Friday, April 11, 2003

PyCS Referrer Features The PyCS server has some very nice referrer features that go a little bit beyond the reporting found in the Radio Community Server. In particular, the basic referrer report includes the date/time of the last entry of each referrer. Clicking through a referrer automatically opens it in a new window. But what is particularly cool, is the search term rankings. Updated: PyCS also has a Zeitgeist style presentation of the search term rankings for an individual weblog. (Thanks to Georg Bauer of PyDS fame for the tip!) And, of course, they also have the traditional Community Server Popularity Contest page. And in response to the various searches, I don't do pirated software, I don't have any idea what sunglasses have to do with code, and you can find Animatrix downloads via BitTorrent at the BitTorrent Files for Slashdot Effect Victims site. It also has the Matrix Trailer. 4:01:33 PM  pontificate

How to move between Radio/Py Community Servers If you are reading this, it is because I have successfully migrated from rcs.userland.com-- the default home of Radio Userland powered weblogs-- to PyCS.net. PyCS.net is two things. First, it is an open source implementation analogous to the Radio Community Server. That is, PyCS implements the server side of the xmlStorageSystem protocol. Migration proved to be very easy. The PyCS implementation seems to be rock solid and Radio happily upstreamed all of my content over the course of an hour or two. To make the move, do the following while Radio Userland is running. Visit the Change Community Serverpage. Set the Server URL to http://www.pycs.net/RPC2. Set the password to whatever you like. Since data flows across the net to both PyCS and RCS in clear text, I would recommend using a password that is different from any other passwords you might use. When you click Change Community Server, it will reconfigure Radio to point to PyCS. This will include creating a new user number on pycs.net. When you return to local radio desktop, the information down the right side should reflect the change to the new server. Go to the Radio Application and select the Radio > Publish > Entire Website menu item. Radio will re-render and push all the content for your weblog to the pycs.net community server. There is no step 3. However, you will probably also want to drop a Moved Permanently notice onto the old home of your weblog on the original community server. This is slightly trickier as it requires configuring Radio to upstream to the old server. Create a new folder under the www (click this link, click 'edit this page' at the bottom of the window) folder. I called mine old-rcs. When you changed community servers, Radio changed the default password to whatever password you are using on the new community server. If this is not the same as your original community server's password, then go to the new password page and add your old community server's password. I called mine rcs-password. Copy the #upstream.xml file from the www directory into the new directory. Change the contents to: <upstream type=xmlStorageSystem version="1.0"> <usernum>***old user number***</usernum> <name>***your name***</name> <passwordName>rcs-password</passwordName> <server>radio.xmlstoragesystem.com</server> <port>80</port> <protocol>xml-rpc</protocol> <rpcPath>/RPC2</rpcPath> <soapAction>/xmlStorageSystem</soapAction> </upstream> Create the file index.txt with the contents: #title "This site has moved permanently." #metaEquivRefresh "0; URL=http://www.pycs.net/users/####" The new address for this site is: http://www.pycs.net/users/#### (replace the #### with your PyCS user number.) Create the file rss.xml and model its contents the contents of the rss.xml on my old weblog. If Radio is configured to do so, it will automatically pick up the changes within the new directory and will upstream the rendered contents to your old site. If you have this turneed off, simply click through to one of the files within the folder, edit the file, and click the publish button. You can check to see if the content was successfully upstreamed on the system events page. An error of "urrlist undefined" means that one of the passwords mismatched -- intuitive, huh? Thanks to Phillip Pearson -- the primary author of PyCS and the person behind the hosting of pycs.net -- for providing such excellent support through the rapid answering of my sometimes inane questions. Also, Jim Roepcke provided the formula for setting up the redirect from RCS to PyCS -- thank you! Update: Aaron Swartz was kind enough to provide me with the rss.xml file for my old weblog such that all subscribers will see a news item pointing them to my weblog's new location. Completely above and beyond -- thank you, Aaron! 3:47:17 PM  pontificate