variable

• $_section_name

applicable sections

• html

description

This prints a more friendly and readable section name on the page.

notes

This variable is closely associated with the $_nav_section variable. $_nav_section, however, creates a URL-friendly section name that replaces spaces with underlines. It should be used in non-visible links.

The $_section_name should be used where it will be displayed to the end user.

examples

1. When viewing an article titled "Maps" in section "home/about us/directions/maps" and the maps section has no subsections
   • Vine Type will return directions
2. When viewing an article titled "Maps" in section "home/about us/directions/maps" and the maps section contains one or more subsections (for instance, "From Airport" and "From Train Station")
   • Vine Type will return maps

What exactly do I mean by Extra SEO Goodness? The enhancements in Vine Type version 2.2 provide three new significant Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature improvements. Being friendly to Google and other search engines is a necessity on the internet. You want your website to be found and indexed easily -- providing the information the search engines need to categorize the information your website provides.

Improved Titles and Descriptions

The biggest feature improvements provide enhanced search result titles and descriptions for your site. Prior to version 2.2, titles were mostly static, and per-article descriptions were non-existent. Now, by placing the $_articletitle_text variable in your title tag and the $_article_summary variable in your meta description tag, search engine visitors are more likely to see what they are looking for.

Take a look at two Google searches for the same Vine Type site before version 2.2 and with version 2.2. Before version 2.2, all the article titles and summaries looked very similar.

After version 2.2, the difference is dramatic. Titles are meaningful, and the descriptions (the first several words of the article) provide a clear indication as to what will be found when the link is clicked.

Generic Search Engine Sitemaps

Pro users of Vine Type will also benefit from the search engine sitemap provided by version 2.2. Prior to version 2.2, Vine Type served up Google sitemaps, but now serves up a similar industry-standard version for Yahoo!, Live Search, and other search providers.

404 Page Not Found

You might not initially equate missing page support with search engine goodness, but search engines are very interested in knowing when pages have been removed, so that those pages could be removed from their index. Vine Type previous to version 2.2 issued visual 404s - blank pages when an article or section was deleted or moved.

Visitors understood their bookmark should be changed, but search engines would continue to index the old page thinking it was still in existence but now blank. This situation can lead to considerable search results clutter. By providing true 404 support, Vine Type version 2.2 sites will clearly communicate to search engines whether pages are and are not present.

variables

• $_now_daynum Example: 03
• $_now_daynum_short Example: 3
• $_now_monthname Example: September
• $_now_monthname_short Example: Sep
• $_now_monthnum Example: 09 (For September)
• $_now_monthnum_short Example: 9 (For September)
• $_now_time Example: 6:15 PM
• $_now_time_24 Example: 18:15
• $_now_wkday Example: Thursday
• $_now_wkday_short Example: Thu
• $_now_yearnum Example: 2008
• $_now_yearnum_short Example: 08 (for 2008)

applicable sections

• html

associated vinetype.config variables

• $culture

description

Place this variable at the location in the body element where you want a day, date, month, or year value for the current tim to be placed.

notes

• The above examples are values for a culture of en-US or other English-speaking culture. Translation for other language is accomplished by adjusting the $culture variable in your vinetype.config file.

Vine Type 2.2 is ready for immediate download. Subtitled With Extra SEO Goodness, Vine Type's 404 support and enhanced article summary improves search engine summary reports. In addition, v2.2 pro licenses gain new generic search engine sitemap capabilities.

• fixed: (security issue) vinetype folder name is no longer shown in malformed xml message
• fixed: no more gmt timestamp when saving articles
• fixed: UTF-8 characters in ANSI-encoded file

• fixed: $article_summaries:yes

• new: generic feed=sitemap (pro licenses only)

• new: $_now variables
  • several new now variables allow you to place the current time, date, or year wherever you'd like. I use the current year in my copyright notice.
• new: $article_summaries_more
• new: $article_summaries_more_img_url
• new: $_article_summary
  • place this in your meta description tag for improved search engine results
• new: $_articletitle_text
  • place this in a title tag for improved page titles
• new: true 404s
• new: srch $_nav_section
  • $_nav_section will contain "srch" when users use the srch widget.
• new: $_commenting_open 0/1 indicator

Vine Type is a lightweight web site content management system that runs on Microsoft Windows web servers. Vine Type provides the means to add, edit, and delete web pages on your site without worrying about broken links, navigational widgets, or other technical details.

And by lightweight, I mean that Vine Type can easily handle sites up to 400 pages. This site is over 200 pages in size and it is easily managed by Vine Type.

For Web Designers and Their Clients

Vine Type targets web designers creating web sites for small businesses and professionals who want to maintain their own website content. Vine Type provides a flexible template system that allows you to wrap just about any look-and-feel around the core Vine Type engine. The single-login interface is simple and easy to teach to your clients.

Free for Not-for-Profit Use

That always sounds good doesn't it? You can download a copy of Vine Type Personal Edition for personal or non-profit use for free. Experience the full range of features that Vine Type offers. There's no expiration.

After some template changes and a repackaging effort, I'll be releasing Version 2.2 of Vine Type. This release will get the tagline With Extra SEO Goodness because the bulk of the changes have been in support of improved Search Engine Optimization behaviors.

From improved search engine result titles and summary descriptions to true 404 Page Not Found support -- version 2.2 provides more tools to get your site indexed even better.

Stay tuned for the update.

Vine Type 2.0 is ready for immediate download. Version 2 of Vine Type is a .NET version 2 application. There are several changes, most notably a performance improvement by caching Ma.gnolia lists locally and updating them only once each hour.

Version 2

New requirement: .NET Framework 2.0 required. Vine Type 1.5 is the final Vine Type release supporting .NET Framework 1.1

• fixed: removed spaces that often appeared in text entry boxes.
• fixed: problem with non en-US cultures when calculating comment expiration
• changed: XML file schema change. All references to "writeback" replaced with "comment." If upgrading from v1.x to v2.0 you must replace-all instances of "writeback" to "comment" in the following files
  • site.xml, site.xsl
  • wb.xml, wb.xsl
  • all template (.html) files in the vinetype folder
  • vinetype.config
  • your css files
    Only if you are upgrading from a v1 Vine Type website, do the following:
  • back up your files (copy to a different location or send the vinetype folder to a zip file)
  • open each xml, xsl, html template and vinetype.config file in a text editor
  • find and replace every occurence of writeback with comment
  • save the file
• changed: article summaries no longer show images for better summary experience
• added: ma.gnolia caching
• added: new, better, statistics-gathering, snippet-showing, keyword-emphasizing search results.
• added: $label_searchresult (vinetype.config)
• added: $label_searchresults_matches (vinetype.config)
• added: Alternating article style option with these two variables
  • $comment_alts (vinetype.config)
  • $_commentalt (template file)
• added: Alternating article style option with these two variables
  • $article_alts (vinetype.config)
  • $_artalt (template file)

Boston

A new Vine Type template is available for immediate download. Boston is based from an award-winning Word Press template by Sreejith Krishnan.

A darker theme with orange highlights is in keeping with the season. This template can be viewed in action at the vinetype.org website. Download Boston now.

Vine Type lets you create up to 26 sets of Ma.gnolia bookmarks. Vine Type returns all your bookmarks that share a Ma.gnolia tag.

Vine Type places your bookmarks in a list with the bookmark title, description, and a thumbnail of the website that the bookmark points to. The title and thumbnail are linked to the web site.

If you'd rather just have a list of your most recent bookmarks, Vine Type lets you do that too.

Vine Type supports up to 26 different sets of Flickr^TM images. This means you can display photos of your vacations in one area of a page and photos of your pets in another area.

Your sets are based on your Flickr tags and Vine Type will return all your photos that share a tag. Is tagging too complicated? Do you just want to show your recent photos? Vine Type does that too.

If you'd like, you can combine Flickr with Vine Type's random feature and display a random sample of a larger collection.

Gravatars -- Globally Recognized Avatars -- are images associated with email addresses. They are popular for blog sites where multiple comment entries (comments) are posted from. For commenters that have gravatars, the gravatar is shown. If an email address does not have a gravatar, a default image is shown.

To learn more about how gravatars, visit the gravatar home page

As of January 30, 2009, Ma.gnolia.com has been out of commission with no stated date to return. The functionality remains in Vine Type in the hopes that this useful bookmarking service will one day return.

variable

• $_ma.gnolia_a
• ...through...
• $_ma.gnolia_z

applicable sections

• html

description

Place this variable at the location in the html element where you want your Ma.gnolia bookmarks to appear.

associated vinetype.config variables

• $ma.gnolia_get
• $ma.gnolia_tag

example

$ma.gnolia_get_a:4  
$ma.gnolia_tag_a:ipod

These two variables would define the Ma.gnolia bookmark set "a". To display the bookmarks from set a on your web page, place the associated template variable in your template file.

$_ma.gnolia_a

notes

• Both private and public bookmarks will be returned.

• If you request fewer bookmarks than match your tag(s) the list will contain the most recent entries

• The maximum number of bookmarks to request is 100.

• To request recent bookmarks, regardless of their tags, use the special value "all-recent" (without the quotes) in the $ma.gnolia_tags variable.

• In order to access your Ma.gnolia bookmarks, you will need to also provide these two vinetype.config file entries:

  • $ma.gnolia_screenname
  • $ma.gnolia_password

sample generated xhtml

      <ul class="magnolia_a">
              <li><dl>
                    <dt>
                       <a href="http://www.dreamprojections.com/2006/10/01/importing-old-stories-into-the-new-blog.aspx#lastcomment" title="Alex Gorbatchev was tired of fighting with Community Server and wrote his own blog.  There is a problem, however, converting 650 blog posts into Markdown.">DreamProjections.com | Importing old stories into the new blog</a>
                    </dt>
                    <dd class="image">

                       <a href="http://www.dreamprojections.com/2006/10/01/importing-old-stories-into-the-new-blog.aspx#lastcomment" title="DreamProjections.com | Importing old stories into the new blog">
                          <img src="http://scst.srv.girafa.com/srv/i?i=sc010159&amp;r=dreamprojections.com/2006/10/01/importing-old-stories-into-the-new-blog.aspx&amp;s=7d7bb007aedda02b" alt="DreamProjections.com | Importing old stories into the new blog" height="75" width="100" />
                       </a>
                    </dd>
                    <dd class="desc">Alex Gorbatchev was tired of fighting with Community Server and wrote his own blog.  There is a problem, however, converting 650 blog posts into Markdown.</dd>
                 </dl></li>
              <li><dl>
                    <dt>
                       <a href="http://codebetter.com/blogs/rodpaddock/archive/2006/10/09/Rad-in-the-Time-Of-Agile-Development.aspx" title="Rod Paddock says Agile coding is just this year's buzzword for Rapid Application Design developed in the 1980s but no matter what the name, getting software into the users hands quickly is good.">RodMan's Corner | RAD in the Time Of Agile Development</a>
                    </dt>
                    <dd class="image">
                       <a href="http://codebetter.com/blogs/rodpaddock/archive/2006/10/09/Rad-in-the-Time-Of-Agile-Development.aspx" title="RodMan's Corner | RAD in the Time Of Agile Development">
                          <img src="http://scst.srv.girafa.com/srv/i?i=sc010159&amp;r=codebetter.com/blogs/rodpaddock/archive/2006/10/09/Rad-in-the-Time-Of-Agile-Development.aspx&amp;s=3b23928a7242e618" alt="RodMan's Corner | RAD in the Time Of Agile Development" height="75" width="100" />
                       </a>
                    </dd>
                    <dd class="desc">Rod Paddock says Agile coding is just this year's buzzword for Rapid Application Design developed in the 1980s but no matter what the name, getting software into the users hands quickly is good.</dd>
                 </dl></li>
              <li><dl>
                    <dt>
                       <a href="http://haacked.com/archive/2006/10/06/Rolling_Your_Own_Blog_Engine.aspx" title="Phil says coding your own blog engine may seem simple but there are many features in modern open source blog engines that take time and have already been written for you, so why reinvent the kitchen sink?">You've been Haacked! | Rolling Your Own Blog Engine</a>
                    </dt>
                    <dd class="image">
                       <a href="http://haacked.com/archive/2006/10/06/Rolling_Your_Own_Blog_Engine.aspx" title="You've been Haacked! | Rolling Your Own Blog Engine">
                          <img src="http://scst.srv.girafa.com/srv/i?i=sc010159&amp;r=haacked.com/archive/2006/10/06/Rolling_Your_Own_Blog_Engine.aspx&amp;s=e8998e6c49d6f633" alt="You've been Haacked! | Rolling Your Own Blog Engine" height="75" width="100" />
                       </a>
                    </dd>
                    <dd class="desc">Phil says coding your own blog engine may seem simple but there are many features in modern open source blog engines that take time and have already been written for you, so why reinvent the kitchen sink?</dd>
                 </dl></li>
              <li><dl>
                    <dt>
                       <a href="http://godbit.com/article/your-pastor-needs-a-blog" title="Justin Thorp writes that pastors need to blog as a means of creating a concrete way of having a conversation with the members of the congregation.">Godbit Project | Your Pastor Needs A Blog</a>
                    </dt>
                    <dd class="image">
                       <a href="http://godbit.com/article/your-pastor-needs-a-blog" title="Godbit Project | Your Pastor Needs A Blog">
                          <img src="http://scst.srv.girafa.com/srv/i?i=sc010159&amp;r=godbit.com/article/your-pastor-needs-a-blog&amp;s=e09d2db7df882988" alt="Godbit Project | Your Pastor Needs A Blog" height="75" width="100" />
                       </a>
                    </dd>
                    <dd class="desc">Justin Thorp writes that pastors need to blog as a means of creating a concrete way of having a conversation with the members of the congregation.</dd>
                 </dl></li>
              <li><dl>
                    <dt>
                       <a href="http://groups.msn.com/windowslivewriter/generaltopics.msnw?action=get_message&amp;mview=0&amp;ID_Message=894&amp;all_topics=0" title="Microsoft Employee Joe Cheng says XHTML compliance for Windows Live Writer is a nice goal but not a priority.">Windows Live Writer | XHTML Compliance</a>
                    </dt>
                    <dd class="image">
                       <a href="http://groups.msn.com/windowslivewriter/generaltopics.msnw?action=get_message&amp;mview=0&amp;ID_Message=894&amp;all_topics=0" title="Windows Live Writer | XHTML Compliance">
                          <img src="http://scst.srv.girafa.com/srv/i?i=sc010159&amp;r=groups.msn.com/windowslivewriter/generaltopics.msnw&amp;s=a07bc62cc96f5834" alt="Windows Live Writer | XHTML Compliance" height="75" width="100" />
                       </a>
                    </dd>
                    <dd class="desc">Microsoft Employee Joe Cheng says XHTML compliance for Windows Live Writer is a nice goal but not a priority.</dd>
                 </dl></li>
           </ul>

variable

• $_flickr_a_nnn
• ...through...
• $_flickr_z_nnn

applicable sections

• html

description

Place this variable at the location in the html element where you want your Flickr photos to appear.

associated vinetype.config variables

• $flickr_get
• $flickr_size
• $flickr_tags

example

$flickr_get_a:4  
$flickr_size_a:s  
$flickr_tags_a:disneyland

These three vinetype.config entries define a Flickr photo set "a". To display the photos from photo set a on your web page, add the associated template variables.

$_flickr_a_001
$_flickr_a_002
$_flickr_a_003
$_flickr_a_004

notes

• Only photos with a Flickr privacy setting of Public will be returned.

• If you request more photo URLs than match the tags in your Flickr collection, Vine Type will create template variables for the number of photos in the collection.

• The maximum number of URLs to request is 100.

Note: Showing 100 Flickr photos on a single page may violate the Flickr terms that you agreed to when obtaining an API key. Vine Type allows requesting up to 100 URLs to work in conjunction with random variables so that you can show a small random collection of a larger number of photos. The number of photos displayed on your website is controlled in the template file, not in the configuration file.

• To request recent photos, regardless of their tags, use the special value "all-recent" (without the quotes) in the $flickr_tags variable.

• In order to access your Flickr photos, you will need to also provide these two vinetype.config file entries:

  • $flickr_api_key
  • $flickr_username

• When you obtain an API key from Flickr you agree to terms governing your use of Flickr photos. I recommend that you become familiar with these terms.

• You don't have to display all the photos you request. By using Vine Type random numbers, you could display four of the most recent 50 photos. This would display a different set of photos with each page refresh.

four random photos example

Create a Flickr photo set and a random variable in your config file. In this example it is the random_q variable:

$flickr_get_a:50  
$flickr_size_a:s  
$flickr_tags_a:disneyland  
$random_q:50

Then use the random values in the template file like this:

$_flickr_a_$random_q001
$_flickr_a_$random_q002
$_flickr_a_$random_q003
$_flickr_a_$random_q004

Vine Type might display, for example, the following four photos:

$_flickr_a_032
$_flickr_a_008
$_flickr_a_020
$_flickr_a_017

The same photo would never appear twice on the same page because of the way Vine Type random variables work. That is, $random_q001 is always different from $random_q002 and $random_q003 et cetera.

As of January 30, 2009, Ma.gnolia.com has been out of commission with no stated date to return. The functionality remains in Vine Type in the hopes that this useful bookmarking service will one day return.

variable

• $ma.gnolia_password

type

• behavioral

associated template variables

• $_ma.gnolia

description

• Your Ma.gnolia website password.

example

$ma.gnolia_password:eiuv89324of84

notes

• this value is needed in order for Vine Type to access your bookmarks from the Ma.gnolia site.

• to turn Ma.gnolia bookmarks "off" at your site, set this variable to blank or delete it.

As of January 30, 2009, Ma.gnolia.com has been out of commission with no stated date to return. The functionality remains in Vine Type in the hopes that this useful bookmarking service will one day return.

variable

• $ma.gnolia_screenname

type

• behavioral

associated template variables

• $_ma.gnolia

description

• The screen name that was assigned to you at the Ma.gnolia website.

example

$ma.gnolia_screenname:wildaboutlists

notes

• this value is needed in order for Vine Type to access your bookmarks from the Ma.gnolia site.

• to turn Ma.gnolia bookmarks "off" at your site, set this variable to blank or delete it.