Configuring Search for One or More Weblogs

Problem

You want to enable your system to provide users with search capabilities across one or more weblogs.

Solution

Add configuration directives to mt-config.cgi that are related to the search engine.

Discussion

The MT search engine features a number of configurable options which are maintained in the mt-config.cgi file rather than in a web interface. The search functionality is not tied to a specific weblog, and its configuration is applied system wide.

Because these functions are not tied to a specific weblog and due to...

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Preparing the way from the dynamic system that's going to be coming in MT 3.1 lets discuss the differences between a dynamic and static way of managing content and clear up any doubts.

Static templating is how MT has been all these years. Everytime you make the smallest change or post a new entry you need to rebuild every single page it is connected to for the change to show up. Rebuilding these pages cause physical files to appear in various directories.

With dynamic templating this is all resolved. No more files, no more rebuilding. With 3.1 you can chose how you want MT to act ie: •

Fully Dynamic - every single template is taken and parsed from the database when requested •

Fully Static - there are...

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A container tag whose contents will be displayed if the entry in context was posted on a different day than the following/next entry in the list.

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MTDateHeader

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For those who aren't using the dynamic publishing feature of Movable Type (see below), experiencing slow rebuild times is not an infrequent complaint especially as the size or complexity of the blog and its templates grows. While there are very good reasons to rebuild, there are no good reasons for it to be painfully slow.

In this essay, we will detail a number of reasons why your rebuild times might be slow and steps you can take to drastically reduce or completely eliminate the time you spend waiting for Movable Type to finish its work.

Upgrade to Movable Type 3

Has anything significant happened to you in the 16 months? Probably so. Well, the same can be said for Movable...

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This is a bug fix release that fixes some major bugs with the dynamic templating tags. A big thank you to all the folks that reported this bug, sorry it took me so long to find the bug! Go grab the update.

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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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To save space on your sidebar listing of categories or monthly archives, you might want to use a pull-down menu like so: Select Category Beginner Tips Categories Definitions General HTML and Javascript Install Marketing Reference RSS Security Servers Style Weblog Goodies

To do this for your category list, make sure that you have category archiving selected as an archiving option in your weblog config, and add the following code to your sidebar:

<form action="" name="pulldown1"> <select name="mypulldown1" onchange="document.location=pulldown1.mypulldown1.options[selectedIndex].value"> <option value="">Select...

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Moving to a Different Weblog

Problem

You have multiple weblogs in your system and want to move from one to another.

Solution

Select the name of the weblog in the Weblogs pulldown menu found in the Primary Navigation and press Go.

Discussion

One of the most useful features of Movable Type is the ability to manage multiple weblogs from one installation. The Weblogs pulldown menu found in the Primary Navigation makes moving between multiple weblogs quick and easy. This control contains weblogs that you have permission to access. Simply choose one and press Go....

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I saw a chunk of code today that made my eyes pop out because of its lack of promise. Well, not its lack of promise, but its absence of MT::Promise. The MT::Promise class, new in Movable Type 3.0, solves a common coding problem so it's worth getting the word out about what it does.

What made my eyes pop out was this chunk of code, in the definition of a container tag for looping over categories: my $needs_entries = ($ctx->stash('uncompiled') =~ /<$?MTEntries/) ? 1 : 0; if ($needs_entries) { my @entries = MT::Entry->load(@args); $ctx->{__stash}->{'entries'} = delay (sub{@entries}); $ctx->{__stash}->{'category_count'} = scalar @entries; } else {...

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This hack is for versions of Movable Type prior to 3.2. This hack has been implemented into Movable Type 3.2

I'm a lazy person and hate having to click repetitively to do tasks and I get easily annoyed at having to keep hitting save and then rebuild whilst making changes to my site. So a hack later I have a Save & Rebuild button which will first save the template and then rebuild it with just one click!

Open lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and around line 1149 find

sub save_object{

and add underneath it

my $sr = 0;

Next on line 1340 find

$obj->text($text);

and add underneath it

if($q->param('sr')){ $sr = 1; $app->rebuild_indexes( BlogID => $obj->blog_id,...

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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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Tutorial cross posted on Learning Movable Type and Movalog.

With Movable Type 3.2, Six Apart launched a new markup and stylesheet structure that has also unified their three platforms. These new templates and stylesheets (from now on referred to as themes) have been called tag soup due to the sheer number of <div>s and indents.

What a mess - why did they do it?

The new themes can be quite intimidating the first time you come across them however Six Apart have created these new themes for several reasons: • First of all, Typepad, LiveJournal and Movable Type now share exactly the same markup. This means that a theme will work on any of these three platforms and designers can...

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When I set about re-creating MovaDir, I wanted to create a form that would post directly into MT. I soon discovered that I would need to use the XML-RPC API to really streamline it. This is a tutorial that will guide you through setting up a form that will allow a user to manipulate entry fields and then rebuild the entry. Use of the mySQL database is required.

You will need to create a new index template called Incutio XML-RPC Library, set the output file as IXR_Library.inc.php and copy this file for the template body.

Next create a new index template called IP Tracking with an output file iptracking.php and copy this file into the template body.

This is a very neat script written by...

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A little while ago I converted my site to use the Smarty for dynamic templating. I'm still using Movable Type for the content management though. Click the 'more' link for an overview of how it all works together...

Smart Templates

The Smarty template engine for PHP is pretty sweet. There's a lot of power in dynamic template rendering. The most important for me is that I can change the shape of my...

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2.1 (2002.05.02)

• Added webMaster, language, lastBuildDate, and pubDate to both RSS templates. • Added encode_html="1" to all RSS fields that didn't have it already. • Added Norwegian dates. • Added test for mt-check.cgi to determine whether we are running under cgiwrap or suexec. • Added a new global tag attribute encode_url (thanks to Scott Andrew LePera and others for the idea). • Changed the behavior of the publish flag in blogger.newPost; previously, if set to false the new entry would be saved as a draft. This was a bad idea, for...

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If you're part of Google's AdSense program you can set up Channels to help track where Clicks are coming from on your web site. The obvious (and easy) thing to do is assign a different Channel to your front page from the rest of your pages, for example. Using Movable Type and different categories (and even archive types) you can further target who's clicking where. PHP use is required.

First, you'll need to create several Channels in your AdSense account. I created Channels for the most popular categories and a "generic" channel to encompass the other less-popular categories.

Add the AdSense code to your Individual Entry Archive template....

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In Comparison needed for conditional Generation I showed how to use the Compare Plugin for managing variations of a page type. The plugin allows comparing values and optionally inserting one or the other code segment into the output stream. However, the simple condition "if one value equals another value" is just the beginning. We are also able to create complex conditions. It is not even that difficult.

Basics

The Compare Plugin offers a number of tags, as for example MTIfEqual, MTIfNotEqual, MTIfGreater, MTIfGreaterOrEqual, MTIfLess, etc. Most of them work the same way: they take at least two mandatory attributes, a and b. The plugin compares the values of those two...

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Working with Style Catcher

With 3.2 came the very nice StyleCatcher plugin that allowed you to easily manage and apply themes or styles to your blogs. This tutorial will show you how to make your repository work Style Catcher. Note, this tutorial won't show...

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Posted on 10/22/2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

CustomFields 1.12

UPDATE: I've just pushed out a silent update that fixes a problem with custom entry field descriptions not showing. Thanks Nilesh! A new version of CustomFields is available that fixes four bugs that people found;CustomFields...

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Question

Can I use PHP code in my templates?

Answer

Movable Type templates generate standard HTML pages; so any coding language which can be used in a standard web page can also be included in your templates.

Here are some important tips to remember about using PHP in your templates:

No shortcut tags in dynamic templates

If you are using PHP in a dynamic template, you should not use the "shortcut" opening tag: <?

Instead, you should use the full version: <?php

Template Tags are processed differently in static templates than...

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After the dutchpink was released, I had an idea to skin Movable Type such that a user could easily switch between stylesheets. So after a lot of work with javascript, here is the package:

SkinningMT.zip SkinningMT.tar.gz

1. Extract the contents of the distribution 2. Upload the tmpl files in ASCII to the appropriate places (MTDIR/tmpl/cms) 3. Upload mt-styleswitcher.php and the styles/ directory into your StaticWebPath (if none then your into your MT Directory, same location as mt.cgi)

The drop-down menu shows up on the main menu ( screenshot) The only requirement is that your server runs PHP. The styles directory, its contents and mt-styleswitcher.php goes into your StaticWebPath. In mt-styleswitcher.php, change movalog.com to your domain name...

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