How To Post To MGoBlog 3.0
One of the nice things about upgrading to a newer version of Drupal is the far more powerful web-based editor. However some of you still like to use blogging software like Open Live Writer, the successor to Windows Live Writer.
Once you've installed it you can set up the blog. Some common trip-ups (these have changed from the old site):
- Use your MGoBlog login information when prompted.
- Do not use "mgoblog.com" as the blog address. Use:
https://mgoblog.com/node/add - Make sure the service you pick is "Moveable Type API," not plain "Moveable Type"
- The remote posting url is:
https://mgoblog.com/xmlrpc
At this point you'll be given a choice of different things to classify your posts as. If you are a contributor this will be "Moderated Story," which publishes your post to the site but does not front-page it. This allows us to do a proofreading/editing run before it goes live. If you are a trusted user (>500 mgopoints), this will be a diary—conveniently the only choice you're given.
In certain situations (like an MGoVacation) you'll be posting directly to the front page and living and dying with the results. In that case you'll want to pick "Story." Unfortunately there's no good way to easily swap between the two; if you want to have both you'll have to set up two entirely different "blogs" that are identical in all ways except which thing you classify the post as.
At this point you'll be able to post stuff to the blog.
Caveat: you should go into the Tools/Options/Editing pane and turn "smart quotes" off. Otherwise headlines with quotes and—more importantly—apostrophes break.
Downloading the Theme
You want your Open Live Writer to look like the posts you’re writing, but for reasons beyond my understanding the standard method doesn’t work (it also posts an annoying temporary article that will end up in feeds if we don’t catch it quickly).
Instead there’s a simple PC fix using your registry editor.
- Run regedit.exe as administrator
- Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\OpenLiveWriter\Weblogs\[somelongnumberandtextstring]
- Inside that there is a key called "HomepageUrl" that has defaulted to “http://mgoblog.com/users/username”. Change that to simply https://mgoblog.com
- Back in Open Live Writer go to the “Blog Account” tab and click “Update theme.”
Pictures
OLW has hugely powerful picture editing. The picture at right was cropped, resized, tilted, given a fancy polaroid border, watermarked, and given a sepia tone in 30 seconds without leaving the application. You no longer have to set to FTP to upload images, either.
Weirdly, Ctrl+L is the picture hotkey and Ctrl+K is the link one.
Categories
Click "Set categories" right above the status bar and you'll get a dialog; start typing in your tag and it'll narrow down the existing categories. If there isn't a tag you can create one by using the "add tag" button.
What To Tag
All tags should be wholly lower case.
- There should be a post type. Liveblog, column-type thing, analysis, actual news, actual research, player profile, etc. If there's already something extant use it.
- Any person who's discussed in the piece, within reason. Same thing with teams, which should be just the school name, no nicknames.
- Random joke stuff is fine.
First in a series of "How to...MGoBlog 3.0"?
First,
Don't fail authentication too many times...even though you haven't even tried to logon that day.
Got this error when trying to login today but haven't been on since yesterday.
Is this a feature, HUEL? LOL /s
It is a bug of some sort. Has happened to me one time since the transition. I closed my browser and the one on my phone and tried about 5 min later and had no further issues.
I have had to do this on all 3 ways I log in - and change the damn password each time
It happened on my work PC for some unknown reason and I can no longer log in. It's been at least 4 days. My phone and home laptop have no problem. Changing my password didn't help either. Growing pains...
Users are always dissatisfied with technology changes/upgrades, as a rule. But even so, if I had dished out a bunch of money to upgrade mgoblog and waited like 18 months, and this is what I got for my money, I'd probably be pretty disappointed.
Think of all the threads along the way anticipating the rollout date for the new site.
What about all the beta testers that participated? Did they all like this layout and think it was an improvement?
I can't comment for everyone, but I did like it, and the commenting is MUCH better than it was in beta.
Sorry Seth, but I don't think making a photo look all polaroid should be a front-and-center concern, there are considerably more important subjects to be engaging your users over right now. We are all addicts to your content and writing talents, but through the days I am finding it increasingly more irritating to come here, not more more comfortable as I would have expected.
Just sayin'.
Ha, that's a feature that's been part of OLW for a long time--we didn't do anything to add it. We did spend some time getting OLW working with the new site however, since this is the program we write most of the content for the main page on. I posted so people who write diaries, or want to, can know how to do it on the new site.
If you're having problems with the new site though we really do sincerely take any and all feedback.
Seth:
I would humbly suggest you take a look at the comments in XtraMelan's thread he posted Saturday asking for constructive criticism. Between that thread and the one on the board right now on the Voting Question/Issue you'll see the majority of the acute issues people on this side of the great divide are having with the new site.
And to be very honest - this thread addressed none of them that I can see.
Unfortunately we no longer have the capability to edit posts so when I hit "reply" before finishing my thought I cant go back and fix it.
What I wanted to also say was thank you for trying to address issues with a post. The silence has been deafening over here and you posting this is appreciated. We just need a LOT more of these and covering different topics.
No disrespect intended toward Seth, but I don't think the purpose of this post was to address users' issues with the new site. It looks almost like it was written for mgostaff and he shared it with the community at large to be helpful to those users who do write legit content in this method.
Without question. But given the complete dearth of communication up to this post from the MgoStaff to the great unwashed I figured something is better than nothing.
Exactly. Considering Seth's honest request for feedback I think it quite possible leadership is as yet unaware of the considerable decline in user experience with 3.0 and the many constructive suggestions given to date. My comments are 100% to help that happen.
I hiiiiighly doubt that they are not all hyper-aware of the issues for users being aired out in various META threads.
Yes. Seth please do review those comments. Unfortunately the 3.0 experience is proving to be far far worse than you would ever imagine (or perhaps are even yet aware of) based on your friendly request for feedback to me above.
I would suggest the MGoLeadershipTeam move immediately to the war room and prioritize improvements. Sorry to say but it is that bad. You are selling saline water to your addicts. Seriously. HTTV done? Hope so. You have a major problem to address.
Wish I could edit out my slight overdramatazation above, or get correction options for misspellings when they are indicated. Two more punch-list items. Thanks man.
At this point in my experience with MGoBlog 3.0, I'm feeling that MGoBlog 3.0 is "a disaster of biblical proportions . . . fire and brimstone coming down from the skies". (I'd embed the video, but I don't know how to embed videos in MGoBlog 3.0, something that was a key feature of MGoBlog 2.0 and that seems to have been overlooked by the MGoLeadershipTeam and the designers at Human Element when creating MGoBlog 3.0.)
SUGGESTIONS
- Prioritize fixes, based on the comments you've received
- Set reasonable deadlines to implement fixes
- Post a notice on the board that advises us of your priorities and deadlines
i've figured out posting gifs and photos but still trying to figure out embedding videos from youtube.
do you have a quick tutorial about embedding videos?
Embedding GIFS and Photos is a PITA.
and its not working
is the plan for us to be able to go to new posts and be able to not have to guess as to what is new and what isn't?
be able to edit our posts?
I was hoping for just an incremental improvement to the nesting indicators for the comments. The new L-lines are worse, and hell if I know what the yellow vs black distinction means.
Seth,
I don't see Diary as an option. I actually see pretty much everything else but that. I'm assuming diarists are to choose "User Name:blog"
Thanks for this post. 3.0 is a work in progress. I've seen these things turn to gold. I'm hoping this one turns Maize pretty quick.
Thanks for this post. I will try and do test diary soon. It's hard to find the time.
Go Blue! To hell with ND and beyond.
Well shit... I've been fighting this ef'er for an hour it ain't working for me...
I'm getting this when I try and post...
Server Error 404 Occurred
You do not have permission to update node 124087.
I'm also not able to download theme... after following BKM...
I get this...
I have turned every knob on OLW.
The only other thing I can do now is to try and create alt accounts... but honestly ... all I really want to do is create diaries when my wife isn't looking, neg bang trolls, re-edit my spelling fails and obsess about the whimsy of 17-year-old boyhoods.
Wait ... that didn't come out right... oh well ... that is my feedback.
So pretty safe to say it's not quite "turned to gold" just yet?
How do I edit my profile? Not plastic surgery, photo shop, air brushing or anything drastic...
IDK - but here is a workaround... force a pswd reset (not hard to do intentionally or not) ... you are forwarded to a once time profile edit page. The signature option is not enabled yet BTW.
Gracias....... Amigo
Well... if ND colors are blue and gold... I'd say it's fricking gold...right now.
Honestly though... I'm happy to spend the next month in this state if it works out.
The new site needs a LOT of work. There are just so many things that are not at all pleasing, difficult or impossible to use, and the "feel" is not great either, IMO.
I've been stopping in maybe once or twice a day, when historically I check in at least a dozen times, or more. I can't be the only one. I hope you guys are taking it seriously, but I don't see a lot of feedback from staff. Not a good look, again, in my opinion.
I'm trying to get my office to agree we need to upgrade our CRM.....
It's needed and it will happen, what I dread is going through the transition while they all bitch and moan about how "we wouldn't have all these problems if we just kept AA".
That's why I drink..... bourbon.....daily.
Will there be a new mobile Android app or will the current one work with the new format at some point? Work blocks me from blogs, so depend on mobile app to get my daily fix of MGoBlog.
So, I cannot simply embed a video any more without downloading some software and a bunch of other stuff?
I mean, I don't even see a place that says "add new content" or something like the old site used to have.
Maybe this new version is better, but not for me. How do I get something up now?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Brain, dude, it worked ok before! Why did you change it? To make it easier on the staff or the patrons?
October 25th, 2018 at 5:59 PM ^
Continuing issues:
- No support for tables. The html tags get wiped. This is not good for analyzing statistics.
- UI does not support linking to external graphics other than editing html at the source level.
- No editing once the post is made. Yikes!
- OLW diary upload and theme download do not work using the procedure outlined.
- No pop-up windows or click-to-embiggens?
November 1st, 2018 at 1:12 PM ^
How do I earn mgo points?
This post was very useful, thank you very much! The last time I got useful info was in an article about proper windows 10 file recovery. In the Internet, it becomes difficult to find good and proven information that you can trust. Anyway, I somehow found your post and that article. So there is still hope.
This post was very useful, thank you very much! The last time I got useful info was in an article about proper windows 10 file recovery. In the Internet, it becomes difficult to find good and proven information that you can trust. Anyway, I somehow found your post and that article. So there is still hope.
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