toys

glog

a CGI script for personal or group weblogging

 Weblogs are great things; everyone should have a Weblog, or a journal, or something. I have one; go and read it sometime. (It's not maintained by glog, though! Further down this page, you'll find a pointer to one that is.)

There are lots of different kinds of weblogs, requiring or demonstrating lots of different degrees of cleverness, HTML skill, and like that. There are Weblogs by individuals and Weblogs by groups (one of the most famous of the latter is memepool).

A Weblog of the purest kind, just links with some words about each one, generally in inverse chronological order, is a pretty simple thing. You can type the HTML yourself and upload, or you can use a service like the Blogger, or if you have CGI powers on your Web server, you can use a CGI script to put up a fill-in form that you can use to add entries to your blog. If you have some trusted friends, you and your friends can maintain the log together. Strength in numbers!

glog (for "group log" or something) is a little CGI script that I put together that lets you, and optionally a trusted bunch of your friends that you give the posting password to, maintain a Weblog via a fill-in form. The emphasis is on simplicity: there's just one Perl script, one password for posting, and optionally another password that you have to know to delete an entry. I haven't added pruning or archiving yet, but I intend to eventually.

Although glog is simple, it's also flexible; if you're willing to touch the Perl code in rather simple and localized ways, you can control the look of the log that gets produced. And since glog keeps the raw data of the entries in a database, separate from the HTML page that it maintains, if you change your mind about how the page should look, the entire log (not just the new entries) changes instantly. Whoo whoo!

The CGI script itself is here. A sample group log maintained using it (or actually a somewhat tailored version of it) is here; if you want to post to it yourself, the password is "swordfish". Be Nice! *8)

Text documentation (the grungy details of installing glog and so forth) is here.

Things I want to add:

  • Pruning and archiving, both automatic and manual via the form,
  • A Preview screen, so you can see what the log will look like with your new entry, before you actually post it,
  • Some richer semantics (more date formats, especially) in the HTML templates.

Feedback is extremely welcome! Send it to me here, or talk in the forum.

This page last updated
November 18, 1999

toys