options <OBJECT> and <IFRAME>. These are fairly well supported on the more popular browsers, though OBJECT is the only one of the two specified in the HTML 4.0 standards. Nonetheless, I went with IFRAME for some of its more useful features.

Continue reading "IFRAME and Amazon Product Feed:"

There's a phpBB hack to add Forum-wide email notification to phpBB boards. It's a good hack, except that it generates notification emails for all replies to all forum topics. This is a bit too much notification.

Following is a method for reducing forum-level notification so that they are only sent when a new topic is created.

Continue reading "New Topic notification"

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/viewhack.php?id=540

I've already got this simple but elegant hack working in phpBB. Now it's just a matter of porting it to my MT installation.

[EDIT]

Done! Want to know how to do it yourself? Read on! (Note: This MT add-on assumes you've already installed the fluffyblog Using phpBB as your MovableType comment engine in 23847392 easy steps tutorial to your MovableType installation.

Continue reading "Add Quick Reply phpBB hack to MT."

I created a Category Archive Index template in the Index Templates section. It creates the file http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMan/CategoryIndex.html, listing all categories, with their descriptions, and the entries in them. It also uses <a name="..."> to create links to anchors within the document, which I use to build a menu bar at the top of the document.

To do this yourself, create a new index template called CategoryIndex.

Copy the default MasterArchive index template to your new CategoryIndex template.

Insert the code below into CategoryIndex, replacing the <MTArchive> container.

<div align="center">
<MTCategories glue=" | ">
    <a href="#<$MTCategoryLabel$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a>
</MTCategories>
</div>
<div> </div>
<dl>
<MTCategories>
    <dt><a name="<$MTCategoryLabel$>"></a><a
    href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><h2><strong><$MTCategoryLabel$>
     (<$MTCategoryCount$>)</strong></h3></a> </dt>
<dd><blockquote><$MTCategoryDescription$></blockquote>
    <MTEntries>
        <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><strong><$MTEntryTitle$></strong></a> :: 
        <MTEntryCategories glue=" | ">
        <a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><em><$MTCategoryLabel$>
        </em></a> </MTEntryCategories><br />
      </MTEntries>
    </dd>
      <br /><br />
</MTCategories></div>
</dl>

When you rebuild, there'll be a new CategoryIndex in your blog root directory. Just add links in your other templates and you're ready to go.

How'd I get the "Notebook" category link to display on the same line as the entry title?

This one's really easy. First, take a look @ The MT Wiki MTCategory page. You'll get the basics there. And while you're there, bookmark the MT Wiki site -- very useful.

Armed with that little tidbit of knowledge, all I did was find MTEntryTitle tag in my index templates. They looked like

            <h3 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>

I wrapped them in two-cell tables, like this.

<table width="100% border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr valign=top><td>
    <h3 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>
</td><td align=right>
    <MTEntryCategories glue=", ">
        <a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a>
    </MTEntryCategories>
</td></tr></table> 

The title is in the left hand cell and the piece of code from MT Wiki is in the right-hand cell. I set that cell to right justify.

No sweat!

p.

This is a tutorial for installing a Windows-only implementation for Moveable Type (MT) bloggers, though Mac users may nonetheless find some useful ideas here, as certainly will enthusiasts for other blogging systems..

If you want to be able to insert Amazon links to whatever's playing on Windows Media Player or WinAmp into your blog entries, read on. It's not all that difficult: it does require some trival edits to some of your MT templates, and you'll have to install a couple plug-ins. If you don't already use Zempt 0.3 SharpMT 2.0 or w.Bloggar, you'll need one of these too, if only to generate the required code.

Continue reading "Presently listening to:"