Microblog component

[datahell]

Component Mikro just released!
Mikro is a smart and modern micro blog system. I strongly recommend you to download it and test it, I am sure you will love it.

Documentation for Mikro will also become available.

Download Mikro from EDC

[kyomar]

Awesome, thank you very much datahell. I have installed the component and while testing I found following bugs (I assume these are bugs):
- Title changed in settings, title but shows always "Micro blog" in front page.
- Image Position set to message left side but always shows below message.

Some questions:
- Is it possible to change directory /mikro to /blog?
- Is it possible to use mod_latestarticles with micro blog?

Thank you again for this great component - I am excited.

[datahell]

No, there are no bugs. If you have APC enabled parameters are cached. Delete apc cache.
Elxis cache documentation

You can re-route any component to anything you want! So routing "mikro" to "blog" is possible.
Elxis router documentation

Recommendation: For maximum portability always use Elxis URIs for internal linking. Especially if you set have custom routing rules.

Bad link (standard link) :
http://www.example.com/blog/rss

Good link (Elxis URI) :
mikro:rss
Elxis will change automatically "mikro" to "blog" or whatever else you set on-the-fly and without having you to change your links. Also these links are multilingual and follow HTTP/HTTPS protocol changes.

I will develop some modules for Mikro during the next days. Follow me on Twitter to stay in touch!

[evkarab]

As i can see, i cannot edit something i have written. Or how can i use paragraphs? Do i miss something?

[datahell]

Mikro began as a pure micro blogging system and ended up with much more features from what I have initialled scheduled.
Micro blogs, in general, display a list of messages like on Twitter. Twitter doesn't have edit too. The improvements I made turned Mikro into an almost full-featured blog but it is still a micro blog.

You can use some html tags including paragraphs. To create a paragraph in HTML write this:

<p>Any text you want</p>
<p>An other paragraph here with more text</p>
The paragraph tag "p" in Mikro is allowed only in Long Text (second text area), not in short message (first text area).

I strongly recommend you to use only these HTML tags: <p> and <strong>, nothing else. Also add hashtags like #this

[evkarab]

Thank you datahell. As you can see i don't have twitter experience at all 
I test it as you said and i saw the use of mikroblog. It is not an article editor.

[kyomar]

datahell thanks for your quick reply and explaining the routing function. Now I know what the routing is meant for and it works very well. It's also very helpful that one can see the routing in the component's listing.

I don't use cache in my testing environment.

Image position I have changed after inserting post, that's probably the reason why the position didn't change for that post. Inserting a new post the image position is according to new parameters. But shouldn't old/all posts change image position as well if the parameter for image position changes?

Title is still Micro blog and not the title I inserted in Edit component Mikro, Title. Funny the Description shows correct.

I am very much looking forward to the modules for Mikro. I am sure they will greatly enhance Mikro Blog.

[datahell]

Regarding the title you are right, there was a small bug in Mikro which I fixed.

Open this file:
components/com_mikro/controllers/base.php
Go to line 149
and change this:
if (trim($this->params['title']) != '') { $this->params['title'] = 'Micro blog'; }
into this:
if (trim($this->params['title']) == '') { $this->params['title'] = 'Micro blog'; }

As for the image position I tested it and it works fine. Just refresh the page and image position will change based on the new settings.

[kyomar]

great, thank you very much for the fix. All works fine now.

[kyomar]

Hi datahell,

I have seen that you made component sitemap and module tags cloud compatible with mikro - thank you. Which other components/modules are you planning to update for mikro? If possible I would be especially interested in:

mod_latestarticles and
mod_pressnews

What do you think?

Thank you,
Markus

[datahell]

I will create a module listing latest mikro articles or update an existing one for standard articles to support mikro. Please wait a few days.

[datahell]

Your wish came true!

Now module Latest Articles can also display articles from component Mikro.
Also an other cool option was added: Display article's large image scaled (responsive design) instead of the thumbnail.

Download module Latest Articles v1.1 from EDC

[kyomar]

Wow, that's awesome - your are the best! This makes mikro much more integratable into elxis.

Just one problem: The urls are like micro/1.html, /2.html. Is it possible to use the title for the url? That would be much more meaningful. I would like to move old posts to the new micro component and this would be much easier (search engines) if the title was used to build urls (same as articles).

Thanks again for your hard work - very appreciated.

[datahell]

No.
1. The titles in mikro articles are optional, you can not base on that.
2. It requires complex interface (seotitle validation etc) in Mikro posting form which is beyond the scope of a micro blogging application. The form must remain as simple as possible.

[kyomar]

okay, that's a pitty. If this is the case I cannot use mikro for the purpose (blog) I thought - perhaps only for tweets. I will just continue using articles to create/write blog posts as I was doing already anyway. Would have been nice though to have everything included/coordinated (posts, tweets etc.) in one solution.

Thank you for your hard work!