Posting To A Salon Hosted Weblog

Presentation

I've been publishing a weblog for a little while using Radio Userland.

I'm doing this from the desktop of a Titanium Powerbook running MacOS X.

Radio is installed in the Radio UserLand subfolder of my system's Applications folder.

When I use a Windows system, Radio resides in the Radio UserLand subfolder of my C:\Program Files folder.

A couple of days ago, I learned about Salon starting a new Radio based weblog community, and decided to join.

I downloaded a second version of Radio, Radio for Salon, which I installed in a separate folder on my laptop.

I then registered with Salon's server, and quickly had a new weblog page going, with a Salon look and feel.

Still, I had to switch Radio applications whenever I decided to post to "the other" weblog... Kludgy.

I couldn't find a way to have both Radio applications open and running at the same time.

Besides, this would be a waste of cpu resource, something I try to avoid.

The solution to this problem is obvious: publish to the Salon hosted page from my first Radio application as if it were a category of my original weblog.

Implementing this is less obvious, so here is a step by step rundown of what I did.

It requires some modifications to the Radio.root table in Radio.

Be advised that a mistake when doing this may cause the loss of the ability to upstream to your regular site.

Do not attempt it if you are not familiar with handling Frontier/Radio tables.

Disclaimer

What I am about to expose worked for me.

It will eventually work for you, though I will certainly not guarantee it, nor will I consider myself responsible if you mess up your Radio installation.

If you are experiencing problems, contact me through the feedback link on s l a m's home page.

Please do not bug UserLand with any problem related to this hack, they have better fish to fry.

Step 1: Making a safety backup.

Before making any fatal mistake, I thought it wise to stash away a copy of my regular Radio Userland folder, in case I needed to restore a functioning copy of Radio in a hurry.

I copied the whole folder to another disk, and zipped an additional copy for good measure.

Step 2: Creating a Salon category.

Using my regular copy of Radio, I first created a slam in salon category, via the Radio / Local Pages / New Category menu option.

I entered the name of my Salon weblog in the Category field, and its description in the Description field.

This way, I am sure the pages I publish from the slam in salon category will have the same title and subtitle as the pages I published from the Radio for Salon application.

I then checked the 'render in HTML' and 'Notify Weblogs.com' preferences and submitted the changes.

I now have a slam in salon category listed on my main weblog local page.

Step 3: Copying the Salon templates to the new category.

The templates for the slam in salon category are stored in the categories:slamInSalon subfolder of my regular Radio application's www folder.

The templates for the Salon weblog are stored in the www folder of my Radio for Salon application.

I copied all the files starting with a pound sign from Radio for Salon's www folder to my regular Radio application's www:categories:slamInSalon folder.

Here is a list of those files :

I actually didn't need #desktopWebsiteTemplate.txt, so I left it alone.

Step 4: Copying the Salon images.

The Salonized version of #homeTemplate.txt - the main publishing template - expects to find a number of images in the images subfolder of my regular Radio application's www folder.

Fortunately, all those image files are conveniently located in the salon subfolder of the www:images folder of my Radio for Salon application.

I just copied the 16 image files I found in the www:images:salon folder of my Radio for Salon application to the www:images folder of my regular Radio application.

Here is a list of those files:

audio4_plain_off.gif

blog_head.jpg

books4_plain_off.gif

comics4_plain_off.gif

ent4_plain_off.gif

mwt4_plain_off.gif

news4_plain_off.gif

people4_plain_off.gif

permalink1.gif

politics4_plain_off.gif

rankings_bttm.gif

salonlogo.gif

salonshim.gif

sex4_plain_off.gif

tech4_plain_off.gif

updates_top.gif

Step 5: Customizing the #prefs.txt file for the slam in salon category.

The first directive in the freshly copied #prefs.txt file I found in categories:slamInSalon read: #title weblogData.prefs.title.

Using a text editor,I replaced it with a 'standard' category directive: #categoryName "slam in salon", then saved the result.

All radio categories require a categoryName when rendered and upstreamed to the public site.

The #title directive is actually already defined in the #prefs.txt file that sits in the main www folder.

Step 6: Customizing the #upstream.xml file for the slam in salon category.

The upstream.xml file copied into categories:slamInSalon tells Radio where to upstream the posts to the slam in salon category.

These posts are not to be upstreamed to my regular public site hosted by Userland, but to Salon's RCS server instead.

Using a text editor again, I made a modification to the entry in upstream.xml.

The original value for password was default.

I replaced it with salon, and saved the result.

That's because the default password in my regular copy of Radio is the one for the UserLand server.

I obvioulsy must specify an additional - different - one for the Salon server.

Actual passwords are stored in Radio.root, hence step 7.

Step 7: Setting Salon's RCS server preferences in Radio.root.

This is the trickiest part, so exercise extra caution.

I first launched my copy of Radio for Salon, and brought it to the foreground.

I opened the Radio.root table, by selecting the Window / Radio.root menu option.

I expanded the user.radio.prefs.passwords table, and wrote down the value for the default entry.

This value is a string of hexadecimal digits, starting with '0x'.

I actually copied and pasted the value to a temporary text file.

When finished, I expanded the user.radio.prefs.upstream.servers.rcs.salon.com table.

I selected the serverCapabilities subtable, then the File / Save As... menu option.

I clicked Ok in the first dialog.

In the second dialog, I provided a file name - serverCapabilities - and saved that file directly on my desktop.

I then quit Radio for Salon, and checked that I had a serverCapabilities file on my desktop.

It was time to launch my regular copy of Radio, and brought it to the foreground.

I opened the Radio.root table again, by selecting the Window / Radio.root menu option.

I then expanded the user.radio.prefs.passwords table, and selected the default entry.

I copied it to the clipboard (Edit / Copy menu option), then pasted it in place (Edit / Paste menu option).

A dialog poped up, and I clicked the duplicate button.

I now had an additional entry in the passwords table, with a name of default #1 and the same value as the default entry.

By double-clicking on default #1, I changed the entry's name to salon.

salon is the string I had updated in the upstream.xml file.

By double-clicking on salon's value, I changed it to the value I had written down when checking Radio for Salon's entry.

I actually pasted the value from my temporary text file.

That took care of my password for accessing the Salon server.

Last, I selected the File / Open menu option in Radio, and opened the serverCapabilities file I had saved on my desktop.

I just clicked OK in the 'name for imported object' dialog that followed, using the default name.

That took care of telling to my regular copy of Radio where to store my posts on Salon's RCS server.

My last step was to close the Radio.root window, to avoid any accidental modifications to Radio.root.

That's it: I was all set at this point.

All I had to do then was posting an item to both the home page and the slam in salon category using my regular copy of Radio, and checking the Event Log page after a few minutes, to make sure the proper files were upstreamed to both radio.xmlstoragesystem.com (UserLand's server) and rcs.salon.com (Salon's server).

Step 8: Or so I thought...

A few days later, I noticed that no links were showing up anymore for slam in salon on the Salon RCS server referer rankings page (http://rcs.salon.com/rcsPublic/referers?site=1048&group=default)

That's because I had forgotten to modify the JavaScript bug in the #homeTemplate.txt template file.

At the end of that file, one usually finds a macro call that looks like

This macro expands into some Javascript code that loads a 1 pixel transparent image, sending as parameter the url for the page the image is loaded into.

But it doesn't account for the possibility of communication with 2 or more community servers at the same time, according to category.

So what I did was replace the macro call with some direct Javascript code, such as :

Notice that I provided 1048 as user number - RCS's registration for slam in salon - instead of 104487 - UserLand's registration for s l a m.

With this last trick, my referer rankings page on the Salon server was back into shape.

The only thing I cannot do currently, due to Radio's limitation, is notify the Salon RCS server instead of UserLand's RCS server every time I update the slam in salon category.

With a little luck, and a little help from Jake, this might change at some point in the future.