With the most difficult part of running Movable Type -- the installation -- behind you, it is time to get started using MT.

It all begins with The Movable Type Content Management System (CMS). This script is the heart and soul of what makes powerful weblog publishing possible.

The CMS contains the majority of the intelligence and work flow that makes Movable Type what it is. Whether it involves posting an entry, adding a colleague as an author, or publishing your content with a whole new style, it is the CMS that is doing the heavy lifting.

By default the CMS script is named mt.cgi, although this...

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We've worked hard to make sure all the configuration settings for your weblogs are more intuitively organized and simplified, while still retaining all the power and control that Movable Type affords.

New in Movable Type 3.2 is a reorganization of weblog configuration into a few weblog settings screens. One of the most notable is the Feedback settings, which govern comments and TrackBacks. At the simplest level, there's a blog-level on/off switch for both comments and TrackBacks, and the options for each have been reduced to cover all the common scenarios for enabling feedback on a blog. You can easily require authentication, make it optional, or not require it at all, and it's...

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Setting Comment Policy

Problem

You want to set commenting policy for your weblog.

Solution

Use the controls under the Feedback tab of the weblog's Settings screen.

Discussion

When Movable Type Version 3.0 was released, its most significant enhancements came in the area of comment and TrackBack management and moderation, providing publishers numerous means of controlling the community elements of MT-powered sites.

While the Comments and Commenters Listing screens provide the ability to manually tend to comments in a more efficient manner than previous versions, MT also added...

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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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Among the expected features of a weblogging content management system (hosted locally on your server, template driven, highly-configurable, permalinks...), the first release of MOVABLE TYPE will have incorporated these added features. • Extensible, library-driven code. • Multiple output templates to enable one-click publishing to multiple destinations. • Entry categorization and grouping. • Built-in support for RSS syndication. • Custom variable and template inclusion, for encapsulation of commonly used HTML. • Support for multiple weblogs/journals. • Multiple archiving options: daily/weekly/monthly/categorical, or each entry on its own individual page. • Comment system, either inline or in...

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Chad Everett's Notifier plugin was one of the plugins released as part of our plugin pack of contest winners when Movable Type 3.1 came out, and now he's updated this indispensable plugin to version 2.3. Notifier now lets you subscribe to email notification for new posts on a Movable Type weblog, as well as notification for new comments.

Chad's also started a Dropcash campaign to help him get a Mac for testing his plugins. Mac fans, go give him a dollar or two.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry: Microsoft Research on blogs vs. email

Next Entry: Forrester's blog analysis

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I've added some redirect information to the confirmation screen that will allow the user to go directly to the entry or the blog that was used in the subscription. I decided to use this rather than a referrer field, as it was a bit easier. Please let me know what you think.

I also added some extra information to the notification email, so you can see the name of the author of the comment (and their URL, if specified). To do this, I flipped some things around a bit, so your notifications will look slightly different than they did with version 1.0.

I modified the plugin to pull the "from" name from the author of the entry that is being commented on. If this author has no email value in...

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Version 3.15 fixes a vulnerability in the mail sending packages for all Movable Type versions in which the user has enabled comment notifications. This vulnerability allows a malicious user to send email through the application to any number of arbitrary users.

All Movable Type users should install this update.

If you already purchased Movable Type, or downloaded the free version, you’ll be able to download the new release for free from your Movable Type account.

For those users who don't want to do a full upgrade just yet, we are also making this fix available in the form of a plugin: zip (1K) or tar/gz (1K) archive. This plugin is compatible with all 3.x versions...

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EmailVerificationSecret

If you are exposing the mt-add-notify.cgi interface to users, allowing them to sign up for site update notifications, you should set this value to something that outsiders would not be able to guess. This allows Movable Type to secure the notification signup process so that visitors have to verify their email addresses.

Permalink ...

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So you signed up to be notified about MT's release but you never heard from us again. What's the deal with that?

Well, we decided not to send the notification out today only because we feared that we'd overwhelm our hosting provider. In the first hour, over a hundred people had downloaded MT. So, we were a bit weary of informing over 500 others that the system was ready.

We're still going to send the notifications out (probably in batches) so don't think we forgot you.

Previous Entry: Write the Web Interview

Next Entry: Please Read Before Downloading...

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For a change of pace, a new version of MT-Notifier is available. I figured everyone was tired of new versions of MT-Approval. In any case, if you're paying close attention, you'll notice that I didn't mention anything about version 2.3.4. That's because it was done for all of a few hours before a bug reared its head, requiring the updates in 2.3.5.

New in version 2.3.4 is a logging feature. This logging feature isn't terribly complex, but it will write some information to the Movable Type activity log during most subscription actions. There are a few that don't log, simply because they don't go through the same subscription process that most of them do. But for the vast majority,...

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Configuring Outbound Email Services

Problem

You want to use one of Movable Type's outbound email features and need to configure them.

Solution

Use the MailTransfer directive along with either the SendMailPath or SMTPServer directives based on your server's environment.

Discussion

Movable Type makes smart enough choices for default mail configuration settings that in many cases you will not be required to change anything.

Without any changes to the configuration, MT uses sendmail for outbound email services. By default it will look for sendmail in three standard locations: /usr/lib/sendmail...

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Question

My webserver doesn't have sendmail; how do I use SMTP instead?

Answer

If you have tried to get sendmail working, or if you know that your webserver doesn't have sendmail (for example, if you're on a Windows server), Movable Type allows you to send email messages through SMTP. To do this, you will need to install the Mail::Sendmail Perl module; if you are on a Windows server, you can do this using Activestate's ppm tool. Launch ppm, then at the prompt, type install Mail::Sendmail

and ppm will do all of the work to install the module. If...

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09.22.2001

Update and More Screens

We have to admit that we fell a bit behind with the development of the system. We actually forced ourselves to take a week off in order to deal with the events of the eleventh. While we did come to the conclusion that most things -- including a weblogging content management system -- are a bit trivial, we realized that we needed to go back to the metaphorical mines in order to regain some sort of normalcy in our daily routine.

Continue reading "Update and More Screens"

Posted by Mena at 01:02 PM | Permalink

09.10.2001

Visual Aids

Some screenshots of the MOVABLE TYPE...

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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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01.18.2005

Movable Type 'nofollow' plugin

Today we are pleased to announce our full support for the rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks introduced to address the main cause of weblog spam: the payoff of higher placement in search engine results.

This initiative, with announced support from Google, Yahoo, MSN (and surely more to come), will direct search engines to ignore links with this attribute set for the purposes of spidering or increasing search engine relevance or ranking.

For current users of Movable Type (note: this plugin is included by default starting with version 3.16), this support is implemented as a simple plugin ( zip [4K], tar/gzip [3K]-- tested on MT 3.x and MT 2.661). For most users enabling "nofollow" support involves placing a single file in your plugins directory. All links submitted by external users in comments and TrackBacks will then be modifed to add the...

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3-Column 404 Error About Page Absolute Pixel Sizes Accessibility Activity Log Add Your Links Here Adding An Author Additional Weblog Adsense Advertising Affiliate Programs Align Attribute Alphabetize Entries Alternative Search Template Amazon Amazon Web Services Archive Pages Archives Ascii Characters and Symbols Ascii Mode Audioblog Author Archives Authors Background Background Patterns Backing Up Your Blog Backup Banner Banner Images Berkeley DB Binary Mode BinHex Mode Blockquotes Blog Maintenance Bloglet Book Review Bookmarklet BookQueueToo Buttons Captcha Captions Categories Category Category Archive Category Archiving CGIWrap Changing Servers CHMOD Chron Job Clocks Closing Comments...

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1.1 (2001.10.22)

• Made <$MTDate$> work as a ``system date'', or the current date/time at which the page is being rebuilt. • Added Pragma: no-cache header to keep Opera from caching pages. (Jay) • Changed default templates to use iso-8859-1 (Latin 1) encoding instead of utf-8. • Added Blog Configuration option for the number of words in an auto-generated excerpt. • Added comment previewing, using the new Comment Preview template. Default templates now ship with comment previewing enabled, and the comments links on the main index...

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0.03 (2001.09.26)

• Added Bookmarklet posting functionality, with a link to setup on the main project administration menu. • In List Entries, if a post does not have a title display [No title] instead as a link. • Changed login cookie path from / to /path/to/mt/. For example, if you installed MT at /my/mt/mt.cgi, the path for the cookie would now be /my/mt/. • MT::Util::send_mt_mail now checks for more default locations of sendmail, instead of giving up, until it finds one that works. It now checks /usr/lib/sendmail, /usr/sbin/sendmail, and /usr/ucblib/sendmail...

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Introduction

This article explains how you can customize the user interface of the Movable Type application. This is a powerful area of functionality that's easy to get started with and almost unlimited in its potential.

Some key points we'll cover: • How to create custom application templates for Movable Type's interface • The benefits of using application templates • Ideas for how to use application templates with your plugins or workflow • Links to some example application templates, to see what's possible and to inspire your own

Customizing the Movable Type user interface

To understand the potential of customizing your Movable Type interface, you'll need a little bit of background....

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