Paging Rogers Cadenhead

First of all, I am rewriting this because I drafted it yesterday and then needed to reboot my browser (it was Mozilla at the time) and forgot/failed/missed the chance to copy-and-paste the draft to a safer place. In the past I’d have used kung-log, now ecto, to keep the user experience a little more desktoppy, but I’m on a new machine and can’t find the serial number that unlocks ecto. Ironically, I paid for kung-log and I paid for ecto but I’ve basically thrown up my hands in frustration but that’s another story.
Since Rogers knows Radio so well and is now delving deeply into Movable Type for another book, I’m just going to lazyweb I’ll my pent-up 2.x-series customizations I’ve been wanting to make over to him, in the spirit of, if I want to do it, so may the readers of your book (which i will also totally buy).
So, Rogers, please give me a short step-by-step tutorial that will turn on the latent edit-this-page feature in Movable Type 2.661! Thank you.
Also, when is somebody going to build a nice PHP gui that can sit on top of databases created by Movable Type and mold them into, well, anything? I’m not trying to imply that Movable Type has jumped the shark here, but if Six Apart does see their business as TypePad hosting and professional publishing with MT platforms of the future, then their legacy will still be some reasonably well structured blog archives and a de facto standard.
I suspect I could kluge something by plundering the search-results-page template, since it produces edit links with the results automatically and I assume it checks the cookie and only shows them to you if you’re already logged in? (Actually, I’m not sure about that part – I recall Dori and Tom having visible Edit links on BackupBrain at some point)
that
I often think that more is made of my disputes with Dave Winer over various matters of pilpul but one way in which I am in total accord with him is on the power of “edit this page” (what a great meme – if Dave evers gets around to writing a book or finds a good collaborator he can work with, that might be a good name for the book, or maybe “Edit This Book?”
It’s also the beauty part that Manila and Radio share with wikis. What if each of my entries instead of having a comments section just had a wiki / whiteboard space and people could build an archive using any of my entries as a stub?
Just now I was scanning the egopendium that is my monolog and noticing various typos and other small errors. It’s ridiculous that I wasn’t able to edit them on the spot. What are we watiing for?


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4 responses to “Paging Rogers Cadenhead”

  1. Roger Benningfield Avatar

    Some of us aren’t waiting. :D
    When I click the “comments” link on any of my blog entries, I’m immediately taken to a page where I can reply, read other replies… and edit the post in question. It’s not “edit this page”, but it’s only one click removed.
    If I were so inclined, I could also set the permissions to allow anyone to edit my posts. It wouldn’t be practical to go full-on Wiki with it, though, since there’s only one level of rollback available. But it would work just fine for a limited set of approved editors.
    And of course, I can link to any other entry within my blog by entering {Title of My Entry} in the editor. I’ve also stolen Everything2’s concept of piped links, so I can modify the display of the link with {Title of My Entry|text of my link}.
    (The same mechanism also supports a series of shortcut links: {amazon|Thief of Time}, {imdb|Joss Whedon}, and a few more.)

  2. filchyboy Avatar

    If you go to any individual entry on my site Xian you’ll see an edit link under the entry. It leads directly to the edit page. Is this what you are refering to?
    Of course only I can actually use the link. I’ll send you the string if you need it. (Or I could simply install it on RFB if you’d like.)

  3. Dori Avatar

    (Actually, I’m not sure about that part – I recall Dori and Tom having visible Edit links on BackupBrain at some point)
    I don’t understand the hoohah, myself. We’ve had “Edit” links on our MT blog for years, and on our Blogger blog before that. Yeah, it shows up for everyone, not just us, but I don’t think that it’s that big a deal.
    I could probably figure something out to only display the link if we’re already signed in, but it’s never been worth it. If someone who isn’t signed in to our blog clicks on it, they’ll get the “sign in” page, and they simply won’t be able to go any further.

  4. xian Avatar

    Thanks, Dori. That’s what I remembered. I’d use that approach in a pinch, but I do think it’s better UI not to show people stuff they can’t use (most of the time – sometimes it’s good as a hint of potential other features they might someday want to access).
    I’ve often thought that each of the blog entries in one of my weblogs should be able to be the stub of a wiki entry – that might do away with comments entirely.