12.12.2001

Version 1.3 Released

We have released a new version of Movable Type, version 1.3. Existing users of versions 1.0-1.2 should use the upgrade distribution to update their MT installation, and should follow the upgrade instructions.

In addition to bug fixes and improvements to general stability, this release adds the following features: • XML-RPC server implementation of the Blogger API, so you can use existing XML-RPC clients to post to Movable Type ( more information) • Search and replace functionality ( more information) • Ability to specify the directory in which upload files are placed, rather than just dumping files into the archive...

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2.6 (2003.02.13)

• Added Text Formatting options. Instead of a simple Convert Line Breaks checkbox, you can now set a different formatting option for each entry. Plugins can add new options to the Text Formatting menu, which allows for greater integration with the formatting within the system (for example, Text Formatting will be applied on the preview screen). • Added PostgreSQL and SQLite database drivers. • Incorporated Brad Choate's Sanitize plugin, adding an mt.cfg setting for a global default and a per-blog setting to override it. Sanitize is turned on...

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

With the release of Movable Type 3.1 comes a new and powerful feature - Dynamic Publishing. To take advantage of Dynamic Publishing, you need to edit or create a file on your Apache server called .htaccess as explained in the Movable Type Manual. htaccess files can give you extra control over your server, allowing you to password protect directories, enable server side includes, generate custom error messages, and block users by IP address among other things. (See this Guide to .htaccess for more information.)

Note: You should really know what you are doing before...

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Setting Up Google Enabled Entries

Problem

You want to integrate Google search results into your entry.

Solution

Provide Movable Type with your Google API Key and use the MTGoogleSearchResult template tag.

Discussion

Movable Type is capable of making Google search queries and inserting the results into site layouts. This built-in functionality is geared toward inserting related links into an entry or a specific topic such as an author's name rather than providing unfettered access to the full power of the Google search engine. This is more a limitation of the Google API...

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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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The height of the image that was uploaded. Images tags can only be used in the "Uploaded Image Popup" system template.

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MTImageURL

The absolute URL of the image...

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The default entry URL file name structure for Movable Type 2.6 looks something like this:

http://www.yourblog.com/archives/000123.html

This structure puts all of the files into one archive directory and assigns each of them a number corresponding to the number of entries you have entered so far in your weblog.

What if you would prefer to have the URLs for your entries include the actual name of the entry and maybe even the category they are in? Something like this:

http://www.yourblog.com/archives/name_of_category/title_of_entry.html

Easy.

1. Using the entry title instead of the entry number. On the left hand side of your weblog edit window, click on "weblog config" navigation...

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In the early days of MT 3, when I had unreg'd comments set to moderate, I really wanted to have an approval all button as I would read the comment in the email notification I received. Since then that feature request has not progressed so I decided to take matters into my own hands. As the screenshot shows, at the end of this hack you will end up with two buttons on the comments listing screen. This buttons will allow you to mass approve/moderate comments by checking the boxes of the corresponding entries.

First of all open lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and find on approximately line 32 the following

'approve_comment' => &approve_comment,

and right after it

'approve_confirm' =>...

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Ajax Archive Drop Downs

In this thread, Gary highlighted how to have drop downs of archives that basically redirected to the appropriate page once an archive was chosen. With this tutorial, I'll take that one step further and use AJAX such that when you...

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Posted on 07/03/2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yearly Archives

One feature I find lacking in MT is yearly archives. A yearly archive basically is just a page of twelve calendars - one for each month of the year - see mine in action here with permalinks to the days....

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Posted on 07/30/2004 |...

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10.18.2002

MT & TrackBack in Technology Review

November's issue of MIT's Technology Review contains an article about backlinking -- as well as a mention of TrackBack and some quotes by us. The article is currently premium content, but the author, David F. Gallagher has informed me that it will most probably be available for free some time in the next week.

Posted by Mena at 06:21 PM | Permalink

10.08.2002

Version 2.5 and a birthday

Read what we've got to say on the one-year birthday of Movable Type. Then, please fill out a short survey and download version 2.5.

What's new in version 2.5?

Posted by Mena at 10:28 AM |...

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09.12.2002

Blogging over iCal

Morbus Iff has been doing some really interesting things with Apple's iCal and Movable Type. Here's the O'Reilly entry that describes how to publish your weblog into iCal-compatible format.

>From his own weblog, Movable Type blog-to-iCal implementation.

Another thought: since iCal is scriptable, one Ben could write an AppleScript (see below) to gather the latest events in your calendar and publish them to a blogging system via XML-RPC.

Update: Here is an AppleScript called iCal2blog to publish events in your iCal calendar(s) to your weblog via XML-RPC. The README contains usage instructions. Note that you'll need to modify...

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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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MT InlineEditor 1.2

A long overdue update to the InlineEditor plugin. For those that don't remember, this plugin allows you to edit entries and comments without leaving your weblog as illustrated by this animation. This plugin includes plenty of new features: It is...

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Posted on 08/26/2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

MT InlineEditor 1.1

This new version introduces inline editing for comments by the commenters. A cookie is set when the person hits the post button on the comment form. The cookie is set to expire in 5 minutes so the person must make...

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Question

Various errors of this type, what they mean, and the solutions.

Answer

Error: Use of uninitialized value in string eq at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 316.

This is related to the display of the Movable Type News Feed on the main page. Your server is most likely having trouble retrieving this feed.

You can disable this feature in mt-config.cgi1 file with the following line: NewsboxURL disable

Remember to edit mt-config.cgi only in a plain text editor, and upload it back to your server in ASCII mode after making changes.

Error: Use of uninitialized...

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Question

My database has been corrupted. Is there any way to avoid losing my data?

Answer

This answer depends a great deal on the level of corruption, the type of backups you have, and how much information is still accessible from within your existing installation (as opposed to being in external files such as the static pages Movable Type has generated from the data).

Does your host maintain backups for your account?

If so, do they have any which would include copies of your database files prior to the time corruption appears to have occurred?...

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12.22.2003

Movable Type 3.0

We realize that official news has been scarce over the last 6-9 months. During this time, our company has grown from two people to seven, and we have launched TypePad. Now that we have hired more engineering resources (and we are still looking for more), we are able to focus again on our Movable Type product line. As mentioned in this post on the Six Log, we're focusing on releasing more personal features in the basic Movable Type package, and concentrating features for businesses, organizations, and large content-driven sites into Movable Type Pro (which, needless to say, has been delayed).

The next version of Movable Type...

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Question

How do I convert from one database type to another?

Answer

Convert from Berkeley to SQL

To determine whether your server supports a SQL database, and the Perl libraries required to connect to it, run mt-check.cgi and look at the status for any of the following modules: DBD::mysql, DBD::Pg, or DBD::SQLite. If any of these are installed, your server will support that version of Movable Type. If none of these are installed, you will need to contact your host to have them installed if you wish to use a SQL database.

If you are interested in...

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06.20.2005

UTF-8 Dirify bug and patch

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,...

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Installing Movable Type with FTP

Problem

You want to install the Movable Type software using FTP.

Solution

Download an FTP application, uncompress the software onto your desktop and take care of any necessary configuration before uploading.

Discussion

• An FTP (file transfer protocol) program is used to send the files from your computer to your server. If you don't yet have an FTP program, there are many available for free. SmartFTP is a good FTP program for Windows, and offers a free trial version. Transmit is a good FTP program for Mac users on OS X, and it has a free...

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07.09.2004

Movable Type 3.01D bug fix release

We've just released Movable Type 3.01D. You can download the new version by logging into your Movable Type Account and using the "download" link for the appropriate license. If you're upgrading from 3.0D, there's no need to run any upgrade script for this release: just upload the files to your server and you should be ready to go!

This release fixes a number of bugs that were present in 3.0D. The lot of it boils down to this: • Comment preview is no longer dropped (see below for instructions) • Default templates now have valid HTML in a few places where they didn't before. • Lots of bugs fixed with export...

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