Just Journal Developer Blog

The database server was upgraded tonight. Please report any oddities.

I'm part of the way through adding tags to just journal. My implementation is a cross between what other sites call "tags" and "categories". You'll see a list on the left side of your blog with all the ones you've used, and each entry will list one or more tags that you've used.

To add several tags, you can list them using commas, semi-colons, colons or spaces. They must be lowercase with no numbers. The software should take care of the lowercase part for you.

Eventually you'll be able to do a number of things including:

tag new and existing entries
bring up all entries under a certain tag (using a link on the left)
search by tags

I've added partial support for the MetaWeblog API today.  You can use that in combination with Windows Live Writer to post blog entries on Just Journal in addition to our own client. 

The post URL is http://www.justjournal.com/xml-rpc

When it asks for the homepage or whatever, use the URL to your blog.  It is something like http://www.justjournal.com/users/yourusername  Replace yourusername with your user name :)

I just published an updated version of just journal. I've been working on it for awhile, but just got an opportunity to finish it.

Changes:

Half the code for tags is now implemented. You can see the tag place holders. I need to add the code to add tags when submitting a blog entry next.

Just Journal now supports RSD (Really Simple Discovery). This should allow some blogging clients to "find" the xml-rpc interfaces (like blogger api) on Just Journal.

The stats on the front page now using fixed floating point numbers so it should be much closer to adding up to 100% for public/private/friends entries. I made use of the String.format method in java.

There are some fixes for Dashboard users. Entries now assume you want comments, and emails on comments for entries.

Some error messages were fixed and I've added more logging on the comment feature to track down some bugs that seem to randomly manifest themselves.

We've hit 500 users. The site has been growing at an increasing rate for the past 6 months. I've very happy about the new users. :)

Outstanding bugs:

A bug was reported to me recently involving the friends feature. Entries are not visible on their page, but do work on your "friends" page. I'm working on this issue.

New features:

I'm about halfway through getting the timezone feature working. The holdup is time to work on it.

Site downtime:

Just Journal was down for a few hours earlier this week. The file system with the database filled up. I've made some room which should cover us for awhile. I may need to buy some new hardware (read a new server) this year to handle the new users and another site I'm hosting.

A new command line client was created for UNIX-like operating systems. It has been tested on MidnightBSD, but should work on other BSDs and possibly linux/solaris/etc. I'm not actively working on support for other systems at this time, but would take patches to this effect.

The client requires xmlrpc-c which can be found on sourceforge.net.

it does not use SSL or any crypto to protect logins.

Usage is jjclient -u username -p password < myfile.txt or input and an EOF character. This is documented in the README accompanying the source code.

This is now on the Just Journal website and in the MidnightBSD ports collection.

Some of the code is now time zone aware, but it's still defaulting to the server default (EST). Eventually I'll allow users to select their own time zone. Some of the RSS feeds are now published in GMT.

I fixed two bugs today.

1. Users with a username that was exactly 3 characters could not login. This has been fixed.

2. This change has not been published, but I have the RecentBlogs servlet that spits out RSS for the site validating with the w3's feed validator. The dates are now in the RFC822 format (with 4 digit years). It publishes them in GMT.

Some users get an error "no group 1" when logging in. This is not fixed as I haven't tracked the cause just yet. (tigress is one)

The SSL certificate expires today. I'm working on adding a new cert to continue with encrypted services. It will be from another company as I cannot continue to spend $65 a year.

I've updated the Dashboard widget for Mac OS X. The new beta version contains several changes:

1. The theme has been changed. It now matches the website, and looks a bit cleaner.

2. The widget now warns you if you didn't type a username or password and hit "Post Blog". It no longer deletes the post in this situation. (user submitted bug)

3. The widget contains a check that will be enabled in the server code to find post errors. It doesn't work yet, but it will get posted after the timezone changes are completed.

4. The tab order was corrected on the widget. Hitting tab from the subject box gets you to the blog body box.

5. A status text area next to the post button was added. It appears when there is an error.

6. The widget is half the size of the previous version. (disk space)

7. The subject box was changed to an HTML input "text" element instead of a textarea. This makes a lot more sense for scrolling purposes, and it matches the implementation on the website.

One of the obvious problems with just journal is the handling of time zones or lack thereof.  During the work on ATOM feeds, I had to add GMT conversion in the code.  I'm working on a way for users to pick their default time zone which will allow them to see entries in their time. The problem is that I need to either log what time zone an entry is posted in or convert them all to the same zone.

Almost all the data is in EST, but I did run JJ on a PST based server for a year.  I'm also not familiar with how MySQL deals with time zones.  Further research is needed.

Just Journal was upgraded today to a new development version I've been working on. This release fixes some of the search bugs (I don't know how though) and cleans up the interface used by many of the functions in the Users servlet. It might be a little slower, but it's much cleaner looking.

I've also had some success hosting just journal as a war file on my Mac.

I've been looking into improving the experience on Just Journal. I've found a number of bugs in the site that I want to fix.

1. The new blog search only works when you're logged in. (in the blog not the site search)
2. The journals are a bit cluttery.
3. There are problems displaying the calendar on dark themed blogs.
4. If you haven't posted a blog entry in the current year, the /calendar link causes an error.


I've made several improvements recently. Site search is working along with private searches in your blog when you login. The version I'm testing also includes a link to an ATOM feed which you can use now. Goto the RSS feed and replace rss with atom. For instance, http://www.justjournal.com/users/jjsite/atom We don't have a post/service interface yet, just feeds.

The website was down for a few hours due to a hardware upgrade. Two new hard drives were added to the server (RAID1).

Just Journal now has a basic search feature.

http://www.justjournal.com/search/

You can search public blog entries and user accounts. I'm planning on allowing full searches of blogs for owners of the blog eventually. There are a few areas I need to resolve yet.

I just renewed the domain for Just Journal for another two years. :)

Just Journal now implements the Blogger 1.0 API with two exceptions.

The official blogger API
implements the following methods:

blogger.newPost: Makes a new post to a designated blog. Optionally, will publish the blog after making the post.

blogger.editPost: Edits a given post. Optionally, will publish the blog after making the edit.

blogger.getUsersBlogs: Returns information on all the blogs a given user is a member of.

blogger.getUserInfo: Authenticates a user and returns basic user info (name, email, userid, etc.).

blogger.getTemplate: Returns the main or archive index template of a given blog.

blogger.setTemplate: Edits the main or archive index template of a given blog.

We support everything except the template functions.  We also have getRecentPosts and getPost which are not part of the official API, but implemented in many third party blogging apps from Six Apart to Wordpress.  There are not many standards on what to support in those but the bare minimum is content, dateCreated.  We also support some of the extensions for six apart software in our implementation.  You should be able to use http://www.justjournal.com/xml-rpc/ and https://www.justjournal.com/xml-rpc/ with clients that support Blogger 1.0.  Ecto for windows is working (although titles are not right and we don't support delete yet).  Blogger 1.0 does not even support titles so it's no shock that the protocol can't handle it. 

We still recommend the Just Journal windows client for posting on Windows, but there are advantages to other clients and we want users to have choice.  This will also help Mac users who don't wish to use our dashboard widget and open source fans.  I'm currently working with a gnome based client in BSD. 

We are researching other APIs for possible inclusion including Movable Type and Metaweblog.  There's a possibility we might adopt our own xml-rpc protocol too.  I'm thinking about it. 

One of the issues with Just Journal is that it is often not flexible enough for users. I've had a very positive response to the Dashboard widget for Mac OS X. I realized that there are many platforms that need a client. I can't write software for everything. So, I've begun working on support for the Blogger API (1.0).

The feature is not complete yet and editing does not work at all.

Clients can point to
https://www.justjournal.com/xml-rpc or
http://www.justjournal.com/xml-rpc

I'll announce when the the API is finished. I'm also considering adding support for other formats like ATOM. I'd love emails about it too.

Just Journal was down due to a power outage.  Service has been restored.  Our APC kept the server up for a time, but the outage was over 4 hours.  The Internet connection went down with the power.

We recently released a new Dashboard widget for Mac OS X (10.4 and 10.5)  I've only tested it on Leopard here.  It has attracted several new users. I've found a few bugs and limitations in the widget and I've got a development version that fixes most of them.  The new version will be able to display the username + passwords and let users pick if they prefer public, friends only or private posts.  I may change the front of the widget in appearance too.  Someone has generated new graphics for it.

I performed a database backup today.