This hack is deprecated in favour of the MT Protect plugin. Please use the plugin instead of this hack!

One of the biggest wants with MT is to password protect individual entries. There are several hacks and bits of code that allow you to password protect entries but many of them are long winded and many involve separate categories. I wanted a simple way to selectively password protect entries no matter what the category, what blog etc.

So I created a new field on the entry screen (click screenshot for a larger view) that would contain the password. For this to work you will need to be using MT 3.1x, mySQL and PHP. To see this in action see the front page on my blog, enter the password "password" and you will be granted access for 10 days....

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Question

I'm getting an Invalid Login message when trying to sign in to Movable Type.

Answer

First Login?

• Is this your first login attempt after installing Movable Type? If so, did the installation script run successfully? Until it reports success, you will not be able to log in. • Are you entering the default username (Melody) and password (Nelson) correctly? These are case sensitive.

Changed Hosts or Servers?

Are you trying to log in after moving servers, and you are using the Berkeley database?

When you change hosting providers (or just move...

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Co-authored by Arvind Satyanarayan and Elise Bauer Tutorial cross posted on Movalog and Learning Movable Type

With the release of Movable Type 3.1 comes a new and powerful feature - Dynamic Publishing. To take advantage of Dynamic Publishing, you need to edit or create a file on your Apache server called .htaccess as explained in the Movable Type Manual. 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.)

Note: You should really know what you are doing before...

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I've just released an updated version of MT-Notifier. Most of the changes are behind-the-scenes, and you won't see much different about the operation. However, there are a couple of new features, notably an enhanced ability to specify the "from" address on your outgoing notifications.

While versions prior to 1.2.0 had a $SENDER variable defined inside the notifier.pm module, versions 1.2.0 and higher will store this information in the plugindata table, along with the subscription information. This also allows a default address to be set on a per-blog or a per-installation basis.

If you have a version of MT-Notifier prior to 1.2.0 and would like to upgrade, simply copy the contents of...

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UPDATE: If you have any feature request I'm all ears. Gearing up for the release I want to see if there are any feature requests I can implement, I think I've fixed all the bugs that were reported so expect a release in the next few weeks.

I had released this to ProNet a few days ago but have not gotten much feedback. That can be either that people are waiting for the point release and don't want to install a beta or that there aren't many bugs in this beta. Either way I want to open up testing for MT Blogroll 2.0 (I'm still thinking about that version number). I'm going to copy my post to ProNet here to save me some time.

I've re-written Blogroll to use its own tables in the DB so...

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Question

When performing various functions in Movable Type, I get errors that include SCALAR reference and/or refer to problems with Serialize.pm.

Answer

These errors are almost certainly an indication of database corruption.

Corruption occurs most often with the Berkeley database. Berkeley is far more susceptible to this, and unfortunately, there are few options for recovery. You will most likely need to reinstall with a fresh database, recreate your weblogs, and import your entries.

When reinstalling, we strongly advise you to choose MySQL as...

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Movable Type 2.2 is now available for download.

Amongst the small fixes and improvements documented in the changelog, there are two very large new features with this release. • TrackBack is a framework for peer-to-peer communication between weblogs; it can track cross-weblog discussions, it can provide remote content repositories, it can emulate guest authoring, etc. A more detailed introduction to TrackBack is available here. Please read through the documentation to learn how to set up TrackBack on your blog. • The system can now use a MySQL database for backend data storage, as an alternative to the Berkeley DB storage. If you are installing Movable Type for the first...

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Question

My database has been corrupted. Is there any way to avoid losing my data?

Answer

This answer depends a great deal on the level of corruption, the type of backups you have, and how much information is still accessible from within your existing installation (as opposed to being in external files such as the static pages Movable Type has generated from the data).

Does your host maintain backups for your account?

If so, do they have any which would include copies of your database files prior to the time corruption appears to have occurred?...

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Installing Movable Type with FTP

Problem

You want to install the Movable Type software using FTP.

Solution

Download an FTP application, uncompress the software onto your desktop and take care of any necessary configuration before uploading.

Discussion

• An FTP (file transfer protocol) program is used to send the files from your computer to your server. If you don't yet have an FTP program, there are many available for free. SmartFTP is a good FTP program for Windows, and offers a free trial version. Transmit is a good FTP program for Mac users on OS X, and it has a free...

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06.26.2002

Version 2.2 Released

Movable Type 2.2 is now available for download.

Amongst the small fixes and improvements documented in the changelog, there are two very large new features with this release. • TrackBack is a framework for peer-to-peer communication between weblogs; it can track cross-weblog discussions, it can provide remote content repositories, it can emulate guest authoring, etc. A more detailed introduction to TrackBack is available here. Please read through the documentation to learn how to set up TrackBack on your blog. • The system can now use a MySQL database for backend data storage, as an alternative to the Berkeley DB...

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Updated. Originally posted April, 2004

Adding a Recent Comments section to your weblog is easy and straightforward. There are two basic approaches. The first is to list the last N number of recent comments; the second the last N most recently commented on entries.

The most recent comments

In this example of Recent Comments the last 10 comments are listed, regardless of how many times there may have been comments to the same entry. The comment authors names are linked to their respective websites, if they have them, and the entry title is linked to the author's comment in the entry.

For most recent comments like shown in the example to the left, add the following code to the...

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Upgrading Movable Type

Problem

You want to upgrade the Movable Type software.

Solution

Upgrading follows nearly the same steps as installation except that you will want to perform a backup of your system before attempting the upgrade. If you are upgrading from Movable Type 3.1x or before, you will also want to migrate to the new configuration file: mt-config.cgi.

Discussion

If you're on any past version of Movable Type, version 3.2 offers a lot of features and improvements that will make managing your blogs easier. To take advantage of them, you'll need to install the latest...

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Movable Type is the premier weblog publishing platform for businesses, organizations, developers, and web designers. Powerful customization gives you control over everything you publish and the elegant interface keeps things simple and clear.

Features

• Unlimited Blogging

Movable Type offers the ability to publish an unlimited number of blogs quickly and easily through a single installation of the application. And the platform supports posting by as many authors as you need, with no limit on the numbers of entries, comments, or TrackBacks the system supports. • Powerful management...

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Multiblog is an indespensible plugin that allows you to display content from other blogs. Unfortunately, in its current version it doesn't work with dynamic publishing. A few days ago I was investigating the best way to duplicate MultiBlog's functions in the dynamic templating system. As it turns out, Movable Type's powerful dynamic templating system makes it easy to include content from other blogs.

With dynamic publishing all you need to do to pull content from other blogs is to change the blog context of the page. Every tag is parsed within a context which affects the content it outputs. For example, with the MTEntries tag the correct entries are outputted because Movable Type...

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UPDATE Fixed a bug with moderation set on Typekey users. Bit to be edited is the code in edit_comment.tmpl

The moderation queue is one of the most powerful features that MT 3 has, and some advocate an aggresive use of it when paired with plugins. Currently, you are able to approve a comment but not unapprove a comment. This hack will add an unapprove button to the edit comment screen that will throw the comment back into moderation.

Open lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and around line 32 find

'approve_comment' => &approve_comment,

and add beneath it

'unapprove_comment' => &unapprove_comment,

Next find

sub list_commenters {

and add above it

sub unapprove_comment { my $app = shift; my $perms = $app->{perms}...

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I really like the "Build All Templates Statically" option on the Templates page, however I really wanted a Build All Templates Dynamically option. I posted a feature request on the subject but I don't think it was taken any further, so I took the matter into my own hands, see the screenshot (click for larger image).

Open up MT/App/CMS.pm and search for the following block of text, line #4842.

} elsif ($dcty eq 'archives') { require MT::Template; my @templates = MT::Template->load({ blog_id => $blog->id }); for my $tmpl (@templates) { $tmpl->build_dynamic($tmpl->type ne 'index'); $tmpl->save(); } } elsif ($dcty eq 'custom') {...

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As the image above shows, $40 (20% of the Dropcash campaign) has been donated to the American Red Cross to help with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. A big Thank You to all the donors of the CustomFields Dropcash campaign that made this possible.

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• Newsgator Toolkit • Updates to the Style Generator • Hurricane Katrina Donation • Movable Type Style Generator • Plugins Forums • Feeds Burned • The IndiBlog Awards • Planet Movable Type • MovaDir, v2 • Preview Release • Vulnerability in Servers Using PHP • Securing your weblog - CGIWrap and SuEXEC • Syndicate This Site • Upgrading • Consulting • Movalog Sideblog • Ask Arvind •

Code Snippets

• Random Banners • Quicktags for Comments • Reset Templates • Iconize • SubCats and Contents • Tweaking Searches • Password Protection • Alphabetizing archives • Relative Dates • Automatic Acronyms •

Dynamic

• Dynamic Publishing - Pros and Cons • Troubleshooting Smarty Errors • PHP Dirification • The DB and Dynamic Publishing • Custom Error Messages • Dynamic Pages & The .htaccess • Breaking Plugins • Smarty. MT. Dynamic...

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I may experience a bit of downtime or things may seem out of flux for a while (don't quite know how long) as my host shifts me to a new server and hosting package. Please bear with me !

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Movalog has been nominated for the best science/technology IndiBlog. The IndiBlog Awards are publicly-chosen awards conferred upon bloggers from India or of Indian origin settled elsewhere. The winner of the best science/tech category wins a year's subscription to Typepad Plus.

Go vote for Movalog as the best science/tech Indian Blog.

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