As the campaign has been successfully completed, here's MT Blogroll 2.0. Thanks to all those that donated to the campaign, the donors will get priority if bugs or problems are faced. If you feel like donating, the campaign is now over, but feel free to use the donate button on the sidebar.

There are some new features including the ability to quickly add a blogroll entry by just entering the URI and having MT-Blogroll gather all the other information. I've also added the ability to define the the names of the author's of the blogs and the target of the blog.

I think all the bugs from the previous version should've been fixed, if you experience a bug, drop me a note.

If you are already using MT...

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While entries make up the content of a weblog and templates control how these entries are displayed, it is the process of publishing that makes a weblog go. Movable Type refers to the process of publishing as rebuilding -- a reference to its static page generation roots. When a rebuild is performed, templates and your content are merged to publish a page that visitors can view in their browsers.

Choosing Between a Static or Dynamic Publishing Model

Movable Type provides the flexibility to choose between either static page generation or dynamic pages to optimize weblog performance on a per-template...

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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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Verifying System Requirements

Problem

You want to verify that the Movable Type system requirements have been met.

Solution

Use your browser to run the mt-check.cgi script.

Discussion

Movable Type requires the presence of several standard Perl modules, separate from the Movable Type code itself. Movable Type comes with all of the required modules except for DB_File, DBD::mysql, DBD::Pg, DBD::sqlite, and DBI. These modules can not be distributed with Movable Type because they require some of their code to be compiled for your server's specific operating system and processor.

Movable Type's capabilities...

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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

Architecture

Movable Type is an internet-based application. This means that almost all functions will be executed on the internet server. Any modern browser may be used for rendering the output.

The server side components were implemented with PHP and Perl. Because of this, you have to install a Perl runtime environment on...

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Co-authored by Arvind Satyanarayan and Elise Bauer Tutorial cross posted on Movalog and Learning Movable Type

Future posting is a convenient new feature in MT3.1x, allowing you to create an entry and have it automatically post at a future time. But before you can use this feature you need to set up a Cron Job on your server.

What is a Cron Job?

Cron is a task scheduler for unix servers. A cron job is a specific task that runs a certain number of times per minute, day, week, or month on your server. For example, you can use a cron job to automate a daily MySQL database backup. The main problem with cron jobs is that if they aren't properly configured they can cause high server loads...

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I've just released an updated version of MT-Notifier. Most of the changes are behind-the-scenes, and you won't see much different about the operation. However, there are a couple of new features, notably an enhanced ability to specify the "from" address on your outgoing notifications.

While versions prior to 1.2.0 had a $SENDER variable defined inside the notifier.pm module, versions 1.2.0 and higher will store this information in the plugindata table, along with the subscription information. This also allows a default address to be set on a per-blog or a per-installation basis.

If you have a version of MT-Notifier prior to 1.2.0 and would like to upgrade, simply copy the contents of...

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Updated April 30, 2005

TrackBack is a feature of Movable Type (and Typepad) that allows you to let other sites know that you have linked to them, and lets you know when other sites have linked to you.

If enabled, the TrackBack feature will place a direct link on your Movable Type entry to entries from other sites that are linking to your entry. Conversely, if you place a link on your weblog entry that links to another site's entry, a link to your site will show up on the other site's entry.

Here an example of TrackBack in action. In this entry you can see that 7 other weblogs are referencing this entry.

Clicking on the TrackBack link will show the list of other sites or weblogs...

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Displaying Entries

Problem

You need to display entry data in your published pages.

Solutions

Use the template tags that are prefixed with MTEntry.

Discussion

Entry tags can be used to display the contents of an entry and its related information. These tags can be used in MTArchiveList or MTEntries tag contexts. Entry tags may also be used anywhere in a Individual Archive template.

Here are some of the more common Entry tags used in templates: • MTEntries

MTEntries is the most powerful and adaptive template tag in Movable Type. It is a container tag representing a list of...

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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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Learning Movable Type is now hosted on a new server and now has its own domain name - http://www.learningmovabletype.com. In the process of changing servers and changing URLs, we may have created some broken links or other site hiccups. If you encounter something that just doesn't seem to be working properly, please email me using the contact form.

Humongous thanks to Chad and Arvind for their invaluable assistance with this move.

If you link to Learning Movable Type (and we hope you do) please, please, please change the URL in your link to the new one. That way, Google will find us more easily, and those using Google to find things regarding Movable Type will find us more easily too....

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Question

When attempting to install Movable Type, I get an error that says: Table 'mt_author' already exists.

Answer

This error means you are trying to use a MySQL database which has already been initialized with some or all of the Movable Type tables.

If you are trying to install for the first time, make sure the database you are using is new or has been cleared of any pre-existing Movable Type tables (i.e., if you are reinstalling from scratch and do not wish to preserve your old weblog data).

If you are trying to install again because...

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Posting a New Entry

Problem

You want to post a new entry.

Solution

Click the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet.

Discussion

Since entries are what weblogs are all about, it should come as no surprise that there are a number of ways to create them in Movable Type.

The two most likely ones are either to use the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet that MT can help you create. See "Making posts quickly from your browser" for more on Quickposts.

When creating a new entry, you will have the chance to set the...

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Movable Type 2.2 is now available for download.

Amongst the small fixes and improvements documented in the changelog, there are two very large new features with this release. • TrackBack is a framework for peer-to-peer communication between weblogs; it can track cross-weblog discussions, it can provide remote content repositories, it can emulate guest authoring, etc. A more detailed introduction to TrackBack is available here. Please read through the documentation to learn how to set up TrackBack on your blog. • The system can now use a MySQL database for backend data storage, as an alternative to the Berkeley DB storage. If you are installing Movable Type for the first...

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Initializing the System

Problem

You have installed or upgraded the Movable Type software and want to initialize the database.

Solution

Sign into the main Movable Type admin script (mt.cgi) for your domain (e.g. http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi). You will be prompted to run the installation or upgrade process. Administrative rights are required to perform this task.

Discussion

To initialize your system after successfully installing the Movable Type software, simply sign in as the default user, Melody (password: Nelson). Movable Type will automatically detect that the...

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Question

I've forgotten my password, and never received the email when I tried to recover it; or I forgot or did not set my password hint, so I cannot recover my password.

Answer

Check Spam Filters First

If you are not receiving the password recovery emails, and you know sendmail is working on your server (i.e., you still receive comment and TrackBack notifications), check your spam filters to see if the emails have been misdirected.

Using a Version Below 3.2?

If you're running a version of Movable Type prior to 3.2, you may be able to reset...

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1.4 (2002.01.07)

• New default templates no longer use <label> tag in the Remember info? checkbox for the ``remember me'' JS, because it was breaking XHTML validation. • Fixed Linked File Templates so that, when linking a template to a new file that doesn't yet exist, the permissions will be set correctly (based on umask settings in mt.cfg). • Added new default templates and made them customizable by stylesheets. • Added the Comment Error Template to specify the layout of the page a user receives when there is an error with his/her...

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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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Here's a little plugin that provides some new Category tags for Movable Type.

Availability

You can download this plugin from here: mtcatx-1_5.zip

Requirements

The following are requirements for using this plugin: • Movable Type 2.21 or later • MT-Regex (if using the 'pattern' attribute of the IfCategory or IfPrimaryCategory tag).

Installation

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

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SpamLookup is an anti-spam plugin created by Movable Type engineer Brad Choate, which identifies spam based on a number of unique characteristics and administrator based tests. It includes: • IP address blacklist lookups • Domain name blacklist lookups • IP address source correlation • Lookup whitelists • Link limits • Email and Link memory tests • Keyword filtering

This plugin has been updated for Movable Type 3.2 and utilizes the feedback rating framework. Each test that is enabled contributes to the final composite score of a feedback item. The final score after all tests (SpamLookup and other plugins)...

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