Tag Archives: blogssuncom

Setting up del.icio.us blog posting on blogs.sun.com

Recently I have received a number of emails about del.icio.us blog posting “links for” working with blogs.sun.com (BSC) or rather not as the case may be, as they have all vented frustration about it not working (either well or at all).

Dave Johnson, the man behind Roller Weblogger itself (the platform BSC runs over), suggests alternative approaches to achieving the same result, most notably using a standalone tool described in “delicious.com Blog Posting tool“.

I was similarly frustrated having just configured the delicious blog posting tool (and getting it to work), however I have since found that the issues I faced were due to not reconfiguring my XML-RPC password after the recent upgrade to the external Identity authentication and authorisation security mechanism used to access BSC.

To get it to work again I had to reconfigure both my BSC and del.icio.us accounts.

Setting up your BSC account for del.icio.us blog posting

First off I had to go into the “Your Profile” page in my BSC account.

Then I had to configure a “Web Client API Password”, as in the screen grab below.

Setting up your del.icio.us account for del.icio.us blog posting

After reconfiguring my BSC account I had to change the user name and password combination in the del.icio.us blog posting settings page.

The user name now needs to be set-up as your email address (and not the old style BSC user name, which matched your blog ‘handle’), whilst the password needs to be configured as the same as the “Web Client API Password” above, see the following graphic for more detail.

Another item to note is that “blog_out_id” needs to be set as your BSC ‘handle’, whilst I’ve found “out_cat_id” has little effect (as the posts default to whatever “Category for posts received via clients” is set to in your BSC blog preferences).

Remember to set “Enable weblog client support?” in your BSC blog preferences to get any of this this to work in the first place.

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Since reconfiguring the two accounts above it’s been working consistantly and I feel safe enough to blog about it as a way forward.

I originally found out about setting up del.icio.us blog posting from the blog post “Posting from del.icio.us to Roller” from Lars Trieloff’s Collaboration Weblog. This worked fine until the change to access was implemented at BSC, and would presume it’s advice still holds for the majority of cases (outside of BSC).

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Integrating Disqus and Roller Weblogger on blogs.sun.com

I’ve recently updated my site to use Disqus the blog comment hosting and conversation site.

Done this for two reasons:

  1. Firstly my usually frustration with any status quo means I want more functionality delivered yesterday, and although I’d started to have a look at the functionality I wanted and how I might add it as a Roller macro / velocity code I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time coding it out (the functionality I specifically wanted was the separation of comments and trackbacks, as well as comment ‘threads’).
  2. Secondly to gain readership and comments from the sizeable blog comment audience that Disqus have built up (Disqus is estimated to be running on over 30,000+ servers).

I’ve already had a couple of comments from Disqus members, and I’ll have to see how it goes before I start heralding it as an unprecedented success, but I’m very pleased with the results (both aesthetic and functional).

Sadly the Disqus comment import function was initially provided for WordPress and Blogger, but apparently wasn’t fully functional; subsequently an update is due out soon that will hopefully include Roller Weblogger. See this Disqus forum entry, and it’s threads for more info: How do I import comments?

Given this was the case I wanted to make sure my blog supported my new Disqus commenting system, but would still show my old comments if there where any for an entry. Here are a few examples:

The code I developed, which has to be separated into two components (number of comments associated with a blog entry, and comment entry form and comment display), is below, but if you use or copy it please note that you need to replace the Disqus supplied JavaScript for my site with your Disqus comments hosted sites JavaScript code. ¨C18C

Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Number of Comments code

For comment numbers I’ve broken it down into displaying “n Comments” for Disqus on it’s own, whilst “x Comments (new, via Disqus) and y Comments (legacy, via Roller)” for comments hosted on both systems.

This replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “_day” template which displays the number of comments per blog entry.

Don’t forget to replace occurrences of ‘eclectic’, my blog handle, with yours (just one, about the fifth line from the end).

## Number of Comments

<a href="$url.entry($entry.anchor)#disqus_thread">View Comments</a>

#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount &gt; 0)
    (new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>) and 
    #if ($commentCount == 1)
        <a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comment</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>) 
    #else
        <a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comments</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>) 
    #end
#end

<script type="text/javascript">
//<[CDATA[
(function() {
		var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
		var query = '?';
		for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
			if(links[i].href.indexOf('#disqus_thread') >= 0) {
				query += 'url' + i + '=' + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + '&';
			}
		}
		document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://disqus.com/forums/eclectic/get_num_replies.js' + query + '"></' + 'script>');
	})();
//]]>
</script>

Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Comment entry and Comments display code

This basically displays the Disqus commenting system, along with any Disqus hosted comments, however if any ‘legacy’ Roller Weblogger hosted comments are found it displays those too.

It replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “permalink” template which displays comments themselves (the same changes may need to be made to the “weblog” and “searchresults” templates too).

## Comments

<h2>Comments (new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>)</h2>

<div id="disqus_thread"></div><script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824js_/http://disqus.com/forums/eclectic/embed.js"></script><noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://eclectic.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the forum thread.</a></noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://disqus.com/" class="dsq-brlink">blog comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a>

##showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
##showWeblogEntryCommentForm($model.weblogEntry)

<br></br>

#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount &gt; 0)
    <h2>Comments (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/http://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>)</h2>
    #showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
    <br></br>
#end

Additional benefits that I’ve picked up by implementing Disqus include:

  • Following commentators.
  • Having my, and my sites, comments followed.
  • Being able to easily ‘reblog’ my comments and make blog entries out of them (looking forward to trying this, although I haven’t yet).

Finally here’s my Disqus profile for you to have a look at: http://www.disqus.com/people/wayne_horkan/

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