Movable Type has a nifty feature called "alternate templates" which allows you to substitute the default MT interface with a customized one. These aren't "individual archive" or "category archive" template replacements, these are replacements for the actual entry-editing interface.

I've only made a handful of alternate templates, but more will be added here as I create and modify them. (You might want to look at set up first.) Currently available are: • Updated 2005/08/29: edit_entry.tmpl is for creating and editing entries. • Added 2005/05/30: preview_entry.tmpl is for previewing entries. (Deprecated. Superceded by the plugin Better Entry Preview.)...

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This is a bug fix release that fixes some major bugs with the dynamic templating tags. A big thank you to all the folks that reported this bug, sorry it took me so long to find the bug! Go grab the update.

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This Movable Type plugin implements a set of template tags related to calendar dates.

Note: The MTDaylightOrStandard tag, which was part of earlier versions of this plugin, is now part of its own plugin.

Required Modules

The DateTags code relies heavily on the Date::Calc Perl module. Depending on your or your ISP's installation, this may already be present on your system. To check whether Date::Calc is installed, open a shell connection to the host on which you're running Movable Type, and type: perl -e 'use Date::Calc'

Hit Enter. If this prints nothing, the module is installed. If it prints an error message, you'll need to install Date::Calc. (The MTIfDaysOfMonth and MTBirthstone tags do not require Date::Calc, so you should be able to use those without the module installed.)...

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Introduction

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...

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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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Warning: main(/home/elise/public_html/mt/mt32badge.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/eliseb/public_html/archives/001012multiple_authors.php on line 90 Warning: main(): Failed opening '/home/elise/public_html/mt/mt32badge.inc' for inclusion (include_path='') in /home/eliseb/public_html/archives/001012multiple_authors.php on line 90

With MT you can have multiple authors on the same weblog, making it easy to have a friend contribute to your blog as a "guest author" or to create a group weblog to which many people contribute. You can even customize to a small degree, aspects of the author-specific Individual Entry pages.

Adding an Author

To add an author in MT 3.2...

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Workflow, a new plugin for Movable Type 3.1x, has just been released by David Raynes. While we don't usually feature new plugins as part of our news about the Movable Type platform, we thought it was worth pointing out because Workflow adds a powerful new area of functionality, and also marks a milestone for the growth of our plugin community.

First, the features: Workflow lets you limit control of publshing rights to certain authors in your Movable Type installation, allowing other people on the system to act as editors and review entries before they're published. Administrators can control who has rights to any of these levels of permissions. Plus, authors can transfer...

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You've seen it before. An article gets hot and soon you have 50 to 60 comments attached to it. Getting in on the tail end of the conversation can be annoying with that many posts to wade through. So we create a handy little convention that will highlight (change the class of) the comments posted by the author of the post.

There are many, many ways this can be done (plugins, php, etc.) and even more ways to implement it (mutliple author highlighting, specific images for certain commenters, etc.), but we're going to look at two important facets: static and dynamic.

Static vs. Dynamic

This is a debate which we will leave to the professionals. I will only...

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The Better Upload File Template has been superceded by the Better File Uploader plugin.

As any regular reader of danandsherree.com likely knows, Sherree and I use the Upload File tool in Movable Type to put a lot of photos on this site. The tool works pretty well, but requires a lot of manual intervention: specify a file, an upload folder, a new entry or HTML, and a thumbnail and its size. If there are many photos to add, it becomes a lot of work!

I edited the Upload File templates to better suit our needs: "Show me the HTML" is the default option, clicking "Create a thumbnail…" will resize a thumbnail to the proper dimensions, and a "For...

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Updated

Occassionally databases get corrupted, servers fail or web hosts go out of business. So it's a good idea to back up your Movable Type blogs. There are many methods for doing so, a few of which I will cover here. The back-up process is much easier if you are using MySQL as your database, which, by the way, is one good reason to use MySQL over the default Berkeley DB.

TypeMover

TypeMover is a new plugin for the purpose of backing up, restoring, and/or migrating your Movable Type weblog. It is compatible with MT3 and later versions of Movable Type. From the TypeMover website:

TypeMover is a MovableType plugin. It adds backup, restore and migration features that let you get...

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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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I have been playing around with Zoto and I'm quite impressed.

Uploading Pictures

One of the things about this service is the ease at which you can upload photos. Just download their client (called Zulu) set it up to scan folders where you put your photos and it'll do the rest for you meaning it scans the folders, makes thumbnails of the images and uploads them ! If you add photos to those folder then the client will pick them up too. I experienced a few problems with the client. It told me it had uploaded all my photos yet when I looked in my account they didn't show up, on uninstalling and reinstall the client they showed up !

Of course you could manually upload them, by selecting...

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Another day, another plugin. This one lets you manipulate images. You can gather size, height, weight information from them and you can even resize them for whatever purpose you'd like. Nifty, eh?

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtembedimage-1_21.zip

Requirements

The following are requirements for using this plugin: • Movable Type 2.21 or later • ImageMagick and the Image::Magick perl...

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Question

Can I pay Six Apart to install Movable Type for me, or upgrade my existing installation to the latest version?

Answer

Yes, we offer these services to those who have purchased a supported version of Movable Type.

Requirements Before We Begin

Please make sure to confirm that your host/server meets the requirements before requesting an installation, as the fee is non-refundable once we begin.

You can view the system requirements and get helpful information on choosing a web host in the Introduction to Installation and Upgrade in the Users Manual....

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Movable Type weblogs require some level of maintenance, beyond just adding new content. Here are some suggestions that can help keep your blog running smoothly. If you have other suggestions not on this list, please let us know in the comments section.

Dead Links

If you link to any other websites from your blog, and or have comments or TrackBacks enabled, you need to periodically scan your site to make sure that your external links are still active. Links with URLs that are no longer valid give a "404" server error when someone clicks on them.

One of the biggest deadlink culprits can come from TrackBack links. Periodically click on the "TrackBack" button on the left side of...

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LinkEntryToFile is a plugin that modifies the interface of Movable Type. When the plugin is installed, you can specify a file on your server to link to the Entry Body or Extended Entry field. The linked file will be kept in sync with the entry, so that you can edit it in an external editor.

This plugin basically takes MT's handy "Link this template to a file" feature and applies it to entries. When using MT to manage certain types of content, especially content that contains extensive HTML formatting, it's useful to be able to use your favorite text-editing application, with syntax highlighting, Undo, search and replace, etc., without having to repeatedly copy and paste into the MT entry...

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Monitoring your web site's activity really only serves two purposes: ego stroking and visitor analysis. It's a lot of fun to watch a site's visitor base grow, but being able to see what a reader is looking for and how they visit is something that can immensely help your site grow .

Unfortunately, I haven't found a single statistics analysis package that does everything. There are lots of packages that do lots of different things, all presenting data in slightly different ways. Combine what you can glean from each of them and it'll become more clear who is visiting your site, what they want to read, and how they came in. Once you know all that, you can...

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Many Movable Type users have wished for the ability to define additional custom fields for entries. A future version of MT may include such functionality. This plugin is a stopgap measure until we have a version of Movable Type that allows custom fields. It lets you define custom fields on a per-weblog basis, by creating one or more SQL tables to store the additional data (this plugin has been designed to work only when using MySQL as your MT backend; see below for more on this).

Some users have managed to add custom fields to their copies of Movable Type by modifying the field definitions within MT. See this page and this thread and this thread. However, this approach has several...

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As you probably already know, Movable Type 3.2 was released and boasts a stunning featureset. I personally have plenty of plugins, tools and other announcements to make which are all related to this release. The first of which you've probably guessed by the title. I present the Movable Type Style Generator. Quite simply, click on any element on the page and a box will appear allowing you to change any of the element's properties from background color to font faces and styles. After you're done, hit the Download button to get the stylesheet, 3.2 compatible! The beauty of this style generator is since it creates 3.2 compatible stylesheets, you can use them across any of Six Apart's...

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What is a default template in Movable Type ?

Default templates are those which are automatically created by creating new blog. And by virtue of MT 3.2's TemplateRefresh plugin, default templates can be restored in existing blogs.

In some cases, we may want to provide MT with our own default templates. By doing this, we can reduce additional routine processes. MT's TemplateRefresh can't do this, because this plugin only works for predefined default templates.

If you want to make a template as default in MT, first you have to locate that under (mt home)/default_templates/ folder. Next, you have to add some required informations into (mt...

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