The ftpUpstream script will automatically upload your OPML files as they change to the FTP server of your choice.
To install, download the ftpUpstream script and open it in the OPML Editor. You should be prompted for the location of the script -- just select "OK" and the rest should be automatic.
Caveats
- The script does NOT delete files on the remote server that you delete on your local machine, so don't think of it as a synchronization script. It is purely one way (hence, "upstream").
- The script is initially setup to exclude your instantOutliner directory from upstreaming. I did this because I thought users might not want people to subscribe to the wrong instant outline. I think this is stupid, so I'm going to change this when I get around to it.
- About the "Excluded directories" prompt: note that the contents of the text entry field must be in proper Frontier list format, including the surrounding curly braces, i.e., {"dir1", "dir2", "dir3"}.
- Note also that ALL files in your "www" directory heirarchy will get upstreamed, not just the OPML files.
Here's a screen capture of my settings (with the private bits blurred, of course):
thanks for this. can i safely install this over what i believe my be an older version i installed a while ago?
also, now that my files are being upstreamed, can you give me an example of what you do? not sure where to go from here. would like to play with this though. thanks, dan.
Not only can you safely install this over the older version, it will clean up the cruft from the older version. 🙂
What to do? Well, I initially wrote this so that I’d have an archive of everything should things blow up. But I also keep lots of files in the top “www” folder that I use for lots of things, including these pages and my errata and changes for the OPML Renderer plugin and Optimal.
thanks dan. the light bulb just went on. this basically allows me to create outlines that are uploaded to my ftp server, which is exactly what Radio used to do for me. So now I can use OPML Editor instead and still have my outlines upstreamed to my ftp server instead of just my opml blogs site. perfect!
You’ve got it!
Forive my frustration but this is producing no results…
I saved the first ftpUpstream script, followed the instructions for manually adding ftp details in dotOPMLData.root table but this either says DNS error or has a ‘Poorly formed XML’ error come up and not FTP takes place.
Then with this second version over-written the same happens.
What can be doing wrong – there is such a frustrating absense of instructions here all along!!!
Tim
… specifically.
There is no prompt system for FTP system…????
Do I need t ochange the proxy setting??
What about “Change Community’???
Tim
Tim,
It’s hard to tell from your description what may be going wrong. I’ve added a screen capture of my settings so you can see what they’re supposed to look like, but the prompts (which are only activated on the first run through) should have worked for you.
From your second comment, however, it sounds like you need to connect to the Internet via a proxy. If that’s the case, I don’t know if this script will work. The script uses the ftp functionality builtin to the OPML Editor, and after a quick look at that code I don’t see any ability connect via proxy.
This script has nothing to do with your OPML community or the “Change Community” setting.
Thanks Dan…
Sorry was annoyed – which put me off my spelling – but indeed no prompt came up.
I attempted to manually change the table – but with the absence of clear instructions put these in the wrong place. I’ll have another go (thanks for the screen shot) but I suspect I’ve mucked things up too much so will probably need to reinstall a clean version of OPML Editor.
All I’m trying to do is upstream to another server as you can do with with Radiouserland so I don’t know why it’s made so difficult, especially as Dave Winer has mentioned he won’t continue his own server for longer than he needs to.
I tried as above but it simply upstreams to the suppport.opml.org server.
Might this error message when I run your script be a clue?
This script has no statements in its body.
To run “ftpUpstreamâ€Â, add a statement belwo the script that calls it with the appropriate paramater list.
Tim
sftp in the future?
I’m sure Dan will have more to say, but Tim, you won’t get what you are after with this script. I too wanted to have OPML Editor upstream _and render_ my opml weblog entries to my own ftp server like you can with Radio UserLand. However, Dan’s script doesn’t render pages like Radio UserLand does. It only send the unaltered OPML files up to your ftp server. From there, you can use something like Dan’s outline renderer plugin (sort of the equivalent of activerenderer) for wordpress to render your opml outlines into web pages.
Donovan,
SFTP? Not likely. I didn’t write the FTP functionality here, it’s whatever is available from the Frontier kernel in the OPML Editor. Sorry. 🙂
And thanks for jumping in to try to help Tim.
Tim, you don’t run the script manually. The script gets run by the OPML Editor whenever it upstreams a changed file to the community server.
Take a look at the log outline: open the Community menu and select “Open Log Outline.”
i figured sftp was unlikely. that’s too bad since i just switched hosts and they don’t allow ftp. only sftp. guess i’ll have to put my outlines somewhere else and yank this script for now.
Donovan, that’s too bad. I hate all the wierd restrictions you get with different hosting companies.
Have you looked at stunnel? Basically, you should be able to run an stunnel daemon on your local machine that will enable you “fake” using sftp. I think you should check it out.