It is a common scenario to have a list of entries sorted by date of publication. As this list may be rather long, it is reasonable to group entries and mark each group with a distinct group header. If you want to group by day, you can use the MTDateHeader tag for this task. However, what can be done, if you prefer to group by months?

An example

Suppose you have a couple of entries. Then you might want to create a structured list as follows:

Jan 16th, 2005 - First entry from Jan 16th, 2005 - Second entry from Jan 16th, 2005 - Third entry from Jan 16th, 2005 Jan 20th, 2005 - First entry from Jan 20th, 2005 - Second entry from Jan 20th, 2005 Feb 3rd, 2005 - First entry from...

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I am going to describe the basics of Movable Type in a short introduction. You do not have to know anything about Movable Type for understanding it. However, when following this three-part introduction, you will learn to know the most important components and gain a good overview. • Movable Type Basics / 1 • Movable Type Basics / 2 • Movable Type Basics / 3

Templates

In the previous part we explained that entries are stored in a database. However, you will not find the website's HTML in the database. Instead, just the attributes of an entry are stored as columns in a database table. But how does Movable Type create HTML out of this?

In Movable Type there are a number of...

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It's a shame MT doesn't provide year-based archives because some of us have enough entries for them even if Movable Type hasn't been out that long! Here's what my 2001 blogging year looks like. Well, you can create them manually-- and since you only have to do it once a year, it isn't too bad. Click the 'more' link for details...

All you have to do to build a year archive is create an index template...

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{Part I of a two-part series.}

Ask an IT person if they know what Slashdot's tagline is and they'll reply, "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Slashdot is a very prominent site, but underneath the hood you will find an old jalopy that could benefit from a web standards mechanic.

In this article we will show how an engine overhaul could take place by converting a single Slashdot page from their current HTML 3.2 code, nested tables, and invalid, nonsemantic markup, to a finely tuned web standards racing engine. The goal is not to change Slashdot, but to rebuild it with web standards and show the benefits of the transition.

Before you panic because...

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I am going to describe the basics of Movable Type in a short introduction. You do not have to know anything about Movable Type for understanding it. However, when following this three-part introduction, you will learn to know the most important components and gain a good overview. • Movable Type Basics / 1 • Movable Type Basics / 2 • Movable Type Basics / 3

Movable Type is a CMS

Movable Type is a tool for creating websites. However, it is completely different from for example Macromedia Dreamweaver or a Microsoft Frontpage. Both are tools with a major emphasis is designing a website. You will understand the special features of Movable Type better if you regard it as a Content Management System....

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Ben and I gave a talk at BlogTalk in Vienna on Tuesday. Unfortunately, because of jetlag and some bad timing, we weren't able to convey all the points we wanted to make in the talk itself. So, I'm posting a transcript of the speech we prepared.

I realize that we've never really communicated these messages. I feel strongly — and have always — that personal weblogs are often marginalized because of their presumed triviality. Weblogs are going to hit the mainstream and they're going to be a new method for communicating with small, intimate groups in a more optimized manner.

---

Good morning. My name is Mena Trott and this is Ben Trott, my husband and co-founder of Six...

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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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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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You can have full control over Movable Type creating the HTML for your website. For making this happen, Movable Type can be configured by a couple of templates.

The templates define the style and the contents of the created pages. In the beginning you should best leave those templates untouched. After you have mastered the Movable Type basics, you can change any template for styling the website according to your wishes.

In the Beginning there is a Mess

If you study the templates, you will very soon realize that the templates are not perfectly organized. Rather often identical parts can be found in different templates. Regarding good structure and easy maintenance the templates will...

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I'm happy to report the Zen Garden archives have (finally) undergone a major re-tooling.

The css Zen Garden has been desperate for some TLC for a while now. Submissions have been increasing steadily (sometimes 6 or 7 per day), but management and archiving has been a frustrating problem for quite some time. So I fixed some of the major problems.

Categorization

Since its launch on this domain over two years ago, the css Zen Garden archives have undergone numerous changes to cope with the growing volume of designs.

It seems hard to believe now, but at one point in time all designs I had received fit on one page. When that page grew too weighty, I chopped it into a handful of...

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Validation matters. No it doesn't. Validation is hard. No it isn't. Standards are flexible. No they're not. Does this conversation sound familiar? Updated 18 Jun 2004

While variations of the debate over the ease and importance of following the standards to the letter have been flying around for years, the coming summer months appear to be heating up the arguments once more.

There's a cross-site conversation about validation happening at the moment, and you may have seen it in places I haven't. On this site anyway, a seemingly innocuous opinion piece from last week calling for moderation and sensibility saw the discussion fly completely off the rails...

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This isn't really MT specific. Many people in the past few days have asked me how I managed to increase readership on my blog. Actually I'm surprised many of them stay and read but I'm happy none-the-less.

There are a few key points if you wish to increase or maintain a readership: • Content This is the most important. Regular, on-topic content will attract many readers of the same interest. If you're writing a journal/diary don't ever think that "No One cares about me." I'll come to journals soon.

Also if you blog about a variety of things you will appeal to a larger group of people. For example, on my blog I talk about everything from technology and the internet to my everyday...

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This is a grouped list of all entries. It is sorted by title ascending.

You can also read a commented Sitemap or a simple list of all entries.

Basics

• In the Beginning nothing but Problems • Movable Type Basics / 1 • Movable Type Basics / 2 • Movable Type Basics / 3 • Weblog Spamming Basics

Installation

• Installation under Windows 2003 • Migrating to MySQL

Configuration

• Date Formats • Grouping a List of Entries by Month • Organize your Templates with MTInclude • What is a Permalink?

Plugins

• A Tag within a Tag • Avoid Spam Comments • Build Conditions with the Compare Plugin • Comparison needed for conditional Generation • Enabling Tags in an Entry...

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01.31.2005

BlogBinders: Publish your blog in print

If you're looking for a way to hold your blog in your hands, BlogBinders.com offers a simple and clever service to turn your blog into an attractive, customized book. BlogBinders supports LiveJournal, Movable Type, and TypePad.

Posted by Anil in Web Services at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Trackback (0)

01.31.2005

Gawker launches Lifehacker and Gridskipper

Gawker Media's just added two new Movable Type-powered weblogs to its media empire, as announced by Nick Denton. Lifehacker is a friendly geek site and Gridskipper is a travel site aiming for selectivity.

Posted by Anil in New Sites at 10:45 AM | Permalink |...

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Research shows that low-vision people need dramatically different web design. CSS lets you give them what they need.

Readers of A List Apart will by now be quite familiar with screen-reader users, the largest group of disabled web surfers whom standards compliance actually helps. In a previous article, for example, I examined how well image-replacement techniques work in screen readers (not very).

But - surprise! - most people with impaired vision can still see something, and a large but unquantified segment of this group sees well enough to use a computer with a magnified or zoomed display. We have not done a good job of catering to...

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This is a simple list of all entries. It is sorted by title ascending.

You can also read a commented Sitemap or a list of all entries grouped by category. • A Tag within a Tag • Avoid Spam Comments • Build Conditions with the Compare Plugin • Comparison needed for conditional Generation • Contact • Copyright • Date Formats • Deadline for 'Link And Win' is near • Design Change and Starting the FAQ • Disclaimer • Enabling Tags in an Entry • Error Page 404 • FAQ: Avoid Scrolling when opening Individual Entry Archive • FAQ: Bad ObjectDriver with MySQL • FAQ: Correcting Typos and Grammar • FAQ: Designing the Movable Type Weblog • FAQ: Different Templates for different Categories • FAQ: Entries or Comments with alternating Style...

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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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Some days ago, a new version of MTLookup was released. Please read Second version of MTLookup released for the announcement.

I will describe the new features in several posts, which will be published here in the Movable Type Weblog. Today, I want to inform you about how websites are indexed and show how new websites can be included into MTLookup.

First Release

When the first version of MTLookup was released in June, just three websites were spidered. These were my own Movable Type Weblog, Elise's Learning Movable Type, and Arvind's Movalog. I talked to both Elise and Arvind before the first version was developed. Both looked at pre-release versions and gave important suggestions....

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Hi everyone, my name is Jay Allen and I am the Product Manager for Movable Type. I'm writing today to address - what else? - comment spam.

This is an issue that, as many of you know, I have spent several thousand waking hours working on since its first appearance back in the fall of 2003, both as the author of MT-Blacklist and as the maintainer of the Comment Spam Clearinghouse. This is an issue which Six Apart takes very seriously, as evidenced not only in the improvements in Movable Type v3.x but also, in some part, by my hiring to this position.

Over the last month, we have been devoting a great deal of resources to solving the comment spam problem once and for...

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I am glad that you found my website about Movable Type and I hope that you are able to find important information for your own work. In this entry I want to give you some information about my website, so you are able to use my Movable Type Weblog efficiently.

What is next?

After having read this help, you should have a look at the Sitemap. There I have collected all entries and put them in a reasonable structure. You will get a good overview of all entries.

What is a weblog?

Movable Type is a product developed by Six Apart. It is used for creating websites organized as a Weblog.

The name Weblog« is the short form for »Web Logging«. It is a certain way of...

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