Tweaking Asterisk* - Permanent Recommendations

September 09, 2003 | 2 Comments

If things seem a bit odd around here it’s because I’ve been working on a few enhancements and small changes to the site. Hopefully they won’t cause to much disruption, but I’ve had to edit my templates a bit so please let me know if you notice anything really out of the ordinary.

One of the things I’ve been working on are my permanent recommendations. As I mentioned last week, I’ve been trying to brainstorm a way to offer more organized (both from my point of view as well as my readers) and more easily updated recommendations for various things I feel y’all might like.

I’m wanting to combine simple links, Amazon referrals (with MTAmazon) and more in-depth reviews on some archive type pages as well as promote some to the homepage as Quicklinks or regular posts.

I think I’ve figured out how to do it using Movable Type’s template system, secondary categories and a few plug-ins.

I started out creating two main “holder” categories Link and Review. Link is for creating lists of links in various subcategories and review is for longer, review type posts.

I then created subcategories for the different types of recommendations. Things like Web Sites, Comics and Music.

Then started work on these special “archive” pages for these categories so that I could better control what goes where as well as use non-review type recommendations with MTAmazon. In effect I wanted a page that could accommodate a list of simple links to Web pages, longer posts and MTAmazon lists in various combinations.

It’s been pretty tricky. I didn’t want the all various posts to show up on the homepage, only some, so I had to edit my index templates so that they would only show specific categories. In the process I updated my RSS template and made some other enhancements, but I think I’ve got those working. At least now your newsreaders won’t get pinged every time I add a link.

So far I have one page, my Web site recommendation page, almost done, with all the others to follow. It’s not 100% done but you can check it out if you like.

What makes it a bit special is that I can add a simple link, promote it to the homepage as a Quicklink if I want and link it to a more in-depth post, like a review, if needed. It gives me the flexibility to do as much, or as little, as I feel like.

When I’m all finished I’ll detail the technique. It’s not to hard to follow, just a bit, well, convoluted. I hope everyone will find these sections fun and useful.

Filed under: My Sites