What Is The Difference Between Posts And Stories?

If you think of Stories - conceptually - as permanent or semi-permanent weblog Posts, you will be on the right track.

Most folks compose weblog posts on-the-fly as they are inclined to share something of immediate interest. Stories tend to be written at leisure to capture extended thoughts on a given subject.

(You are reading such a story right now).

Where Posts and Stories are Created and Stored

Operationally, you create, edit or delete weblog posts on the home page of your weblog in your browser interface.

(Web posts are stored internally in the weblogData.root table under (surprise!) posts. To find them, right-click the Radio icon, select weblogData.root from the Window menu, click the 'weblogData' item if it isn't already open and click the 'posts' item. You can inspect individual posts by clicking their items as well).

By contrast, you create, edit or delete stories by selecting the "Stories" command from the Radio menu at the top of your weblog interface.

(Stories are stored as HTML texts locally in your WWW folder in the 'Stories' folder).

How Posts and Stories are Archived for Retrieval

As soon as you create a weblog post, it is retrievable - by you - from your local weblog calendar.

As soon as you upstream (publish) that post to an Internet server, it is retrievable by you or others from the same calendar mechanism.

By contrast, you can always access your own stories in your browser interface from the 'Stories' menu, but other readers will only see your stories if you link to them explicitly from a weblog post. Your link becomes the permanent retrieval mechanism for a story.

Of course, you can not only link to a story from a weblog post but also create a navigator link. Navigator links are displayed on all of your weblog pages through the templates you have chosen. For example, Radio provides a default navigator link of "Home" when you first install the product that links to your most current weblog post.

Linking to Stories

Story links are a bit awkward in Radio since you are really working with two entirely different locations - a local location and a published, public location.

Note that Radio automatically constructs the link's content based on the title of your stories.

If you link to your story from a weblog post on your home page using a local reference (say, http://127.0.0.1:5335/stories/2002/03/09/whatIsTheDifferenceBetweenPostsAndStories), you will be able to display that story but your friends on the Internet won't be able to find it. The reason is that your local weblog is invisible to the wide world of the external Internet.

(This may seem odd to you since you are connected to the Net through your browser. Take it on faith for now. The explanation would not make you feel any happier though it is sensible).

On the other hand, creating an external link to your story takes several steps. Are you ready?

1. Write your story in your local browser interface and post it.

(This topic does not aim to explain in detail the posting of stories. I may add such a topic soon.)

2. Upstream your story to your public internet weblog site. This will create an external link reference for it - for instance, http://radio.weblogs.com/0100059/stories/2002/03/09/whatIsTheDifferenceBetweenPostsAndStories.html.

You can find and open the upstreamed story to copy the URL by going first to the Stories index page on your public site at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100059/stories but substitute your user number for mine in the URL! Otherwise, you will see my story list ...

3. Write a normal weblog post on the home page of your browser interface. Where appropriate create the link to the story and copy the story's URL into the link.

4. Post your weblog post when you are finished creating it. At the next scheduled upstream, your post with its story link will be made public.

(Thanks to Peter Cook for this tip on simplifying linkage: After the story has upstreamed, go to your Events page. Look for the name of the file. If it's hot, it has a link to it's location on the server. You can easily copy this link to the clipboard. By copy, he means you should right-click you mouse on the link and then select 'Copy Shortcut'. Now you can paste it into a weblog post. )

Stories As First-Class Citizens?

Those of us who are familiar with Frontier or Manila find it frustrating that we cannot use the simple relative link references that are so powerfully implemented there.

In Manila, once you have created a story, all you need to do is reference the story within quotes and Manila manages the rest - say, "What Is The Difference Between Posts and Stories?".

Manila then looks on the story list and constructs an absolute URL link behind the scenes (http:// etc ....)

Well, it isn't that Userland wouldn't like to do something like this but the situation is far more complicated since we are no longer authoring-and-publishing to a Frontier server which can resolve all these references but are rather publishing a rendered set of files to an entirely external file location.

Those Nuances ...

Can you drop HTML files into your Stories folder even if they weren't created directly within Radio? Of course, but ... err ... there one or two small things to keep in mind.

What about directing stories to different weblog categories in different weblogs? Sure, of course you can do that but ... ah ....

These things are truly do-able and many more besides. But if I documented them now, how could I also have time to go down to the gym and work out today?

 <-- Return to Home Page