- On January 30 my ability to update this site broke. Each time that I tried to build this blog I saw an error message reporting that the file name contains illegal characters. I also observed via the web browser console that the server was returning a 400 error. I suspected the use of my email address with the at sign was the cause, even though the at sign is a legal character I saw information on the web saying it was common for web servers to have policies that don't recognize the at sign as a legal character.#
- Today Dave wrote on Scripting.com that there was a problem in Drummer blogs due it now being served by HTTPS. Details suggesting a fix were posted on the drummerCms github repo that involved creating one's own template for the site and adding an OPML header to tell the CMS to use it for generating she site. I then went down the rabbit hole of fixing the site and I posted the results of my work to the thread on github. #
- I was curious about how support for https caused the illegal characters, so before I did anything I decided to just try building the blog and to my surprise it worked. My idea is that https support has been added to the oldschool host using either Caddy or Nginx, which had a default policy that did not allow the at sign in the URL and that subsequently got changed so site access will work. If I am right the net is Drummer users don't have to actually do the template change unless Dave were to decide to force all access via https.#
- I decided to press on down the rabbit hole by getting a copy of the minimal template Dave provides, editing it, and storing it on my shared Internet instance. My copy of a working template is at https://shared.frankmcpherson.net/html/newtemplate.html. Users could use this link but that means any changes I might make to the template in the future will affect your site. #
- To use the new template one has to add the OPML header urlTemplate to the blog.opml file by selecting File, Edit OPML headers in Drummer. Through several iterations of testing I found that all references to //scripting.com in the template needed to change to //s3.amazonaws.com/scripting.com and all references to //fargo.io need to be changed to //s3.amazonaws.com/fargo.io. The changes are needed for HTTPS access because all referenced scripts and CSS files need to use HTTPS, which with these changes are provided by Amazon's default public access to S3 buckets. (s3.amazonaws.com is Amazon's host). #
- After adding the urlTemplate header variable and setting it to a value, which is the URL to your template file, click Tools, Build my blog in Drummer to build the new site. Note that when you Build your blog with Drummer it may continue loading the site using HTTP rather than HTTPS, pay attention to the security indicator in your blog. You may want to confirm HTTPS by access the site via another browser tab.#
- After testing further I found that all the generated links in the site, for example the links to each day's posts, where still using HTTP rather than HTTPS. I went back to the Drummer docs and found information about using PagePark for serving Drummer blogs with one's own URL like www.example.com, and that requires the header variable urlBlogWebsite set to the URL https://www.example.com. I added urlBlogWebsite and set it to https://oldschool.scripting.com/frank.mcpherson@gmail.com and then rebuilt the blog and confirmed that all generated URLs used HTTPS. #
- This site is not my blog, I view it as public access to a set of notes. I do my writing here using Drummer and so long as I can access Drummer I can get to my notes. Problem is, Drummer works best in a desktop browser so I have found it easier to access my notes via the "standard" web server. I don't know how many people beyond myself read what I write here, so what I write here it is for an audience of one. #
- I have been using Dave Winer's products since 1999 and I have learned the lessons of what it means to use his products. Dave is a developer and not a hosting provider, so I understand the main risk of using his web apps is that they can go offline at any time and may never return. I am diligent about downloading copies of the files I create in Drummer and I have a copy of Electric Drummer on my Mac to enable me to open the files should Drummer ever go offline for good. I could mitigate this issue further by learning and using Dave's outlining source code, concord. #
- When I found that I could not publish to this Drummer blog I created a work around by creating a new OPML file in Drummer, creating a public link for that file, and then enabling access to that OPML file using my own instance of pagePark, which I had set up a few years ago to "publish" my other outlines like the books I read. #
- PagePark is a web server that can serve markdown and OPML files as well as HTML. It supports templates but I like the default way it renders OPML files. The simplest approach is using one OPML file for one HTML page/site, so while the Drummer blog version of my Daynotes renders separate pages for each day, the PagePark version of the Daynotes keeps a page of posts all on the same day. I can set collapse attributes to node headers to keep a web page from getting real long, and for now I am collapsing each month. #
- So now that this Drummer "Old School" blog is back online, do I stick with my single outline or revert back here? I am not entirely sure, I am leaning toward keeping the single outline just because the web server access to it is under my control although the source OPML files are stored on Dave's drummer.land host. #
- On January 30 my ability to update this site broke. Each time that I tried to build this blog I saw an error message reporting that the file name contains illegal characters. I also observed via the web browser console that the server was returning a 400 error. I suspected the use of my email address with the at sign was the cause, even though the at sign is a legal character I saw information on the web saying it was common for web servers to have policies that don't recognize the at sign as a legal character.#
- Today Dave wrote on Scripting.com that there was a problem in Drummer blogs due it now being served by HTTPS. Details suggesting a fix were posted on the drummerCms github repo that involved creating one's own template for the site and adding an OPML header to tell the CMS to use it for generating she site. I then went down the rabbit hole of fixing the site and I posted the results of my work to the thread on github. #
- I was curious about how support for https caused the illegal characters, so before I did anything I decided to just try building the blog and to my surprise it worked. My idea is that https support has been added to the oldschool host using either Caddy or Nginx, which had a default policy that did not allow the at sign in the URL and that subsequently got changed so site access will work. If I am right the net is Drummer users don't have to actually do the template change unless Dave were to decide to force all access via https.#
- I decided to press on down the rabbit hole by getting a copy of the minimal template Dave provides, editing it, and storing it on my shared Internet instance. My copy of a working template is at https://shared.frankmcpherson.net/html/newtemplate.html. Users could use this link but that means any changes I might make to the template in the future will affect your site. #
- To use the new template one has to add the OPML header urlTemplate to the blog.opml file by selecting File, Edit OPML headers in Drummer. Through several iterations of testing I found that all references to //scripting.com in the template needed to change to //s3.amazonaws.com/scripting.com and all references to //fargo.io need to be changed to //s3.amazonaws.com/fargo.io. The changes are needed for HTTPS access because all referenced scripts and CSS files need to use HTTPS, which with these changes are provided by Amazon's default public access to S3 buckets. (s3.amazonaws.com is Amazon's host). #
- After adding the urlTemplate header variable and setting it to a value, which is the URL to your template file, click Tools, Build my blog in Drummer to build the new site. Note that when you Build your blog with Drummer it may continue loading the site using HTTP rather than HTTPS, pay attention to the security indicator in your blog. You may want to confirm HTTPS by access the site via another browser tab.#
- After testing further I found that all the generated links in the site, for example the links to each day's posts, where still using HTTP rather than HTTPS. I went back to the Drummer docs and found information about using PagePark for serving Drummer blogs with one's own URL like www.example.com, and that requires the header variable urlBlogWebsite set to the URL https://www.example.com. I added urlBlogWebsite and set it to https://oldschool.scripting.com/frank.mcpherson@gmail.com and then rebuilt the blog and confirmed that all generated URLs used HTTPS. #
- This site is not my blog, I view it as public access to a set of notes. I do my writing here using Drummer and so long as I can access Drummer I can get to my notes. Problem is, Drummer works best in a desktop browser so I have found it easier to access my notes via the "standard" web server. I don't know how many people beyond myself read what I write here, so what I write here it is for an audience of one. #
- I have been using Dave Winer's products since 1999 and I have learned the lessons of what it means to use his products. Dave is a developer and not a hosting provider, so I understand the main risk of using his web apps is that they can go offline at any time and may never return. I am diligent about downloading copies of the files I create in Drummer and I have a copy of Electric Drummer on my Mac to enable me to open the files should Drummer ever go offline for good. I could mitigate this issue further by learning and using Dave's outlining source code, concord. #
- When I found that I could not publish to this Drummer blog I created a work around by creating a new OPML file in Drummer, creating a public link for that file, and then enabling access to that OPML file using my own instance of pagePark, which I had set up a few years ago to "publish" my other outlines like the books I read. #
- PagePark is a web server that can serve markdown and OPML files as well as HTML. It supports templates but I like the default way it renders OPML files. The simplest approach is using one OPML file for one HTML page/site, so while the Drummer blog version of my Daynotes renders separate pages for each day, the PagePark version of the Daynotes keeps a page of posts all on the same day. I can set collapse attributes to node headers to keep a web page from getting real long, and for now I am collapsing each month. #
- So now that this Drummer "Old School" blog is back online, do I stick with my single outline or revert back here? I am not entirely sure, I am leaning toward keeping the single outline just because the web server access to it is under my control although the source OPML files are stored on Dave's drummer.land host. #