Okay, I give up
Posted on January 28, 2004
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments
I’ve spent way too much time today looking for an email form processor that will take the field data and attach it to an email in vcard format. My clients wants to be able to double click the attachment and have the contact in Outlook. Sounds fair enough and I was hoping it would be easy, but apparently not. I found one script. It’s called aptly enough vCard Mail.
From the description:
* Retrieves the information from a HTML form,
* Translates the specified data into the vCard 2.1 format,
* Sends them to the specified user, along with a vCard as an email attachment.
Absolutely perfect. Exactly what I want. The demo on the site worked so I downloaded it and tried it out.
Only problem is:
# It’s built around a 3 year old Perl version of FormMail, otherwise known as the most insecure way of having an email form on a website. The Perl version of FormMail has been updated in the past year or two to deal with the security holes, but it’s probably not a good idea to use it.
# It doesn’t work. I keep getting a server error, chances are there’s something at the host level that’s missing.
I also tried Forms 2 Go which is a very nice GUI for generating PHP form scripts and I’m using it on standard web forms but it doesn’t do the vCard thing. I searched every depository of PHP and Perl scripts, as well as Googled every combination of “php form email vcard” I could think of. Lots and lots of form handlers, none besides the aforementioned one that will specifically attach a vcard.
Suggestions, anyone?
Update: A great big THANK YOU to Erik Barzeski of NSLog(); who saw my pitiful little plea and came to my rescue. He whipped up a little PHP script for me in about 15 minutes while we chatted that does exactly what I want. Thanks again, Erik! I’ll send you some snow, I’m sure you miss not having some where you live. 
Snow. Again.
Posted on January 27, 2004
Filed Under Life | 6 Comments
Today. Cloudy with a chance of light snow this morning. Then light snow becoming more widespread this afternoon. Snow accumulation around an inch. Highs in the lower 20s. East winds 10 to 15 mph.
Tonight. Snow. Becoming heavy at times. Snow accumulation of 8 to 12 inches. Lows 15 to 20. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph.
Wednesday. Early morning snow. Tapering to scattered snow showers by afternoon. Total snow accumulation of 10 to 14 inches. Highs in the mid 20s. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph.
I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. Early dismissal today, school cancelled tomorrow. My kids haven’t had a week of 5 days of school in a row since early December. I am just not a winter person. I don’t like any snow-based activities, I hate wearing layers and layers of clothes and I don’t like being cold. I grew up only an hour from here and I don’t remember winters ever being as bad as these last two have been.
No one is complaining about global warming anymore, at least around here.
Next/Previous links in specific categories
Posted on January 26, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized | 4 Comments
As I mentioned, I’m working on a site that’s entirely driven by MovableType. It takes a bit to get the structure in place and working, but adding content is a breeze. Just copy/paste into ecto. Speak of which, does anyone know of a PC equivalent to ecto? I think my client will be more comfortable adding/editing content in a stand-alone window than futzing in her browser.
Anyway, here’s something cool I found when building the site. One section has multiple categories and I wanted to show “next” and “previous” links but have them only step through the category and not the listings of the entire blog. By default, MovableType won’t let this happen. But ScriptyGoddess had the answer and it works exactly as described. It requires PHP, but all of sudden that’s not so scary for me. When I was setting up the new site, I made all the pages PHP just in case. I figure worst comes to worst it stays all HTML and that’s fine, but I knew that there may be some functionality I would want that would only be possible with PHP.
When I redo my own site (whenever I’ll have time for that) I’ll definitely be converting it to PHP.
Seeing your MT configuration settings
Posted on January 25, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
Don’t you love when you’re doing something for someone else and you come across something that helps yourself?
I’m working on my largest MovableType project to date. It will involve multiple blogs, each with different categories and settings. Keeping it all straight has been challenging to say the least and I’ve been jumping around between mt.cgi files.
And then I found this entry in “the girlie matters” blog that was so cool, I had to try it on my own blog first and it works. You can get a nice listing off *all* of your MT configuration settings for view or export. See a demo of the output here. I tried it out on “View From Home” first and it worked so well, I set up on the client site and it has made setting things up there much easier.
Thanks, Girlie!
His ‘n hers blogs
Posted on January 24, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
First it was his and hers Powerbooks. (Kind of. That’s another story.) Now its weblogs. My wife Kristen got her own weblog now. There goes the neighborhood.
I laughed, because what did I do tonight? I set up a blog for Eric. I had been offering to do one for him for a while, and he finally decided that he wanted it. I have done so many MovableType installations at this point, that it took me about 10 minutes to get it installed on his site. As always, the real time is in setting up the templates so the blog works seamlessly with the rest of his site. I still have to set up the comment preview and search templates, but the majority of the blog is ready for him to start publishing. I’ll point him in the direction of ecto tomorrow.
We send each other files and links via email and iChat. We invite each other to events via iCal (only those events that impact each other, as in “I won’t be home this night so you need to be sure you don’t schedule anything for the same night”) and now we’ll be able to ping each other. Scary. Although I doubt his blog will be as chatty as mine is.
