Nilesh.org Notes on technology and everything else

Inspired by Brad
Chaote and Adam
Kalsey‘s never-say-not-possible MT plugins, I came up with a wierd thought
of plotting the post times of my blog in a timespan of 24 hours. And I knew
it might not be impossible, even though I had never ever peeked into the MT
code and plugin API. And here I am, after 3 days of poking and probing through
MT plugin API and Brad and Kalsey’s plugins. This goes miles to prove how very
well Ben Trott has created the MT API. They are damn easy to code!

MTBlogTimes creates a chart which plots the time of your posts(in
a specified period) on a bar of the 24 hours of the day. I haven’t found any
apparent advantage of doing so. Well, probably someone will devise a way of
using this too. Say like, analysing the blog patterns for various blogs (provided
everyone shared their blogtimes) .. or like finding out a true blogomaniac,
a person who blogs all day… Nevertheless the resulting graphic looks cool. Check it out –

MTBlogTimes

You can download this plugin here: mtblogtimes-1.0.tar.gz
or mtblogtimes-1.0.zip

Prerequisites

This plugin has been tested on MovableType
v2.51 but should work on versions >= 2.2. Also, it requires the Perl
GD module. I have tested the plugin using GD v1.4. You should not have any problem
with newer versions.

Installation

Extract the tar-gzip or the zip file and copy the plugin to the MT plugins
folder.

(mt home)/plugins/blogtimes.pl

Description

This plugin allows you to plot the time of your posts in a given period in
the form of a timeline bar.

Tags made available through this plugin:

• <MTBlogTimes>: Container tag for bar/pie creation.

• <MTBlogTimesWidth>: Returns the width of the image.
  This is not the same as the width you specify in the tag attributes. This
  is because the bar is padded additionally for writing the text.
• <MTBlogTimesHeight>: Returns the height of the image.
  This is not the same as the height you specify in the tag attributes. This
  is because the bar is padded additionally for writing the text.
• <MTBlogTimesFilename>: Returns the filename of the
  image
• <MTBlogTimesFullFilename>: Returns the complete path
  of the image
• <MTBlogTimesFileURL>: Returns the URL created for
  the image.

Tag Attributes for <MTBlogTimes>

width: This allows you to specify the width of the timeline
bar in pixels. This is not the final width of the image because padding will
be added to this to put the text. If you do not specify this, the value defaults
to 400.
height: This allows you to specify the height of the timeline
bar in pixels. If you do not specify it, the value defaults to 30.
name: Allows you to specify the name of the image that will
be created. The default value is `blogtimes’.
save_dir: This attribute allows you to alternatively specify
a sub-directory under <MTBlogSitePath> where you can store the generated
image. This directory should be write-accessible to MT or the file won’t get
created.
linecolor: This allows you to customise the colour of the plot
lines on the bar. Specify this color in hex format e.g. #RRGGBB. The default
value is #FFFFFF
textcolor: This allows you to customise the colour of the text
on the bar. Specify this color in hex format e.g. #RRGGBB. The default value
is #757575
fillcolor: This allows you to customise the colour of the bar
background. Specify this color in hex format e.g. #RRGGBB. The default value
is #757575
bordercolor: This allows you to customise the colour of the
border of the image. If you want to turn off the border, simply specify the
color of your page background. Specify this color in hex format e.g. #RRGGBB.
The default value is #757575
padding: This allows you to control the padding around the
timeline bar. The default is 5px.

show_text: This allows you to shut off the text and keep only
the bar.
month: this allows you to specify the month for which to plot
the timeline. You need to specify thi sin the format YYYYMM. e.g. November 2002
would be `200211’. If you do not specify this, the current month at the time
of rebuilding the page is taken.

Usage

When you rebuild a page containing <MTBlogTimes> tag, an image is generated
and stored on your server. You can link the image on the page or somewhere else.
Please note that the generated image is a PNG image with transparency set. If
you do not like transparent images, you’ll need to edit the script and remove
the appropriate line. Here’s an example of how you can use the <MTBlogTimes>
plugin -

Simple:


<MTBlogTimes>
  <img 

  src="<$MTBlogTimesFileURL$>" 

  width="<$MTBlogTimesWidth$>" 

  height="<$MTBlogTimesHeight$>" 

  border="0" 

  alt="B L O G T I M E S" 

  title="B L O G T I M E S" />

</MTBlogTimes>

Customised:


<MTBlogTimes 

  fillcolor="#4a4a4a"

  textcolor="#4a4a4a" 

  linecolor="#FFFFFF" 

  bordercolor="#4a4a4a" 

  width="400" 

  height="30" 

  save_dir="images" 

  show_text="on">
  <a href="http://nilesh.org/mt/blogtimes/">

  <img src="<$MTBlogTimesFileURL$>" 

    width="<$MTBlogTimesWidth$>" 

    height="<$MTBlogTimesHeight$>" 

    border="0" alt="B L O G T I M E S" 

    title="B L O G T I M E S" />

  </a>
</MTBlogTimes> 

Either you can paste this code directly on your page, or the cleaner way of
doing it is to create a Template Module called BlogTimes and including it on
the main page like this –

<$MTInclude module="BlogTimes"$>

Some cool things you can do:

* Save the timeline using the month as names – e.g. `http://nilesh.org/archives/images/blogtimes-2002-nov.png’.
You can do this by giving the filename as this

<MTBlogTimes name="<$MTDate format="blogtimes%Y-%b">">
<img src="<$MTBlogTimesFileURL$>" 

  alt="B L O G T I M E S"/></a>
</MTBlogTimes>

You can later reference these images in your monthly archives.

ToDo

1. Allow more customisation of the period which is at present limited to a
   month. Probably a flexible period with start date and end date.


2. Allow a vertical timeline bar for placing on your sidebar.


3. Add another view, say something like a piechart.


4. If you think there is something more you can suggest, mail me.

Support

If you have any problems installing this plugin or need help for installation,
post your problem to this MovableType Forum thread. Or you can put your questions
/ comments on this page.

Changelog

1. 29/11/2002 – Released BlogTimes plugin.

License

This plugin is released under the MIT
License.

Author

Nilesh Chaudhari (mail at nilesh.org)