For those of you with multiple MT weblogs, have you ever wanted to move an entry from one blog to another? or the entries from only one category from one to another weblog? You can copy the entries from the first weblog and paste them into the second, but how to move the associated comments or trackbacks?

Here's one fairly straightforward method.

1. Create a new index template in the weblog that contains the entries you wish to move. Give the template name any name you wish. Call the output file mt.txt. Copy and paste the following code into the new index template:

<MTEntries lastn="1000" sort_order="ascend" category="Your Category Name Goes...

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Seeing as how Elise is having fun with PHP and databases I though I'd show you how to easily play around with the database in dynamic publishing. This is all stuff I've picked up when talking to Brad Choate, the man behind the amazing dynamic system.

Movable Type 3.1+ comes with a dynamic publishing system that has EZSQL rolled in for all the SQL databases MT supports and as a result interaction with and manipulating of the DB becomes a piece of cake. At the moment, however, this system works only for MySQL databases.

First of all to call the DB, you just need three simple lines:

<?php include('<$MTCGIServerPath$>/php/mt.php'); $mt = new MT(<$MTBlogID$>, '<$MTCGIServerPath$>/mt.cfg...

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The idea is pretty simple: returning visitors get to see only new content, not the old stuff. After all, if they're returning, that's probably what they want.

Using a cookie, I can track when you've last visited the front page. If any content is newer than the cookie, it gets published. If not, a "no new entries" message gets displayed. And so I dubbed it "Cookie Publishing."

You'll need to be able to use PHP to implement this feature. Visit danandsherree.com's front page to see it work - first a cookie will be set, then refresh to see it in action - or keep reading for details of how to set this up yourself.

2005/08/02...

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Blogs that have multiple authors sometimes have the need for a 'credits' page or something like that that lists everyone. This plugin allows you to do just that by providing a <MTAuthors> tag that Movable Type lacks. Continue reading for documentation and download link.

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtauthors-1_32.zip

Installation

To install, place the 'authors.pl' file in...

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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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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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This Movable Type plugin implements a pair of template tags that allow you to filter a listing of categories by specifying the categories either to include in or to exclude from the listing.

Installation

To install the FilterCategories plugin, upload the file FilterCategories.pl to the plugins directory within your Movable Type directory. If you do not already have a plugins directory, create one before uploading the file. For more information about Movable Type plugins, see the documentation.

Contact

Please address questions, comments, bug reports, feature requests, interesting usage examples, etc., to mtplugins [AT] staggernation [DOT] com, or post them in the Plugin Development area of the Movable Type...

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The default main index page of a Movable Type weblog displays entries made in the last 7 days. You can change this number by entering a different number in the weblog config preferences.

lastn If you keep the default setup, you may notice that if you don't post for a while (more than 7 days) your main weblog index page becomes blank - no entries. To change the setup so that the weblog displays the last 7 entries instead of entries in the last 7 days you need to add a lastn attribute to the MTEntries tag.

Changing <MTEntries> to <MTEntries lastn="7"> in the Main Index template will cause the index page to display the last 7 entries. Adding the attribute lastn="10"...

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Seeing the flurry of activity around Inline Editing on Wordpress ever since Jay Allen mentioned it on his panel at SXSW, I thought it was time us MT'ers had something similar. Download the plugin. This animation better highlights what this plugin does (600kb)

Preserve the directories in the zip starting from your root MT directory (therefore files in the extlib/ folder in the zip go into MT's extlib/ directory and mt-ie-cookiecheck.php goes into your root mt directory etc.)

I'll need to talk you through installing this. For every blog you want this enabled on, you will need to create two index templates of the two text files in the zip (mt-inlineeditor.php and mt-inlineeditor.js) I've...

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Updated Sept 14, 2004

A sideblog is a separate weblog which appears in the sidebar of your main weblog. Sideblogs are often used as a convenient way to list out interesting links, something akin to a frequently-updated, public list of IE favorites. Rather than mixing in your "this link is cool" entries in with all of your other entries, with the accompanying overhead of code for individual entries, comments and trackbacks, you can streamline your links into a linkblog.

A great example of a linkblog can be found at MovableBLOGthe Asides section in the right sidebar.

Making a sideblog is pretty straightforward; it can be accomplished by creating a new weblog in Movable Type and using...

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Similar to the weighted category list, the weighted keyword list builds a list of keywords used on your site and uses varying font sizes to show how popular they are. This list might be more representative of what your site is about than the weighted category list is. Here's the list for this site:

adobe backup book camera camporee car cars cat category cd christmas collection collector color com computer cow danandsherree detail digital dpi dvd elsewhere file files film fire florida image life light links monitor movable movie news nikon page paper park photo photos photoshop php pinball print profile radio raw river scan scanner...

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Question

I want to have the most recently published entries in the sidebar. My code works most of the time. However, the category archive and the date-based archive only show some of these entries. How can I show all entries?

Answer

You have probably saved the code for the sidebar in a module template, and include that template from the Main Index Template, the Category Template, and the Date-based Template. Alternatively, you simply copied the code for the sidebar into the three templates (if so, please read Organize your Templates with MTInclude for learning an important feature of Movable Type).

Your code for showing the ten most recently published entries might be as...

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UPDATE: Multiblog 1.1 has been released which fixes bugs with the GlobalListings. I have updated the tags in this tutorial to correspond to MultiBlog only.

Have you got two or more blogs that you would like to 'merge.' By merge I mean show all entries on one page, chronologically and inline - for a greater understand take a look at my blog. The front page shows entries from the main blog plus the sideblog - the sideblog entries are formatted differently, the little bars !

The plugins you will need are: * MultiBlog * GlobalListings

Multiblog does have the GlobalListings plugin built into it, but at the time of writing this tutorial that section of the plugin didn't work. So I am using...

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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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This is the first in a series of tutorials regarding the API for developing Movable Type plugins for the new PHP dynamic rendering engine.

This tutorial applies to the current release of MT, which is version 3.11. Subsequent 3.x releases should also be compatible (and releases beyond that, but I cannot say for sure).

PHP Dynamic Publishing Architecture

The first thing we should cover is the architecture behind it all. In terms of PHP scripts, the following shows the order of invocation from request to response. • HTTP request • .htaccess rule / error document • mtview.php • MT Class (MT.php) • MTViewer Class, aka Smarty (MTViewer.php) • PHP • HTTP response with output

Let's examine each stage of...

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This Movable Type plugin implements a set of template tags for defining a section of text and/or HTML code as "glue" that will appear between items (entries, categories, comments, etc.) in a listing, and will not appear after the last item in the listing. The functionality is similar to that of the glue attribute of Movable Type's MTEntryCategories tag, although the way the plugin is used within a template is somewhat different.

Installation

To install the Glue plugin, upload the file Glue.pl to the plugins directory within your Movable Type directory. If you do not already have a plugins directory, create one before uploading the file. For more information about Movable Type plugins, see...

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This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Mike Everett-Lane of Ishbadiddle.

A Subject Index can give context to your posts and makes it easier for your readers to browse what you've written on specific topics. Unlike Categories, which are limited, top-down, and hierarchical, Subject tags are open-ended and limitless. While your blog's Category system is like the Table of Contents of a book, a Subject Index is like the book's Index, one that is constantly updated.

First, you might want to read my blog post on how the use of Subject Indexes can improve the organization of your blog. You can see it in action there as well as here on LMT. For instance, here's the index of all my subjects, and the index of all my posts on the subject of...

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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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This is the first in a series of tutorials regarding the API for developing Movable Type plugins for the new PHP dynamic rendering engine.

This tutorial applies to the current release of MT, which is version 3.11. Subsequent 3.x releases should also be compatible (and releases beyond that, but I cannot say for sure).

PHP Dynamic Publishing Architecture

The first thing we should cover is the architecture behind it all. In terms of PHP scripts, the following shows the order of invocation from request to response. • HTTP request • .htaccess rule / error document • mtview.php • MT Class (MT.php) • MTViewer Class, aka Smarty (MTViewer.php) • PHP • HTTP response with output

Let's examine each stage of...

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Many Movable Type users have wished for the ability to define additional custom fields for entries. A future version of MT may include such functionality. This plugin is a stopgap measure until we have a version of Movable Type that allows custom fields. It lets you define custom fields on a per-weblog basis, by creating one or more SQL tables to store the additional data (this plugin has been designed to work only when using MySQL as your MT backend; see below for more on this).

Some users have managed to add custom fields to their copies of Movable Type by modifying the field definitions within MT. See this page and this thread and this thread. However, this approach has several...

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