The latest issue of MacUser contains a tutorial showing how to make a
custom Blogger layout using Freeway 5. This is in the issue that’s
out with subscribers already and that will be on the newsstands
tomorrow - Thursday 22nd.
(The blog itself is at http://talkoftrash.blogspot.com/ if anyone’s
interested - but note that I’m still having fun fiddling with it.
The previous issue of MacUser contained a feature I wrote talking
about the growing importance of CMS (content management systems) in
web design; it discussed systems from WebYep (including Max’s WepYep
actions for Freeway) through to Joomla! and Drupal, as well as the
pros and cons of using blogging systems as general-purpose CMS
engines.
SHAMELESS PLUG:
I tend to have at least one article in pretty much every issue,
whether it is a tutorial, review or feature. Don’t forget, MacUser
comes out every two weeks - so if you snooze, you lose! A
subscription is highly recommended.
And for you lovely folks in the US and other non-UK parts of the
world there’s a relatively cheap digital subscription option. No free
t-shirt though. http://www.macuser.co.uk/subsmarketing/XWEB
Sometime around 22/5/08 (at 06:31 +1000) Robert Hicks said:
Could not find the digital ‘non-UK’ subscription in the subscriber section.
Hi Rob - for the digital edition click the US link; that’s the only
subscription that’s offered there, simply because the cost of
subscribing to the print edition of a fortnightly UK magazine and
getting it in reasonable time in the US is pretty high!
Having been a MacUser subscriber for longer than I care to ponder I don’t remember ever getting the opportunity of a “free T shirt”.
As my subscription goes on and on I don’t benefit from any of the subscription offers.
Maybe you should mention to the powers that be that it would be nice to reward those of us that are coming up to elegibility for the long service medal.
Or maybe I should cancel and renew my subscription every year?
Sometime around 21/5/08 (at 19:34 -0400) DeltaDave said:
Or maybe I should cancel and renew my subscription every year?
That is a perfectly viable option!
There’s no long-service reward I’m afraid - although warm fuzzy
feelings are directed your way. I will mention it, but it is one of
those marketing things I’m afraid.
This is in the issue that’s
out with subscribers already and that will be on the newsstands
tomorrow - Thursday 22nd.
I feel rather left out by my Macuser subscription - it’ invariably late, and the current issue has yet to arrive. And, yes, I’ve complained to little or no avail. The post here is dreadful at the best of times. At the moment, it’s well…
How do you get anyone from MacUser to respond to questions? I have written to KM numerous times in the last three months regarding Freeway - no reply. I have also sent a direct message for help or information to the mailbox at MacUser. Still I get a stony silence. Admittedly, I have only been a subscriber for about four years, but my money is the same colour as any other. Why not just tell me to f*** off - at least I know where I stand.
Sometime around 2/6/08 (at 17:29 -0400) Richard Baylis said:
How do you get anyone from MacUser to respond to questions? I have
written to KM numerous times in the last three months regarding
Freeway - no reply.
Yikes! Hi Richard, I’m sorry to hear this! I last heard from you
directly a while ago. I’ve been trying to fine-tune email and spam
filtering because of a rather annoying jump in junkmail activity, but
I didn’t think I’d done anything destructive or blocked any wanted
email.
I’ll see about reversing what I might have done in case I’m the root
cause. In the meantime please use thatkeith at mac.com. That should
work fine.
…yowza. Dangit. Sorry.
k
(And sorry if anyone else has been trying to raise me here in the
last few days. I’m currently watching the progress of a significant
copyright theft case that involves some of my own personal content.
That’s somewhat distracting…)
Hi Keith,
Alan Stonebridge has kindly answered my letter to MacUser magazine, with the following comments on Freeway’s inability to rebuild my site:
…The Get HTML feature can rebuild pages, but if you publish and reimport a fresh template you’ll see why it’s best avoided.
The bad news is that it’s going to be easier to start from scratch, but there’s an upside to this story. The original designer has given you a rude introduction to a design rather than code-oriented application. Don’t trash the files you’ve salvaged, as the images will help rebuild the site. After that, ensure you add the Freeway document to your backup schedule.
You told me in April that you would rebuild the site in Freeway 5 within a couple of days, but now it looks as if the £1600 I paid to have the site written in the first place might have been wasted.
I’m afraid I haven’t seen direct emails from you since mid March. I
last sent a query about the odd link farm-like pages the SEO company
had added to the site. Some of what was done was sensible, but those
pages seemed both slightly risky SEO practise and possible
promotion of competitors…
I have the Freeway document zipped and waiting to be downloaded, but
I won’t post the URL here of course! I’ll send you an email directly
please let me know if you get this.
(BTW, I didn’t see anything come in on the mac.com account.)
Richard,
I saw your message in MacUser today - and I was wondering where the site was. You haven’t said what the additions are - they could be Actions, or code added to your site after the fact. The problem here being that if someone does tinker with the HTML that Freeway generates, then, yes, Freeway won;t know about it. However, it is possible to put the majority of 3rd party code into a Freeway document. As far as I am aware, none of the Action developers have left the building, so if it’s Actions which are missing, let us know.
It should be possible to FTP to the ISP to get the HTML files. You’ll need the user name and password. If you don;t have these, you may need to convince them that you are the sites proper owner. You can always get the HTML for a page by viewing it in a browser, looking at the source and copy/pasting it into a text editor.
Where is the site in question? It would be handy to see what the site is and someone here could well see if the “additions” you mentioned are in fact Action generated or hacked in by someone else.
Sometime around 5/6/08 (at 13:02 -0400) Paul said:
You haven’t said what the additions are
I hope Richard Baylis doesn’t mind me answering, especially given the
comms problems I have had. I have sent a seperate email using an
account that shouldn’t hiccup between my end and his.
This is regarding third-party SEO content. Some is in the form of
meta tag data, but a lot is in the form of pages of outbound links to
companies in similar fields, and pages that invite others to add
their links automatically.
I’ve rebuilt the core site in Freeway, but my concern lies in the
fact that those link collection pages can appear to be ‘link farm’
lists and hence could trigger a blacklist action from Google et al at
any time, and also the fact that this did seem a little like
providing advertising for competitors.
I appreciate that this is a difficult line to walk. It concerns me,
but I believe the search engine results have so far been improved by
this. (No blacklist effect seen to date, thank goodness.)
Access to the FTP site is not a problem, it is really a matter of
knowing how to weave the additional content into a Freeway-managed
site and end up with something he can manage that also gets good
search results.
I have even less time to spare at this time of year than normal, and
Richard probably wants to work with someone who receives his emails
with more reliability! (I’ve been trying to route stuff through
college servers in order to simplify certain things, but thanks to
one or two seriously unhelpful IT staff people it hasn’t been a
totally smooth process.)
Richard, Paul is one excellent possible source of help, provided that
he has the time.
