blogs.gnome.org is now running WordPress MU 2.6.2, which is the latest and greatest (strictly speaking, a micro-release into the future) of WordPress MU. It is equivalent to WordPress 2.6, which has all kinds of cool new stuff, including:

• Wiki-style revision control of posts and pages, integrated with auto-save… including diffs!
• The Press This! bookmarklet, for drive-by blogging of cool stuff you find on the web — it will helpfully find images, video and quotes, ready to include in your post.
• Turbo-charge the admin interface with Gears enhanced in-browser caching support.
• Thinking of trying on something new? The theme preview window lets you see how your blog would look before you switch.
• In addition to the enhanced upload interface and image captions, you can now post galleries in your blog.
• New plugins for blogs.gnome.org: The incredibly capable Twitter Tools plugin replaces the old Twitter widget — and soon we’ll make sure it has laconi.ca/identi.ca support. A simpler Google Analytics plugin — everyone using the old plugin has been migrated across. Viper’s Video Quicktags makes it really easy to insert videos.
• Sadly, OpenID is off for the time being. Our old hacks were really too hacky to bring across. We’ll be testing the author’s work on MU compatibility soon.
• Although the admin interface has never been a speed daemon, the whole site is generally faster due to a whole stack of performance fixes we’ve done since the upgrade.

Please file bugs if you notice any problems with the upgrade. Thanks as always to the WordPress and WordPress MU hackers!

• Footnotes: The footnotes plugin was included to satisfy the alarming number of GNOME contributors who have a footnote fetish. Perhaps it’s some kind of bizarre tribute to our logo… whatever it is, blogo is ready!
• Content License: Blog for freedom with the official Creative Commons WpLicense plugin! You can choose from a range of Free and non-Free content licenses, and display a footer badge to show off your choice.
• Subscribe to Comments: Make it easy for your readers to join the conversation with the Subscribe to Comments plugin. All they need to do is check a box when commenting, and they’ll receive email updates when new comments arrive — just like you do! There’s even a management interface for both you and your readers to manage subscriptions.
• OpenID Delegation: If you have an OpenID provider, but you’d like to use your blog URL as your OpenID identifier (which is particularly useful when commenting on other blogs), just switch on the OpenID Delegation plugin and point it in the right direction. Now your blog really is you!
• Flickr Widget: Many GNOME contributors combine technical prowess with a keen eye for beauty — which is why Flickr has such a huge GNOME following! Show off your mad photography skillz with the Flickr Widget plugin.

  

• Twitter Widget: The ultimate interruption-oriented technology… and we all thought email was bad! Keep the world seriously up-to-date on your thoughts and movements with the Twitter widget plugin.

  

• Easy Gravatars: Your gravatar is a “globally unique avatar” based on an MD5 hash of your email address. They provide an easy way for any website to display your favourite avatar icon, without the need to configure it for every individual site. To show gravatar icons in your comments, switch on the Easy Gravatars plugin.

  

• Hidden Treasures: Finally, there are a bunch of cool plugins on blogo that you can enjoy without even switching them on:
  • Tango Smilies makes your emoticons rock!
  • Bug Links makes it easy to refer to bugs in GNOME related trackers without breaking a sweat. Just mention the bug number as you normally would: GNOME bug #number will appear as GNOME bug #496024 while Fedora bug #number will appear as Fedora bug #170856 — nice!
  • Bad Behavior protects your blog against many kinds of comment spam.
  • Custom CSS lets you define your own CSS styles for any theme (Presentation » Custom CSS).

Of course, if you’re using blogo and would like another cool plugin installed, let us know by filing a feature request!

• Native tagging support, including an easy converter if you were previously using categories like tags.
• A pending review feature, which will be very handy for multi-author project blogs. You can now specifically submit a post for review by the blog editor.
• Complete Atom 1.0 support, including the Atom Publishing Protocol.
• Various performance improvements on the database side and the browser side.

Please file bugs if you notice any problems with the upgrade. Thanks as always to the WordPress and WordPress MU hackers!

Let’s get to it!

1. Copy the rss2renderer.py plugin into your plugins directory:

   cp ~jdub/rss2renderer.py ~/bin/pyblosxom/plugins/

   This will provide better RSS output than the built-in templates, which will allow us to export your categories (subdirectories in pyblosxom) as well as your posts.

   Here’s a copy for those of you not hosted on www.gnome.org.

2. Add the following configuration stanza to ~/bin/pyblosxom/config.py:

   py['rss2_extension'] = "/index.rss2"
   if "/index.rss2" in os.environ.get("PATH_INFO", ""):
       py['num_entries'] = 0

   This tells the rss2renderer plugin to output all of your entries when it’s invoked. We set it conditionally so that your flav=rss output stays small (that’s what everyone’s subscribed to, so… let’s not punch them in the face).

3. Change to the directory where your config.py and blog files are located. Most likely ~/bin/pybloxsom/ or ~/public_html/:

   cd ~/bin/pyblosxom/ or cd ~/public_html/

   Now for the fun bit!

4. Run pyblosxom on the command line, to save your entire blog as an RSS feed:

   REQUEST_METHOD=GET PATH_INFO="/index.rss2" python blog < /dev/null | sed '1,/^$/d' > ~/export.xml

   Keep in mind that’s a single, one-line command. Now that we’ve got something to import into WordPress…

5. Log in to your WordPress admin interface.

   Click Login or Site Admin in your “Meta” sidebar.

   

6. Navigate to the RSS Importer.

   Click through Manage > Import > RSS.

   

7. Upload your exported RSS file.

   Click Browse… to find the file and Upload file and import to begin the import process. The import results page will list every entry that is imported, so it can get pretty long. I’ve gimped the image below so you can see the end of a successful import run.

   

8. You’re done!

   Now you can browse through your blog, freshly imported into WordPress!

What does that mean for you?

• Rocking user experience, built on the foundations of everybody’s favourite blogging tool, WordPress.
• Multiple blogs: Yes, you can run more than just one blog! You may want one for yourself, one for your project. Do be nice though, there’s only one namespace here.
• Multiple authors: You can invite existing users to participate on your blog — perfect for developer teams to contribute to a project blog. There are a few different user levels, so you can act as ‘editor’ to a team of contributors, give core maintainers administrative access, etc.
• Some cool themes to start you off, including the beautifully stylesheetable Sandbox. You can apply your own CSS to any theme using the ‘Custom CSS’ page. Make your blog yours.
• Customisable sidebar widgets, and a few cool widget plugins to play with. Stick a Twitter or Flickr feed in your sidebar, let everyone know where you’re at.
• Spam protection thanks to the Bad Behavior plugin, enabled by default on every blog, and auto-closing comments after 21 days of inactivity. We’re going to wait and see how bad the spam might get before implementing other measures.
• All the mod cons you’d expect from WordPress: XMLRPC, APP, feeds, GUI editor, blogrolls, great management of pages, categories and comments.
• Seamless migration from NewsBruiser, and thorough redirection to a much better URL scheme. Not only have we maintained your Google-juice, we’ve enhanced it!
• Easy sign-up: Anyone with a gnome.org, gtk.org or gimp.org email address can join!

Enjoy!