One of the key features of the Raven blog editor is its extensibility via plug-ins. Some of the plug-in extension points are based on XML file configuration (i.e. no programing required) while others require programing. Some examples of the first category are blog sites/servers that appear on the New Account wizard, FTP based sites that appear on the New Media storage wizard, weblog ping sites and "quick links" that appear in the Link To right click context menu.

The current beta release does not provide a UI for the user to add his or her own list of quick link sites that appear in the context menu or even the tag sites that appear in the post publish settings dialog. How ever, if you are technically proficient in XML, here is way to "manually" add links and tag sites.

1. Download the sample link plug-in zip file:
   sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider.zip
2. Unzip it to Raven install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Zoundry Raven).
3. Restart Raven. You should now see some new links in the Link To menus.

   
   (Note: Displaying of simple links show above (Raven Blog, Zoundry etc.) will be available in the next release - build 226+).

   You will also see a new entry (Ice Rocket) in the Tag Sites tab in the publishing settings of the post as well as LinkTo->Tags menu.

   

   

The plug-in zip contains two folders, one for the plug-in xml and the other being the plug-in resources (icons). In this example, the plug-in id is sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider and the plug-in extension point contributions (zplugin.xml) can be found in the plug-in folder

<install_dir>\system\plugins\sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider

and associated icons are located in:

<install_dir>\system\resources\plugins\sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider

This sample has the following links (see zplugin.xml):

• Simple link to a web site (Raven Blog)
• Search link to Google Image Search
• Tag search at IceRocket.com
• Reference lookup at imdb.com

You can edit the sample zplugin.xml file to add your own links and tag sites. You can find more examples in the zoundry.raven.blogapp.simplelinkprovider plug-in (this is the default link provider plug-in that Raven ships with).

Labels: development, how-to, linking, tagging

Raven provides a simple text control for you to enter a comma separated list of tags (or labels). These are entered in the "Tagwords" field, found below the Title in the edtior.

In the previous release (0.9.199), these tagwords were linked (bound) to Technorati.com tagspace when post is published and updated (even if tagging was natively supported by your blog platform such as Blogger or WordPress 2.2+).

A feature of the new beta release (0.9.223) is that we have finally removed the "hard coded" references to Technorati tagspace that was in the alpha release. With this release, you can select one or tag sites (or none at all, if you are on WordPress).

The new version has an additional tab ("Tag Sites", similar to Weblog Pings) in the blog post configure UI.

By default, the available tag sites are unchecked. If you want to add your tags to Technorati (or any other tag supported tag site), then the Technorati (or other) tag should be checked. Now, the nice thing about this option if you are using Blogger, WordPress 2.2+ or LiveJournal, then you do not have to select any tags sites since these three platforms supports tagging natively (unless you also want to add tags to sites outside your blog such as Technorati). For Blogger, we treat tags and categories as labels. So, most of you might end up using the Tagwords section to enter Blogger labels rather than using the (some what inconvenient) Category check boxes.

Default tag site selection can also be made at application level (via Preferences) as well on a per Account and Blog basis (via Account Manager).

Finally, if you want to link to a tag space within your post content, simply select the text you want to link, right click and choose Link -> LinkTo -> Tag -> Technorati (or other supported site).

Labels: how-to, tagging