This question is for everybody. I need you all to check something, if you have a minute (shouldn't take much more that that).

If you use categories (channels) on your Weblog II page, would you (please) check your RSS feed? It should have <category>...</category> tags, one for each category/channel you choose for each post. (Look at this site's rss feed for an example.)

If your RSS doesn't have categories, is that intentional? The built-in template, 'Weblog Item RSS READONLY', includes support for the category tag. That's the defautl template for new weblogs, but over the years many of you may have created your own, or started out with something else.

Category tags are a good way to build some flow to your site, because they help services like Technorati index and track your posts, and present it to the right people on their search pages. Apparently Google uses them, too.

Post a question if you need any help setting it up...

Believe it or not, Weblog II is finally available to everybody!

Since the Weblog II page is available to everyone, and all existing documentation is here on the beta site, I've decided to make this site public. (Eventually the docs will be copied to the Free-Conversant support site).

Along with the release of the plugin and making this site public, I'm changing the site's URL. You should now be able to find the site here.

The Qumana situation, which was described here, has been fully solved. The latest version of Qumana is fully compatible with Weblog II. The folks behind Qumana acknowledged the bug, fixed it, and released a new version in a timely manner.

I know there are a few people on this list who don't follow the Free-Conversant support site.

There is some important new software in beta, now, and you can get all of the details in these two messages:

New Pattern Wizards - Beta Test

and

Second Site Configuration Wizard: Pattern Installer

Hoping to get the ball rolling, there's also a sample pattern available, based on a site design from Bryan Bell (which he created for Clark Venable).

I'm hoping (or rather, planning) that there will be lots of patterns created. They'll make it very easy to customize and personal a site (including a Weblog II page), especially since it's possible to mix-and-match patterns.

Hey all,

I've just rolled out some new features for all of the servers.

First up is the Monthly Archives feature. Go to the one of your weblog's archive pages (anything with a date in the URL), and then take off the last "/" (forward slash) and the day.

Here's an example. Start at this URL on my site:

<http://www.truerwords.net/index/2005/04/07>

Now, take off the "/07" from that URL, so you go to this page:

<http://www.truerwords.net/index/2005/04>

There you can see everything that I've posted in the month of April, 2005.

The technical side of this feature is done: it renders all of the items from the specified month. However, there are still some things that need polishing up:

• I think a site should offer either daily (old-style) or monthly archives, but not both. It's just too darn many URLs, and too much server load. There's no point to having both. (Monthly archives are good, and they keep us compatible with some of the other big names like Moveable Type.)
• More calendar-related macros are needed so that, if you're using monthly archives, you can produce a list of archive months. Probably something like weblog.calendar.listMonths, or perhaps weblog.calendar.years (where each year would then use a template to display its months).
• The channel month archives don't stop at the end of the month. Oops. They only show content from the channel, but they show as many days as are on the main weblog (the default channel).

New Conditionals

There are three new conditional macros, for determining if the page that was requested is from the weblog archives.

• weblog.request.isArchive
• weblog.request.isArchiveDay
• weblog.request.isArchiveMonth

isArchiveDay returns true if the requested URL specifies a day, like the first URL I provided near the top of this message.

isArchiveMonth returns true if the requested URL specifies a month, like the second URL above.

isArchive returns true if either of the other are true. It's identical to doing "weblog.request.isArchiveDay || weblog.request.isArchiveMonth". However, if we ever add another archive format -- perhaps an archive year, or topical archives? -- then isArchive will still return true in those archive formats. (In other words, isArchive will always going to be the most generic test.)

Comments and Questions, please! It's too quiet around here, and we're getting very close to the end of my To Do list...

Seth

I seem to have misplaced my official todo list (not kidding), so the following is my new official list of significant features still to come in Weblog 2.0.

• Monthly archives (now partly done)
  
• Weblog Posting Bookmarklet (now done)
• Expose the whole weblog ii api via xml-rpc
• Private channels (now done)
• Some way to specify that a post should NOT go on the default channel. Haven't figured this one out at all, yet. (now done)
• a new kind of channel that lets you specify the search args manually, since that feature has now disappeared with the redefining of beginner/advanced channels. the current channel system won't be able to be shut off (though you can choose to simply not use it), and creating this other type of channel will require explicit selection. no more confusion (cancelled)
  
• a simple channel editing/managing interface in the weblog itself. Not sure about this one, but it's looking likely. Maybe just a macro to return a direct link to the channel editor would be good enough?

What am I forgetting...? There's an old to-do list here, I'm pleased to see that a lot of that list is done now.

Hey, it's been awfully quiet around here lately. Maybe this will get things moving again.

Weblog II has a bunch of bug fixes and changes today that you should all know about:

• IMPORTANT: the template type for weblog item templates has changed. If you have any custom weblog item templates, you'll have to edit the template in the template editor, choose "Weblog Item" from the popup menu, and then submit the template. The weblog page will continue to work even if you don't make that change, but your template won't show up in the template lists in the Structure Editor or in the weblog's /edit page.
• When changing the Weblog Day template or Weblog Item template for just one day (via the weblog's /edit page) on the weblog, the cache is flushed and it no longer throws an error about "msgNum not defined."
• When changing the weblog item template for a single item on the weblog (via the weblog's /edit page), the cache is flushed and it no longer throws an error about "msgNum not defined." (This is similar to the previous fix, but is specific to one item rather than all of the items for a day.)
• On the /edit page, the [Default] template choices now specify what the default template is for that picker, similar to how the template picker works in the structure editor. For example: "[Default: Weblog Item Full READONLY]"
• On the /edit page, there is now a disabled separator between the default item and the other template choices.
• On the /edit page, a minor change to the help links. Parens removed around the ?, and the ? link is now bold.
• A new Weblog Day template is available, called "Weblog Day Minimal READONLY." It's pretty minimal, but I'm not sure if it's minimal enough considering the name. It just wraps the #weblog.day.items macro in a div. (No macro for the current date or anything.) Comments are welcome.

Yet another short message I'm only posting for use in a screen shot.