Disclaimer
I just brought the site back to life so that people can stop reminding me that it's down. Please note that probably most if not all content is outdated. I'll try to update stuff as soon as possible.
best Ingo
Blogging with TYPO3
Well, this is about how it came to my mind to do this blog extension.
Actually it started in September/Oktober 2004 when I was planning to do studies abroad. Finally I made my way to the University of Wisconsin Platteville, Wisconsin, USA and soon I was in the need of a more powerfull homepage.
As I already had experience with TYPO3 I decided to redesign my homepage and use TYPO3 as backend. Honestly: TYPO3 is way too big for a small homepage, but I see it more as a kind of playground and a place where I can show what I have done with TYPO3 already besides other things of my portfolio.
So it was March '05 finally and my new homepage was online, yeah! As I just wanted to keep my buddies informed what's going on in the states I needed a news system or even better a BLOG!
Why not choose the already existing ee_blog extension? By a reason I don't know I don't like the extension and as I'm pretty familiar with tt_news and I contributed some work to it already like the first tableless layout and the rss feed thingy I know tt_news is very powerfull.
A time ago there was a post by Valery Romanchev in typo3.projects.tt_news saying that he modified the "Modern Guestbook" extension in a way that one can use it as commenting system for tt_news. WOW - comments, that's what I wanted, too but I did not want to configure the whole tt_news + chc_forum solution which was available as an alternative just for comments. So when the time came to put my homepage together I applied these changes to the latest version of modern guestbook. So now we were able to post and comment - some really essential things for a blog I guess ;-)
The next steps were to implement other features like trackback, pingback and so on. The code for trackback and other features are taken from other open source systems and libraries as far as they met the needs.
The concept
The extension key TIMTAB was actually chosen by purpose. It was meant to be similar to TIMTAW. TIMTAW means "TYPO3 Is More Than A Wiki (but now offers wiki functionality, too)" and so TIMTAB means "TYPO3 Is More Than A Blog (but now offers blog functionality, too)".
The main idea is to use the features supplied by other TYPO3 extensions already and just to add the missing features which make a blog. So TIMTAB depends on other extensions and thus does not reinvent the wheel. It is built on top of mainly two extensions, News (EXT:tt_news) for entering and editing the blog posts and Modern Guestbook (EXT:ve_guestbook ) to comment the posts. In the beginning we also had an eye on XMLRPC Server (EXT:xmlrpc_server) but dropped that as it didn't met our needs. Optionally one can also use RealURL (EXT:realurl) to get human readable URLs but this no must but more a recommendation.
TIMTAB uses hooks in tt_news to insert own markers to display the comments count for example. Further tt_news is extended to have a fourth type 'Blog Post' which has another tab containing blog specific information like trackbacks, en/disabling pings and comments for a specific post and so on.
At the moment there're two accompanying extensions: One to show photos from your flickr account and one to show your latest del.icio.us bookmarks.

![]() |
![]() |
The concept of TIMTAB |
Ingo Schommer started working with me on this extension, he did the initial implementation of the metaWeblog API. I know him from my studies in Dieburg and from the Darmstadt TYPO3 User Group - DaTUG meetings.
wish / ToDo list
when I was talking to Ingo we put together a list of things we'd like to have in the extension:
comments
nicer URLs for tt_news like www.example.com/archives/2005/03
rss/rdf/atom feeds
permalinks (= providing recommended configuration for realurl)
deliver with wordpress's beautyful default template "Kubrick"
blogroll with XFN support
Gravatar support
Trackback
enabling/disabling of pings per post
metaWeblog API
enabling/disabling of comments per post
remember the users name, e-mail and homepage from the comment form
Blogger API
ee_blog converter
small calendar to see which days have posts
New Commenting system
Pingback
Manual
RSS feeds for comments
- Tagging
- Ping services like weblogs.com
- true rolling for the blogroll
- referrer logs (maybe later)
- Movable Type API
- flickr API
- del.icio.us (sharing bookmarks)
- Pavatar support
geoURL- just two tags in the <head>, everybody can add them himself- support for more microformats (later if usefull)
- to be continued...
Please notice that this list is not ordered by priority nor strives for completeness.
|
|
| |
| |
link resources
progress
Here is what's working already:
2005-12-30
- trackback system reorganized, no editing of bodytext field needed anymore to recognize new trackback links - this one needs testing especially from blog tools!
- version reised to 0.6.0-dev
2005-10-31
- release of TIMTAB version 0.5.0
2005-10-30
- added calendar that show which days have posts
2005-10-29
- added the Kubrick style category menu
2005-10-25
- added post navigation to Kubrick
2005-10-20
- fixed bug in Kubrick with posts on every page
- !!!manual updated according to the bug fix
- added dutch translation
2005-09-21
- implemented an importer API
- ee_blog import
- other importers like an Wordpress import will follow
2005-09-05
- first TER release of TIMTAB (version 0.4.0)
- first reduced version of manual
- removed not working and not well tested functions
2005-08-24
- added support for remembering the visitors name, e-mail and homepage when he leaves a comment. This uses a cookie with a lifetime of 90 days.
2005-08-23
- renamed class timtab to timtab_fe
- simplyfied the use of Kubrick: just build a site structure, select the Kubrick static template, set some page Ids in Constants Editor and insert the ve_guestbook on the single view page, that should be it to get a basic blog running
- removed the search field from the Kubrick template
- added support for disabling comments (requires ve_guestbook v1.7.5)
2005-08-08
- multi category support for XML-RPC interface
- small fixes and improvements
2005-08-01
- blogroll links now showing in web->page view
- small fixes on blogroll plugin
- new marker for use in ve_guestbook templates: ###BLOG_COMMENT_NUM### gives every comment a number starting with 1 and for every comment increasing by 1
2005-07-21
- Trackback working: BE, FE, receiving
- new nightly build with Trackback, see ChangeLog!
2005-07-18
- sending trackbacks implemented in XML-RPC interface, so that when a post is created or edited f.e. via metaWeblog API trackback pings will be sent, too. Tomorrow I will test this since some code has been restructured to achieve this and thus might be brocken.
- next nightly build will be released after trackback testing
2005-07-17
- receiving trackback pings
- provided patch to protect HTML comments from getting "cleaned" by xhtml_cleaning. That patch needs to get applied to allow others to find your trackback URLs automaticly with their blog tools
2005-06-27
- trackbacks will be send from the BE with automatic detection
2005-06-25
- added example realurl setup
- added two fields for dis/enabling pings and comments, nevertheless not working yet
- !!! please update ve_guestbook, some bugs have been fixed
2005-06-11
- transformations between client and database are working
2005-06-03
- added user authentification, thanks for helping with this goes to René Fritz
- renamed the server class file to meet naming conventions
- added configuration variables for Blogger and Movable Type APIs
- added dependency on EXT:sv, this is a TYPO3 3.8.0 system extension
2005-05-30
- added metaWeblog API -still needs some fine tuning, but it's working already
2005-04-24:
- just to keep you updated: we're still working on this extension
- Ingo's Powerbook is broken
- I'm getting into the final weeks of this semester that's why there has been less activity in the last days
- I started working on the XMLRPC interface which is needed for external blog software and to send pings to other blogs
2005-04-15:
- added Gravatar support
- the TS option to manipulate the <head> tag needed for full XFN support has been added to the 3.8 core, thanks to Michael Stucki!
- no nightly builds anymore, you can make a CVS checkout yourself ;-)
2005-04-13:
- committed TIMTAB to typo3xdev @ sf.net, it's available from the module tx_timtab
2005-04-12:
- added plugin to display blogroll, features XFN support
- I would like to get some feedback from anybody using this extension already or interested in it!
2005-04-10:
- integrated Kubrick as static template
- started manual - at least the file is there ;-)
- required patches included in T3X file - res folder
- thanks to the fast integration of the patches for ve_guestbook by Udo von Eynern they are only required for versions < 1.6.8
2005-04-03:
- now using extraItemMarker hook in tt_news directly w/o blocking it in TS
- added a hook in ve_guestbook to clear the cache of some configurable pages when a comment was added so that the comment count stays updated
- use provided patch to add the hook to ve_guestbook for version < 1.6.7
2005-04-02:
- added rdf feed export to tt_news
- updated tt_news manual for rdf and atom feeds
- sent patches to Rupert
2005-03-31:
- counting comments
- atom export for tt_news (will be in one of the next CVS versions)
- additional news type 'Blog Post'
Nightly Build
![]() |
T3X_timtab-0_6_0-dev-z-200604151416.t3x Ready for TYPO3 4.0.0, please test wether trackbacks are working when writing posts from blog tools like w.bloggar. |
152 K |
![]() |
Patched version of class.t3lib_parsehtml.php needed for Trackback Autodiscovery from other Blogs. Just overwrite the original file. |
14.2 K |
Donate
If you enjoy using this extension and/or would like to see it enhanced, please donate a buck or two ... or fifty. I will use the money to keep my development hardware and software updated. If I had a girlfriend I would buy her dinner so she lets keep me working on this stuff for free and doesn't comlain.
You can also check my amazon wishlist if you don't like making donations via paypal.