Let the De-cruft Begin
December 19th, 2004Yesterday I wanted to find out a way to finally de-cruft my URLs. I did a search and found my own site. Lame. I was looking for the excellent and simple way that Mark Pilgrim had de-crufted his URLs back when he used Movable Type. After recovering from Googleshock, I found his tutorial and 20 minutes later, boom, de-crufted URLs.
Why mess about with stuff when the site seems to be working? There are many reasons for this, the first being that I’d like to start messing about with PHP includes, the second is that I’m using dynamic archives, so it doesn’t matter what the file extension is on my archives, and I’d like to be the guinea pig so that when we move the mothership over to dynamic publishing, no one gets hurt.
I had reservations about this because of the newness of Movable Type’s dynamic archiving. However, if you follow the directions with Movable Type and the Mark PIlgrim tutorial, the .htaccess stuff handles redirecting people from your old URLs to the new ones. The database and server handle it all. Sweet. I did have to turn off the custom error page that my host allowed me to make, but who said de-crufting didn’t come with a cost?
At any rate, let me know if you see any problems or can’t access things. I’ll fire a memo off to myself as well as fine myself for incompetence.
UPDATE: As part of Mr. Pilgrim’s instructions, he notes making a Redirect call on the archives directory. With Movable Type 3.x and dynamic archiving, you don’t need the Redirect line. You probably don’t need anything, as they seem to have solved it all, but it made me feel powerful to create and edit a .htaccess file. Sweet. Now if I could just get the most recent posts to show up on my archive pages.
UPDATE: Finally. I finally have a PHP include working. I am, as the kids say, getting up in the grill of the Individual Archive Page. o
I am too stupid to understand this post. But I still like you as a person, Jon.
Jon - I like to read your page b/c you are just as funny & enlightening as your wife, albeit in different way.
And really, normally I’d figure this out some other way, but I’m just far far too busy right now - what is de-crufting?
That came close to making sense. No, really it did.
Did you say that your trying to move stuff and want people to still be able to get to it if they ,like, click on old stuff? And you want it to work right when The Goddess Of Blog needs to ,like, change stuff?
My 3 year old can navaigate Nick Jr’s website with no errors and without opening a gazillion different windows, unlike his 7 yr old sister does. I think there is hope for that boy. He is bugging me right now to get off the computer. “How long mommy. I wanna get on the computer. How long is it gonna take.” LMAO!!
I am undecided about cruft as only the non-omnipotent (non-website responsible) can be. There’s a conflict for me between usability/”web anthropology” and (ironically) usablility/maintainability/elegance. As soon as I have a sub-world of my own to rule, I will no longer have the luxury of fence-sitting. Same goes for my lumping security concerns under ‘maintenance’.
For the new-to-crufters some definitions and a good debate on cruft:
URL cruft, and how to remove it
by Oli Studholme
http://oli.boblet.net/2003/12/29/urls
The Case For Cruft
http://socialtwister.com/archives/000042.html
Okay, I’ve waited long enough, I NEED to ask. How in the holy hell do you get that picture next to the url like that? And what I mean is, in the address bar, right next to the http. Anyone? Bueller?
Dudes. Seriously USE TINYURL PLEASE.
Thanks.
Nero,
The image is a favicon file. Do a google on favicon and you should find everything you need to know.
Jon,
You gotta stop with the geekspeak man! I’m developing a man crush.
“I’m hetero…”
“I’m hetero…”
Seriously though, glad you got crufting issues worked out. You’ve been on that for a while.
“I’m hetero…”
There really is nothing worse that crufted URL’s.
Specially at christmas — so I am extra glad you fixed it.
Oh look, my comment is one of the first 10!
damn. a typo. what am amatuer.
When I was a kid, my mother used to decruft my PB&J sandwiches. I hated the cruft. Still do.
Decrufting sounds like something one would do to Leta’s hair. Or Chuck’s, maybe.
apparently i’m not as big of a web geek as i thought — decruft-wha?
one item for the suggestion box, since we’re on the subject of site adjustments: couldja make it so commenter info (name/email addy/url) can be remembered/stored sos i don’t have to keep typing all that in?
love,
trace, lazy frequent commenter.
blurbo - are you speaking english?!?! i’m charlie brown & you’re the teacher…
Well… I’ll make sure you get another copy of the memo, mmm-kay? Grrreeeaat.
I’m now stupider for having read today’s Blurbomat entry. Great.
And I still don’t know what de-crufted means. I wonder if urbandictionary knows….
Until last night, I believed that TobyJoe was king nerd. After I read this, I interrupted TobyJoe from writing chapter 15 of his PHP5 book and said, “Hon, what’s a de-crufted url?”
To which he replied, “Never heard of it.”
I was forced to actually read up on it instead of cheating and having him explain it to me (which is what I usually do.)
And honestly, I’m still not sure.
Dude, if he’s WRITING a PHP book, he IS the king nerd.
here’s what i loved most about this post: google adsense determined the most relevant advertising to be… “discount quality aprons”
Well, if he makes it through the next few weeks before it’s finally due, I’ll crown him.
But Sam, they are funny aprons. FUNNY. Do you hear me?
Hmmmmm…
Will have to consult with computer genius husband about this post and get back to you with witty applicable comment.
Jon=Guinea Pig
Wife=Mothership
Child=Guinea Ship?
Heh heh heh …
Hey, come on, I had to make SOMETHING up to entertain myself because I TRIED to understand the de-crufting or crusting or crafting thingy.