Vacation

I'm on vacation starting Friday the 23rd and won't be back until January 4th.

I've been busy in the past few weeks, working on automatic user creation, polishing up the events calendar, and getting the new website template ready. More about that when I get back!

New users

What a week. I've been fighting a cold at the same time as I've been fighting a deadline to get accounts created for next term's students. That's finally done (with lots of help from Troy), and in the process I've gotten a lot closer to automating the process. Hopefully by January, as soon as a student shows up as admitted, an account (complete with email and blog) will automatically be created for them the next night.

No FAQ again; things have been just too busy around here.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Busy

Projects I've been working on lately:

Further refinements to the Calendar of Events. The new dynamic version just went up today, and we put a better date entry method in the submission form.

Automatic user creation. Hopefully soon we'll be able to automatically detect when new students have enrolled and creat their user accounts immediately. This still needs some work, but is getting closer. This is the main project I've been putting time into, lately.

Web maintenance. I'm finally caught up again with user requests, except for one that I'm still waiting for information on. If anyone is waiting on me for web alias creation or editing rights, please remind me again.

Oops

Looks like I've been getting a bit lazy with the blogging, here. Part of that was vacation, but I've been back over a week now and still no entries! What gives, you may ask?

Mostly it's because I've been busy with other things. The events calendar has been one; I had a nasty bug last week that I was beating my head on the wall about for several days, but finally solved thanks to a hint from Michael Ellis.
I've also been working on granting everyone access to the new web portal system; that's pretty much ready for prime time now. You can get to it at http://www.wou.edu/portal. Just log in with your WOU username and password. The next FAQ will be about the portal system, which has some cool and useful features.
Aside from that, there's been the usual large amount of time spent on migration cleanup and adding features to the user creation system. That program is now over 2100 lines long, not counting a bunch of code that's been stored in separate modules; this may seem like a lot, but it does the work of three separate programs we used to use in the old system. Plus I've been working on user requests for web permissions and so forth.
All this is making me wish for another vacation! Luckily Thanksgiving is coming up soon.

Back from vacation

Well, I'm back. Actually I got back yesterday, but spent the day digging out of the pile of stuff that built up while I was out. I finally feel like I'm caught up with the small stuff so I can get back to the bigger stuff.

Current top priorities (in no particular order):

• Trying to figure out how to enable Portal services on people's user accounts in bulk, by adding LDAP attributes.


• Working on the Public Relations Calendar of Events (it's really close now!)


• Figuring out how to use the security features of the new webserver for some departmental pages that need security right now rather than after the web migration.

So anyway, I'm going to get back to doing that stuff instead of talking about it.

Personal Development time, take 1

Hmm, I see I need to make time to do more entries here; my original goal of one a day proved unrealistic, but I need to do at least two a week.

Today we had our first Personal Development Time, instead of a staff meeting. It was interesting: I got to watch (and occasionally help with) a Solaris 10 installation, and got some reading done on Object-Oriented Perl, which i hope will help my scripting and make it easier for me to create programming tools usable by others.

UCS folks, please take a look at the Personal development Time wiki page (created by Mike Ross.) Feel free to add your own ideas, comments, suggestions, experiences, whatever you please! It's a wiki, after all.

Personal development time

Travis had a good idea about a different way to spend the time we normally take in staff meetings.

I like the idea of personal development time; right now, I have to get up early and drive in to work without knowing whether there'll be a meeting. I don't mind it too much, because coming early means I get to leave earlier, but it can be a pain when I was here too late the night before. (Luckily that doesn't happen too often, and when it does, it's generally either my own fault or else totally outside anyone's control.) Knowing I would have a chance to work on my own stuff would give me a better motivation to come in those mornings.

I'd probably spend the time learning stuff like advanced CSS coding, because that's something I've fallen behind on but would really help me with web page design. It would also be nice to work on automating some of the more repetitive tasks I need to so, like feeding webserver logs into the Urchin log analyzer, and setting up web permissions, and stuff like that. I have a serious case of "programmer laziness"; I get frustrated having to do the same stuff over and over, and would rather build a tool to do it for me, even if it takes longer to build the tool! I'd love having time to do stuff like that.

Busy week

It's been a busy week so far. I finally got to all those web permission requests I've been needing to do; if you're still waiting on one, please let me know, because it means your request has fallen through the cracks somehow. I also got a bunch of public_html websites fixed; I know I didn't get all of them, so if yours still isn't working, please let me know.

I made a bit of progress on the event calendar, but not as much as I would have liked. I think I can still get at least a basic version of it done, but it's going to be close, considering I have one and maybe two meetings tomorrow and need to get the weekly FAQ ready.

Events calendar

Well, I was hoping to have it done sooner than this, but the event submission form is live. It feeds into the existing database (with a couple of extra fields kindly added by Summer.) Next I need to get the actual calendar display working from the database so they don't need to code it by hand anymore. Plus I still have a stack of web requests I have to get to. Sorry, folks! I should be able to get to most of your stuff tomorrow.

Future FAQ topics

Just so you know, next week's FAQ will be about the Sophos Antivirus program we bought over the summer, including instructions for home use. (It's free to members of the WOU community, just as Command Antivirus was.) The one after that will introduce the calendar that's built into Communications Express. I'll probably be on vacation the week after, so there won't be a FAQ that week, but they should continue on a weekly basis after that.

Whew

OK, crunch time is starting to ease off, for me at least. I've still got a lot of random acount cleanup to do, including tracking down people whose V-numbers we can't find.

Next week I get to work on the Public Relations event submission form and calendar display. That's going to be interesting; I get to use the PHP scripting language, which I find a lot more fun to work with than the PL/SQL language that we've done a lot of our web development in. (My favorite programming language is still Perl... maybe I'll talk about that sometime when I feel like really boring everybody. ;-} ) Another upside of PHP is that it'll give the PR folks more control over the look and feel of the system without having to come to us for changes.

I have about a week's window for that, and then I need to work on the Web migration. We've already got a new webserver running on a much faster box than the current one, and we need to get the website files moved over to it and its name changed so www.wou.edu leads there instead of the current server. The new server will feature an all-new search engine, which will hopefully be an improvement on the current one.

A bit of advance warning for the people who are reading this: we're probably going to have to reset all the editing permissions on the website. They've gotten entirely too tangled over the last three years. I'm going to need to go to each department and find out who has permission to edit what, and make sure they are still able to do that on the new webserver. At least once that's done, we'll be able to get rid of thiose little batch files everybody has to run now to connect to the W: drive.

Anyway, I've worked my ten hours today, time to go enjoy my three-day weekend!

Using the W drive

As of mid-September 2005, most of the WOU domain migration is complete, except for the website files. This will be done in a month or so, but meanwhile any access to the W: drive is more complicated than usual. Since the website files are still on the old domain ("Aviation"), you will need to map the drive with your Aviation password (In other words, what your password was before the migration.)

Here's how to do this:

If you use a Mac, the old instructions should still work, as long as you remember to use your old password. If you use Windows, you will have to set up a special command file on your machine and run it every time you want to use the W: drive. If you work with multiple computers, you will need to put this file on a floppy disk or USB drive or some other means of portable storage. The file itself is only two lines of text. It must be plain text; do not create it with Microsoft Word unless you know how to save files as plain text. The easiest way to make the file is to open Notepad (Start Menu - All Programs - Accessories - Notepad) and type the following:

NET USE W: \\maverick_nt\wou_website$ /USER:aviation\username
PAUSE

Be careful to type the text exactly, except that instead of "username", you need to put in your own username. For instance, if your username is jdoe, the first line would be:

NET USE W: \\maverick_nt\wou_website$ /USER:aviation\jdoe

Once you have typed both lines in, save the file onto your desktop as "mapw.bat" (without the quotes, obviously.) Actually, you can use any name, as long as it ends with ".bat". If Notepad insists on adding ".txt" after the ".bat", go ahead and save the file anyway, but before you do anything else, right-click the file, choose "Rename" from the context menu that pops up, and delete the ".txt" from the end. If you have done this correctly, the icon for the file will be a blue and white square with a yellow gear inside it. If you want to use the file on multiple computers, drag and drop it from your desktop to the floppy drive or USB drive you want to use it from.

When you are ready to use the W: drive, double-click the file. It will pop up a black window and ask you for your password. Enter in your old password from before the migration. If you do not remember this password, email Ron at webmaster@wou.edu with your full name, V-number, username, and a new password; the password will be changed and you will receive confirmation by email. After entering the password, the window should wait a few seconds and then say "The operation completed successfully." If you get an error message instead, email it to Ron at webmaster@wou.edu; also copy both lines of your file in the email. (Do NOT send the file as an attachment!) Whether or not you got an error, the window should also say "Press any key to continue . . . " on the last line. When you press a key, the window should disappear, and if you didn't get an error, the W: drive will be be available in "My Computer."

This is only a temporary situation. In a month or so, we will be moving the web files to the new domain ("MASH") and then the W: drive should come up automatically as it did before. In that process, we will have to re-enter everyone's access permissions; to ensure the least possible disruption, please email me now and tell me what parts of the website you have access to. (If you are a student, this will need to be confirmed by your faculty or staff supervisor, or the advisor of your club is you work woth a club website.)

None of this will affect public_html websites! Those have already been migrated along with the rest of your H: drive, and you still edit them by chening files in your public_html folder. You still access them on the web at http://www.wou.edu/~username (where "username" is your username, not the actual word "username".) However, if your public_html website still doesn't work, please email me at webmaster@wou.edu and let me know. Include your username if you aren't emailing from your wou.edu email address.

Training

Bill asked us all to do an entry about training classes we've taken in the past year or so. I haven't had time to do much of that, but I did do one: SunONE Directory Server LDAP Concepts. It was a mid-level summary of LDAP, and it taught me a lot that I've used ever since.

Holy blog creation, Batman!

Well, I guess that joke kind of dates me. I'm still amazed, though; I just ran the mass blog creation script, and our server created 5102 blogs in only 25 seconds. Do we have fast hardware or what?

So now everybody at WOU has a blog. Yes, this means you, too. You can start it up by going to http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin; use your normal username, but for now the password is the last four digits of your ID number (unless you already had a blog, in which case the password is still whatever it was before.) Hopefully within a few days we'll set up password synchronization so that when you change your main password via the account lookup page it will also set your blog password.

For help getting going on your blog, take a look at the general blogging FAQ, and the WOU blog server FAQ (Part 1, Part 2)

Turning the corner on trackback spam

I think I'm finally turning the corner on all the trackback spam I've been getting; banning IP addresses seems to help.

I found a nice little shortcut that makes this stuff easier to manage. In the trackback list, just click on the IP address in the Source column. (In the comment list, you can click the little magnifying glass icon in the IP column for the same effect.) This gives you a filtered list of all the trackback pings (or comments) posted from that address; it makes it easy to just click the "check all" button to select them all, then "Delete" to send them all to the bit-bucket.

Furthermore, when you have this kind of filtered view of trackbacks or comments from a single address, the blog server also gives you a button to "Ban this IP", so you can do that without having to copy the address and enter it separately on the banning screen.

Just thought I'd share that little tip.

Crunch time!

Wow, did I say it was crunch time before? I didn't know what I was talking about. This is crunch time. Here's what I've been working on:

• Cleaning up the LDAP database and making sure everybody has their ID numbers and other needed attributes added in (as of 3AM on Tuesday, only 19 people were missing ID numbers. Most of the ones I couldn't find were because of multiple possibly matching records in Banner; if I call you and ask if your middle initial is L or J sometime next week; don't be weirded out!)


• Entering newly registered students into LDAP. I need to automate this better, but I should be able to get a new batch in by Monday.


• A script to add new user accounts.

This last is the most interesting, not least because it's actually something that doesn't have to do with the migration! It replaces three old scripts that were needed to properly add user accounts on the old system, and does extra things like automatically creating a blog for each new user.
Anyway, I've been maxed out all week, so please accept my apologies if you've been waiting on a service request and I haven't gotten back to you just yet. I have managed to get a fair number of individual requests don, but I just don't have time to get each one of them done this week, unless I want to stay up after midnight every night. Next week I should be able to get to a few more, and the rest should hopefully be done soon after. I feel kind of bad about not giving the kind of service I wish I could, but at the moment there's little I can do about it.

So what is an LDAP database, anyway?

I've been talking a lot about LDAP here lately; as I promised, here's more of an explanation.

LDAP stands for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol", which I'm sure makes it perfectly understandable right there (just kidding!) Strictly speaking, there isn't any such thing as "an LDAP database"; any database could work, provided that it is tuned for very fast retrieval of information, and can be accessed using the standardized methods of LDAP. It is these standard methods that make LDAP special, and the data retrieval speed that makes it useful.

Because computers can't do magic, a database has to give up something else in order to get very fast retrieval speeds; databases that work with LDAP generally sacrifice speed of updates. This is not really much of a problem since LDAP is designed to work with data that is not constantly changing. LDAP is ideal for storing lists of objects where each object has similar pieces of information that don't change very often; for instance, all user accounts have a username, password, first and last name, ID number, email address, telephone number, etc. That's where the name comes from:
Lightweight - it is quicker and easier to use than previous methods.
Directory - it works with information stored in lists, much like a phone directory.
Access - its primary purpose is to access data as opposed to changing it.
Protocol - it is a standard set of methods.
We use our LDAP database mainly to store user account information. Originally, only our email server stored accounts in the LDAP database, but as part of the migration, we are consolidating most of our user accounts for various systems into a few LDAP databases that synchronize with each other. Because LDAP provides standard methods to access data, many different programs and systems can use the same database of user accounts. This is what enables us to use the same password for email, network, FTP, forums, and other systems; they all refer to the LDAP database to check your password and other information.
LDAP provides good security as well; your password is encrypted so that even we can't see it. That is why our account lookup system can only change your password, and not tell you what it is. Note that this system depends on your ID number being stored in the LDAP database as well, in order to verify that you are the owner of the account; a few people still don't have their numbers in the system, so if you try the account lookup and it doesn't recognize you, please contact the UCS service request desk and let them know your name and ID number so we can get your account fixed.
LDAP makes our jobs as system administrators easier, too; before, we had to create multiple accounts for every new person that came onto campus, but now things are much simpler. We don't have to set up a separate login system for every web-database application anymore, since our Oracle database server can access the LDAP database for logins. And we don't have to ask you quite as many questions if there's some sort of login problem, because there are fewer user databases where a problem might exist.
As time goes by, more and more systems will be converted to use LDAP; for instance, this blog server, the purchase request system, and the Physical Plant service request system. Also, when we roll out our new WOU portal, it will also use the LDAP database, so you won't have to create a new account and remember a new password in order to use it.
Hopefully this has cleared things up a bit! If you want to know more, please contact me or comment on this entry. As usual, Wikipedia has more, in this article.

Improved password synchronization

Just today Summer, Travis, and I fixed the password synchronization between email and network logins. Well, not "fixed" exactly, because it wasn't really broken; it just required someone to restart some software once or twice a day.

Now, when you go to the account lookup page, you will know for sure that your new password will work on both your email account and your network login. The only catch is that you have to wait (at most) five minutes for the change to take effect; we will make the change happen in real time as soon as we find a way to keep it from introducing a specific and sneaky little security hole.

Thanks to Summer for creating that account lookup system, by the way! I know there have been a few people who have had problems with it; almost all of those problems have been because we needed to enter information into the LDAP database, and not the fault of the account lookup system itself.

Once the domain migration is finished, I would like to convert more of our systems to use the LDAP account database. For instance, we could reprogram the blog server to look in the main LDAP database instead of its own separate one; this would mean that your email and network password would also get you into your blog administration page.

Thanks to the PL/SQL functions I've mentioned before, we could also do this with things like the UCS purchase request system, and the Physical Plant work request system. Ideally, you will only have to remember one or two passwords to do everything you need to do.

We would love to do this with Banner as well, but that would be hard. We would have to be pretty creative and/or sneaky to get that going, so for the time being, if you need to log in to Banner, you'll need to remember a different password.

Crunch time

It's getting down to crunch time here. Students will be back soon, and as UCS finishes up the migration for all those user accounts, I've been pretty busy programming scripts to automate parts of that process. (If we tried moving four thousand email accounts by hand, the migration wouldn't get finished until next year!) So I've been setting up scripts for moving email accounts, changing entries in the email alias file (which is how our email system knows whether your mail needs to go to the old or the new system) and preparing user information so that unix accounts can be moved into an LDAP database.

I've also finished coding up a couple of generalized PL/SQL functions so our programmers can look people up in the new user database. This probably won't mena much to most people, but if any of you programmers need more LDAP lookup functions, let me know. Want to be able to check if a user si faculty, staff, or student? Want to be able to do name or email address searches in LDAP? I can get you a function to do that kind of stuff.

When I have more time, I'll post some more general blog entries about LDAP and other such topics, so everyone will have an easier time understanding the stuff I talk about here.

That's it for now, though!

What I've been up to.

I haven't been blogging much lately, as you can see. I've mostly been busy with the system programming side of my job. Here's a brief list of the things I've done:

• Added LDAP server accounts for all students registered for Fall


• For all faculty and staff ccounts migrated so far, added some LDAP attributes that we missed in the migration (this is why the Account Lookup and Password Change feature didn't work for some of you; hopefully this is all fixed now, but if it isn't, please tell the Service Request Desk!)


• Worked on a procedure so that our Oracle web/database applications can talk to the LDAP database and easily use it for logins. (this means that more web applications that used to require their own logins will soon work with your email password, which is also now your network password.)


• Worked on a system to help us re-code our website. I'll talk moreabout that later, but it's a huge job! Once it's done, though, it should make it easier for everyoen to create web pages with the WOU design.

I'll try to come up with a more easily digestible explanation of some of this next week. Especially LDAP, since that's becoming so important to my job lately. Hmmm, I should note that down as a possible FAQ topic for when I start sending those again....

More on trackback spam

I'm getting tired of all this trackback spam I've been getting; it's averaged about sixty a week, usually in one or two big chunks. I've tried banning an IP address or two; let's see if that helps.

How do I ban an IP address, you might ask? Well, it's pretty easy.

Here's how it works: first, of course, you need to know the IP address you want to ban. Then on your blog admin page, click on Configuration. Near the upper right of that page, you should see an "IP Banning" link. Click it and you will see a simple form with one input. Enter the IP address to ban and click the Add button; you should then see the newly banned IP address in a list below the form.
If you realize you've made a mistake or you want to un-ban the address for any other reason, go to that list and click the checkbox next to the address(es) you want to un-ban. Then click the Delete button below to delete the address(es) from your ban list.
When an address is banned, no computer using that address can leave a comment or a trackback ping. This isn't foolproof, of course; there are ways for someone to get a new IP. If they are on a large ISP such as AOL, it may well be just a matter of signing off, waiting a few minutes, then signing on again.
For more about IP addresses, check out Wikipedia's entry.

New Blogs at WOU

We've had lots of people start blogs since I last posted a list of new ones, and four of them have made at least two entries so far.

Here they are:

Dale Goodell's Blog - Dale used to work for Library and Media Services, and now works with UCS on library-related projects.
Joan Guralnick - Joan is a UCS tech support manager and Monmouth resident.
Laura Dunn's Blog - Laura is a recent graduate of WOU. (Congratulations!)
Mike Soukup's Blog - Mike is a UCS Banner programmer.

If you want your blog mentioned here, just make at least two entries in it! If you want me to say anything specific about you, please email me.

Busy again

Wow. It's hard to remember to post here sometimes. I had a really busy week last week; mostly working on the new database system for the website.

On Friday, I came in for a meeting about the University Self-study that we need to do as part of our regular re-accreditation process. I'm one of the UCS representatives in the self-study group, and I expect I'll have more to say about that later, but at the moment I need to get back to programming; I have some system administration scripts that need to be done by the end of the week.

More on TrackBack

Oops, I spoke too soon. It turns out that the Nofollow plugin also applies to TrackBack links. Good thing, too, since I just got six more trackback spams in the last two days.

TrackBack spam

Well, it looks like that nofollow plugin to defeat comment spam is effective; now I'm getting TrackBack spam instead.

I want to allow TrackBack pings, so I can see if any other blogs are linking to my blog; but man, there was some disgusting looking spam in those TrackBacks. Since each TrackBack creates a link on my blog to the blog that supposedly mentioned my post, TrackBack spammers can create links to their spam sites by sending TrackBack pings. This is really annoying, and to my knowledge there's no way to stop it, at least not yet.

Luckily, on your blog control panel, you can view and delete TrackBacks; just click the "TRACKBACKS" button in the left-side toolbar.

By the way, I'm going to be off campus tomorrow, Thursday the 28th, but will be back in on Friday, normally my day off.

Busy day

Today was a day for catching up with a lot of things that fell through the cracks while I was up to the eyeballs in programming. Apologies to the people who waited for things; I will start getting to the quick requests a little more quickly.

Part of what I was working on, and just finished before the weekend, was a fix for all the students who had their files migrated and had their public_html websites stop working. All of those sites should be up and running again.

Anyway, it's late and I need to get going, so I'll sign off now.

Woo-hoo!

I finally got the automated blog creation script going. This means we'll be able to set up blogs in bulk for the whole incoming Freshman class, and any other group we want; also, it means Paul will be able to create individual blogs more quickly.

I just had to share that. :-}

More new blogs at WOU

I haven't been posting these for a couple of weeks, so there's a bunch to catch up on!

• Troy's Blog - by Troy Knabe, assistant sysadmin


• Nathan's Blog - by Nathan Sauer, Classroom Support manager


• Rick's Blog - by Rick Thompson, computer lab manager


• MikeE's Blog - by Mike Ellis, manager of Residential Computing


• Terry Manning's Blog - A student's blog.

By the way, I am working on a public page to list the blogs on our server. A question for anyone who is paying attention; should I automatically include everyone, or only include people who don't ask to be removed, or only include people who specifically say it's OK to be listed? Or any other ideas?

Whew

I've been really busy lately, but I've just about gotten the mass blog creation problem solved. Work on the website is also eating lots of my time. I will start blogging again more regularly in the next few days, though.

Back from vacation

Hey, folks, I'm back. It was a good week; we spent the last part of it camping and touring the northcoast, from Tillamook to Astoria. There wasn't enough time to see everything we wanted to see, but wow, it's beautiful up there.

So anyway, now I'm digging my way out from under the pile of things that built up while I was gone. It's not as bad as I thought it would be; by now I actually have time to write a blog entry!

I'm also getting ready to work on a mass creation script for blogs; we hope to automatically create a blog for every incoming freshman by Fall Term.

That's all for now!

Comment Spam

Well, I was wondering when this was going to start happening. Looks like someone comment-spammed my blog.

What's comment spam, you may ask?



Basically it's when some money-grubber ads a comment to a blog entry that has nothing to do with the entry, but just includes a lot of links to spam sites. The idea is that when google scans the blog, it will see all those links, and thus rank those sites as more important. (The number of links to a site is one criterion Google and other search engines use to determine how a page ranks in their search results.)
Needless to say, I deleted the comment. I doubt I was the only one hit, either, but since most people who blog at WOU have comment moderation turned on, it's unlikely that any of the others got through.
We need to get the Nofollow plugin configured on our blog server; it adds a special flag to all links in comments telling the Google scan to ignore them, thus denying their benefit to spammers. Hopefully that will make them stop showing up.
It's hard to describe how much spammers annoy me without language I don't want to use in public. It's also annoying that some people actually buy stuff that's advertised in spam. That's why the spammers keep doing what they do; because it makes them money. I hope none of you have ever sent money to a spammer, because if you have, you've helped make the lives of everyone on the 'Net just a bit more annoying.
Anyway, I'm on vacation and don't want to get all riled up, so I'll end here.

Vacation

I'll be on vacation from Monday, June 20, through Friday, June 24. I'll be back on Monday the 27th as normal.

During that time I will be checking email and voicemail only rarely. If you need help that can't wait for my return, please call the UCS Service Request Desk at 88925 or email them at ucshelpdesk@wou.edu.

Emails to faq@wou.edu, virusinfo@wou.edu, and webmaster@wou.edu will wait in my inbox until I return; if you have an urgent question related to any of these three areas, please email Travis at knabet@wou.edu.

Legal Guide for Bloggers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently published an online Legal Guide for Bloggers that some of you may find interesting. Just thought I'd mention it; it covers topics like liability, privacy, defamation, and the differences between the legal rights of bloggers and the legal rights of print journalists.

Information channels

Here at UCS we've been getting complaints about too many sources of information. People are concerned with missing something critical. A common question is, "How am I supposed to keep track of all these different blogs, forums, wikis, and so on?"

The short answer is, you don't really need to. As long as you're reading your email, you're fine.

Here's the long answer: though official policy hasn't been set yet, we're still using email to send any information that is really critical. All these blogs, forums, wikis, and so on are alternatives, designed to give you additional information if you want it, or for specific uses by smaller groups of people.
The blogs are mostly designed for personal communication; some of us write about topics that affect campus, but mostly that's because we deal with those things as part of our own personal jobs. I would hope that my posts are useful enough so people interested in blogging at WOU will visit my blog regularly; but you aren't required to. The resource is just there in case you want to take advantage of it.
Speaking for myself, if I post something on my blog that is really vital for people to see, I'll include a mention of it in the weekly FAQ email (or, as you've seen in the last few weeks, I'll send out a reminder to check blogs even if there is no FAQ for that week.) Other UCS people are also sending out messages on the allfacstaff and/or students email lists, to inform you when they post a blog entry with important information. That way, it's not your job to check fifteen blogs every day just in case there is something important in one of them.
Of course, if you choose not to read your email list messages, and you miss something, that's your responsibility. This is just me talking here; it's not the official UCS policy. We're meeting you more than halfway by using email for everything critical; you only have to worry about one source of information, so I think it's only fair that you take advantage of that source.

Computer Jargon

I noticed this entry and this one in Travis's blog. Widely differing levels of technical knowledge can definitely make it hard to communicate; UCS has faced this issue in the past and no doubt will continue to do so in the future.


I think Travis is justified in his response. His job is to deal with a lot of specialized technology, much of which isn't easily understandable unless you work with it regularly. Personally, I can't figure out half of what he does, because it's outside my area of expertise. You can take it from me that Travis's blog posts aren't nearly as technical as they could be; of course, he could explain things so everybody can understand them, but that would take a lot of time away from things like making sure your Internet access stays available and your data is safe on our network.
As for me, though, a large part of my job is figuring out how to communicate technical concepts to people who don't already understand them. So my response to the jargon issue will be a bit different. I'm committed to making my blog entries and FAQ documents as understandable as I can; I won't repeat the basics every time, but will at least try to explain things, and provide links to definitions and further information.
Also, there's something that really shouldn't be necessary to say, but human nature being what it is, somebody probably needs to hear it. The thing is, when we talk about technology, and you don't understand it, it's not because we're intentionally trying to insult you or confuse you. We're taking our best guess at how to communicate without being either too basic or too technical. We don't always guess right.
If you don't understand everything about computers, that doesn't mean you're stupid. Heck, I don't understand everything about computers. Nobody does. I don't understand plumbing or accounting or molecular biology, either. If you don't understand something I say, feel free to give me feedback. Of course, I'd like it if you were a bit more polite than the person who wrote Travis; but don't be shy either. If people start telling me I'm too technical, or too boring, or whatever, I'll try to change my tone; that's part of my job.
Of course, you can also do some research of your own; there's always the WOU FAQ documents, Google, Wikipedia, or the search on whatis.com, just to name a few.
Hope that helps somebody.

New Blogs at WOU

We have several new blogs this week, but only one that has passed the two-post mark: Mike Ross's Blog

Keeping busy

So, I suppose I should explain what has been keeping me so busy that I haven't had time to write FAQ's or update this blog every day.

Warning: this is all geeky stuff. But read on if you're interested anyway! I've tried to explain the stuff in English, as non-technically as possible.

Mostly it's been systems programming, but that really means several different tasks at the moment, most of which have to do with our LDAP database.
What is an LDAP database, you may ask? Basically, it is the database that stores things like usernames, passwords, email addresses, program settings, etc. The acronym stands for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol", and LDAP databases can store all sorts of information besides user settings. For instance, in Messenger Express and the new Communications express, your address books are stored in the LDAP database1.
The advantage of this sort of thing is centralization. Since LDAP is a standardized and widely supported protocol, many different systems and programming languages can use it. For instance, since your email username and password is stored in the LDAP database, other systems like the forums server or the domain migration questionnaire can use that same password.
Which brings me to the project that had me busy all last week: developing a standard way for all our Oracle web/database applications2, of which there are many on our servers. (For instance, the faculty/staff and student directory searches, the domain migration questionnaire, the policy display system, the online application for admissions... I'd have to go on way too long if I were to list them all.) Many of them require usernames and passwords, and now they can easily be converted to use your email login, so you won't have as many passwords to remember. Of course, most of them haven't actually been converted to the new method yet, but that's coming.
This week, I've been working on a better way to create web pages. Anyone who has used our website template knows that it requires some finicky editing to start a new page; you have to get the title right, the random images, all those meta tags, and so on. If someone gets part of this stuff wrong, it isn't always easy to notice, but it does affect things.
What I'm working on is a web form that will let you enter a title, choose some images, and put in keywords and other details. A web page will then be created for you in the folder you want, with all those finicky details taken care of, ready for you to edit by whatever means you normally use. Naturally, not everybody is allowed to create web pages; the system will use LDAP to verify your login and determine what folders you have access to. This is a long project, though, and won't be finished for some time; I'm shooting for late summer.
Aside from that, I've been doing some programming related to the domain migration, and moving people's email address books as they get transferred from Messenger Express to Communications Express. (If your email has already been migrated but you don't see your address book(s), please let me know!) If you don't know what migration I'm talking about, refer to this post on Joe's blog. (Just the first part, not the part about supporting Outlook, though you may find that good news too.)
Anyway, that's all the time I have today. If there's an FAQ tomorrow, it will be short.

---

1 Technically, "LDAP database" is a misnomer; LDAP is really just the way we access the database to read information out of it, or change what's in there. When I say "LDAP Database" I really mean "the database that we use LDAP to access", but of course the distinction is probably only of interest to geeks like me.

2 "Oracle web/database applications" are systems programmed in the PL/SQL language, using data in our Oracle database server, and accessed via the web.

New Blogs at WOU

We've had more blogging activity lately! Please check out the following new (or newly active) blogs:

Project Blog - By Dr. Sriram Khe

Shaun Gatherum's Blog - Information about the Teaching Research network migration.

Summer's Blog - By Summer Runyan, programmer and Web Portal specialist at UCS.

Travis's Blog - By Travis Knabe, head system administrator at UCS.

No FAQ this week

There will be no FAQ this week either. My jury duty got canceled at the last moment (too bad, because I was curious about how it would go) but I still was too busy today with systems programming.

Jury Duty

I have jury duty on Thursday the 2nd, so I won't be in. I'll be back to work on Monday as usual.

New blogs at WOU

We've had several new blogs started since I posted the last list, but only one of them has two or more posts, so that's the only one I'll list.

Brian Wendler's Blog: Technical information about the Banner system

Memorial Day

I don't intend to stray much from work-related stuff here in this blog, but today is an exception. It's Memorial Day.

There are a lot of soldiers and sailors out there giving their lives, limbs, and sanity for what they believe in. No matter what you think of the Bush administration's handling of this war, the troops deserve our support. Even more so if you (like me) don't think the war was the right idea; if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that this means the troops are getting a raw deal from the government and deserve even more support from us.
If you're thinking about buying one of those car magnets that say you support the troops, please don't unless you actually have given time and money to support them or their families. Otherwise you're really just saying "I support the company that made this magnet."
Of course, if you've already served, that's different. I salute you, and I salute the families of those who have given their lives.
But most of us have not, nor will we ever, put our lives on the line for what we believe in. Shouldn't we at least put some time and money on the line instead? If you don't know where to start, try a google search for charities that support the troops. Or take a look at this list.
If everyone spent as much money on actual support as we spend on flags and car magnets, I bet things would look a whole lot better for the troops. They'd still be in harm's way, but at least they'd really know we were behind them.

No FAQ this week

There won't be an FAQ this week; I've been buried in the systems programming side of my job for the last couple of days. I'm glad my schedule gives me three-day weekends, even if that means extra-long days Monday through Thursday. I like programming, but I can't do it too many days in a row anymore.

I'm probably going to have jury duty sometime next week, by the way. The next part of the stylesheet tutorial may be delayed a while because of that.

Changing blog colors, part 1

OK, I've been meaning to post about this for a few days now. The trouble is, changing colors and other style attributes requires more than basic HTML knowledge; you have to get into what's known as "Cascading Style Sheets" or CSS, which take a bit of explanation. If you are careful, though, it's not terribly hard, especially if you keep a backup of your blog's stylesheet so you can recover from any experiments that go awry. I'll start with a general overview of stylesheets and then get down to the nitty-gritty about how you use them to change the look of your blog. Part one will end with a concrete example of how to change the colors of links in your blog; later, part two will show you how to apply that technique to other aspects of your blog.

Stylesheets have a lot of options and technicalities, but basically they boil down to a list of rules for how different HTML elements should be displayed. For instance, if you want all bold text to look red, you can set up a rule that the B tag has the color red. You can actually change much, much more than colors; stylesheets let you control all sorts of things like font, text size, margins and borders for just about everything, and even the position of items on the page.

I suggest taking a look at your blog's stylesheet at this point. Open up a separate browser window and log in to the blog admin page. Go to your blog's control panel and click the "Templates" button in the sidebar. Look for the Stylesheet entry in the index Templates list, and double-click it. Before doing anything else, back this template up; copy everything in the large text box and paste it into notepad or some other text editor (Word is OK as long as you save as text and not .doc format.)

If you decided to skip that step, I seriously suggest going back and doing it right now. If you don't, you may regret it as soon as you start making changes.

Once you have backed up the stylesheet template, take a closer look at it. The top section should look much like this:

body	{
margin: 0px 0px 20px 0px;
background-color: #8FABBE;
text-align: center;
}
a	{
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:link {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:visited {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:active {
color: #8FABBE;
}
a:hover {
color: #006699;
}

These are the first six rules in the stylesheet. (Each rule starts with a name, and inclides one or more attributes inside a set of curly braces.) The name of the rule defines what HTML elements it applies to; the first one is the BODY tag, and the rest are for the A tag. Those of you at least somewhat familiar with HTML will know that the A tag defines a link; all the different A rules here control the appearance of various states of a link, i.e. before it is visited (the a:link rule), after it has been visited(the a:visited rule), as it is being clicked on (a:active) and as the mouse is hovering over is but not clicking (a:hover).

We'll use these as examples to work with. You probably want to change more than the colors of links in your blog, but that will be covered later after we have a basic understanding of how colors work in stylesheets.

Take a look at the "color: #8FABBE" line in the a:link rule. That 8FABBE encodes a color, expressed as a combination of red, green, and blue. Now, I could spend paragraphs explaining hexadecimal encoding of RGB colors, but there's an easier way to get the encoding for a particular color. webreference.com has created a tool called the colorizer that makes this process fairly painless. Go there and play around with the settings until you have a color you like (it's probably easiest to click on the "Red" selection, move the red scrollbar up or down until you see a color you like somewhere on the color grid, then move the pointer on the color grid to that color.)

Once you have picked a color, copy the Hex value from the top of the three boxes to the lower right of the colorizer. Paste that in place of the "#8FABBE" in the a:link rule; be sure you include the pound sign. Now hit the Save button below the template text box; after a moment the page will refresh and a "Rebuild" button will appear in a yellow area near the top of the screen. Click that button to complete the process.

Now view your blog. If you've done this correctly, any unvisited links in your blog will be the new color, instead of the default grayish-blue. If it didn't work, go back and check that you followed the directions exactly; there should be only one "color" line within the curly braces that follow the "a:link" name. The word "color" should be followed by a colon, a space, a pound sign, the six hexadecimal digits you copied in, and a semicolon. Every time you make a change, remember to save and rebuild.

If you can't get it to work, or if it does anything weird that you weren't expecting, just copy the "color" line from one of the other rules in place of the one you changed, so you get back to "color: #8FABBE;".

Try this with some of the other A rules. Play around with the colorizer some more until you get the hang of it. That's all for today; tomorrow I'll talk about how to change the colors of other page elements, like the banner, the background, and so on. If you have any questions, post them as comments here and I'll answer them for you.

Hope this helps, and happy blogging!

New Blogs at WOU

I'm going to start linking to new blogs as they are started up on the WOU server. I'll wait to mention a blog until it has at least two entries, though.

Here are the new ones so far, in alphabetical order:

• Bill's Blog


• Joe's Blog


• The Reluctant Republican


• Tricia Flaherty's Blog

WOU Blog Server FAQ, Part 2

This is a reprint of the FAQ sent out on Friday, May 20. Please feel free to comment or email me questions!

Hello, everyone--
We've gotten some more questions about running blogs on our new Movable Type blog server, so this week I'll address them, and say a bit more about some features that may be of interest even though people haven't asked about them.
* I saved a blog entry but it doesn't show up when I view my blog! What's wrong?
Most likely, you saved it as a draft. All entries default to draft status, which means they don't show up even after you save them; this is useful when don't have time to finish an entry and want to add more later without posting it right away. When you are ready to add text or change the entry's status from draft to Publish, you can edit the entry.
* How do I edit a blog entry?
Whenever you save a new entry for the first time, you are automatically taken to the edit page for that entry. You can get back to it later by clicking the "Entries" link on the sidebar of your blog control panel. (Remember, you get to the control panel by clicking on your blog's name after logging in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin.)
The edit screen is basically like the entry screen, only with a few more fields at the bottom. The most important is Post Status, where you can change the entry from draft to publish, or vice versa. (The Future option in this menu also prevents the entry from being displayed.) The other important ones will be covered below.
* How can I notify people when I have posted something to my blog?
At the bottom of the edit screen for any saved entry, you can choose to send a notification to your predefined notification list. You can type in extra text if you want, and choose to include the entire text of the entry, or just an excerpt. All users in your list will get an email notification when you click the Send button.
* Who is on my notification list?
Click the "Notification" link on your control panel's sidebar. At first, your list will be empty, but you can use the form on this page to add email addresses. Unfortunately, you can only add them one at a time; we understand that this makes it difficult for professors to add all their students, and are working on a way around this. You might also consider contacting Paul Lambert (lambertp@wou.edu) and getting an email list created, and just entering that address into your notification list.
* What if I want to keep people from commenting on a specific entry?
Near the bottom of either the new entry or edit entry screen, you will see a "Comments" menu. Normally this is set to "Open", meaning that readers of your blog will be able to both read comments and post their own. "Closed" means that no more comments may be added, but any comments already left are still visible. "None" hides all the comments and prevents any from being added. For a new entry, set this to either "None" or "Closed" to prevent all comments.
Note that there is a way to force people to leave a name and email address when posting comments, and to be notified whenever a comment is left; these and other options will be discussed below.
* How do I delete a comment I find offensive or inappropriate?
When you edit an entry, near the bottom of the edit page you will see a list of all comments that have been made on that entry. From here you can delete any comment.
* How can I post links that stay on my front page?
You can do this by editing your index template. This requires some HTML knowledge; the better you are at HTML, the more things you can change. It is possible to change the look of your blog in almost any way, but that is beyond the scope of these FAQ's. However, in my blog, I have posted a fairly simple way to add links to your blog's sidebar. You can see this here or just look for the entry titled "Sidebar Links".
* How can I change the colors or font of my blog?
This can be done by editing your blog's stylesheet; again, the more you know about stylesheet code, the more you can change. The possibilities are almost limitless, but I don't have room to talk about them here; I intend to post some basics in my blog fairly soon, probably early next week.
* How can I change the name of my blog?
After the last two questions, you'll probably be relieved to hear that this does not require any HTML or CSS knowledge. First, click the "Weblog Config" link in the control panel sidebar. As you might expect, this takes you to the Weblog Config area, which has many options. The first page you will see is "Core Setup"; the first item there is the name of your blog. Please note that it is extremely dangerous to change any other settings on this page! They can completely mess up your blog. (Well, all right, you can change the time zone if you really want, but there's no reason for it to be anything other than Pacific Time.)
* How can I change the description of my blog?
If you are already in the Weblog config area, just click the "Preferences" link near the top of the page. The Preferences page has many more options than the Core Setup page, and they are much less dangerous; however, you should still not change anything if you don't understand what it is even after reading the help text.
The very first option is the description of your blog; you can change it to anything you want, but I recommend keeping it fairly short.
* What other preferences can I change here?
Well, any of them, really, but I don't recommend mucking about in here unless you know what you are doing. If you do change things you aren't sure about, make sure you make note of the settings that were there before, so you can change things back if they have an effect you don't like.
One setting that might be useful is the "Default Post Status"; if you find yourself saving entries as drafts too often, and having to go back and edit them to make them visible, you can change this setting. Just remember that this can lead to the opposite problem of saving things in publish mode by mistake when you meant to save them as drafts!
Other useful settings can be found near the bottom of the page, in the Comments section. You can make people leave a name and email address wen commenting on your blog, control the way comments are displayed, and get email notifications whenever someone comments.
* Where can I go for more information?
I already mentioned this last week, but you can find the Movable Type user manual at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html. Also, look at my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs; I will post more tips and tricks as I discover them!
That's it for this week; feel free to post questions as comments on my blog, or just email me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks as ever for your time and attention!
----Ron

What to blog?

Tricia raised some good issues in this post in her blog. Personally, I think the content of any blog should be up to its author. If you want to talk about personal stuff, that's fine. Political opinion is likewise fine. Work-related stuff is also fine. The only things that are not fine are listed in the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy; basically, this means no commercial or criminal activity.

Bill posted a draft version of some guidelines that I think make a lot of sense. Of course, these guidelines aren't mandatory, nor should every blog here at WOU be considered a "work blog".

Also, when you have a blog, you should not feel like you have to conform to a certain schedule, unless you purposely set one for yourself. Many blogs are daily, but that doesn't mean they all have to be. There's nothing wrong with having a weekly schedule, or just writing an entry whenever you have something to say, without worrying about a schedule.

Just so you know, this blog is mostly going to cover work-related stuff, though I'm not going to limit myself to that. I'll try to post an entry every day I'm here (which, in case you didn't know, is generally Monday through Thursday,) but I may skip days occasionally, or post when I'm not here.

A new fraud

A week or so ago I got an email from someone claiming to be "Jerson Estandarte", a recent high school graduate in the Philippines who needed money for college. This person was trying to reach someone else on campus, but I got their email since they sent it to webmaster@wou.edu.

I thought there might be a chance they were legitimate and just very naive; I looked around and couldn't find any other examples of this kind of thing being a scam. So I asked them for some proof, and they got evasive, pretending to misunderstand my requests.

Finally when I asked them to mail actual paper documents to me, I got a reply accusing me of being unsympathetic and saying they would stop trying to contact me. At that point I figured the whole thing had been a scam all along.

I'm curious if anyone else has seen anything like this; it sounds like a new strategy.

By the way, for fraud information with a humorous slant, check out http://www.scamorama.com/.

Sidebar Links

You may notice that I've put some links on the sidebar of my blog; it takes a bit of HTML knowledge, but not too much. Read the full entry for instructions.

Here's how to add links or any other text to your sidebar:
First, go to your blog admin page; the easiest way to do that is to log in at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin and click on the name of your blog.
Next, look in the middle of the left column of buttons; click the "TEMPLATES" button. This will take you to a list of templates. Click "Main Index" to go to the edit screen for that template.
Don't make any changes to the top parts of the form unless you are sure you know what you are doing. The important stuff is in the big text box. Before making any changes, I recommend backing it up! Select the entire contents of this box, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into an empty text document. Save the document some place where you will remember it later. If you ever get this template messed up, you can go back to the file, copy the stuff back out, and replace everything in this text box with the file contents. (If you don't understand this part of the instructions, you probably shouldn't be trying to add links to your blog.)
Once you've got it backed up, look for the following text, about halfway down:

<div class="sidebar">

Below that, paste in the following HTML code:

<h2>Links</h2> <div class="link-note"> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.wou.edu/~kernanb/blogs/">Bill's Blog</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.wou.edu/~crowej/blogs/">Joe's Blog</a></li> </ul> </div>

Of course, you can change the word "Links" to whatever you want, and change the link addresses and text as well! Bill and Joe probably wouldn't mind if everybody linked to their blogs, but I'm sure you have your own ideas for places to link to. :-}
Make sure to put a blank line below the inserted text, for readability. If you want more than one list of links, just paste in that block of code multiple times. Note that the links may look a bit more spread out in your blog than in mine; that's because I also messed with my blog's stylesheet to tighten things up a bit. I'll talk about some stylesheet tweaks later.
That's all there is to it! I know some people have requested a way to set up links that does not involve HTML editing; I will see if I can come up with something over the summer.

What's happening

Don't forget to check out Bill's Blog for important updates about UCS and what we're up to.

I've been working on a script to migrate people's email address books from the old email system to the new one; that took up a lot of my time last week and the week before. Apologies to those of you who are still waiting on other things; however, now that the script is done, I'm working through the rest of my to-do list. If you haven't heard back from me by Thursday afternoon, feel free to call or email.

WOU Blog Server FAQ

This is a reprint of the FAQ on the WOU blog server. It was originally sent out on Friday, May 13. (And no, I'm not superstitious.)

Hello, everyone--
The Movable Type blog server is now up and running, so this week I'll talk about how to get started with it. This will be a fairly short FAQ because my week has been filled with other urgent projects, but luckily there's not much you need to know to get going!
* So what do I do first?
First, you need to send a message to Paul Lambert at blogadmin@wou.edu and request that a blog be created for you. Eventually, we will tie the blog server in with our other systems and automatically create blogs, but for now you must request it.
* Can I choose my username, password, title of my blog, or anything else?
Your username will be the same as your WOU email username, and your password will be a standard one, which you should change as soon as you log in the first time. You can choose whatever title you want for your blog, within reason, and also a short descriptive phrase, one line of text or less. These can be changed later.
* Where do I log in?
Go to http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin, and enter your username and password. The next screen is the main blog administration page; you will see a list of all the blogs you can post to; at first, this will just be one. Later on, some users may be able to post to multiple blogs; for instance, their own and another one that is written by a group. For now, though, you will see only the blog you just requested.
* How do I change my password?
This is the first thing you should do. Look on the right side of the page, and you will see a box labeled "Shortcuts". One of the links there is called "Edit your profile"; click on it to go to the profile page. You can change any of the options here, but we do not recommend changing your username. To change your password, enter the new password in both the "Password" and "Confirm Password" boxes.
* Why does it ask me for my birthplace on the profile screen?
If you want, you can enter your birthplace for the purposes of password recovery. If you don't, the "forgot password" link on the login screen will not work. You must also make sure that your email address is listed correctly in you profile, because the password recovery system sends the password to that address.
* How do I get back to the main page from the profile editing screen?
Click the "Main menu" link near the top, or select your blog's name from the menu at the top of the screen and click the Go button.
* How do I actually post to my blog?
To the right of the blog name on the main page, you should see a "Create Entry" link. Click it, and it will take you to the "Create New Entry" page. This page has a lot of options on it, but luckily there is a fairly good help page available; just click the question mark button next to some of the field names. I'll still cover the basics here, though.
* So what are the basics?
You'll need to fill in the Title and the Entry Body fields; the rest are optional. Notice that you can choose categories for your posts; there's no need to worry about that now, though. If your entry is long, consider putting the bulk of it in the "Extended Entry" box; that will hide that part Down at the bottom are some more options, but the only one you need to worry about right now is the Post Status menu. When you are done with your entry, you should make sure that menu is set to "Publish" rather than "Draft" or "Future".
Go ahead and hit the Preview button at the bottom. Naturally enough, this will show you a preview of what your entry will actually look like to readers. You can choose to re-edit the entry if you want to make changes, or save it now if you are done.
* What can I say in my blog?
Pretty much anything you want. Because the blog server (like every everything else here) is owned by the state, blogs are subject to the standard limitations spelled out in the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy, available at http://www.wou.edu/policy/36. This really isn't any different from the rules on email or anything else; you just can't use your blog for any sort of commercial business or criminal activity, and you agree to take sole responsibility for what you say.
* Where do I go to view my blog? Or anyone else's?
Your blog is stored in the public_html folder on your H: drive in the folder called "blogs". You should not try to edit anything in this folder by hand, unless you really know what you are doing. Since it is in the public_html folder, it can be accessed at "http://www.wou.edu/~username/blogs" (substitute your actual network username for the "username" part; and don't forget the tilde "~" before it!)
This address will be listed below the blog name in the main menu page of the blog server. Anyone else's blog, if they have one, will have a similar address. If you have a home page, I recommend putting a link to your blog somewhere on it as well. You can find my blog at http://www.wou.edu/~swartzer/blogs. Feel free to post comments there!
* How do I post a comment?
Click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of any blog entry (that number beside it is the number of comments already left, by the way) and you will be taken to a comment form. Just fill it out, preview it if you like, and save it!
* Where do I go for more information?
Movable Type has a good user manual; you can find it at http://sundown.wou.edu/mtstatic/docs/mtmanual.html.
That's it for this week; feel free to email me with any questions, or post them as comments on my blog!
Thanks once again for your time and attention!
----Ron

Blogging FAQ

Here is a reprint of the UCS FAQ on blogging in general. This was originally sent out on Friday, April 22.

Please feel free to post comments and questions!

Hello, everyone--
Though the FAQs have been on hiatus for a while, they should be more regular in the near future. This week's topic is blogging.
* What does that word mean, anyway?
The term "blogging" started out as a slang term for "Web Logging", the practice of keeping a public log of comments about interesting websites. It started back in the early days of the Web, before search engines were widely available. The first web logs were just web pages created by hand, like all other pages back in that era; but as the web took off in the late 1990's, software tools appeared to let non-technical people create and maintain web logs of their own. Around the turn of the millennium, references to web logs started showing up in other media, and the term "blogging", which began as slang, became the standard word. Someone who maintains a blog is called a "blogger" and the collection of all blogs is commonly known as "the blogosphere".
* Blogging is about a lot more than just commenting on websites now, isn't it?
That's right. Blogs are now used for all sorts of things, most commonly personal online journals, technical newsletters, or political discussions. Often they do include links to other websites, and comments about them, but this is no longer required. Blog entries are just as likely to refer to items in the news, or developments in the technical world, or events in the blogger's life, or whatever else the blogger feels like writing about.
* Why would I want to know about blogs now?
Blogs are an important means of communication these days. For years now the Web has been too vast for any one person to find everything they are interested in, but blogs can be useful "filters" that help people find sites they would not have otherwise known about. Despite the claims of some, blogs have not yet rendered traditional media obsolete, but they still provide a lot of useful information and commentary on things the more traditional media might miss, or provide a place for different opinions to be expressed freely.
More to the point, WOU is in the process of setting up a blog server of our own, using the Movable Type system. Any member of the WOU community will be able to set up a blog, free of charge. The specifics will be covered in a later FAQ. If you have anything you want to talk about, a blog is easier to set up than a personal web page. Also, blogs can be very useful in a classroom setting, facilitating communication and discussion. See below for more on this.
* So what makes a blog a blog?
The exact definition of "blog" is open for debate. Most people agree that the key feature of a blog is that it has dated entries, like a diary or journal. The most recent entry is visible first and previous entries are available lower on the page or in archives; any entry can be bookmarked or linked to individually. Virtually all blogs include a sidebar of links to other sites (mainly other blogs.) Most blogging software also allows readers to post comments on blog entries, and several programs also have a "trackback" feature that allows readers to see what other blogs have linked to the entry they are currently reading. Some make a distinction between a "weblog" in which every entry contains a link, and a "journal" which is more free-form, though for most people, the term "blog" covers both.
* What are some common types of blogs?
As already mentioned, the three most common types of blogs are personal, technical, and political. Many blogs cross these boundaries, of course, but the three categories remain fairly distinct, with common features shared among blogs of the same type.
Another way to categorize blogs is by the contributors. Most blogs are run by a single individual, who may or may not allow other users to comment; examples might be a class blog run by a professor, or a personal online journal, or a blog dedicated to political commentary by one person. Many blogs are are run by groups of people, sharing the responsibility for keeping the blog updated. Others, known as community blogs, are open to anyone, sometimes for a fee. Still others are official publications of companies or other organizations.
* What's the difference between a blog and a forum?
The main difference between a blog and a forum is that most blogs maintain a distinction between the blogger and the readers, while in a forum, anyone who is a member may post. Forums are also designed to maintain many different discussions at once, while blogs are more linear, in that they are date-based. The distinction blurs a bit when a blog allows readers to comment, or when a forum only allows a few people to post but many people to read. Of course there are also many technical differences, but I won't get into that here.
* Why has there been so much in the news lately about bloggers and blogging?
Political blogs have been very much in the news in the last year or so. Blogs of several different biases have spread news that was at first ignored by the mainstream media, and in some cases this led to embarrassment and retirement of public figures. Since many people on different sides have a low opinion of the mainstream media these days, many have turned to blogs for their news. Also, the mainstream media has begun picking up stories from blogs for their own use.
* How much should I trust what I read in a blog?
Good question! Since blogs are most often written by individuals, they are subject to the mistakes and biases of those people. As with any web page (or any piece of information at all, really,) you need to consider the source. If the blogger is someone you know, such as a friend or one of your professors, trust is easy to judge. Most bloggers will not be known to you, of course; in general, they do mean well, though they are of course still human, and fallible. A few bloggers actually tell outright lies or intentionally distort their sources to fit some agenda. Even if someone is trying to be honest, they still might fall prey to false information; it is easy for a rumor to start somewhere in the blogosphere and spread like wildfire with little or no fact checking. Naturally this is not unique to blogs or even the Internet, since gossip has been with us for thousands of years; blogs just allow it to spread faster. On the other hand, blogs can also spread truths that other sources have missed or ignored.
With all this, it isn't easy to know how much to trust anything in a blog. The best way I've found is to read a wide variety of blogs, as well as other news sources, and compare them. If a story only appears on blogs of a certain bias, take it with a larger grain of salt than normal. It's also crucial to consider the track record of the people involved. Have they exaggerated before? How much and what kind of documentation do they provide? Just like anything you hear from anywhere else, you have to weigh different factors before deciding how much to trust something on a blog, and whether it is worth passing along.
* What are some examples of blogs?
For legal reasons I will not link to or recommend any political blogs here, though there are a vast number of them. I'm also not going to point people at anyone's personal online journal (Well, I'd point you to mine but it's horribly out of date!) That still leaves a lot of the blogging world to be explored, though. Here are just a few blogs to take a look at:
http://www.metafilter.com/ - a good example of a community blog; anyone can buy a membership for a small fee and post about anything they please. Metafilter is a weblog in the strict sense, in that every entry has to contain at least one link. The result is a widely mixed bag, with often fascinating and obscure links appealing to all sorts of different interests.
http://www.boingboing.net/ - a widely-read multiple-contributor blog covering technology and modern culture. It is generally considered to be reputable, despite its often irreverent tone.
http://www.slashdot.org/ - probably the most popular general technical blog in existence. It has so many readers that when it links to another site, that site sees such a massive traffic increase that its server sometimes crashes. This has become known as "getting slashdotted". Slashdot's motto is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", though if you aren't interested in technical stuff, their news might not matter so much to you.
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ - one of the oldest popular blogs. It purposely maintains an old-school look and feel, and might not be the easiest to use, but still has a lot of good stuff. It's an interesting example of what most blogs were once like.
http://www.orblogs.com/ - not a blog in itself, but a directory of blogs written by Oregonians. If you start a blog on WOU's server, you can be listed here.
* I'm a professor. What if I want to start a blog for my class?
Dr. Shaun Huston of the Geography department recently gave a presentation on effective use of blogs in a classroom setting. If you missed it, you can contact him at hustons@wou.edu. Dr. Huston has also written a paper (co-authored by Anne-Marie Deitering of OSU) on the use of blogs for teaching and learning; you may view it on the Web at http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/5mar2879z4.htm.
* Where can I go for more information?
The links below are all, appropriately enough, either blog entries or articles by bloggers.
Introduction to weblog terms - This covers some basic terminology you'll run into if you start reading blogs. It is also a good example of a blog entry, with comments from readers.
A History of Weblogs - This is a fairly brief history of blogging from the earliest days.
Weblogs: a history and perspective - This more in-depth history and discussion article is widely referred to by other blogs.
That's all for this week. Next week we'll cover more about WOU's blog server, and answer any blogging questions that come up between now and then. Feel free to send those questions to me at faq@wou.edu.
Thanks for your time and attention,
----Ron

Continuing tests

I'm trying out a few more things. This blog may look really ugly for a while as I delve into templates and try making changes.

Test of features

Test post. Thanks to Troy for setting up the blog server for us, by the way! You should maybe visit his blog and post a comment.

This part was entered in the extended entry field. It probably won't look any different from the first part.
Anybody, feel free to comment on this post, especially if you have questions!

First Post

First Post! Woo-hoo!

Well, OK, it's kind of silly to call first post in a place where I'm the only one allowed to post. But hey, this is my blog and I can say what I like! (Within the limits of the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy of course... but since I don't intend to use this thing to try and make money, or steal copyrighted info, or anything like that, I should be fine.)

Anyway, this is mostly for testing, though I may turn it into a real blog somewhere along the line.

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew."
    --Marshall McLuhan