One of the changes I made with Scrapbook, the new site design, is to add a little "no comments yet" or "no TrackBacks yet" message to the entries that haven't received any. Using a little PHP, it's easy to do.

Below is some code to do this, using default template code as an example. The PHP is bolded to (hopefully) make it easier for you to institute on your site.

<?php if (<MTEntryCommentCount> != '0' ) { ?> <MTComments> <$MTCommentBody$> <p class="posted">Posted by <$MTCommentAuthorLink default_name="Anonymous" spam_protect="1"$> at <$MTCommentDate$></p> </MTComments> <?php } else { ?>...

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Question

When I save an entry or rebuild my site, I receive an error that says "Writing to filename.new failed".

Answer

End of the error message says No such file or directory

• Make sure that you have created the folder where you want Movable Type to publish your blog files.

• Make sure you have properly set your path(s) in Settings > Publishing1. In almost all cases, you should be using a full server path for Site Root ( and Archive Root, if enabled)2. (See How can I find my full server path? for more information.)

End of the error message says...

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Question

How do I show all entries from the same month or category as the current entry on an Individual Archive?

Answer

If you want a list on the Individual pages which only shows entries in the same month or category as the entry, you will need to do this with a second Archive Template and a PHP (or SSI) include.

Create The New Template

Navigate to Templates and click the Archives tab1. Click Create New Archive Template.

Assign the template a name of your choosing (to distinguish it from your normal Monthly or Category Archive Template). In...

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Question

I've just installed Movable Type. How do I integrate my current site design into the system, so that the pages will now be updated with my Movable Type data whenever I publish a new entry?

Answer

Because each person's site is unique, there's not really a "one size fits all" way of integration with Movable Type; it's a process that differs according to your own preferences and needs. Overall, the best way to familiarize yourself with how the system works is to set up a test blog in a separate area of your site, and then make...

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This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Chris Vannoy of Circadian Rhythm.

Movable Type's default templates have always been intimidating things to those new to the system, and with Six Apart's decision to standardize their template structure across all three of their blogging platforms, TypePad and LiveJournal being the other two, they've become a lot more intimidating in version 3.2 of Movable Type.

This standardization is a great idea if you are a web designer already familiar with the intricacies of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The standardization means that, assuming users stick to the default templates, you could design one stylesheet that would work on sites on all three...

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09.29.2004

Behind the Scenes - Brenna Koch

Behind The Scenes is a new series where we here at Six Apart discuss what tools (software, technology, etc.) we use to do our work.

I'm Brenna Koch and I work in technical support for Six Apart. If you're curious, "Cook" is how you pronounce my last name. I usually hear "Cotch" since that's how it is said in some areas and I also hear more ah... interesting variations. But now you know.

We have many browsers around in the support department but my favorite is Safari. I utilize keyboard commands with my bookmarks bar for fast access on the sites I use all the time like my test weblogs and pages in the help system...

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Question

I rebuilt my site, but no entries appear on my main page.

Answer

Check The Post Status For The Entry

Make sure that your entries are set to a status of Published and not Unpublished1. If you change the setting, you must remember to save the entry to update your site.

Check Your Default Weblog Display Settings

By default, Movable Type will use the Entries to Display setting in Settings > General : Default Weblog Display Settings2 to determine how many entries to display on the page (as well as on your other index templates).

If you've chosen...

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Question

I'm unable to publish my weblog index to the root folder of my site due to host restrictions, so I have it publishing to a subfolder. But I still want it to be the first page visitors see when they browse to my domain name.

Answer

If your account is hosted on an Apache server, see if your host permits you to use .htaccess files.

An .htaccess file is a hidden system file in your server directories. You may or may not have one by default, depending on your host. The file can be created in any text editor and uploaded to the directory you...

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Question

My permalinks are pointing to the wrong archive type. For example, I want them to point to the Individual Entry Archive, but instead they point to the Monthly Archive for the entry.

Answer

When you use the MTEntryPermalink tag, Movable Type will create links that point to the archive type you have set as your Preferred Archive Type in Settings > Publishing : Publishing Preferences1.

So, you can either change your Preferred Archive Type to Individual, or you can add the archive_type attribute to the MTEntryPermalink or MTEntryLink tag:...

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Question

When clicking any of the archive links on my site, I get a 404 error.

Answer

Versions 3.2 or Higher

If you're using Advanced Archive Publishing on the Settings > Publishing screen, make sure that the settings you've designated for Archive URL and Archive Root correspond correctly to the same location on the server.

Versions Prior to 3.2

This usually means your Local Archive Path in Weblog Configuration > Core Set-up does not correspond to the same location on your server as the Local Archive URL, so you should check your settings...

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07.27.2005

Dynamic Publishing support for PostgreSQL and SQLite

It's a common refrain for us to talk about Movable Type's wide platform support, but we really are committed to making sure Movable Type's full power is available on the widest variety of platforms. It's an investment that takes a lot of care and attention, but we think it's well worth the effort.

For example, take databases. Movable Type has long supported multiple databases, with MySQL and Berkeley DB being among the most popular. But two mature, popular open-source database technologies that a lot of our users have requested have also part of our platform support for over two years: PostgreSQL and...

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Question

When I save an entry or rebuild my site, I receive an error that says mkdir /some/path: Permission denied at /full/path/to/mt/lib/MT/FileMgr/Local.pm.

Answer

This error means that Movable Type is trying to create a folder which does not already exist at the specified location. Movable Type cannot create your blog folder for you, so: • Make sure that you have created the folder where you want Movable Type to publish your blog files. • Make sure you have properly set your paths in Settings > Publishing1. In almost all cases, you should be...

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Question

Accented characters display incorrectly in my pages.

Answer

After Importing

If you are importing a weblog from an earlier version of Movable Type (before 3.0), your data is most likely encoded using the ISO-8859-1 character encoding, but Movable Type 3.x is set by default to use the UTF-8 encoding.

To change the character encoding used by Movable Type, open mt-config.cgi1 in a plain text editor and find the line that reads: PublishCharset utf-8

Change utf-8 to the same encoding that was used in the PublishCharset option in your old...

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Question

Movable Type doesn't have the permissions it needs on Windows to publish my files.

Answer

The user (iusr_server, where server is the unique name of your machine) is not assigned any permissions by default, so you'll need to add that user to the folder where you want Movable Type to publish your weblog files.

Give the user either full control, or (at a minimum) the following permissions: • modify • read & execute • list folder contents • read • write

Once you've added those permissions to the dialog box and before you click OK, go to Advanced on the...

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Question

How can I switch my site to use PHP file extensions?

Answer

Update Archive Settings

Log into Movable Type and navigate to Settings > Publishing1. Locate the setting for File Extension for Archive Files under Publishing Preferences and enter php in the setting field (without a leading period).

Scroll down to Archive Mapping2, and check to see if any of the Archive File Template boxes are filled in - if so, change the extension to php there as well. Press the SAVE button.

Update Index Templates

Navigate to Templates. For each Index Template...

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Question

I published a new entry, but no one on my notification list received the email telling them about it.

Answer

Note: There was a bug introduced in version 3.15 which affected the send notification feature. Please upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type to eliminate this bug as a possible cause for this issue.

Have You Sent the Notification?

The notifications for new entries are not sent out automatically, so make sure you have sent the notification after publishing your entry:

Navigate to the Edit Entry screen of the entry for...

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The Movable Type team has been hard at work and we have some very exciting things coming in the 2005 release schedule. To kick things off we are proud to introduce Movable Type 3.16.

Movable Type 3.16 sports significant improvements to application security and over one hundred other fixes which really make it a highly recommended upgrade for all users.

Movable Type 3.16 is a simple drop-in replacement for any user who is running version 3.1 or higher. As long as you are running one of these more recent versions, there is no need to run an upgrade script or do anything other than upload the files in the upgrade distribution. Of course, if you're running a version older...

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One of the things that bothered me about the switch to dynamic archives is that I had to stop using the Compare plugin, since it doesn't support dynamic publishing (or didn't, at any rate). With the use of Smarty, you can very easily reproduce this functionality, and though I haven't done any benchmarks or anything, I suspect that the performance gains are dramatic.

For instance, I used to use something like this in my template to conditionally show text around comments: <MTIfEqual a="[MTEntryCommentCount]" b="0" numeric="1"> No comments yet! </MTIfEqual> <MTIfEqual a="[MTEntryCommentCount]" b="1" numeric="1"> 1 comment!...

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Question

I don't like the default filenames Movable Type assigns to my files. Can these be changed?

Answer

Yes, you can control these filenames.

Index Templates

For Index Templates, you can change the Output File name on the Edit Template screen.

Archive Templates

For Archive Templates, you can use Archive File Templates (on the Settings > Publishing screen, under Archive Mapping1).

This feature lets you customize the names/paths of your archive files, using standard Movable Type tags. This allows you to impose a directory structure and...

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Question

I'm having trouble getting a full export of my entries using the default export function. Are there other ways I can perform an export?

Answer

Movable Type contains a function to export all of the entries in your blog, but that doesn't mean your options stop there. You can easily export a single entry, all entries from one or more categories, or break your exports down by month (helpful for those with large blogs whose server times out on the export).

The secret is in this export format file. By downloading this file and pasting it into...

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