MTSubCategories

A specialized version of MTCategories that respects the hierarchical structure of categories.

Attributes: • include_current - An optional boolean attribute that controls the inclusion of the current category in the list. • sort_method - An optional and advanced usage attribute. A fully qualified Perl method name to be used to sort the categories. • sort_order - Specifies the sort order of the category labels. Recognized values are "ascend" and "descend." The default is "ascend." This attribute is ignored if sort_method has been set.

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A specialized version of MTEntries that is aware of subcategories.

Attributes: • category - The value of this attribute is a category label. This will include any entries to that category and any of its subcategories.

Since it is possible for two categories to have the same label, you can specify one particular category by including its ancestors, separated by slashes. For instance if you have a category "Flies" and within it a subcategory labeled "Fruit", you can ask for that category with category="Flies/Fruit". This would distinguish it from a category labeled "Fruit" within another called "Food...

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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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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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• 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 mt-check.cgi, mt-testbg.cgi or any of the...

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Strange adding a category called categories... but I digress.

Two Roads Diverged...

I've been working on a new blog in which I want to sort the categories in order other than alphabetical. Now, there is an quick and ugly solution, and there is a time-consuming and beautiful solution. First, we'll look at the ugly way of sorting your categories of the U.S. Presidents:

The Easy, Ugly Way

Create first category for Washington, only call it 01:Washington. Create second category for Adams... name it 02:Adams. So and so on through the U.S. Presidents. When Movable Type builds your page, it catches those initial numbers and puts them in order by number. A...

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When I set about re-creating MovaDir, I wanted to create a form that would post directly into MT. I soon discovered that I would need to use the XML-RPC API to really streamline it. This is a tutorial that will guide you through setting up a form that will allow a user to manipulate entry fields and then rebuild the entry. Use of the mySQL database is required.

You will need to create a new index template called Incutio XML-RPC Library, set the output file as IXR_Library.inc.php and copy this file for the template body.

Next create a new index template called IP Tracking with an output file iptracking.php and copy this file into the template body.

This is a very neat script written by...

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Question

I have a couple of categories in my weblog. By default, these are listed on the start page. I want to hide a certain category. How can I do that?

Answer

The start page is based on the »Main Index Template«. We have to change that template for making categories disappear.

If you do not know the term »Main Index Template«, then please have a look at FAQ: Explaining the Templates. Moreover, we will need the Compare Plugin. If you do not know it, or it has not yet been installed, please read the entry Comparison needed for conditional Generation.

Open your Movable Type project. Click »Templates« in the left navigation bar. A list of...

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The default Movable Type MT3 templates come with a sidebar on the right side of the Main Index page, but not on any of the individual entry, monthly, or category archive pages.

There are two basic ways to add a sidebar to archive pages. The easiest for beginners is just to copy and paste the existing sidebar code into the correct place in the archive templates. The slightly more involved, but much preferable method is to create a separate file with the sidebar code and use a PHP include or an MT include to include the file into the various templates. You can also very easily move a sidebar from the right to the left side of your weblog pages.

Where is the Sidebar Code? MT3.1 and...

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Question

When rebuilding my site or saving an entry, I get the following error:

Build error in template 'Main Index': Error in <MTSubCategories> tag: <$MTCategoryArchiveLink$> can be used only if you have enabled Category archives.

Answer

You will need to either enable Category Archives on your weblog; or remove the code which is causing the error from your Main Index Template.

Enable Category Archives

Navigate to Settings > Publishing : Archive Mapping1 and check the box next to Category. Click Save Changes and then Rebuild Site...

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I want to display a list of categories in a sidebar on my Category Archive Template page. If I enter the code from the Main Index, my category archive sidebar comes up empty (literally, it displays nothing under the categories heading). To fix that, I am calling that same code into my category archive template as a php include.

Create a new index template called categories.php and place in it the sidebar code (from main index template) for your CATEGORIES:

<MTSubCategories> <MTSubCatIsFirst><ul></MTSubCatIsFirst> <MTIfNonZero tag="MTCategoryCount"> <li><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"...

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I recently stumbled across David Raynes' excellent SubCategories plugin. This plugin allows you to define existing categories as parents and children of one another. For instance, I have a Movable Type category. This category has been defined as a parent of my SomeDays and ModCheck categories.

So when you go to my Movable Type category archives, you will see those entries (such as this one) that are entered directly into the category, as well as those entries that belong on the child categories of SomeDays and ModCheck. Meanwhile, SomeDays and ModCheck can exist as their own separate categories too.

The problem that I ran into while doing this is that the most excellent Supplemental...

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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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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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3.16 (2005.04.13)

Security

• Made several important improvements with regards to application authentication and security.

Notifications

• Fixed ``Send Notifications'' feature for multiple recipients. • Fixed a bug where comment notifications weren't being sent for some moderated comments.

Error checking

• Improved validation of user input in many places. Leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed from author names, category names, and blog names. None of these can be left blank except for a known issue with editing the...

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•

01: Installation and Upgrade

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

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MTSubCatsRecurse

Recursively call the MTSubcategories container with the subcategories of the category in context.

Attributes: • max_depth - An optional attribute that specifies the maximum number of times the system should recurse. The default is infinite depth.

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MTSubCatsIsFirst

The contents of this container tag will be displayed when the first category listed by a MTSubCategories tagset is reached.

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MTSubCatsIsLast

The contents of this container tag will be displayed when the last category listed by a MTSubCategories tagset is reached.

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Once in a while, my own programs analyze MTLookup's search logs. They find out, which keywords have been used most often. They also look for search phrases, which resulted in long result lists - trying to find those queries whose result lists are so long that it was difficult for you to find what you were looking for.

Today, I started with integrating a new feature into MTLookup: giving suggestions to the user, how a search query might be improved and better results be found.

Offline Analysis

Currently, this feature is in an experimental state. It is not yet a true part of MTLookup. It is run and supervised by me on demand.

Therefore, the suggestions will not appear immediately...

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