Several users of MTLookup reported that sometimes the result lists' sort order seemed to be strange. Important entries were on position 10, and not so important entries reached top positions.

I analyzed the situation and compared the result lists that were generated by MTLookup with those that were created by Google and Yahoo. Some important facts could be found.

What is most important, the MTLookup ranking could be improved. Now it works consistent - no matter whether the keyphrase contains short or long words, or it contains words that appear often or seldom it the database.

I could even find some situations, where Google and Yahoo produced not so perfect result lists. It was...

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Via PhotoMatt I found a very interesting comments thread on what is basically an argument of Movable Type vs. WordPres. Now everyone knows that I worship Movable Type, but I wish to voice some thoughts on this topic.

Movable Type and Wordpress are aimed at completely different audiences. If you upgraded to MT 3.0 you would have seen that the title was no longer "MOVABLE TYPE :: Personal Publishing System" but now was "Movable Type Publishing Platform." As can be seen from this post at Mena's Corner

One final thing. You'll notice that we're no longer describing Movable Type as a "Personal Publishing System" -- we now call it a "Publishing Platform." While "personal" remains a major...

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After you have started to modify the Movable Type templates according to your own style, you will probably find out, that this "programming by tags" is a little bit restricted. Often you want to use a condition for creating the HTML output in one or the other way. But Movable Type isn't able to support this very well.

And again, a plugin will do the work.

What do you need Comparisons for?

In this weblog an entry's title area consists of two parts. On the left side there is the title describing the subject. On the right side there is the date of creation.

With some entries I do not want the date to be visible. For example the entry »help« should be...

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I'm often confused by type choices web designers make. In my opinion, readability needs to be of utmost concern, not the look of the site. After all, how many sites do you visit that you don't intend to read? Readability of the type on your site can definitely affect how many returning visitors you have.

While I'm not a type expert, I have been working in the print publishing world for quite a few years. And because of that, I've been exposed to and learned more about type and readability than most would probably want to know. I'd like to share a little of that knowledge and epxerience.

Serif or Sans-Serif Typefaces?

There are two kinds of...

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This tutorial is co-authored by LMT guest author Chad Everett of Everitz Consulting and Elise Bauer of elise.com.

Movable Type allows you to create categories and sub-categories for organizing your entries. The default MT3.2 Main Index template includes code to list these categories in the sidebar section. This tutorial will attempt to explain the tags used in this code and how they work together.

Categories, Sub-categories, Parent, Child, and Levels

The only difference between a category and a sub-category is that the latter will always have a "parent" category. The sub-category is still a category, and everything else remains the same as any other category. But by having...

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Warning: main(/home/elise/public_html/mt/mt32badge.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/eliseb/public_html/archives/001012multiple_authors.php on line 90 Warning: main(): Failed opening '/home/elise/public_html/mt/mt32badge.inc' for inclusion (include_path='') in /home/eliseb/public_html/archives/001012multiple_authors.php on line 90

With MT you can have multiple authors on the same weblog, making it easy to have a friend contribute to your blog as a "guest author" or to create a group weblog to which many people contribute. You can even customize to a small degree, aspects of the author-specific Individual Entry pages.

Adding an Author

To add an author in MT 3.2...

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Updated April 30, 2005

Once in a while you might just want to show actual code - HTML, PHP, or Javascript - in an entry you make in Movable Type. For example, say I want to show the A HREF tag and code to get to elise.com. It looks like this:

<a href="http://www.elise.com">elise.com</a>

However, if I simply type that code in while I'm writing the entry, the resulting page will not show the tags and code, but the actual link: elise.com.

So how do you display code in entries? There are several methods:

1. Manually write out the symbol equivalents of your code. If all you want to do is write a short tag, the easiest way may be to write out the < and...

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I don't have a complete knowledge on IRI. So below contents might have some misunderstandings. If you find one, please feedback to me.

* At first, this post was written in part of Cool IRI for a permalink. So in this post, you'll often see the words, "this plugin". "This plugin" means that a plugin for a Movable Type bloggin tool, which enables you to create a Cool IRI for blog archives.

You may be stunned by comparatively long page. I swear this content is not deeply technical and is just common knowledge. If you have no time to read it, just see some pictures. Perhaps it will do a little for you.

What means a "Cool" ?

If you've never heard of Cool URI, I...

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Upgrading or installing Movable Type can be rather intimidating. There are few things I have screwed up so badly attempting, even when they say it is super easy, idiot-proof. I always seem to be the idiot who still can't make it work. I have now upgraded two separate MT installs to MT 3.2 and thought I would share my notes with you. Please note that Jay Allen (Product Manager of Movable Type), Chad Everett (of Don't Back Down and Everitz Consulting), and Arvind Satyanarayan ( Movalog) have all helped me at various stages in upgrading, and if I didn't have friends who knew what they were doing, honestly I just wouldn't attempt this on my own. But that's me, and I have over 20 blogs...

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by Category | by Date

Anti-Spam

Getting the most out of MT-Blacklist - MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse: Getting the most out of MT-Blacklist Birdhouse notes on Comment Spam - Why this web host is forcing comment registration Blacklist to Mod Security - by Peter Wood Brad Choate: SpamLookup - anti-spam plugin Interview with a Comment Spammer - The Register's interview with a blog comment spammer. MT-Approval Plugin - Prevents comment spam from spam bots MT-DSBL Open Proxy Comment Filter - from Brad Choate MT-Moderate - Plugin for moderating trackbacks and comments from Chad Everett Mod Rewrite to Block Bot Spam - Mod Rewrite method to divert comment spam bots to a 403...

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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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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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2.6 (2003.02.13)

• Added Text Formatting options. Instead of a simple Convert Line Breaks checkbox, you can now set a different formatting option for each entry. Plugins can add new options to the Text Formatting menu, which allows for greater integration with the formatting within the system (for example, Text Formatting will be applied on the preview screen). • Added PostgreSQL and SQLite database drivers. • Incorporated Brad Choate's Sanitize plugin, adding an mt.cfg setting for a global default and a per-blog setting to override it. Sanitize is turned on...

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The Touch of Hope web site is powered by Movable Type. It's more than your average blog site though. Don't let it's blogging slant fool you-- MT is a budding CMS!

The architecture is like this: • 1 blog for the site's basic content: welcome page, about page, Art for Hope page, request a site page, make a donation page, contact us page and the news and updates content. All of this is in...

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Categories provide an alternate means to the weblog's traditional chronological form of organizing entries. Movable Type allows you to enter a list of categories using a variety of methods and assign one or more to each of your entries. You can use MT's categorization facilities to group related entries despite chronology or simply as a means of filtering entry listings in the CMS more easily.

Each entry can be assigned one primary category and any number of secondary categories. The primary category is used when you wish to display information about just one of the categories to which an entry is...

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Yes, it's another anti-spam plugin. I would have called it MT-DSBL 2.0, but the feature set grew beyond the name, so a more generic name was chosen. This is a 2.0 release however… the plugin deserves more seniority than a 1.0 release, since it was built of the carcass that was MT-DSBL 1.1.

The first beta release is now available. Please visit the project page for SpamLookup to download it.

So, what does this thing do? Well, in a nutshell: • Filters inbound comments for all installed weblogs. • Filters inbound TrackBack pings for all installed weblogs. • Checks IP address of sender against DNSBL services....

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With the most difficult part of running Movable Type -- the installation -- behind you, it is time to get started using MT.

It all begins with The Movable Type Content Management System (CMS). This script is the heart and soul of what makes powerful weblog publishing possible.

The CMS contains the majority of the intelligence and work flow that makes Movable Type what it is. Whether it involves posting an entry, adding a colleague as an author, or publishing your content with a whole new style, it is the CMS that is doing the heavy lifting.

By default the CMS script is named mt.cgi, although this...

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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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A recent thread on the Professional Network had people talking about how they could trust non-Typekey commenters and someone requested an ability to "Trust" commenters based on their IP. Turns out, I had written a plugin that did exactly this a long time ago but had forgotten to release it. Quite simply, this plugin allows you to define an email whitelist. If a commenter enters an email that matches one on the whitelist, two things will happen: • The comment is credited with a junk score of +10 (the highest positive score) and depending on your junk threshold will cause the comment to be instantly approved. • The comment status is set to visible so that it will be publishedThis plugin is a great way to have some "trust" functionality for those of you that don't feel comfortable using Typekey....

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MTTrackbackEntry is a Movable Type plugin and hack that enables you to create new entries from the Trackbacks that you receive. In other words, it enables other people to post new entries in your blog, simply by pinging an entry or category on your blog. The title of this plugin/hack could just as easily be called TrackbackCrosspost, since it can act as a trackback-based cross-posting tool.

Currently, entries are created AND pings are received and recorded. This means that TrackbackEntry will receive and record pings the same as usual, but it will also add a new entry. Perhaps a future version will only add new entries, or at least provide an option in this area.

TrackbackEntry is especially...

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