XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the Eurodollar of web development. Both XML and the Euro bring order to chaos; both offer undeniable, wide–ranging benefits; both are poised, in 2002, to change the way we do things. Frankly, both scare the crap out of people.

For web developers, 2002 is a time to conquer fears and take their first hands–on approach to XML. It's time to examine XML and realize the practical benefits that it can provide to web projects today.

The bankers can fend for themselves.

XML, HTML & Databases

If you need a good analogy to describe XML to other people, don't mention HTML. Although XML looks a lot like HTML,...

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Updated

Occassionally databases get corrupted, servers fail or web hosts go out of business. So it's a good idea to back up your Movable Type blogs. There are many methods for doing so, a few of which I will cover here. The back-up process is much easier if you are using MySQL as your database, which, by the way, is one good reason to use MySQL over the default Berkeley DB.

TypeMover

TypeMover is a new plugin for the purpose of backing up, restoring, and/or migrating your Movable Type weblog. It is compatible with MT3 and later versions of Movable Type. From the TypeMover website:

TypeMover is a MovableType plugin. It adds backup, restore and migration features that let you get...

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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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I find the Configure Active Plugins list on the MT front page very useful, however this list has been getting longer and longer and I install more and more plugins that register on there. Eventually this bugged me (big surprise eh?) and I decided to move that to its own page. Click the thumbnail to the side for a larger image.

First open up lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and find around line 40

'list_blogs' => &list_blogs,

and add right underneath it

'list_plugins' => &list_plugins,

Next around line 342 (at the end of sub list_blog) fine

$param{no_breadcrumbs} = 1; $app->build_page('list_blog.tmpl', \%param); }

and add after it

sub list_plugins { my $app = shift;...

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Question

When first trying to view the Movable Type application using the mt.cgi program, I receive a long error that starts Can't load error template, got error 'Loading template 'error.tmpl' failed and continues from there.

Answer

This indicates that Movable Type can't find the files in your tmpl directory.

First check to ensure that the directory tmpl is in the same directory as mt.cgi; that inside tmpl there is a directory called cms; and that inside cms there are a number of files with the extension .tmpl.

In addition, make sure that the...

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Installing Plug-ins

Problem

You want to extend Movable Type's functionality and install a plug-in.

Solution

Installing a basic plug-in requires you to place a file with an .pl extension into the plugins directory; however more advanced plug-ins may have additional steps.

Discussion

Plug-ins are Perl scripts with a .pl extension that reside in the subdirectory named plugins under the Movable Type application directory. (If you are running an older version of MT that was upgraded and have not installed a plug-in before, you may have to create this directory.) Each time MT is...

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

The installation instructions in the Movable Type Install Guide contain a section in the Configuration area called Enable Security Features. These instructions tell you to uncomment the Umask lines in your mt.cfg if your server is running cgiwrap or suexec. If you don't know what CGIwrap or suEXEC are, you may be tempted to skip this step. Don't. This step gives your MT installation extra security, which we will explain. (Note that this tutorial is only appropriate for MT installations on Linux/Apache web servers.)

What is CGIWrap or suEXEC?

CGIWrap and suEXEC are features...

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UPDATE

I've had this idea swimming around my head ever since Planet Mozilla launched but never implemented it because until a few weeks ago I was under the impression that my host did not provide Python.

Anyways, announcing Planet Movable Type.

What is it?

Planet MT aggregates posts from the following weblogs: • 6A ProNet (feed) • Brad Choate (feed) • Chad Everett (feed) • David Raynes (feed) • Girlie's Tips & Tricks (feed) • Learning Movable Type (feed) • MT Forge Dev (feed) • MT Plugins (feed) • MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse (feed) • Mena's Corner (feed) • Movable Type News (feed) • MovableStyle (feed) • Movalog (feed) • Neil's World (feed) • Phil Ringalda (feed) • Six Apart (feed) • The Tweezer's Edge...

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Sometimes you may want to keep an entry, or all entries within a certain category, at the top of your weblog, above all of your other entries. For example, you may want to highlight announcements at the top of your site, or you might have a site explanation or introduction that you wish to maintain at the top. There are several ways to accomplish this.

1. Changing the date of the entry.

If all you want to do is to put one particular entry at the top of your blog, perhaps only for a limited time, the easiest way to accomplish this is to give it a date that is posted at a later date than all of the other entries. To do this, in the edit entry window, scroll to the bottom of the page....

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The first question/answer from Ask Arvind...

Lea writes:

Can you provide tips on how to have cruft-free URLs (a la diveintomark.org, as well as others)? I already have this employed in my blog, but a lot of others don't.

The diveintomark tutorial in question can be found here.

First of all what is cruft ? Cruft is basically the extensions of webpages for example .php, .html etc. In the field of SEO it is meant to be very bad. Here's a - hopefully easier - method to have cruft-free urls. For this to work you will need to install the Short-Titles plugin (thanks Amit!)

•

Blank out "File Extension for Archive Files" under Weblog Config → Preferences •

Change the Archive File...

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2.5 (2002.10.08)

• Localization: the MT interface can be available in multiple languages, on a per-author setting. • Integrated Jay Allen's mt-search (Thanks, Jay!). We've made the following changes from version 1.31b: • Rewrote ``new comments search'' to make it more scalable (using recently_commented_on functionality) • Added a search log through the Activity Log. • Added search request throttling, to help against denial of service attacks. • Merged mt-search.cfg directives into mt.cfg....

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Updated 09/05 - Search Throttle

The search form that comes with default MT templates is very limited in what it lets you do - basically it only lets you search the current blog and allows you to not specify any oother options. Here are some things you can do with searches. The code listed here can go into any template but the code must be placed within the search form ie <form>....</form>. Also each block of code is independent. You don't need to use previous code for it to work - as long as it is placed within the search form it will work no matter what other code you have or have not implemented !

Search Where ?

Replace the search form code you have with something like...

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Sometimes you would like to display the age of an entry as compared to a specific date. In the case, of my daughter's blog, I've displayed her actual age at the time of each post, based on her birth date and the authored-on date of the entry.

Updated to support time difference too.

Updated to correct date_delta function's accuracy.

This is a Movable Type/PHP tip. I haven't...

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Ok, my games index is now live. It's a fairly complete list, although I know there are a bunch of DOS games that aren't on there just because I don't have them with me anymore (they're at home with Mom and Dad collecting dust). Anyway have a peek. If you're geographically nearby let me know if you'd like to borrow something. (While I'm at it, I might as well make this a Movable Type tip-- click the 'more' link for the goods.)

...

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This is a test with paged "more" text... implemented using a couple of PHP tricks. :)

Read on to see it in action and to see how it's done.

The implementation of paged content is pretty simple. I'll use this test entry to explain how I did it. First of all, you'll need PHP 4 installed on your server. You can use this same technique with other server-side tools like ASP, ColdFusion, etc., but this...

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Except when you're writing or editing entries, much of the time spent in Movable Type is in managing the listings of entries, comments, TrackBacks, authors, or other items in the system. In past versions, listings could be inconsistent, with listings offering varying degrees of control, and the arrangement of information on some pages being frustrating. Worse, when the same type of information was listed in two different places, it wasn't always the same. For example, the comment listings page and the display of comments on an individual entry worked in completely different ways.

Every listing page improved

With Movable Type 3.2, we've made some massive improvements to the way that...

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The FAQ has been extended, explaining the following questions.

June 2nd, 2005: In Movable Type, entries or comments or other objects are often shown in lists. For example, the main index shows the most recent entries, a category archive also shows entries, or an individual entry archive shows comments. I preferred if not all items in such lists were styled the same. For example, there should be an alternating white / gray background. How can this be done? Read FAQ: Entries or Comments with alternating Style

June 1st, 2005: I have a couple of categories. When using the MTCategories tag, these are sorted by name. However, I preferred if I could choose the order manually. There is a...

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If you have a lot of content - entries, categories, sidebar information - sooner or later things may begin to look a little cluttered on your weblog. One way to address this is to make some of your lists expandable and collapsible, as I have done with LMT's Table of Contents. There are probably many different ways to do this. I have found one method, based on Javascript, that is simple to implement and appears to work fine, from Bleeding Ego.

1. Upload listmenu.js to your server.

Copy the following script into a new file with a texteditor. Save the script as "listmenu.js". Upload the script to a location within the public directory of your server using an FTP program. (You can...

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All roads in weblogging lead to posting entries, for without posted entries there is no weblog. It should come as no surprise that the Entries Listing and New/Edit Entry screens are where most users will find themselves when working with Movable Type.

In these screens a user can view what entries are in a weblog, filter them based on certain criteria, make new posts and edit existing ones.

Entries Listing

The Entries Listing screen displays either all the entries for the weblog or just the entries made by you. What gets displayed depends on whether or not you have been granted Edit All Posts access.

...

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Question

A list of all known issues in the latest version of Movable Type. Please be sure to review this list before using the product or opening a support ticket.

Answer

As of Version 3.16, released April 18, 2005 • Configuration • A new application method ("app_path") prevents the login cookie from being set when Movable Type is installed in the root folder, rather than a subfolder. See Keep getting login screen for the solution. • Archives • It is impossible to produce files with no file extension by using the File extension for archive...

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