In general, Movable Type has worked great for me across the various blogs I maintain although I periodically fantasize about switching to WordPress.  However, during an upgrade along the way, we accidentally switched the name mapping from text to numbers.  We figured out a hack for this, but Ross (my IT guy) finally sat down and figured out the correct solution.  The following is the best approach we could figure out for anyone that wants to figure out how to “remap MT URLs.”  If you are not an MT nerd, please punt on this post. Oh, and if you subscribe via RSS and got duplicate updates for all the recent posts this is why – since the URL’s changed the feed got updated (sorry about that.)

A while back Brad asked me about changing the way Movable Type generates the permalinks and category pages. Somehow when we migrated from one server to another we changed the way we generated the URLs. Rather than the URLs being the nice pretty version of the post (where it’s based on the name of the post) we ended up using a numbering system. Brad noticed this and did a little research on how to change it. He quickly passed it off to me so I could figure out how to make this change to get us to the nice pretty URLs we’re using now. Since it took me a while to get this all figured out I figured I’d share what I went through.

Apache Redirection (mod_rewrite)
One of the first things we realized was that we would have to keep the old pages in some way so that all the information indexed by the search engines would still work. We couldn’t just dump all the old pages and go with the new ones otherwise all the old links (from search engines as well as from other bloggers) would break. The best way to achieve this is to use mod_rewrite. I won’t take the time to go into Apache mod_rewrite here, there are plenty of resources on the net for that. Once I had it up and running (it’s included by default in SuSE) I had to generate the mappings for the old pages to the new ones. This is what took so long.

Permalinks in Movable Type
When I started looking into this I found lots of sites with information on how to generate a file that would build all the redirection for me (details below). You could create a small template that would generate both the ID for the post and the long name for the post. I worked with this for days off and on and kept running into the same problem – the long URLs didn’t match what Movable Type was really generating in the end making this worthless. Since Brad has over 1500 posts there was no way for me to do this manually, it had to be automated.

This morning I hit my eureka moment – I need to change the way the pages were being generated by Movable Type. Then and only then would my redirection file create the right URL’s for me. In Movable Type I went to Settings – Publish and changed the Archive Types to their defaults (the first selection in the drop down list). Remember we’d custom created these at some point (I’m not sure why, when, or how.) Once these were set correctly Movable Type knew how to generate all the proper URLs

Creating the Redirection Template
The next step was to create a simple template to do the mapping for me. I’d found some examples out there and after playing with it for a while I settled on the template below. To create this template click on “Templates” then “Create New Index Template”. Name it whatever you want (I used migrate.html) and paste in the code below. Save and rebuild the template then hit migrate.html to see your results. If everything worked correctly you should see the mappings in your browser. Don’t forget to update the path at the beginning of the statement below to match the path for your site, as it will most likely differ.

In the redirection statement you want the “old” or missing page to be first and the new, correct one second. Notice that the second one is the full URL including the domain (you’ll see this in your generated output.) Next you’ll need to use the output to create your .htaccess file. Create the .htaccess file at the root of your website (or root of your blog.) All you should have to do is copy the contents of the template above (the generated template) into this .htaccess file and do some testing. For Brad’s site I removed all the old archive files first so I would be certain that I was getting the new pages not the old ones, confirming that the redirection was working properly.

Final Thoughts
I have a few obvious pieces of final advice. BACK UP YOUR SITE FIRST. Yes, yes, this is obvious, or should be but don’t be lazy with this step. My backups saved me at least three times during this process. Second test like crazy. This site has over 1500 articles so I can’t test them all but I tested a big sampling of pages to be sure I got it all right. If you find something that isn’t working as you think it should, please feel free to email me and let me know.

Amy put an interview with Brad Paisley & Kimberly Williams titled “The Look of Love” (People Magazine, May 7, 2007, p. 193) on my desk the other day.  The last few lines could have been from a conversation between me and Amy.

Brad: I’m not really into beauty products.  I just find them through my wife.  I work in the sun a lot outside and I get dry skin, and I’ll borrow whatever is in the cabinet.

Kimberly: He’ll take whatever is sitting there – if it’s $80 La Mer, he would still take it.

Brad: Her hair products are good – like what’s that oil in the shower?

Kimberly: That’s for shaving my legs!  Have you been putting it on your hair?

Brad: I thought it was conditioner.  Well, anyway, it makes your hair real shiny!

I think all Brad’s must be the same.

On Thursday, I’ll be participating in the TechStars: Funding Your Startup event at 6pm at the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus.  The panel includes me, Gary Held (exec director at CTEK), Chris Scoggins (Sequel VC), Lisa Rutherford (ex-In-Q-Tel), Dan King (ReadyTalk CEO) and Kimbal Musk (Me.dium CEO).

The event is free, but you have to register.  As of right now, there are still 76 of 225 seats available.  If you are in Boulder, want to meet some of the TechStars folks, and sit in on one of the TechStars open sessions, please join us.

I love outing friends that are blogging.  My partner Ryan McIntyre’s wife Katherine has started a blog titled It is what it is.  Katherine and Ryan moved to Boulder in August 2006 and – other than the worst winter ever in the history of man – have been settling in nicely.  Katherine is a beautiful writer: upfront, personal, and articulate while being willing to tackle juicy stuff.  Her posts have quickly become some of my favorites to read when they show up in FeedDemon.  Katherine – welcome to the blogosphere or whatever it is called these days.

I answer my own phone.  I always have.  If I’m sitting at my desk working on something and my phone rings I’ll usually pick it up, even if I don’t recognize the phone number.  I know this doesn’t fit the “be hyper-productive” method of life, but I like the randomness of it.

A few minutes ago I got a random phone call from a guy in Oklahoma.  He was calling (I have no idea how he found me) to raise some money for his business.  He started off by saying that he needed $150k, thought he had it raised, but was looking for some venture capital.  Before I had a chance to say anything he launched into a description of his business.

I was able to interrupt at some point and tell him that I didn’t think he should be bothering talking to VCs if he was only raising $150k.  I started to explain and again he cut me off and started telling me how he’d proven the business worked he needed to find VCs that would invest less than $3m, and he really didn’t need much money to build the business.

This went on for a little while.  At some point I got more forceful in our conversation about his financing approach.  He then started pushing on the idea and explaining why it was going to be so successful.  He also explained that he could raise $3m and spend it if that’s what I wanted by simply going after more markets.  When I suggested that I thought that was an irrational approach, he started getting angry and explained how he’d proven things already and could go after more markets if that’s what I wanted.

I eventually managed to tell him that regardless of his financing approach, this wasn’t a market (mobile phone software) that I liked to invest in.  The conversation then spun into a really weird place where he told me that he could respect an answer like that, but not the advice I was trying to give him about how to raise money since I sounded “just like another one of those VCs that just gives advice but doesn’t do anything.”  He got even more indignant and told me he didn’t respect my point of view and didn’t know why he was talking to me.

I said “ok – goodbye” and hung up.  While I clearly didn’t impress him, he completely blew an opportunity to get some help.  While I’m not sure that any of the angel investors that I know in either the mobile phone software universe or in the Oklahoma / Texas area would be interested in his business, I could have at least made an intro for him to someone that might be relevant (which is where I would have gone with the conversation if he had let me.)  Instead – he got nothing from the call while I got a blog post out of it.

Me.dium announced today that they have closed a $15 million financing and have decided to stay in Boulder instead of split for Rio.  Me.dium is one of the most ambitious projects I’ve been involved in.  Alex Iskold – the founder of AdaptiveBlue (another exciting company) – has written an excellent overview at Read/WriteWeb where he describes Me.dium as “the dawn of collaborative browsing.”  Alex nails the goal and vision of Me.dium and Phil Butler over at Profy gives another useful explanation.

One of the themes I’ve been banging away on for the last year is something I call the “Implicit Web.”  I’m not alone – some of my favorite co-investors and friends are also playing with this idea.  I’ve even helped start a conference – called Defrag – with Eric Norlin to further explore this problem.

Me.dium is going after the real-time element of this.  As more time is spent online, the value of having real-time interactions with others increases.  This isn’t new – we’re all “enjoying” IM.  However, there’s no contextual relevance with any of these services.  I can’t easily discover new things or people in real-time based on what I’m doing.  Dumb.

More importantly – my computer isn’t helping me!  Wouldn’t it be nice if my “computer” (or more properly – my “compute infrastructure”) was paying attention to what I was doing and making all these connections automagically in the background for me?

The technology behind this is incredibly difficult.  The guys at Me.dium have recruited some of the local tech hotshots and have assembled a fantastic team.  They’ve also taken a really smart approach to developing this – rather than open it up and see what happens, they’ve worked meticulously to manage scale, figure out the issues at each scale point, and iterate.  My list of “active friends” has steadily grown, the real-time relevance has increased, and the performance has continues to be acceptable (with the occasional expected burp.)

If you are interested in trying Me.dium out and you are a Firefox user, click on my invite code and sign up.  You’ve got to add some friends to get the real sense of the value (not too many – once you get above 10 active ones it gets really interesting.) 

Look for a lot of exciting stuff to come in the next few months (e.g. non-Firefox.)  As my friends at Me.dium like to say, “Crossover…”

It was inevitable that, with the endless crush of the upcoming elections, I’d start writing the occasional post on politics.  I’ve decided to ignore the primary elections for the presidential elections, but there are some local Colorado candidates that I am putting some effort for in the primaries.

One of them is my long time friend Jared Polis.  Jared was one of the first people that I met when I moved to Colorado (I think we met in early 1996 via my first business partner Dave Jilk.)  We’ve been involved in a number of things together, including a company called Net.Capitol, TechStars, Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and a bunch of non-profit stuff.  Jared has had remarkable entrepreneurial success at both BlueMountainArts.com (acquired by Excite@Home) and Provide Commerce (IPO, then acquired by Liberty Media.)

I believe Jared represents the new generation of leadership in government – one that is desperately needed.  Jared has been passionate about public service since I met him and his experience is extensive.  He’s an articulate independent thinker – willing to dig into data and draw his own conclusions.  And he’s a phenomenal human being.

I encourage you to get to know Jared and – if willing – support his run for Congress.

If you’ve been following along at home, you know that Amy and I disconnect once a quarter for a week (we call this “Qx vacation.”)  Usually we go away – someplace warm when it’s cold in Colorado and someplace in Europe the rest of the time.  For Q2 vacation, we decided to hang out at our place in Keystone.

That’s the view from our living room.  I left the big 40’ pine trees in the picture just for perspective.  While we had a nice week, it was more of a “break” than an “off the grid disconnect.”  For some reason I had difficulty completely disconnecting (maybe it was because there were too many fun things going on in my world last week.)  I did get some amazing runs in – that little white dot below is me heading off into the mountains.

We also got to know our new Golden Retriever named Brooks.

We’ve decided Keystone is a great place to take a break, but isn’t some place we can do Qx vacations.  Paris, Rome, and Barcelona – here we come.  That said, as I sit here on my chair in Keystone in a post run bliss while watching Nadal and Federer battle it out, I love Colorado.

I’ve got a large stamp collection that I’m considering selling.  The obvious – but relatively labor intensive – way to do this is on eBay.  I poked around looking for some other options, but didn’t come up with anything particularly credible.  Any stamp collectors out there willing to give me a clue?