new greymatter features

[petefinnigan]

I have been thinking about some of the longer term mods / core features that should be added to greymatter and wanted to list some of them here to start an initial discussion and to add to coldstones list. Here is my wish list:

o - multiple blogs from one interface / installation
o - draft posts
o - comment anti spam -
o - comment moderation - I am working on this
o - comment blacklists
o - comment unique number posts - i.e. put this number in a box before you can post
o - full feed support - I am working on this now
o - translation of posts to different languages
o - proper categories
o - blogroll support
o - trackbacks
o - last xx comments
o - statistics - i.e. who is logged on, from where etc
o - dynamic posts - but ability to keep .htm(l) URL's
o - database support
o - spell checking
o - WYSWIG editing
o - support for remote editing
...

what else.. please feel free to add to this thread and I will update this post to create one neat list.


cheers

Pete

[coldstone]

Wow, now I feel daunted

• Modular plugins (mods)
  
• Modular themes - admin tool allows which theme to use
  

Would we need comment blacklists if we have the Ban feature?
What woudl comment anti-spam entail (curious how diff then comment moderation)?

[petefinnigan]

I was thinking about using the MT-Blacklist. This is used in many software now.

I will post some details on comment moderation. I have some detailed notes on how I would develop this. I will post them soon. In basic terms instead of going to post or preview a comment instead it goes to a queue. Then the admin can review the queue and decide to delete the comment or allow it to be posted.

Comment anti-spam techniques would include comment throttling, recognising previous posters (based on IP, name, email etc) and other techniques.

cheers

Pete

[picaman]

Since you are asking I'd like to see the URL for individual posts use the title of the post (http://www.qwerty.com/blog/archives/this_is_the_name_of_the_post.php) rather than the current numbering scheme (http://www.qwerty.com/blog/archives/00000292.php). I know that's major, though.

Also, the Wikipedia entry for Greymatter gives a pretty objective rundown of strengths and weaknesses:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greymatter

Checking there may give you some ideas/priorities of things to do.



Jamie

[petefinnigan]

Hi Picaman,

I also thought about this idea last year then forgot..:-( when i was looking at other blogs that i read. I know MT for instance does this. The main benefit would be for search engine listings. URL's with keywords seem to rank higher.

I would need to go through to code to see how hard it would be. I guess not easy. I have made some progress on RSS2 and Atom feeds I will report later on that, then I want to go back ot the comment moderation mod, then maybe I will review what wsould be best to look at next. I see that there are some good posts on comment spam yesterday..I will take a look tomorrow, its late here and I had a bad day as some b%$^&rd broke into my car this morning..:-(

cheers

Pete

[picaman]

petefinnigan said:

I have made some progress on RSS2 and Atom feeds I will report later on that,

Did you see the RSS 2.0 code I posted from phrebh?

I put the {{entrysubject}} field in the <title> header of the entry pages--that way each blog subject is listed on the page so the search engines can see it. It works well for Google--might be a good idea to include that as the default config in the new version. But it would be better if the files themselves were named instead of numbered.



Jamie

[coldstone]

Jamie, that is an interesting idea about using {{entrysubject}}. I hope you don't mind, but I am going to put that in the gm_cookbook document I am putting together. I hope to have a sorta/faq howto, that will talk about how to use Grey Matter vs changing the code.

Right now it seems that there is alot of flex with GM, but as a developer my instinct is to change the code, since I am ignorant of all of GMs options and how to use them.

[petefinnigan]

I think that you have made a very good point here, we are all probably ignorant of whats possible by simply changing config / using the features and in clever ways, instead of changing the code. Tell us more about the cookbook?

cheers

Pete

[coldstone]

Right now its two 'recipes', but I want to kinda copy the style of the o'reilly cookbooks (Perl Cookbook, Javascript Cookbook, etc.). Basically its a bunch of entries, like an FAQ, but with a bit more detail. Each entry would have a Question, Answer, and Discussion. The discussion expands on and explains why the Answer works.

I'll post what I have pretty soon, its just embarresingly small. I want to pull the relevant stuff from Noah Grey's website (he has some older documentation I think still could be usefully). Yet another 'todo'. I started a notebook this weekend. I gotta find a place to for us, with a bug tracking system.

[petefinnigan]

Hi Coldstone,

Thanks for the update. The main question is where is this best kept, in the docs, on-line or both. i would suggest both. For online we could either maintain a file, find a public wiki, i would be willing to host if not, or perhaps much easier is to add a board / category (what ever the naming is) here and add the recipes as posts with edit reply turned off?

cheers

Pete

[petefinnigan]

I want to add the ban list ranges to the features list that this thread represents,

cheers

Pete

[coldstone]

Yeah, both seems good. I like the not too many eggs in one basket. With online docs though, we have to be careful that we don't let the static docs that ship with GM fall out of date.

I like the idea of creating a seperate board withen the Support or GreyMatter categories. I believe we can make it so that no replies are allowed (though would it matter?). I would like to keep the online eggs together for now so to speak, so that we don't have forums and another site for help/doco/support.

[petefinnigan]

Hi Coldstone,

Actually i meant for the documentation / cookbook to be made available on-line hrere in this forum, I was just not sure what each category is referred to as, board, category etc..:-)

cheers

Pete

[jesper]

picaman said:

Since you are asking I'd like to see the URL for individual posts use the title of the post (http://www.qwerty.com/blog/archives/this_is_the_name_of_the_post.php) rather than the current numbering scheme (http://www.qwerty.com/blog/archives/00000292.php). I know that's major, though.

I would also love that, and if you deside to go through with it, please make something like name_of_post_XX.suffix, or simular, where XX are numbers, so we have the ability to re-use our titles.

[coldstone]

I originally thought this would be impossible, unless using a database. However, I took another think and realized that the source .cgi files would always be (e.g. 00000001.cgi) but that when the page is translated (e.g. 00000001.html) it doesn't *have* to be a number, it could be a title.

Previously, I thought the cgi data file would have to have the title and that we couldn't find them, but no, just the html (or whatever suffix is used) needs to have the filename as 'title'.

Not to be a downer, but this is farther out on the radar, as we are still refactoring the core, just an fyi.