2 Bit Hacker

Okay, so after a bit of trial and error with yesterday’s crossposing plugin, I’ve redesigned it’s interface to MT so that it no longer relies on a ping to trigger the LJ updates, but instead uses a template tag. This results in more reliable operation, better error reporting, and easier configuration, so all around I’m happier with it.

To use this new lj-crosspost plugin, just drop the lj-crosspost.pl file into your MT plugins directory, then add a <$MTLJCrosspost user="lj-user" pass="pwhash" $> tag to your archive template. Now, whenever you post a new article, it’ll get posted to LJ as well, and if you edit an existing article, the LJ counterpart will also be updated.

I’ve also written a couple of script that go along with the plugin. The first, pwhash.pl, it just a simple helper script to do the MD5 hash of your LJ password. The second is sync.pl, which downloads all your existing LJ entries and attempts to match them the existing MT entries. This will help prevent double-posting when you first rebuild after inserting the tag into your template. It’s not 100% foolproof, but it worked pretty well for me. It matches on subject line, and prompts you if it finds multiple matches. Not sure how well it does with no subject line though. I should add date matching to it, but I’m lazy.

If you want to try it out, grab the plugin here.