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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Creating an Archive Template

Problem

You want to create pages that provide different views of a weblog's entries.

Solution

Create an archive template that is mapped to a particular archive type.

Discussion

Archive Templates allows for pages to be created for different views of the weblog's entries. MT supports a few date-based archives -- daily, weekly, and monthly -- in addition to individual entry and category archives. These templates are used to create multiple pages, one for each "unit" (time-period, entry or category) of the archive.

Movable Type ships with Archive...

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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

When I post more than one entry per day, the date only shows up for the most recent entry. How do I make the date show for every entry?

Answer

The default templates use the <MTDateHeader> container tag to control the display of entry dates: <MTDateHeader> <h2><$MTEntryDate format="%x"$></h2> </MTDateHeader>

The MTDateHeader tag is a container tag, and the contents of this container will be displayed only if this entry marks a new day in the list of entries.

So, in order to have the date...

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The <MTEntries> container tag has two often-used attributes: lastn and days. The lastn attribute will display the x most recent entries (regardless of whether they all occur on one day or 10 days, for example). The days attribute will display whatever entries occur in the last x days (regardless of whether there are 0 or 18 entries in that timeframe, for example). Each of these options is mutually exclusive, meaning they can't be used together. Or can they? A little PHP does the job!

Why would you want to combine these two attributes? Different display and entry listing options: show the 7 most recent entries, displaying a larger excerpt of any entry in the last 2...

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Creating a Search Template

Problem

You want to customize the look of your search engine results.

Solution

Edit the default.tmpl file in the search_templates directory.

Discussion

MT provides a handful of search tags which are only recognized in these special templates. Let's take a look at those tags and their usage: • MTSearchResults

Similar to MTGoogleSearch, MTSearchResults is a container tag that creates the search results context and loops through each of the returned items. This tag creates an entry context so that any of the MTEntry tags will be valid. The search also...

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Today we are releasing a patch to fix an issue for customers running Movable Type versions 3.16 or 3.17 and using UTF-8 character encoding on their weblogs. Specifically, a bug introduced in Movable Type 3.16 causes the dirify routine to preserve dashes in transformed text where, historically, it has suppressed them. This could be problematic because the dirify routine is used to create all URLs in Movable Type.

While default Movable Type installations are not adversely affected by this bug, there are certain common or legacy customizations (which will be detailed below) that could cause problems. For that reason, if you are using UTF-8 and MT 3.16 or 3.17, we suggest that...

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Creating a Main Index

Problem

You want to create an index of your weblog's latest entries.

Solution

Create an index template using MTEntries and other tags.

Discussion

Weblogs are generally organized so that their entries are in reverse chronological order with the latest post on top. Movable Type ships with a template called Main Index with just such a listing. The Main Index is essentially the homepage for the weblog.

As an index template it has an implied context of the weblog. Entries (represented by the MTEntries tag) are selected based on Default Weblog Display Settings...

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Authored on...

The "Authored On" field is the official entry date and time displayed with the entry on your weblog using the MTEntryDate tag. In reality, it is the time at which you began writing the entry.

Movable Type allows you to edit the date and time in order to pre-date or post-date your entries. If you change this value, it must be in the form of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Permalink...

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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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Question

My file names only display the first fifteen characters of the entry title; I want the full title included in the file name.

Answer

Assuming you're not concerned about breaking inbound links, you can override the default file naming behavior by setting up an Archive File Template for your Individual Entry Archives (do this in Settings > Publishing : Archive Mapping1): <MTEntryDate format="%Y/%m">/<MTEntryTitle dirify="1">.html

Save the change and rebuild your site, and this should create a file with...

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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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Question

My archive pages are getting too long, so I'd like to change them to just a listing of entries with titles and permalinks, rather than showing the full body for every entry. How do I do this?

Answer

Go to the Edit Template screen for the Archive Template you want to change. Look for the section of code that starts with <MTEntries> and ends with </MTEntries>; then replace it with code similar to this: <ul> <MTEntries> <li><MTEntryDate format="%x"> - » <a...

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Really, this is just stretching the work I did to create the previous weighted lists ( keywords and categories). This weighted post date list shows when you've posted the most to your Movable Type weblog(s), sort of like the BlogTimes plugin - but completely different.

Below is the weighted post date list for this web site:

april august december february friday january july june march may monday november october saturday september sunday thursday tuesday wednesday 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1976 1987 1989 1990 1991 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001...

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Question

I changed my mind about the title of an entry and rebuilt, but the file name is still showing the old title for this entry.

Answer

This behavior is intended to avoid breaking your permalinks (as in, if someone linked to your post and then you re-named it later). Movable Type uses the Entry Basename field by default to name Individual Entry Archives. The basename is assigned (from the entry title) the first time an entry is saved, and this field is not updated merely by changing the entry title.

Assuming you're not concerned about...

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John Gruber found (as I did recently) that the Movable Type RSS 0.91 template doesn't validate using the new RSS validator (kudos to Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby for developing the tool. Mine validates now.). John offers a way to fix it using a new custom plugin, <$MTrfc822BlogTimeZone$>. For those that already have my Regex plugin installed, you can do this instead: <lastBuildDate><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S"$> <$MTBlogTimezone regex="s/://"$></MTEntries></lastBuildDate> <pubDate><$MTDate format="%a, %d %b %Y...

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1.2 (2001.11.04)

• Fixed bug when system's crypt implementation uses MD5 passwords (MT was not picking up the proper salt). (Monica Reyes) • Added form-validity checking to mt-comments.cgi for checking email address and URL. (Aaron Straup Cope) • Set $CGI::POST_MAX to 1MB, which means that uploads must be 1MB or less, to prevent denial of service attacks. (Aaron Straup Cope) • Added mt-export.cgi, which will export all of your MT entries into a format that can be suitably re-imported through the import mechanism. It is also useful for keeping backups...

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I'm not sure why I've chosen the new version number to be 2.0 but none-the-less, the new version of Tabs is here. This new version boasts a new feature that will make multi-tasking easier. The "open links in sidebar" checkbox will open the MT manual (or WP Wiki) in the sidebar hence allowing you to edit your template in the main window whilst browse through the tags in the sidebar. Also this new version features a slick new CSS (with updates from Kasey) and javascript 'magic' thanks to Akmal. With 2.0, support for the Opera browser has also been added.

Any suggestions, feature requests, complaints etc. are always welcome. Please post those in the comments. • MT Tabs • WP Tabs

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2.2 (2002.06.26)

• Added TrackBack, a peer-to-peer framework for communication between weblogs. Can track cross-weblog conversations/discussions, provides remote content repositories. Has password protection, IP banning, automatic RSS output, and email notification. • Added MySQL backend support. • Added the <$MTBlogRelativeURL$> tag to produce a relative URL to your main blog. • Added <link> tag navigation (prev, next, start) to Individual and Date-based archive templates. Thanks to Mark Pilgrim. • Strip HTML from author, email, and...

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• Initial beta release

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0.02 (2001.09.25)

• Added FTP URLs to installation instructions. (Daniel Talsky) • Fix some warnings. (Caroline van Oosten de Boer)...

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