Hot on the heels of v1.0, here's version 1.1. The only new feature is the availability of dynamic tags, i.e. those of you that wanted to use MT Protect on dynamic templates now can!

Download MT-Protect_1.1.zip and follow the installation instructions. If you installed any older version of MT Protect, you will need to disable and re-enable protection on all your blogs via the global configuration so that the new files get downloaded.

The template markup is identical for both static and dynamic templates!

If you experience a bug or a problem, please file a ticket.

The campaign has not yet reached its target, if you find this plugin useful people consider donating to the campaign.

On a sidenote, Movalog is now...

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The second plugin in the pluginset known as Ajaxify, this plugin adds a search suggestion feature to the Quicksearch box at the top when you search for entries, comments or trackback. There's very little to talk about this plugin but I should note that it is a little buggy when handling search terms with spaces for example "MT Blogroll". I've been trying to find a fix but the javascript is unreadble! None-the-less, it works quite well as can be seen from this screenshot. It has, of course, been built for Movable Type 3.2. Go grab your copy.

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Looking for a way to incorporate a Photo Gallery into your MT blog? Check out Photo Gallery Templates from StopDesign.com.

There are many ways to create a web-based photo album or photoblog in Movable Type. This tutorial addresses just one method for creating a photo album, and is based on the steps I took to create my MT-based photo album. This tutorial is for experienced MT users and assumes familiarity with plugins, CSS, creating a new weblog, category archiving, and uploading images. Although long, the tutorial is easier than it looks, especially if you want a photo album that works just like mine. It's always the customizations that take time. In this tutorial I will give...

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Well, it looks like this weblog is becoming just a Movable Type how-to blog. Well, in keeping with that theme, here's a little "part two" companion piece for Doing your whole site with MT (one of my worst blog titles, ever).

Now that you've got your whole site MT-powered, what about your RSS feed? Chances are you, have one for your weblog, but what about one for everything? I've created one for my site, called sitewide.rss. It lets folks keep track of every update that happens to my site, whether it be part of my weblog or not.

To get it to work, you have to do a little bit of...

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Over time a lot of content will be generated by a site, especially a weblog or news-oriented site. Finding that content in a reverse chronological archive can be difficult and frustrating. Local search can make a site more accessible by providing readers with the means to dynamically zero in on the content they are looking for.

Built-In Search

Movable Type's public search interface originally began as an add-on to MT developed by Jay Allen before formal plug-ins existed. The code was later integrated into MT version 2.5.

The search engine provides a rudimentary means of querying an MT system for...

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I quietly released a new version of MT-Notifier about a month ago. This was in response to the feature ransom that I introduced, and those who contributed to the ransom have been running this version since that time. This serves as an introduction to everyone else.

This version of MT-Notifier supports entry notifications as well as comment notifications. The changes are pretty much self-explanatory in the management interface. Simply choose the option you would like for your entire installation, an individual blog or a category, and users will be able to sign up accordingly.

If there is no notification type set on a particular level (for instance, a category), the system will look...

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Safari users can now enjoy the Template Tag Bookmarklet by simple installing the Saft extension (which is a highly recommended extension), grabbing the template tags plugin and unpacking it into ~/Library/Application Support/Saft/Sidebar/. Alternatively, you can also open the destination folder by turning on sidebar in Safari ('View' > 'Show Sidebar') and clicking the '+' icon at the bottom-left corner the the browser window.

A big thank you to Lola Lee and Joe D'Andrea (who, incidentally, has an awesome plugin called Seeker which you can try out on Movalog by searching!)

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10.22.2001

Version 1.1 Released

We have released version 1.1 of Movable Type. Existing users should use the upgrade distribution to update their MT installation, and should follow the new upgrade instructions.

New users should download the full distribution after agreeing to the license agreement.

The new release provides some bug fixes as well as some new features; read through the changelog for a full list, or take a look at an abbreviated list of features here.

Posted by Benjamin Trott at 03:38 PM | Permalink

10.19.2001

New Release Scheduled

We are planning a new release of Movable Type for next Monday, October...

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Choosing the Right Weblog Platform

Problem

You are trying to determine whether Movable Type or TypePad is right for you.

Solution

Decide what is most important to you: simplicity or control.

Discussion

TypePad is a complement to Movable Type, not a replacement. The two tools share a common core designed to address the needs of users with different requirements and capabilities. So, the question that will often be asked is, which is right the tool to use, Movable Type or TypePad? The answer comes down to simplicity vs. control. TypePad's centralized design and focus on...

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Some of you may remember the MT Tabs bookmarklet I had created oh so long ago that was quite simply a page that listed all the template tags available for easy reference. The best part of it was that it loaded in your browser's sidebar so it wouldn't interfere with and be separate from your Movable Type installation.

Well that bookmarklet (I'm trying to phase out the name "MT Tabs", it was badly chosen and didn't really reflect what the bookmarklet did) has been updated in a major way. What's new: • Major overhaul of interface so that the tags are now more appropriately grouped and all the tags are now present (including ones I didn't know existed!) • All tags have been...

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As the campaign has been successfully completed, here's MT Blogroll 2.0. Thanks to all those that donated to the campaign, the donors will get priority if bugs or problems are faced. If you feel like donating, the campaign is now over, but feel free to use the donate button on the sidebar.

There are some new features including the ability to quickly add a blogroll entry by just entering the URI and having MT-Blogroll gather all the other information. I've also added the ability to define the the names of the author's of the blogs and the target of the blog.

I think all the bugs from the previous version should've been fixed, if you experience a bug, drop me a note.

If you are already using MT...

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One feature I find lacking in MT is yearly archives. A yearly archive basically is just a page of twelve calendars - one for each month of the year - see mine in action here with permalinks to the days.

Now there are two ways you can do this, one easier than the other. The first - harder - way to do it is installing Brad Choate's PerlScript Plugin and then follow the steps he has laid out here. I call this the harder method because for every year you are blogging you need to create a new index template and call the template module.

The second method, all you need to do is setup the archiving and MT will do a lot for you - including tidying up you monthly archive list ! You will need...

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Updated. Originally posted January 4, 2004.

If you are interested in driving more traffic to your blog, the first thing you should do is create useful, compelling content. The next thing you should do is make sure that content is easily found in search results from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Movable Type does a few things automatically that are very helpful to getting ranked higher in search engines. For example, Google likes pages that are well structured, with header and title tags, and with lots of text. The default templates in MT ensure that the pages of your blog are well structured with H1, H2, and H3 header tags, and even title tags that include the name of...

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Learning Movable Type has an article that guides you through the steps of creating a three blog layout. The only problem is that the #container width has ben set to 904 pixels. This means that on a 800x600 layout you're going to get the nasty horizontal scroll.

The best way around this is to create a fluid three column layout ( what are fluid/fixed layouts ?).

1.Change the width of #container to 90%

2.Delete #center and corresponding div tags in all your templates

3.Duplicate your sidebar, find the following/similar code in your stylesheet #right { float: left; width:200px; overflow: hidden; }

And replace it with the following: #right { float: right; width: 20%;...

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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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Question

I do not like the directory structure that results from rebuilding the site. Can I change this somehow?

Answer

You can change both, the names of the generated files and the directory structure. We have to look at two different components. • There are several Index Templates. Each of those templates results in exactly one output file being created. The Main Index is most important, as it is responsible for creating the start page of your weblog. • Moreover, there are Archive Templates. Each of those templates may result in many different files being created at several locations. For example, there might be one HTML file for each month. And there might be one HTML file for...

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You've seen it before. An article gets hot and soon you have 50 to 60 comments attached to it. Getting in on the tail end of the conversation can be annoying with that many posts to wade through. So we create a handy little convention that will highlight (change the class of) the comments posted by the author of the post.

There are many, many ways this can be done (plugins, php, etc.) and even more ways to implement it (mutliple author highlighting, specific images for certain commenters, etc.), but we're going to look at two important facets: static and dynamic.

Static vs. Dynamic

This is a debate which we will leave to the professionals. I will only...

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Many people wanted to know how I implemented these guicktags into my comments form. So here's a quick tutorial for that. In your comments form find

<p><label for="text">Comments:</label> <MTIfAllowCommentHTML> (you may use HTML tags for style)</MTIfAllowCommentHTML><br/> <textarea tabindex="4" id="text" name="text" rows="10" cols="50"></textarea></p>

and replace it with

<div class="quicktags"><p><label for="text">Comments:</label> <MTIfAllowCommentHTML><script src="http://www.movalog.com/mt/js_quicktags.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">edToolbar();<...

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In the early days of MT 3, when I had unreg'd comments set to moderate, I really wanted to have an approval all button as I would read the comment in the email notification I received. Since then that feature request has not progressed so I decided to take matters into my own hands. As the screenshot shows, at the end of this hack you will end up with two buttons on the comments listing screen. This buttons will allow you to mass approve/moderate comments by checking the boxes of the corresponding entries.

First of all open lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and find on approximately line 32 the following

'approve_comment' => &approve_comment,

and right after it

'approve_confirm' =>...

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You now know why there hasn't been any updates in nearly 20 days! I'm very proud to announce MT Blogroll 1.0. Basically MT Blogroll is a blogroll manager, similar to blogrolling.com. You are able to store various details about a link including its URI, Name, Description and Relationship and assign them to various categories. If you have been using another blogroll manager like blogrolling.com or blo.gs, you can use the Import OPML tool to import those links into MT Blogroll.

I would suggest reading the README first which describes the installation process and includes some example code. Other documentation includes the Tag Reference which describes the template tags that MT Blogroll...

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