Movable Type provides a powerful API that allows developers to extend its functionality. Plugins can add tags to MT's templating system, or create full-fledged applications that interact with the MT database.

One missing piece of the API, however, has been the ability for plugins to modify MT's own interface—the screens you see when using Movable Type to manage your content.

BigPAPI is intended to fill this gap. It provides hooks so that other plugins can access and alter any page of the MT interface before it's displayed to the user. In effect, it enlarges the Plugin API—hence the name BigPAPI.

Unless you're a developer, that's probably all you need to know. The best way to...

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Professional Network member Kevin Shay wrote the following tutorial to introduce the community to his exciting new plugin and its development potential.

The BigPAPI plugin for Movable Type allows you to create plugins that can easily add features to Movable Type's interface. This article explains the background behind the develpment of BigPAPI, and walks through the creation of a simple working plugin.

Why BigPAPI?

With each new version, Movable Type has become friendlier to plugin development. The earliest plugins could do little more than add tags to the platform's templating system. Now (as of version 3.2), the Plugin API allows plugins to define not only template tags...

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Professional Network member Kevin Shay doesn't just keep busy by writing for McSweeney's or Modern Humorist, he's busy writing entire new plugin options for Movable Type.

Kevin's latest (and most impressive) addition to his stable of Movable Type plugins is BigPAPI. The amusing name belies some seriously powerful functionality: BigPAPI lets you transform any part of Movable Type's user interface programmatically, or if you want a soundbite: "server-side Greasemonkey for Movable Type".

With BigPAPI in place, you can manipulate the entire experience of working with Movable Type, creating your own plugins that layer on top of BigPAPI with custom functionality. As Kevin shows,...

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Movable Type gives you an amazing amount of control over your content, but one of the things that it sorely lacks is the ability to make massive changes to all of your entries at once. Oh sure, you can edit the basics in power editing mode--categories, authors, dates and titles--but we want more. Being able to make massive changes to the extended, excerpt and keyword fields can become almost a necessity if, like me, you're using those fields for something other than their original purpose.

For instance--Customer A is using MT to store course listings. The extended entry field contains the dates offered, the excerpt field holds the price and the keywords...

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07.13.2005

Announcing Movable Type 3.2 Beta

Over the past two weeks, we've been telling the world a lot about Movable Type 3.2 and now it's time to show it.

Today, we are releasing the first beta version of Movable Type 3.2 and we encourage everyone to download it and see for themselves.

You can find the details over on the Beta Blog. We hope to see you over there!

Posted by Jay Allen at 06:19 PM | Permalink

07.05.2005

Intermittent "500 Server Errors" in MT (RESOLVED)

If you are experiencing intermittent "500 Server Errors" while using Movable Type and are using MySQL for your database, we are aware of the cause...

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World Wide Web has been mainly constructed with US-ASCII, even for URL. But in now and future, WWW will shift from US-ASCII only world to Internatinalized world with the help of Unicode, UTF-8, IRI, and so on.

If you are European, or Asian, or others, you would write an entry by your own language, therefore the title of it also will be with yours. However, the default MT removes or deforms non US-ASCII characters in title to make an entry basename for permalink URL(It is completely right in URI side). As a result, they couldn't enjoy full features of MT that can create Cool URI. Only English users could do.

This plugin makes your permalinks as Cool IRI...

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This plugin is for blocking feedback[ct(=comment) and tb(=trackback)] spams by adding an additional CCode(hidden ct input field) or adding TCode to original tb ID in tb URL, and then obfuscating that Code for the purpose of not easily guessing it.

MT 3.2's enforced anti-spam system is performed mainly after getting feedbacks. So if many spams are arrived, then it also uses system/MT user resourses when filtering, junking, unpublishing, and deleting spams although it becomes comparatively easy than pre 3.2.

CCode and TCode works in before saving spam feedbacks to MT system. CCode/TCode make it very difficult for spam-bots to guess tb URL and required ct input...

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Current version: 1.05 (Updated 2005/10/4)

Simply, Better File Uploader is a Movable Type plugin that allows you to create default settings for file uploads. Create default settings to: • Specify a folder to upload to • Append year/month/ to the upload path • Create a new entry or show HTML • Select a thumbnail size • Build photo galleries quicker

Better File Uploader is also the successor to A Better File Upload Template.

Installation

Better File Uploader requires the BigPAPI plugin. BigPAPI is included in the below distribution. Better File Uploader requires Movable Type version 3.2 or higher. • Download BetterFileUploader.zip and unzip. • Upload to your plugins/ folder, preserving directory structure. The result should one file in the...

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This plugin changes the original MT interface to new one. I named it as alogblog MT interface. It's for anyone fully accustomed to MT 3.2's menu system, because it has no visible menu title, just only icons.

Features

• 720px fixed width(essentialy wider than the original) • center located • round cornered box • top located icon menubar • switchable alternate stylesheets • configurable to each blog • disabling plugin restores original MT interface

View Screenshots

Installation

Download this plugin and place files like this: • (mt home)/plugins/BigPAPI.pl • (mt...

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Current version: 1.01 (updated 2005/09/24).

The Better Entry Preview plugin's purpose is to make the entry preview screen more useful. The included styles give the entry preview environment a feel that a traditional editor might like by using larger type, more line spacing, and a serif font. Tapping the beginning of what is possible, floated elements will now float around text, rather than falling above or below text. With customizable styles, the entry preview window can be made to mimic your web site's look quite easily.

Better Entry Preview is the evolutionary step of the preview_entry.tmpl alternate template, and is a plugin based on BigPAPI.

Download Better Entry Preview and BigPAPI as a .zip file. Extract, and upload to your...

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The BigPAPI plugin offers a lot of opportunity to do some exceptional customization to the Movable Type interface. In fact, it can do everything an alternate template can do - and much more!

So the question: would you rather deal with an alternate template or a plugin? If you're not already using alternate templates, the plugin has the advantage that no setup is required. Aside from that, though, I can't see that one offers any benefits over the other. What do you think?

If you found this article useful, please consider supporting this site through a donation.

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LinkEntryToFile is a plugin that modifies the interface of Movable Type. When the plugin is installed, you can specify a file on your server to link to the Entry Body or Extended Entry field. The linked file will be kept in sync with the entry, so that you can edit it in an external editor.

This plugin basically takes MT's handy "Link this template to a file" feature and applies it to entries. When using MT to manage certain types of content, especially content that contains extensive HTML formatting, it's useful to be able to use your favorite text-editing application, with syntax highlighting, Undo, search and replace, etc., without having to repeatedly copy and paste into the MT entry...

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UPDATE: EnhancedEntryEditing has been bumped up to v1.01 to fix a bug where popup windows wouldn't disappear after you were done with them. Grab the update, you only need to upload EnhancedEntryEditing.pl

Ajaxify is a series of BigPAPI plugins that adds various javascript and AJAX widgets into Movable Type's interface. It has, of course, been built for Movable Type 3.2. The first of which is EnhancedEntryEditing. This plugin adds two widgets into the entry screen: • Resizable Textareas - I personally find the textareas on the entry screen too small and find it annoying to hack the stylesheet everytime I upgrade Movable Type. This plugin now adds "Increase Size" and...

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I'm happy I could provide this plugin to the MT community.

This plugin, BigTemplateWindow, is for a really big template editing window. The size of template editing box is only limited by that of your monitor. :) First I developed this just for a big template box. In the process of doing it, several useful features was added. I hope almost all MT users could be a little happy by using this.

Requirement

IE or Firefox/Mozilla.

The use of TAB key and other features was developed and tested only on IE and Firefox/Mozilla browsers. Adaptation into Opera and other browsers are...

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Over the past two weeks, we've been telling the world a lot about Movable Type 3.2 and now it's time to show it.

Today, we are releasing the first beta version of Movable Type 3.2 and we encourage everyone to download it and see for themselves.

You can find the details over on the Beta Blog. We hope to see you over there!

Previous Entry: Intermittent "500 Server Errors" in MT (RESOLVED)

Next Entry: Introducing BigPAPI: A new plugin framework

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WeblogsActionMenu is a plugin that modifies the interface of Movable Type.

The dropdown menu of available weblogs in the header of every Movable Type screen is a handy way to jump from one weblog to another. What's not so handy is that you have to first go through the other weblog's menu in order to do anything with that weblog. WeblogsActionMenu lets you jump directly to a specific action for a different weblog than the one you're in.

Requirements

WeblogsActionMenu requires the BigPAPI plugin, which is included with the WeblogsActionMenu distribution.

WeblogsActionMenu is compatible with MT 3.16 and higher.

Installation

To install the WeblogsActionMenu plugin, upload the file WeblogsActionMenu.pl...

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UpdateAuthoredOn is a plugin that modifies the interface of Movable Type. When the plugin is installed, you can click a button to set an entry's Authored On timestamp to the current date and time.

Requirements

UpdateAuthoredOn requires the BigPAPI plugin, which is included with the UpdateAuthoredOn distribution.

UpdateAuthoredOn is compatible with MT 3.16 and higher.

Installation

To install the UpdateAuthoredOn plugin, upload the file UpdateAuthoredOn.pl to the plugins directory within your Movable Type directory. If BigPAPI.pl is not already present in your plugins directory, upload that as well.

Terms of Use

UpdateAuthoredOn is available free of charge under a Creative Commons license....

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MainMenuRecent is a plugin that modifies the interface of Movable Type. When the plugin is installed, MT's Main Menu will display the three most recent entries for each weblog.

Requirements

MainMenuRecent requires the BigPAPI plugin, which is included with the MainMenuRecent distribution.

MainMenuRecent is compatible with MT 3.16 and higher. However, the Settings are only available under MT 3.2.

Installation

To install the MainMenuRecent plugin, upload the file MainMenuRecent.pl to the plugins directory within your Movable Type directory. If BigPAPI.pl is not already present in your plugins directory, upload that as well.

Terms of Use

MainMenuRecent is available free of charge under a Creative Commons license....

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Okay, I have another request (perhaps two). The new "Save and Rebuild" button in templates is nice, but I miss the old "Rebuild" by itself - what if I just want to rebuild, but have no need to save it again? That's not a biggie. I can deal with it if I have to do so. What I want is really intelligent rebuilding, especially as it relates to archives.

Index pages are easy to rebuild. But if I edit an individual archive, I have to go to rebuild, then select that archive type, then rebuild (or even rebuild everything). What if the archives had a "Save and Rebuild" option, but it rebuilt only those archives where that template was used? That would be simply incredible. What do you say,...

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I really need to learn Perl. I can look at some code and stumble through it to figure out what's happening, and I can hack it with minor changes - but I really don't know what I'm doing. And once I learn Perl I can learn to write some MT plugins.

I've had ideas for a few plugins floating around in my head: • A plugin to change the file upload behavior. I've hacked the file upload template and CMS.pm to add a Photo Gallery option that formats the URI as I need it and insert it into a new entry; I think this could be made into a plugin with BigPAPI. Done: Better File Uploader. • A file management plugin. It doesn't need to be terribly...

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