neon epiphany

By the way, does anyone still read this?

Should have guessed that renewed posting would only lead to eventual blog geekery. For awhile I’ve been worried about what would happen if I had to move my little blog to another server or Movable Type install. By default, the documents for each entry are named according to their indexes into the MT database, a volatile number that’s not likely to survive either situation. Last time I looked at solutions people had whipped up, there didn’t seem to be anything that would make things future-proof but still deal with old permalinks already out in blogspace. So I held off.

Of course, the longer you live with the problem the worse it gets.

Today, I ran across this article at khakipants which had they key — a nice trick for generating a static .htaccess file with a mod_rewrite rule for each archive entry to date. This means a painless map that itself doesn’t depend on the current MT install, and one which I can take with me to another apache server in the future (and if I go to some other environment, at least I have a reference for URL mapping).

So yay! I’m now future-proof. All the entries now live in folders and filenames organized by date and time, and I’ve also removed the .html extension as well.

Some excellent web references on URLs, blogs and future-proofing:

• Howto: Future-proof URLs in Movable Type by Már Örlygsson
• How to recognize a Weblog tool by its permalinks by Matthew Thomas
• Cruft-free URLs in Movable Type by Mark Pilgrim

As for what else: Love Love Love! Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist isn’t just any old fling, it’s the one you bring home to mum. And it’ll probably make you breakfast in the morning too!

OK, I admit it. I’ll probably see Sky Captain in the end. Jude Law!