Posting a Category as a Salon Blog

Disclaimer: I have only tried this once, so I can't vouch for it's reliability in all situations. I'm offering these notes as a guide for people who are comfortable with Radio Userland and the Radio.root database.

It's possible to publish a Salon Blog as a category of your existing Radio Userland weblog, but it's a pretty messy process.

I publish the Workbench weblog on one community server and paid for a Salon Blog earlier this week. I'd like to publish both using a single copy of Radio.

Though I think it might be more trouble than it's worth, here's how I set it up, thanks to some tips from people on the Radio Userland support forum:

  1. Close any copy of Radio Userland that is currently running.
  2. Backup everything in the Radio folder (probably Program FilesRadio Userland on Windows). You need an extra copy of all your existing data, so you have something to fall back if you can't get this to work.
  3. If you haven't done this already, download and install the Salon version of Radio Userland. Make sure to install it in its own folder. I installed mine in Program FilesRadio Userland Salon.
  4. Open the folder where you installed the Salon version of Radio and run the program.
  5. If you have customized any of the templates used on your Salon Blog, create a theme containing your site's design. Give it a descriptive name such as the name of your Salon weblog. This theme will be stored in a single file in the Themes subfolder (mine was in Program FilesRadio Userland SalonThemes).
  6. Open Radio so you can view its database. Choose Window, Radio.root and expand the item user.radio.prefs.passwords.default. Write down the value of this item, which will be a sequence of 18-20 letters and numbers.
  7. Quit the Salon version of Radio.
  8. Copy the theme file you just created to the Themes folder of your original Radio installation.
  9. Start your original version of Radio.
  10. Create a new category that will hold posts to your Salon Blog. Give it the same name and description as your Salon Blog.
  11. Open the www folder of your Salon version of Radio (mine is in Program FilesRadio Userlandwww) and copy the #upstream.xml file.
  12. Open the wwwcategories folder of your original version of Radio, then open the folder named after your new Salon category.
  13. Paste the file #upstream.xml into the new Salon category folder.
  14. Open the file #upstream.xml in the new Salon category folder with a text editor and look at the line that has the XML tags <password> and </password>. The word "default" is probably displayed between these two tags.
  15. Replace the word "default" with the word "salon" (without the quotes).
  16. Open Radio so you can view its database. Choose Window, Radio.root and select the item user.radio.prefs.passwords.default.
  17. Hit CTRL-C to copy this item.
  18. Hit CTRL-V to paste it. You'll be asked if you want to Replace the existing item, Duplicate the item, or Cancel.
  19. Click the Duplicate button. A new item will be created called default #1.
  20. Click your cursor on this item, then use your keyboard to give it the new name salon.
  21. Change the value of this item to the password you wrote down in step 6.
  22. Open the main Radio interface and click the name of your new Salon category.
  23. Check the box to render the category in HTML.
  24. Change the Theme of the category to the theme you saved from your Salon Blog in step 6.

At this point, anything you post to the new Salon category will show up on your Salon weblog, instead of your main Radio Userland weblog. Your Salon weblog will use the main weblog's navigator links, referrer link, and updates link. Also, if you use comments, the Salon weblog will use the same commenting system as your main weblog, rather than the one on Salon's community server.

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