hcgtv.com / the content

hcgtv · 2007-01-27 01:27:03

hcgtv.com was the very first domain I registered back in 2001.

At first I used NetObjects to maintain the site but that lasted about a year. Then I spent 2 years trying out every CMS and blog in existence until I settled on Nucleus CMS back in 2004.

hcgtv was an experiment of sorts, I spent 3 years entering content that would mimic the top happenings on the Net, the big stories of the day. Then I would monitor when the pages were spidered and how quickly they made it into the search results, since I have a timestamp on the pages. To my amazement, there were many days when I was on Google’s first page for hot searches of the day. I soon realized that on the Net, we were all on equal footing, it didn’t matter if you were a CNN or an hcgtv, the spiders were kind to all of us.

Today, I have many domains and keeping hcgtv current was getting harder. So I pondered what to do until I started playing with SimplePie on the Textpattern Planet site and I had my answer.

Over the last week, I ported over the Minima template to Textpattern and tweaked the plugin to display the feed items like if they were a blog post. So now I have a site that’s as close to the old site without having to do much maintenance to it. The images from the old site are now in a gallery and all discussions are still in the forum.

That completes the juggernaut, all my dynamic sites are now running Textpattern.

marios · 2007-01-27 02:29:33

cool @hcgtv, seems you,ve all figured it out nicely and followed your plan down the line.
I haven’t looked in detail yet, but it looks nice.

I’ve noticed, that the B. B. King article shows up three times in list view in the rated section
( probably an RSS issue with bit_rss plugin of some sort )

regards, marios

hcgtv · 2007-01-27 06:21:19

marios wrote:

I’ve noticed, that the B. B. King article shows up three times in list view in the rated section
( probably an RSS issue with bit_rss plugin of some sort )

It was the particular Yahoo! feed I was using for that section. After monitoring it for most of the day I’ve got the feeds working the way I want to now, there shouldn’t be any duplicates.

The plugin I’m using is the one at the SimplePie site, this is the fifth site I use the plugin on, so I’m quite familiar with adapting it to my needs.

marios · 2007-01-27 11:47:47

@hcgtv, the simplepie plugin only works from within a page ( or at least it did so a couple of month ago)

How did you make it work to be used in forms as well ?

regards, marios

hcgtv · 2007-01-27 19:41:57

marios,

On different sites, I’ll use the tag in either a page or an included form. It depends on the complexity of the site and if I want to abstract out the feed links. So I’ve never had an issue using the tag in any part of the Textpattern templating system.

It’s when you want to style the feed that you have to dive into the plugin and change the code. Whereas bit_rss works off of TxP forms, the SimplePie approach doesn’t require any new forms but you need to know a little PHP to change the styling output.

Ultimately I’d like to see an approach in the middle, the ease of controlling the formatting like bit_rss but the simplicity of a container plugin. When you start dealing with all sorts of feeds, having the ability to match the input to the output comes in handy.

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#1 2007-01-27 01:27:03

hcgtv.com / the content

#2 2007-01-27 02:29:33

Re: hcgtv.com / the content

#3 2007-01-27 06:21:19

Re: hcgtv.com / the content

#4 2007-01-27 11:47:47

Re: hcgtv.com / the content

#5 2007-01-27 19:41:57

Re: hcgtv.com / the content

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