1Fred Janssen  26/02/2010 12:17:45 GMT   Issues with block

I am having issues with updates to Blocks;

I am using the standard leftsidebar block, but added a few other blocks to the leftsidebar block.

When updating one of the sub-blocks the updates do not show (even after a day, also also not in the html source).

The checkReplica agent is running OK from start to end (added some checks).

Running the Rebuild Site Indexes action does not solve the issue.

It took me some time before I figured out the only way to get the changes to the sub-blocks visible is to update the leftsidebar block (which is actually unchanged).

Also Links in the LinksDX in the leftsidebar stay visible, after disabling them, until I delete them from the db completely.

I can (and am willing to) participate in testing only (I''m not a developer, I'm an Admin).

2Karsten Lehmann  26/02/2010 12:37:15 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I set up two blogs based on the Domino template, a product blog ( { Link } ) and our own company blog ( { Link } ).

The basic setup was quite smooth. Of course it's getting more complicated when you start changing the UI. The product blog was just "create a different UI than the standard", which was quite easy, but the company blog was supposed to have the same UI has the whole company website. That was a day full of CSS merging fun with a little help of Firebug. :-)

I don't know if it is (still) necessary, but I'm using a periodic agent to refresh the comments count:

Option Public

Option Declare

Use "DXNotesContentProcessing"

Sub Initialize

Call recalcAllCommentCounts()

End Sub

When the product blog started, I noticed that the comments count did not update at all or only with a big delay, so I added that code.

All in all it's a very poweful template and easy to use.

BTW good to know where I could have found the documentation. Did not know that. I did it the hard way. :-)

3Fredrik Malmborg  26/02/2010 13:01:13 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

For me it had been much quicker to get the grip of it if I had found DX-reference in Help - Using This Application.

I agree that the update machinery are kind of a mystery sometimes.

Anyhow thank you for sharing.

4Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 13:02:37 GMT   Issues with block

Ok Fred so that sounds like a embedding blocks within blocks html issue and the recalculation of html - will make a note to take a look.

If you disable a link it will be visible until there is an index update (everything is cached) so will take a new post, comment or manual refresh to remove (unless there is a bug with "disable" flag)

5Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 13:05:26 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Karsten - comment count updates should be automatic and that function is in case there is an issue and count gets out of sync (which is normally corrected by the next comment received anyway). The only thing I can think of for the count not to be updated is either acl or signing of template (but I doubt these are issues for you).

6Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 13:07:48 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I could write up about the update machinery Fredrik. Do you mean the way html is cached like all the indexes? (so some changes do not seem instant)

7Fred Janssen  26/02/2010 13:23:20 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@6: Yes please. Documentation on the update machinery would help with debugging update issues.

I have tried to debug it myself, but got lost in the code...

Remember: I'm not a developer.

8Fred Janssen  26/02/2010 13:26:16 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@4

> If you disable a link it will be visible until there is an

> index update (everything is cached) so will take a new

> post, comment or manual refresh to remove (unless

> there is a bug with "disable" flag)

Waiting for the checkReplica agent is not enough?

9Juergen Conradt  26/02/2010 13:28:25 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Is there a way to allow say 10 people to create blog entries from the webbrowser without grating admin access/going thru the admin panel ?

I tried and found no way.

Thanks, J

10Lasse Jrvinen  26/02/2010 14:11:44 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hello Steve!

Here are couple things that are on my mind:

If you use Notes client to enter number list, the list breaks after saving the document couple times. Bullet list works correctly.

If you enter (Notes) table into the document, every time the document is saved and posted an extra line break is added after the table.

Users are a bit confused how to add attachments since they are used to add them directly to the content (as they do when writing e-mail messages). That is of course matter of educating the users (they don't read the instructions on the form). And it would be nice to see at least the names of the inserted attachments on the document (that was possible on the older version).

The blog documentation is spread into several places. Could it be possible to put it all into one place?

11Keith Brooks  26/02/2010 14:24:52 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

We appreciate all you do with this.

I know I have pestered you over time about various issues/questions and the problem is you have to be a developer to make the website on the blog template.

It takes someone new to the template a good hour or more to just understand it all to figure out how to even add anything to it and where and how it comes up.

Maybe developers "get it" more but I can't let users use this on their own unless I set it up for them and then make all the changes they want.

Thanks for the references, never even knew this was in the content help, always thought it would be in the admin help which is why I never saw it.

A really nice graphical layout of a page with all the esoteric references to everything on it would be extremely helpful. In fact that is what I had to do, print a page them mark it up with all the pieces I could figure out so we knew which item to edit.

12Alan Lepofsky  26/02/2010 14:50:40 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

As you know, I'm a big fan of blogging via Notes. The main thing I love is the ability to simply enter rich text, including pasting in pictures. My issue with the Domino based blogging is understanding how all the pieces fit together. Templates, CSS, blocks, dxtags, etc. Perhaps this is all perfectly documented, and I've just been too lazy to read it.

Perhaps a simple example of adding an outside plug-in to the template would help. For example, how can I make it so that commenters can log in with their Facebook or Twitter IDs?

13Paul Withers  26/02/2010 14:59:08 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

The Domino Blog template is extremely powerful with so much that can be configured, I know I've only really scratched the surface of it. I've done some stuff like adding extra blocks, and it took a bit of trial and error with styles to make it look good.

Bearing in mind the template is being used by a lot of people, and particularly given various blog posts recently, would it be beneficial to have a wiki where useful "how-to" docs could be posted?

From a "wish list" point of view, the date and time of a post seem to be fixed by when it was created. I've found the field to *ahem* hack to change that, but it would be great if the date and time were able to be set. I don't think it could be tied to the Post to Blog button, because sometimes you need to go back and edit a post. Perhaps a separate Publish button?? I'd be happy to have a go at trying to create the code for that, if others think it would be useful.

A template deployment app sounds a good idea, particularly for increasi uptake and usage of end-user apps from e.g. OpenNTF.

14Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:03:17 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@Fred - really you shouldn't get update issues

15Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:04:15 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@Juergen - roles webcompose and webadmin will do this. I can document this but webadmin gives acces to the web admin side, web compose then allows creation of content within it (if my memory serves me right)

16Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:06:01 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@Lasse Yes the lists is a Notes mime/rich text issue - I can test to see if any better. Attachments cannot be added directly in the rich text, because again the mime field has restrictions here so you have to use the attachments section but I know users naturally think to do it the same as email. I will improve the documentation.

17Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:08:38 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Ok Keith - I will provide some basic user help.

18Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:09:25 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I guess Alan the crux of it is the template tries its best to seperate User (content creator), developer (Notes dev) and web designer. So the web designer provides the css and html, the developer builds the template (me or whoever), and maybe the developer/power user would understand enough about html to add to the template, and position tags where the "functionality" should go. I will provide more documentation to make this more obvious

19Steve Castledine  26/02/2010 15:24:13 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hi Paul - yes common theme "structured documentation". Any code is useful and yes I also had one other person recently comment about the date/time that is used.

20Keith Brooks  26/02/2010 16:41:10 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Steve, the notes help is basic user help in my eyes, (how to create a new page/widget/etc.. which is simple enough)because by that point I have created something they can use without customizing it more.

We, admins, need help understanding the pages and connections to customize it better.

21Darren Duke  27/02/2010 17:24:38 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Both my blog { Link } and the Tips In Two site { Link } run on the excellent blog template.

The hardest thing for me is customizing it. I just don't have the time and I think one of the alluring things that Mitch and others have commented on is the ability to change templates for the design with relative ease on other blogging products.

I think having a dozen or so templates would be a good idea. There si my $0.02.

Thanks for all the work yo put into the template.

22Patrick Kwinten  27/02/2010 17:33:22 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hej Steve

I have been working with the blog template quiet a lot and as a designer it takes a bit of time before you know most ins and outs but then you have a failry good understanding what the blog is capable of.

However I have some recommendations to help my end-users:

- A 'Open in Web browser' button / link would be extremely usefull.

- The configuration is a nightmare. Too many options and hard to understand what the impacts are. A wizard would be a good thing here (simple wizard, advanced wizard).

- Wha twould be great, and moving a bit more towards Lotus Connections would be that when you have multiple editors there would be a possibility to read the posts from each editor as a separate blog. This would make it much more attractive since we calcutate monthly fees per application. At this point when you want to have your own blog you have to order a separate database.

- My users NEVER read how to use the blog via the Help.nsf. They assume the documentation should be in the application.

For a developer it would be nice to understand how the blog works under the hood. A technical article on developerWorks would be great.

I have read a pdf (I guess I have downloaded it from this site) with all the options I can enable in the application. I have no idea if that is the best way to distribute technical information. Maybe a Wiki for the application is better?

We 'offer' the database as a 'premium' blog solution (offline support, rich text editing etcetera) however customers are interested in simple edit functionality so they have choosen now for the MS Shitpoint solution.

I would like to see more of such 'collaborative' templates delivered out of the box with Lotus Notes.

If IBM would focus a bit more on this then LN would gain interest. Dont IBM have a team with template developers employed? Sounds like a nice job...

Cheers

23Patrick Kwinten  27/02/2010 17:35:51 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

ps. I read an article about adding a statistics db to a blog. This would mean that a user would be charged 2 times (blog + statistics). Is there any logic / way to include the statistics in the original blog template?

24Martin  28/02/2010 12:03:29 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

The dominoblog template, in my opinion is the best IBM Domino templates.

You can make what you want using this template.

A page static web.

An agent of contents.

ETC, ETC

You don't need the designer for anything.

I insist, I believe that is the best template that IBM given to Lotus people.

In the Spanish Lotus User Group has many examples to download.

This last one, I put it yesterday.

{ Link }

Some days ago, in Facebook (Redbooks) they asked about new redbooks, what topic???

My answer??? Dominoblog template Redbooks, of course.

Regards from Spain.

25David Clover  28/02/2010 12:41:55 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

As I've mentioned before, the Podcast utility is really useful, but it projects the wrong fields to the RSS feed. This means that when using (say) iTunes to look at it, the content fields are not populated correctly. I think this would be fairly straightforward to fix. It's an incredibly useful part of the blog template and having it working properly would be great.

See: { Link } for what I mean and compare with: { Link } which does it properly.

26Karsten Lehmann  28/02/2010 13:18:42 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Documentation about the podcast utility would be great (if it does not exists somewhere). I already asked myself how to use it.

27Bob Perilli  28/02/2010 17:07:07 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Some time ago, I saw a demo you gave of a Theme Manager add-on? db/app. Never could find it anywhere. Was it ever released? That would be very useful.

28Steve Castledine  01/03/2010 10:54:38 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I'm out sick today (monday) - will carry on with responses upon return.

29Denny Russell  01/03/2010 14:54:35 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I've used the template for years both personally and thru work and have gotten used to customizing it. After some time it does make sense how things are done and it's not all that bad, but getting started is a struggle.

I may try to put some of my own notes together on my blog. In fact, a while back, I did write one on how to use the .css to update your site. My intention was to start documenting more of the blog template so maybe I'll try to get back to that again and help out the community a bit.

30Adam Gartenberg  02/03/2010 19:06:56 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Like many others here, I want to begin by thanking you for the the creation of - and ongoing commitment to - DominoBlog.

Now that it is much easier to create a hotlink (thanks to the updates in 8.5.1), the one thing that would make a huge difference in how I blog would be around images.

My first choice would be able to just paste an image into the rich text for the blog, but right now the template doesn't seem to translate settings around alignment, size, and text wrapping out to the web, and most of the time I want smaller graphics, right-aligned, and with text wrap.

As a second choice, it would be great if there a simple "add image" button that would allow me to upload an image to the blog and insert a link to it. Right now, to add an image, I first have to head over to the Advanced management (which opens the non-java UI), then remember whether images are in Resources or Configuration, and then I can upload an image... after which I have to go back to my post and manually add code to link back to it (as well as remembering the html codes for alignment and dealing with hspace and vspace, etc.).

Is there any chance there might be something along these lines in the works?

31Larry Smith  04/03/2010 15:40:09 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Steve,

This is more of a feature request than a difficulty - but what the heck.

It would be nice to have a function which would push out a Twitter post of the subject line of a new blog post, along with the URL to the post and additional hand-entered text.

32John Head  04/03/2010 23:12:50 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Here is my feature wish list:

1. Import of WordPress themes via a couple clicks for users

2. The ability to use WordPress plug-ins and make them easy to add for end users

3. incorporate the LS2HTML and some kind of javascript and java code and add a tag for that (like /blocktext) to make it easier to share code samples

4. Make an XPages version of the blog

5. FIgure out how to allow copy and paste of images into the rich text editor on the web :-)

6. add advertising spaces into the blog automatically, for google and manual. Be able to just drop tags into blocks that allow for this

7. I agree with Adam - we need an image wizard. I typically copy and paste images into Notes Rich Text, but it's hard to resize images.

8. xml-rpc interface to allow for mobile blog apps to talk to the blogs ... since you don't want to build a mobile app for each platform.

9. Webkit mobile blog UI

33Robin K Mullins  08/03/2010 03:36:15 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

When using the Insert button to create an Attachment Link it only seems to work if the Attachment Link is the last thing in the post. If I attempt to place the Attachment Link in the body of the post then the browser throws an error indicating it can't find the document. This is generally easy to work around but it is inconvenient.

34Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:49:43 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hi Darren - yes the ability to switch designs easily can/will be done. they will have to be wordpress etc based as I cannot design to save my life :)

35Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:51:39 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I will take on board all this feedback Patrick. If you guys use the template would you be willing to help put some of it into action? There is a setting where to send the stats, you could pick the blog database and add in theiews etc from the stats template. Originally they were removed to stop bloat and keep performance etc at a max.

36Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:54:43 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

I will check this out David as it seemed to be right years ago when the feed was first built.

37Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:55:26 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Karsten - there is a link to podcasting at the bottom of this article. It was written a while ago so will check that it is up to date

38Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:56:06 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Bob - as part of this renewed development the theme manager will be finished and made available

39Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 10:57:01 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hi Adam - on the images the mime conversion doesn't offer any information that may have been selected in Notes Properties. At least it didn't years ago when the code was written. I will take another look but I doubt if that has changed. You almost have to see the Notes rich text editor to be as dumb as a browser based editor here and images have to be styled using html and css etc

40Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 11:03:18 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

@ Larry - Its a good idea. Makes me realise how important openntf needs its software updated so stuff like this can be very visible for other developers to start work on.

41Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 11:04:34 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Got it John - these are all things that need to be done.

42Steve Castledine  10/03/2010 11:07:05 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Will check that out Robin - wasn't aware of this.

43Denny Russell  10/03/2010 21:26:38 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Steve, I do have a question. I want to have a 'Home' page that starts when the blog is opened, then I want to have a link that will take me to the Blog and I want to do all this with the .nsf file.

So I took and made a copy of the 'Home Page' found within the 'Page Templates'. I then renamed the copy to "Blog" and saved it.

Next I changed the 'Home Page to look like what I wanted.

Now my question is this, How do I Call the new page I made from my top menu or is this not possible and I'm going about it all wrong?

As always, thanks for the help.

44Steve Castledine  11/03/2010 16:42:32 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Hi Denny - hopefully this will help: http://planetlotus.org/670b4c

45Patrick Kwinten  23/03/2010 08:21:57 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Today I am going to discuss with a customer the default settings for the roll out of a large set of blog installations.

Hereby I will use the DX tag dictionary and a print out of the configuration document.

I find it very hard to explain what impact each option in the configuration document has or how I should use a certain option.

A similar document as the DX tag dictionary would be very helpful understanding the configuration document.

46Patrick Kwinten  23/03/2010 08:39:40 GMT   hiring an editor to write a manual

can't IBM hire an editor to write a good manual how to use the template and the impact of available options?

47Patrick Kwinten  26/03/2010 08:57:14 GMT   Categories vs Tags

"Tagging takes preference over categories Previously you could tag and categorize content, this lead to confusion and UI clutter. By default tagging takes preference however categories are still available and both can still be used. "

I experience whenever I want to use categories and tags that whenever I select a category it will be overwritten by tags.

How can I avoid or disable this?

48Mark Gottschalk  24/05/2010 20:02:53 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Theme Management: The ability to both import wordpress themes, and the ability to manage and quickly change themes is the biggest request that I get. It would also do the most to empower non-developers, who would then be much more interested in using the blog template for their blog.

I've got two users in my organization, for example, who simply could not be persuaded to move away from typepad or wordpress because of the ease of customizing their blogs using those services. They don't want the Domino blog template default theme and give up quickly when they saw the difficulty of customizing it.

Yet they spend many hours a week managing their blog on typepad/wordpress, so the interest is solidly there. They are simply intimidated or put off by the hurdle they have to leap to use the Domino blog template.

Similiarly, an easy way to use WordPress plugins.

49Stefan  22/06/2010 15:40:04 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

If multiple authors/editors in one dominoblog, is it possible to read the posts from each editor as a separate blog?

For example, Bob, Sara and Andy are sharing one dominoblog as a teamblog. On the "startpage" I can see all the posts they make sorted by date. Is it possible to click on Bobs "personcard" (for example) and see all of his posts sorted by date?

Or should I create one blog for each person and then develop an app. that combines all blogposts from each and every blogdatabase (combining RSS-feeds)?

50Bill Malchisky Jr.  09/07/2010 00:00:15 GMT   Dominoblog - give me the dirt

Steve:

Really like the template overall and like my blog.

One thing I noticed is the discrepancy of items that can be used to create a rich text field in Notes and are unavailable in this template when viewed via a browser--despite being available within the HTML set (as seen on other web sites). Example: tables, tabbed tables, sections.

I use these a lot and have helped me to organize my thoughts concisely. Would certainly speed-up blog document creation.

@46 post would also be good.

Keep up the great work.