Thingamablog Blog

New Bio Page

I created a bio page to go along with this blog. It is a separate page from the blog so that I can refer to it from several different blogs without having to create it again.

In fact, as I continued editing the page, it became apparent that I was repeating many things that were already on my home page but in a different format. So I just turned the bio page into my new home page and that is that. You can see it here

My New Home Page 

The look of that home page will be similar to the look of my new blog template.

There are several things that must be included in a zip file to make an installable Thingamablog template.

• A "template" folder with all the template files in it
• A "web" folder that has all the images I need plus the stylesheet, styles-site.css
• A file called "pack.properties" which has information about the template, such as name and creation date.

The pack.properties file looks like this:

#
#Sun Sep 27 14:18:15 EDT 2009
author=thekimerers.com
description=A template set custom created to use with the NHAT blog
title=NHAT
created=1254075498000

The number at the "created" line is just the creation time specified as the number of milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970, which is the standard way that Java keeps track of time.

The template files that are required are:

• archive.template
• category.template
• entry.template
• feed.template
• index.template
• main.template

The template files are just html files that call out the stylesheet ID's and classes plus the custom Thingamablog tags that are replaced with the blog contents.

To get started on creating my new template I did the following:

• I created a new blog that is posted locally to my disk for testing.
• I copied an existing template to modify (I don't really want to start from scratch) into a new directory
• I modifed the template files in the test directory on my disk.
• Incrementally made changes and reviewed the results.

In order to see the results of my changes to my template I have to jump through some hoops. Here are the steps I have to take.

• Change the .css file or the template files
• Zip the required files into a template zip file
• Copy the zip file into the directory of templates where Thingamablog is stored (to install it).
• Open Thingamablog and then open the properties sheet for the blog.
• Change the template for the blog to any other template.
• Close the properties sheet.
• Open the properties sheet again and reselect my new template. This causes the template to be refreshed.
• Publish the blog.
• Refresh the blob page in the browser to see the new output.

I am basically creating the new template, installing it, and refreshing the entire blog with the new version.

That is a real pain. So I came up with a way to get some more immediate feedback.

I created a "test" directory in my sandbox. Then I copied the following things into it

1. main.template
2. styles-site.css
3. nhat-bodybg.jpg - the background image

I changed the name of the template file to "main.html". Now I can view the template in place and see the effects of the changes to the .css by simply reloading the main.html file in the browser. Of course, there is no content in the "blog" page, and what I see in place of the content is the Thingamablog custom tags, <$tag$>. But that is OK because I am only looking at the format for the style sheet and the template anyway. Once I get it like I want it I will go through the steps above to see what it looks like with content in it.