Blosxom Plug-in Mods: calendar
I use the calendar plug-in (v0.6). This plug-in produces the monthly calendar at the top of on the left hand sidebar on each page of my blog. Before today, I was using this plug-in pretty much modification-free. But I found that under certain circumstances, the plug-in will get stuck in an infinite loop; namely, when the month extracted from a PATH_INFO request is out of range. So I added some simple month range checking and now it is much happier. My modifications can be reviewed and downloaded here:

calendar modified source code
calendar source patch
calendar change log

Blosxom Plug-in Mods: comments
I use the comments plug-in (v0.6) on my blog. This allows visitors to contribute their snarky thoughts and feelings about my blog content. I have made considerable modifications to the original plugin, including:

1. trap on reloads after POSTs to prevent duplicate entries
2. e-mail comments posted back to a specified address
3. obfuscate posted e-mail addresses
4. better subject and title support
5. require password to post comment

You can download my modifications to the blosxom comments plugin in the full context of the file itself, or as a patch. My cvs development log for the comments plugin is also available.

comments modified source code
comments source patch
comments change log

Blosxom Plug-in Mods: storytitle
I use the storytitle plug-in (v0.5) in order to include a nice page title on each individual blog entry page. I made just one minor tweak to the code, but other than that I pretty much use it out of the box. My mod can be reviewed here:

storytitle modified source code
storytitle source patch
storytitle change log

(Update Fri Mar 17 00:16:47 PST 2006 // added link to original source)

Blosxom Plug-in Mods: categorytree
I use the categorytree plug-in (v1.7) to show the nifty by-category display of my blog entries on the right hand side of every page of my blog. I made one minor modification to the original code; I added a new class to differentiate a top-level category from a sub-category. My mod can be reviewed here:

categorytree modified source code
categorytree source patch
categorytree change log

(Update Fri Mar 17 00:12:01 PST 2006 // added link to original source)

Blosxom Plug-in Mods: flatarchives
I use the flatarchives plug-in (v1.0) to show the convenient summary of blog entries by month on the right hand side of every page of my blog. Other than just one very minor tweak I made to the code, I pretty much use it out of the box. My mod can be reviewed here:

flatarchives modified source code
flatarchives source patch
flatarchives change log

(Update Fri Mar 17 00:15:01 PST 2006 // added link to original source)

Blosxom Plug-in: multicat
I love my blogging software - blosxom. It's just so light, compact, and easy to use. Blosxom is especially nice for someone like myself that prefers to use a mouse as little as possible while using a computer. I can use the command line to author a new blog entry using vi, spell check the new entry using aspell, modify the blog entry's publication date using touch, and use the standard unix file system commands to insert my new blog entry into my blog file structure (i.e. my blog's category heirarchy). And I can do all this as fast as I can type the commands at the shell prompt.

There is one limitation of blosxom that I just recently bumped up against. The limitation is a byproduct of using the blosxom data directory structure to double as the blog's category heirarchy. Each blog entry lives in one directory, and thus one category. Sure, a blog entry can be copied into (or a link made in) another directory to associate the entry with a secondary category, but then blosxom will show that entry multiple times. So, that's no good.

I wanted to find a way around this behavior primarily because I wished to associate the daily journal entries (located in "/daily_journal/2006") that I composed about our recent trip to Vancouver with a new category (something like "/vacations/2006/vancouver"). That way, I could still read my daily journal in a linear fashion using a URL like:

http://rus.berrett.org/blog/daily_journal/2006/

yet, at the same time, access just the journal entries that detail our Vancouver vacation using a URL like:

http://rus.berrett.org/blog/vacations/2006/vancouver/

(Note: the above examples of URLs to access blosxom blog entries presume that my modifications to blosxom with regard to "viewing by date" have been applied to the blosxom installation).

With that goal in mind (one entry - many categories), I set to the task of creating a blosxom plug-in that will allow me to "file" a blosxom entry under one or more different categories while, at the same time, suppress the display of the multiples. I was able to create a plug-in (which I've named "multicat") that does exactly that.

The "multicat" plug-in allows me to easily classify a single entry under many different categories (i.e. different directories) using symbolic links. The multicat plug-in controls when the symlinks to the entries are displayed and when they are hidden. Thus, the display of duplicate entries (which is the normal blosxom behavior when symlinks to files are encountered) is suppressed. Support for the comments plug-in and the writeback plug-in is built-in. Comments (or writebacks) that are added to or appear on a source entry will show up in the symlinked entry and vice versa.

I think what I have done is very clever and I'm very pleased with the result. I can now create symlinks to blog entries in other secondary categories and, in effect, file a single blog entry under multiple categories. This was something that was impossible to do before (and I scoured over many different other blosxom plug-ins) and, ultimately, I think it could be very useful to the blosxom blogging community at-large (but I could be wrong about that).

So, using the example above, I can now build a URL to access all of the entries in my daily journal that are just about our recent trip to Vancouver. Check it out:

http://rus.berrett.org/blog/vacations/2006/vancouver/

Note that each of those entries has not one, but two, categories that it is associated with. Mission accomplished.

More information about the multicat plug-in can be gleaned by reviewing the source code (my perl reads pretty easy), or by reading the man page. I have provided links to both (as well as my development log) below:

multicat source code
multicat(1) man page
multicat development log

cheers!

(Update Mon Mar 13 00:47:59 PST 2006 // fixed a grammatical error)

My Modifications to Blosxom
I use blosxom (v2) for my blog software. It's lightweight, simple to setup and administrate, written in Perl, and free to use and alter. Blosxom uses the file system as its organizational structure. Directory names become category names. Files are blog entries, and blog entry titles are simply the first line in each file. The file modification time is used as the blog entry's publication date. Managing a blosxom blog is nothing more than creating, editing, and manipulating files.

I've made just one minor modification to blosxom (see log). I wanted to be able to use all numeric directory entries, but this conflicted with blosxom's built-in "view by date" capability. The feature allows for the creation of URLs to isolate blog entries by date. The general form of such a blosxom blogi URL is:

http://blog_url/[optional_category_path]/[YYYY]/[optional_MM]/[optional_DD]/

This is a great feature of blosxom. Unfortunately, blosxom out of the box prevents me from using all-numeric directory names such as a year (e.g. '/daily_journal/2005' or '/daily_journal/2006'). I think this was simply a small oversight by the original blosxom developer, and so I've added some code to correct it.

You can download my modifications to blosxom in the full context of the file itself, or as a patch. My cvs development log for blosxom is also available.

blosxom.cgi modified source code
blosxom.cgi source patch
blosxom.cgi change log

(Update Fri Mar 10 14:23:17 PST 2006 // updated links and link titles)
(Update Fri Mar 17 00:09:24 PST 2006 // added link to original source)
(Update Fri Apr 7 12:58:43 PDT 2006 // added clarity to description of mods)