If you are creating a group weblog with multiple authors, you might want to customize the look of the Movable Type editing windows with the group's logo. MT3.1 makes this really easy to do. The styles.css file and the images folder that are in the folder you chose for your static files on your server are where you can find the files you will need to adjust.

Changing the logo

The default upper left-hand logo of the editing window looks like this in MT3.x:

The file name is topnav-logo.gif and it can be found in the images folder in your static files folder. You can use an image editing program like Photoshop to swap out the Movable Type logo for that of the group's. Save the image...

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Most people know MobileTracker as one of the best blogs tracking news about mobile phones. But Jon Gales' Movable Type-powered site is also a good way to make a living. As this month's issue of Business 2.0 discovers, being able to easily publish updates on a topic that's popular with advertisers can yield a successful small publishing business.

If you're interested in more background on similar micropublishing successes, Matt Haughey's Blogging for Dollars, about his experiences with PVRBlog, is one of the best overviews.

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Installing Movable Type requires uploading many files to a web server using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. The files must be loaded in the proper format and then the correct permissions must be set for each of the files in order for MT to work. If you are new to FTP then the Movable Type instructions (see MT Installation Manual: Uploading Files) can seem a little confusing.

FTP

Installing Movable Type requires that you know how to use an FTP program. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. There are many FTP programs available; typing "FTP" into Google will yield several. For my Mac, I use Fetch. Transmit and Cyberduck for the Mac have also had good reviews. Leech FTP has been recommended as a good Windows FTP client, as well as...

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Thanks in large part to the help and feedback from Professional Network members, we've just released Movable Type 3.14. This release addresses the performance issues detailed last week, and we'll be providing additional guidance and information to ProNet members later this week once this release is deployed. Thank you to all who contributed and tested this version over the weekend.

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einfach-persnlich - Movable Type 3.14 freigegeben - December 21, 2004 07:50 AMDie Version 3.14 von Movable Type ist freigegeben. Six Apart reagiert als Hersteller der Weblog-Software Movable Type damit auf die aktuellen Fehler ihres Weblog-Tools und empfiehlt allen Anwendern das...

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Over at dashes.com, Anil celebrates his sixth year of blogging. Anil and I became friends after his Amazon Chagrin post. Although I had never interacted with him before, the pathetic nature of his post motivated me to actually reach out and befriend him. It was a big step for me since I was pretty shy at the time and could imagine him thinking "who the hell is this girl?"

We've come a long way since that post and I could write 10,000 words about all the ups and downs of our friendship. Hiring friends is incredibly hard and I know that he's wanted to kill me on many occasion (and vice versa). But at the same time, he loves our products and the company as much as we do and that's been...

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XML.com has published a pair of interesting new articles building on top of the IETF Atom standard. The first, Dreaming of an Atom Store, features Joe Gregorio describing what an ideal integration of the Atom Publishing Protocol and Amazon/A9's OpenSearch spec would look like. It's a compelling vision, and one that we'll be watching closely in the future for our own platforms.

Complementing this work is Uche Ogbuji's Processing Atom 1.0, a great primer for Python fans who want to consume the format that's output by all our platforms, as well as the Six Apart Update Stream.

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A few of us from Six Apart are at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, as mentioned on our Six Apart news blog, and if you're here, you'll want to check out Ben Trott's session on Making Web Services Personal at 2:35pm.

One of the coolest things we've seen since getting here is the announcement from Amazon's A9 search team of the new OpenSearch spec.

While we'd hacked together a solution for enabling OpenSearch on your Movable Type site while we're here (and got to tell an old Etech friend about the implementation), Niall Kennedy was busy posting while we were still in the panels, so he has a straightforward implementation of an OpenSearch template for Movable Type.

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, our VP of...

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This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Mike Everett-Lane of Ishbadiddle.

A Subject Index can give context to your posts and makes it easier for your readers to browse what you've written on specific topics. Unlike Categories, which are limited, top-down, and hierarchical, Subject tags are open-ended and limitless. While your blog's Category system is like the Table of Contents of a book, a Subject Index is like the book's Index, one that is constantly updated.

First, you might want to read my blog post on how the use of Subject Indexes can improve the organization of your blog. You can see it in action there as well as here on LMT. For instance, here's the index of all my subjects, and the index of all my posts on the subject of...

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The first drawing for Link and Win will take place on June 13th, 2005. The deadline for taking part is May 16th, 2005.

If you like my weblog, create a link pointing to one of my pages. Then inform me by email. If the link exists for 4 weeks, you will take part in the monthly drawing of an Amazon gift certificate worth Euro 50 (about US$65). You can read the details about the drawing on Link and Win.

Ok, there are lotteries with higher prizes. However, the chances are better here. You should try.

Much luck!

mgs | 05/05/2005

Feedback is welcome!

What do you think about this entry? Was it interesting or boring? I would like to hear your...

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As if there wasn't already enough to get excited about with MT3.2 just around the corner, Byrne announced the coming transition of BookQueueToo to MediaManager which will take advantage of all the ninja sweetness of MT's new goodies. Fun!

And here's a somewhat related freebie... somewhere on some MTAmazon related sites (should have bookmarked them) suggestions have been made to add "/ref=nosim/" to Amazon URLs so the link takes you directly to the page with the "add to cart" link, resulting (supposedly) in a better referral rate. Here's an example:

<a href="<MTAmazonLink>/ref=nosim/"><img src="<MTAmazonMediumImage>"></a>

I also tacked /ref=nosim/ onto...

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Earlier this week, I met with two new experiences. In the first, I received some goodies from my Amazon Wish List, courtesy of a presumably happy customer of one of my Movable Type plugins. In the second, that same person asked if I'd be interested in doing some Perl work for him on a project he was working on.

I had done some Perl work on plugins, of course, and I had hacked at the MT code a bit, and I had also done a bit of development at work on a site for mostly internal use. So I had some experience with Perl - but this was a real project!

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea, but I passed along my insecurities, not wanting to promote myself as something I'm not, and what do you know -...

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Movable Type lets you have as many weblogs as you want on the same installation of MT. Once you have a weblog up and running, you should be able to easily add another one. In fact, it's a good idea to have a separate test blog to try out different style and format customizations before launching them on your working site. (Note that these instructions are for those who already have Movable Type installed and working.)

1. Create a new directory on your server for where you want the new weblog to reside. (Typically this is done with an FTP program.) Within that directory, create another directory for your archives.

2. On the MT Main Menu, select Create New Weblog.

Note the popup window with...

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Yesterday, I received the first items ever from my Amazon.com wish list. Eli Cochran sent me a book (CGI Programming with Perl) and a DVD (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Sweet. Thanks, Eli!

If you're using a plugin or something else I put together, please don't feel that it is necessary to send something from the wish list. But if you've got the urge, please don't hesitate, either! If you are using one (or more) of my plugins on your web site, I would like to know about how you are using it - I hope to put together a list of examples at some point in the near future. So please let me know what you're doing, or if I can help in any way!

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Movable Type offers five default stylesheet templates to use with your MT website. If you are like me, not a web designer and only possessing a cursory knowledge of CSS, you may not want to stray too far from the defaults. But then that doesn't leave us with a lot of choice in the number of default styles from which to choose. Fortunately, Typepad (Six Apart's hosted service based on Movable Type) has several default styles that will work with the new Movable Type templates.

I've tested the following Typepad styles on the new default MT3 templates, with the sidebar on the right hand side, and they appear to work fine. If you have changed your MT3 templates layout at all, for...

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Let your site visitors from other countries easily translate your pages into their own languages. Note these services are far from perfect. I often get a big laugh when I translate a site from Japanese or French into English. But you can usually get the point.

1. Babel Fish from AltaVista Let your weblog readers translate your pages with Babel Fish from AltaVista.

The translator seems to work pretty well with text. Unfortunately for this site, it also translates what I've identified as code which, if used in its translated state, won't work. But for sites that aren't talking about code snippets, Babel Fish looks like a useful utility.

2. FreeTranslation.com

Like Babel Fish,...

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Everywhere you go these days there is some sort of quiz to take (what castaway from Gilligan's Island are you?) Here are a few fun ones:

1. What Kind of Blogger are You? You Are a Pundit Blogger! Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

2. Your MT-Do Rank

We have judo, kendo, aikido, and now... MT-Do! If Movable Type were a martial art, what rank would you be?

2. Dan Black Belt

The path that lies behind you is now longer than the path that lies ahead. But, the path ahead as a MT-Ka is a narrower road, one that is harder to walk. By now, you are probably aware of your...

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Fortunately for those of use who use Movable Type, there are several folks who devote much of their free time to understanding, exploring, and extending the capabilities of MT, and are willing to share that knowledge with the rest of us.

Here's my roundup of good sites (in addition to LMT) to investigate while learning how to use Movable Type (I will add to this list over time): Movable Type Support Forums - The MT Forums should be your first stop for questions regarding Movable Type. Before posting, read this thread which will explain general rules of conduct and the best way to find answers. Generally, play nice, read the MT Manual (3.2) ( for 3.1 and earlier) first, and try a search...

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06.05.2003

Webby Awards

We just found out that MovableType.org has been recognized with the Best Practices award in this year's 7th Annual Webby Awards. The criteria followed by the Webby judges for awards in the Best Practices category fit this decscription:

Sites demonstrating unparalleled excellence across The Academy's six criteria: content, structure & navigation, visual design, interactivity,functionality, and overall experience. Best Practices sites serve as an industry benchmark for the most current, innovative, and advanced practices in Web development.

We're thrilled to have been recognized in a field with such distinguished competitors and...

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htaccess files can give you extra control over your server, allowing you to password protect directories, enable server side includes, generate custom error messages, and block users by IP address among other things. (See this Guide to .htaccess for more information.)

An htaccess file is a simple ascii text file which you create or edit in a text editor. The dot (.) before the word htaccess indicates that .htaccess is a file extension. Some text editors will add on an additional .txt file extension when you save your document. When you upload it to your server however, make sure the final file is named .htaccess and set the file's permissions to 644. The (.) in .htaccess also makes...

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Every so often I'm reminded of how the simplicity of the web is belying of the underlying power.

Generally speaking, the web provides a simple user interface that has the ability to power increasingly complex back-end interactions. The more I delve into the nuts and bolts of how things like HTTP work, the more I realize that the implicit transparency of it all creates prime opportunities for even know-nothing coders like myself to build more and more sophisticated interfaces and applications.

Once the data hits the server it's mostly smoke and mirrors to me. But the data that hits the client side is quite transparent, and easy to tweak at will. The web is built on...

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