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React Publish your own item

by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

May 6, 2002

Blogging with Dreamweaver: Doc Searls (Linux Journal Senior Editor, Cluetrain co-author) asked for a permanent link to last week's item about Triana, the earth-imaging satellite grounded by politics. I've been ducking the obvious need for a link to each item ("fifth item" is a lame reference), but I don't use a blogtool that would automate this. I make all my html pages with Dreamweaver 3 (screenshot), commuting between the WYSIWYG window and the code, so I worked out a partial workaround that might be useful to others who blog with Dreamweaver:

(You could reverse this process by writing every item in a new document, then either copy and paste each into the main page, or make them includes (SSI) in the main blog page. But I hate to face a WYSIWYG page that's blank but for a line of include tags that have to be clicked to see what's in them. I also often find myself typing one item while another comes to mind, so I need easy access to the whole main page. When it's all done, I'll spin the items off to separate files.)

Here's how to make it less tedious:

1. Make each blog entry a separate file:

This is a bit quicker with a Dreamweaver Extension called "New Document from Selection" that works like this:

-- Select any text in the DW text window and, on the File menu, under "new from template," a "new from selection" option appears.
-- Click it and it makes a new file containing only the copied text and links.
-- Save that to a standard place with a short name (such as triana.htm)

2. Link to the new files in the main page:

-- Create a library item containing a prelinked "Link to this item" link with the path already filled in (http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/include.pl/blogs/shenews/items/) except for the "*.htm"
-- Save it with an obvious name such as "linkto"
To use it:
-- Drag the "linkto" item from the library to a new line below the end of blog entry.
-- Right-click to "detach from original" (i.e. make it editable)
-- Copy and stamp it after each blog entry
-- Complete each link with the appropriate *.htm

This is just a way of opening a discussion. If others have better ways to automate blogging with Dreamweaver, I'm all ears.
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