3.17 (2005.06.02)

• Once an entry or category has been set to receive TrackBack pings, disabling pings for it through the UI will not actually refuse pings to that item but will suppress display of those pings. • Rebuilds will fail silently after saving an entry if a problem exists in your templates (for example, mismatched tags or a missing include module). An error will be shown, however, upon manual rebuild using the "Rebuild Site" functionality. • The nofollow plugin will cause a spurious warning for users with older versions of Perl upon running...

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UPDATE: There seems to be a bug with the Sub Categories code which prevents this tutorial from working properly in static index templates. In dynamic index templates it works as it is meant to. Differences can be seen between static and dynamic

Following on from Elise's Expandable List Menus tutorial, this is a way to incorporate Sub Category relationships in your Table of Contents or other similar pages.

Add the following code to an index template wherever you want the Category/Entry list

<div class="subcats"> <MTSubCategories> <MTSubCatIsFirst><ul></MTSubCatIsFirst> <li> <h3><a...

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Google Suggest offers suggestions while you're typing in a search term. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for or how to spell it, the Suggest feature can make finding what you want easier. I've added the same functionality to danandsherree.com. Try it - start typing something in the search box at the right and watch the suggestions appear! It was a pretty easy feature to institute.

In an amazing piece of coincidence, Arvind at Movalog has just announced Suggest Search. For better or worse, his approach works a bit differently than mine.

If you want to use my incarnation of Suggest Search you'll first need a list of suggested...

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Categories provide an alternate means to the weblog's traditional chronological form of organizing entries. Movable Type allows you to enter a list of categories using a variety of methods and assign one or more to each of your entries. You can use MT's categorization facilities to group related entries despite chronology or simply as a means of filtering entry listings in the CMS more easily.

Each entry can be assigned one primary category and any number of secondary categories. The primary category is used when you wish to display information about just one of the categories to which an entry is...

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Now that Movable Type supports a real database with the MySQL support in version 2.2, it's time for some new tags that can let you select entries, comments and categories using any criteria you'd like. Click the 'more' link for full docs and download link.

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtsql-1_52.zip

Installation

To install, place the 'sql.pl' file in your Movable Type 'plugins'...

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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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3.2 (2005.08.25)

Major Features

• New dead-simple AJAX-powered installation/upgrade process (see screencast demo) which replaces mt-load.cgi and all mt-upgrade* scripts. Also eliminated the upgrade distribution since only the config file would be different. • Combined mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi into mt-config.cgi. Shipping as mt-config.cgi-original so as to prevent overwriting when upgrading. • Introduced the new System Overview section which allows administrators to configure and manage aspects of the system across all weblogs • Introduced a plugin-based feedback rating framework which scores comments and TrackBacks upon submission on a scale from -10 (least desirable) to 10 (most desirable)...

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This hack is deprecated in favour of the MT Protect plugin. Please use the plugin instead of this hack!

One of the biggest wants with MT is to password protect individual entries. There are several hacks and bits of code that allow you to password protect entries but many of them are long winded and many involve separate categories. I wanted a simple way to selectively password protect entries no matter what the category, what blog etc.

So I created a new field on the entry screen (click screenshot for a larger view) that would contain the password. For this to work you will need to be using MT 3.1x, mySQL and PHP. To see this in action see the front page on my blog, enter the password "password" and you will be granted access for 10 days....

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•

01: Installation and Upgrade

• Introduction • Choosing the Right Weblog Platform • Finding Perl on your Server...

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Update: A 2.01 release of MT-IfEmpty is now available, which mainly adds support for dynamic publishing in MT 3.1x.

You can download this plugin here: mtifempty-2_01.zip.

Usage: <MTIfEmpty var="EntryTitle">(untitled)</MTIfEmpty> <$MTEntryTitle$>

Embedded expression support works like this: <MTIfNotEmpty expr="[MTEntries days='1']1[/MTEntries]"> We...

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Updated. Originally posted March 29, 2004. Providing printer-friendly versions of your weblog entries can be useful to your weblog readers. For example, my cooking weblog has printer-friendly versions of the recipes like this. Learning Movable Type links to printer-friendly versions at the end of each entry. There are several ways to create printer-friendly versions. I've outlined two methods in this tutorial. The first method is a simple header tag and CSS trick that automatically generates printer-friendly pages whenever someone goes to print a page from your blog. The second method is a bit more involved, creating a printer-friendly archive template with associated...

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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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The contents of this container tag will be displayed when the last entry listed by a MTSearchResults tagset is reached. This tag is only recognized in search templates.

Back to top | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTBlogResultHeader

...

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In creating templates for your Movable Type installation, you'll find that the <MTEntryCategories>, <MTCategories>, and <MTParentCategories> container tags have a "glue" attribute. The glue attribute is used to separate items with a string. For example, joining category/subcategory names together with a comma or slash to create breadcrumbs (a path tracing your entry's hierarchy). A simple example of breadcrumbs might look like this:

Category Subcategory Entry

Often it is desirable to use an HTML tag as the "glue," though quickly trying it you'll find it doesn't work. The extra greater-than and less-than signs...

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Working with Category Tags

Problems

You need to display category data in your published pages.

Solutions

Use the template tags prefixed with MTCategory.

Discussion

Category tags can be used to display a list of categories and their information in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical forms. These tags can be used in MTArchiveList archive_type="category", MTEntryCategories, MTCategories or MTSubCategories tag contexts. Category tags may also be used anywhere in a Category Archive template.

The basic tags when working with non-hierarchical data are as follows. (For an...

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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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You may have notice the new del.icio.this buttons on the site.

These allow easy bookmarking in del.icio.us (yes, optimistic, I know). The bookmarked item is the individual post.

This is done by including the following in the Movabletype template, inside MTEntries:

<p class="delicious"><a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&amp;title=<$MTEntryTitle encode_url="1"$>" title="Add the post entitled <$MTEntryTitle encode_url="1"$>, and JUST this post to your del.icio.us account">del.icio.this</a></p>

The style for this is as follows, I use a second...

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This Movable Type plugin implements a set of template tags for displaying the first letter of a section of text as a "drop cap." A drop cap is a large initial letter of a paragraph that spans more than one line of text. The CSS2 standard lets you create drop caps using the first-letter pseudo-element. However, this will not display properly in older browsers, and it also doesn't allow you to use images for your drop caps. This plugin is designed to let you do drop caps the old-fashioned way, by using an HTML table or image with align="left", which will cause the paragraph to wrap around the drop cap.

The DropCap plugin currently only formats the first letter of the entire piece of text you...

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Fully load entries into special date-based archive contexts, to use MTArchiveCount or MTEntries.

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Allows for easy filtering of category listings to include or exclude certain categories. Not for MTEntries containers.

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