Be a full-fledged participant on the web and do it on your terms, using apps you're already familiar w, as easily as working w local files.

Build a website using standards compliant HTML and CSS, write posts, create photo galleries, host videos, interact with web services, and do just about anything else you might imagine.

Envision a platform that allows you to more actively participate in the web on your terms. A personal publishing platform that offers literally unlimited potential for personal expression and experimentation whether you're interested in web design and development - even if you think it might be too difficult for you. (It's probably not - as long as you're willing to learn a thing or two along the way.)

Now imagine you can do all of this using your favorite apps and working with local* files - copying, moving, renaming, deleting files and folders just like you already know how to do.

Is it really local?

Many of file transfer application allow you to connect to your remote storage space as if it were a locally mounted volume. It looks and acts just like a drive connected directly to your Mac via USB. This allows you to treat your Ode site as if it were running on your local drive but all of the changes that you make are taking place live on your site. This style of interaction works particularly well with Ode. With no database to worry about, and cryptic data stores, you already know how to work with Ode. Open your favorite text editor, write your post, save the file directly to your site using a standard open/save dialog box, and you're done. Your new post is now live on the web. Of course your favorite app offers a wealth of functionality that make writing your posts a joy spell checking, auto completion, advanced search and replace, syntax highlighting, etc. Maybe most importantly it offers you an environment you're already comfortable with including all of your preferences and other tweaks. What's more, you're not limited to any one single app. Simultaneously run, and switch between an text editor, and GUI HTML/CSS, photo management, video editing apps, and more.

Why trade all of this for the glorified text boxes that you get with other content management systems and weblog packages?

Sound good? (I think so too.)

New version of the 'logic' the Ode 1.x default theme. You might guess that there aren't any major changes, and you'd be sort-of right.

Most of the changes involve reworking the underlying markup, but there are noticeable changes to the look of the theme as well (e.g. fonts are a little bigger all around, the date lines in the post area have changed, etc.)

Read the rest of this post

The Indexette addin is now available.

Well it took me a longer than I thought it would to get to this, and get it finished but, the good news is that the addin is available now.

I've already described what this addin is, what it does, and why in a previous post, A preview of the Indexette addin

If you haven't read that post I invite you to do so now.

There are a few important things to understand about Indexette:

Read the rest of this post

Ode 1.2.3 is available to download now from ode-is-simple.com/home/.

What's changed?

1 - Fixed a problem with anchor links introduced with the updated behavior for handling relative paths in themes with release (r1_2_1).

2 - Revisited how the script manages tags by reworking 3 key subroutines.

3 - Changed the order of the settings in the config file 'ode_config'.

Read the rest of this post

Ode 1.2.2 is available to download now from ode-is-simple.com/home/.

What's changed?

This release is nothing but a bug fix correcting a silly mistake introduced in version 1.2.1. Except that 1.2.2 works properly, it is identical to version 1.2.1 that preceded it.

Fixed a problem introduced in version 1.2.1 that resulted in the the first post on any page returned being repeated in the place of every subsequent post.

So, for example, given a request like:

http://sample.net/cgi-bin/ode.cgi?firstpost=3&numposts=23

The 3rd post (in post sorted order) would be repeated 20 times on the resulting page, and none of the other 19 posts would appear at all.

Read the rest of this post

I've recently finished an addin for Ode called Indexette that I think is an important one.

Indexette is a nice example of a simple solution to an important (to this project) problem. Like Ode itself, there is nothing complicated or hard to understand about Indexette.

It's also a good demonstration of Ode's tags.

I've created a video overview of Indexette demonstrating what the addin does, and how it's used. The video is in two parts and about runs for about 10 minutes in total. If you're interested Ode, I think you'll agree it's worth seeing. If you watch the video you can skip the written instructions. (See, you don't have time not to watch.)

Read the rest of this post

Ode 1.2.1 is available to download now from ode-is-simple.com/home/.

What's changed?

1. Introduces a key change related to the handling of relative links in themes. It's now possible to use relative links to resources under theme directories (stylesheets, images, javascript files, etc), WITHOUT including the $found_theme_url variable introduced with the previous release (v1.2.0)

This new capability means that you can use relative links that look and behave just like the common relative links you may be familiar with from working with static sites.

The new behavior still takes advantage of the config file's $document_root_url setting to construct direct URIs to resources that bypass the script. But rather than requiring theme designers to manually work the variable $found_theme_url into into themes, the script now identifies when a relative link is used as the value for 'src' and 'href' attributes and takes care of building a direct URI on its own.

Read the rest of this post

Ode's themes really are simple. This post tells you everything you need to know to use them effectively (Part 2 of 2).

This is a continuation of 'Everything you need to know to successfully use Ode themes Part 1' which talked a lot about non-dated themes, and how ode handles those. I ended that post with a short introduction to dated-themes and the use_site_look_date setting (which is found in the config file). I'll start by repeating that short introduction and then I'll talk about how Ode behaves differently when dated themes are enabled, i.e. when use_site_look_date is true.

Like the first part, this post is long, and so you may want to read this post with the text_page theme (which is little more flexible and better suited to reading longer content).

Before I get started though, I want to say that I recommend everyone use dated themes. (Of course you're free to ignore this advice.) Dated themes are really no more complicated than non-dated themes and I believe that the added functionality is beneficial. (Keep reading.) Furthermore, even with dated themes enabled, you don't necessarily have to do much with them, but you will make it a little easier on yourself should you choose to embrace dated themes at some point in the future.

Dated themes allow a site maintainer to save previous versions of a theme as changes are made over time. These dated variants of the same theme can be used to recreate the look of the site from any point in time (i.e. you can recall any prior version of a theme).

The config file includes a setting labeled 'use_site_look_date'. This variable acts as a mode toggle (on/off switch).

When use_site_look_date is true the dated themes mechanism is enabled, and when the same setting is false, it's disabled.

Dated themes are identical to non-dated themes with the single exception of the name of the directory enclosing the theme.

Read the rest of this post

Javascript will allow you to greatly expand what you can do w Ode. @sitepointdotcom offers to teach you in 21 days for $9.95.

Let me list in order the set of skills that will allow you to take maximum advantage of Ode so that you can get the most out of your web site

1. HTML and CSS
2. Perl
3. Javascript
4. Everything else

Honestly it's hard to say which is more important, Javascript or Perl, because the answer depends on your interests. If you want to write your own Ode addins and contribute to the development of this platform, then you'll want to know Perl. If you're more interested in adding interactive behaviors to your site then Javascript may be what you want. Both Perl and Javascript are useful beyond Ode.

Read the rest of this post

Buy 1 get 1 free ebooks from @OReillyMedia until 2010/0430. Pick up Learning Perl along with another book you've wanted.

O'Reilly is offering a buy 1 get 1 free ebook sale through next Friday (April 30, 2010). For every ebook you buy they will give you one for free with no limit on the total number of books you can buy (buy 2 get 2, buy 3 get 3, ..., buy 50 get 50). This beats their standing Buy 2 get 1 free offer (code OPC10).

Read the rest of this post