Last Updated on April 18, 2017 by Dave Farquhar
New feature: More Like This. It took me several hours to implement this one. It should have taken me less than thirty minutes. Hot tip: If you try to run a CGI script and you get Internal Server Error messages, try re-uploading the script in ASCII mode rather than the default binary. Betcha it works after that. When running under Linux or Unix, Perl hates extra carriage returns, and Windows often inserts them.
I think this is the next trend in Weblogs sites. If it’s not, it should be. The idea is this: You assign some keywords to each entry. And at the end of the entry, you put a line that says More Like This and some hyperlinked keywords. So if you like it when I write about baseball or music and you want to see more, click on the baseball or music hyperlink at the end of the entry, and the search engine I stole will go fish around for other entries I gave the same keyword to.
For sites that always write about the same thing, this isn’t very useful. For sites with eclectic content, this is a boon. You can quickly find whatever writings of mine tickle your fancy and skip over the subjects that bore you. How cool is that?
My goal is to put together the best site in the Daynotes circuit. I’ll never have the best content, but if I have reasonably good content and you can quickly find a whole lot of what you’re looking for (be it entertainment, stuff that makes you think, or technical content), I stand a ghost of a chance of reaching that goal.
I actually managed to implement More Like This without modifying any Greymatter code. First, I grabbed Meta Tag Search, a simple CGI script that searches on meta tags, from http://support.cws.net/hosting/cgiscripts.html. I followed the installation instructions. Like I said before, upload it in ASCII mode. You’ll save yourself a few hours and a lot of gray hair. Now, whenever I make an entry in Greymatter, I put a keywords meta tag at the very beginning of the entry. I don’t know if other search engines will find the tags there, but Meta Tag Search will, and that’s my primary concern. Then, at the end of the entry, I add collection of hyperlinks that call Meta Tag Search.
So now it takes a couple more minutes’ effort to make each post, but I think it’s worth it.
More like this: Linux Weblogs HTML CGI
Greymatter
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
This is sahping up nicely Dave.. this Greymatter looks very useful.. but Dave.. I don’t spend much time looking at guys.. but you have GOT to post a different pic .. I sent one of your old columns to my fiancee’ one day and she said.. OMG how can you even read him with that ‘face’ staring at you.. it’s a true booking mug shot LoL
(Laughing really hard) I’m working on getting another picture.
Actually that’s the picture off my first press pass. I think I’d just been told I’d be on the criminal justice beat, and I definitely wasn’t happy about it. I hated that beat. If I wanted to spend my life talking to cops and lawyers and judges, I’d have been a cop, lawyer or judge!
I wonder if my first driver’s license is still floating around anywhere. Now THAT looked like a mug shot. Leather jacket, surly expression…
Oh yeah. One of my, ahem, friends took that picture and doctored it up a bit. He found a "What would you look like with hair loss?" site and sent it in. That was pretty darn funny, but I don’t think I’ll post that one.