That and, oh, turning it into a full-blown forum system.
(Also: when it's working, you'll still be able to read the public areas of the site -- all those you can see right now -- without logging in. And you won't need to register with me for a login unless you want to -- the system will accept Google, Yahoo, OpenID, Facebook, or any other identifier you care to offer it.)
]]>OpenID coming soon?
]]>I'm not sure I want to believe some of the things they've said I bought.
]]>IF this works, I've got here in the end. Initially signed up to Typepad using LJ/OpenID. That worked, but when trying to sign in here, couldn't because signing in requires a password & registering at Typepad with LJ/OpenID means that I don't get a password with which to use...
So I now have two Typepad profiles, one with LJ/OpenID, the other using a GMail address.
]]>Needless to say, there's no way, given my statements, that I'm giving it valid data. Whatever you say, however much you don't think you are doing marketing, that's exactly what Typepad are trying to do with the data.
It's not necessary (especially for spam, for which it doesn't work), it invades privacy, in short it's a damn dumb idea. You should find another way.
Sorry if you think that's very B&W, but I've seen too many instances where "just put your email address here" translates into torrents of spam mail, all the while the host swears blind "no we didn't sell your email address". When you point out its a one off email address, including the sitename and "nospam", and hasn't gone anywhere else, they still swear blind they are innocent.
]]>Dave: I've no idea what's causing your problem, but I suspect it's probably IE5 choking on the CSS. I'd better warn you that the site is going to get a little more complex in the near future; I'm going to try and keep the graphics lightweight (because I've got a lot of readers -- if I start using 500Kb images as part of my layout, my bandwidth bill will go through the roof), but you may want to look for another lightweight browser compatible with your version of Windows (Win98SE? Win2K?) but more compliant with web standards.
]]>I'm also thinking in terms of improving the comment system (possibly going to threaded discussions).
And another reason for the upgrade is to make it easier to nuke comment spam (of which I get a fair bit).
Jon: yes, that's being looked at. MT 4.x handles HTML entities in comment headers differently from MT 3.33. There are other minor things that broke with the upgrade that I'm trying to fix -- no show stoppers, but annoying stuff. (For example, searching is currently broken on www.prattle.net.)
]]>Turn off single sign in and Bob's your transgender relative of choice.
]]>