My ‘Dad’ experienced a bit of frustration last night while trying to install Scuttle, the open source social bookmarking script, on one of his domains. It was quite a learning experience for him and me. He learned a few things about Scuttle and I learned a few new interesting phrases straight from Dad’s Marine vocabulary. I’ll save those for the next time the ‘Grandparents’ visit. 
Anyhoo, Dad asked me to pass along a few hints on my blog about Scuttle, the lack of Scuttle Documentation and so forth. He said I needed to make myself useful if I wanted some fresh bananas.
The first trick is in the config.inc.php file. You have to make sure that you enter your correct database information. That means the full database name, as in [username]_[database name], otherwise you’ll get a 500 server error and start cussin’ like my Dad did. You can also change the name of the site from plain old ‘Scuttle’ to something you like, such as ‘Banana Bookmarks’.
Another change you may want to make in the Scuttle config file is to have your links followed. They’re nofollowed by default which means they don’t pass Google link juice. If you make them followed this can give a boost to sites listed in your Scuttle bookmarks. My Dad says that’s one of the main reasons to have a Scuttle site.
Now, this is really what got my Dad in a pissed off mood. Once he got Scuttle installed right he added some bookmarks. However, these links did not show on the front page, the index page, of the site. Even though there were links available Scuttle said, “No bookmarks available.” That’s when I learned a few new phrases! As it turns out there is a subtle bug in the query for the index page of a Scuttle site. This bug causes the query to not return any data until the next day. So, be patient, eat a banana, don’t cuss or panic, just wait and your links will be on the front index page shortly.
One last little hint I’ll pass along. You’ll want to delete or rename your Scuttle site’s register.php file. Otherwise every spammer in the universe will come to visit your Scuttle site using automated tools like Bookmarking Demon and jam pack your database with links to all sorts of nasty sites. You can add your and any of your friend’s registrations in before you do this or add them in from your database’s control panel.
OK, that should earn me a tasty banana and maybe some grapes. If you have any Scuttle questions, ask me in a comment and I’ll pass them along to my Dad when he’s in a better mood.
