I find the Configure Active Plugins list on the MT front page very useful, however this list has been getting longer and longer and I install more and more plugins that register on there. Eventually this bugged me (big surprise eh?) and I decided to move that to its own page. Click the thumbnail to the side for a larger image.

First open up lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and find around line 40

'list_blogs' => &list_blogs,

and add right underneath it

'list_plugins' => &list_plugins,

Next around line 342 (at the end of sub list_blog) fine

$param{no_breadcrumbs} = 1; $app->build_page('list_blog.tmpl', \%param); }

and add after it

sub list_plugins { my $app = shift;...

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UPDATED 09/10: There was a problem with the files as phps so I've zipped them UPDATED 09/04: To fix SmartyPants

So you've downloaded the very new 3.1 with all the amazing features but you've found one problem, your plugins no longer work with the dynamic templating. Well its not only plugins, text filters also no longer work.... Here are some methods by which you can combat this problem, some may not work in all cases but its better than nothing for other cases.

• Text Filters In a previous tutorial I had linked to PHP Markdown, but a few people have contacted me about Textile as well. So I have collected PHP versions of Markdown, Textile and SmartyPants Just download the following...

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Page: 1 2 3 4 4 Pages.

Working with Style Catcher

With 3.2 came the very nice StyleCatcher plugin that allowed you to easily manage and apply themes or styles to your blogs. This tutorial will show you how to make your repository work Style Catcher. Note, this tutorial won't show...

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Posted on 10/22/2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

CustomFields 1.12

UPDATE: I've just pushed out a silent update that fixes a problem with custom entry field descriptions not showing. Thanks Nilesh! A new version of CustomFields is available that fixes four bugs that people found;CustomFields...

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Professional Network member Kevin Shay wrote the following tutorial to introduce the community to his exciting new plugin and its development potential.

The BigPAPI plugin for Movable Type allows you to create plugins that can easily add features to Movable Type's interface. This article explains the background behind the develpment of BigPAPI, and walks through the creation of a simple working plugin.

Why BigPAPI?

With each new version, Movable Type has become friendlier to plugin development. The earliest plugins could do little more than add tags to the platform's templating system. Now (as of version 3.2), the Plugin API allows plugins to define not only template tags...

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In Comparison needed for conditional Generation I showed how to use the Compare Plugin for managing variations of a page type. The plugin allows comparing values and optionally inserting one or the other code segment into the output stream. However, the simple condition "if one value equals another value" is just the beginning. We are also able to create complex conditions. It is not even that difficult.

Basics

The Compare Plugin offers a number of tags, as for example MTIfEqual, MTIfNotEqual, MTIfGreater, MTIfGreaterOrEqual, MTIfLess, etc. Most of them work the same way: they take at least two mandatory attributes, a and b. The plugin compares the values of those two...

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Current version: 1.05 (Updated 2005/10/4)

Simply, Better File Uploader is a Movable Type plugin that allows you to create default settings for file uploads. Create default settings to: • Specify a folder to upload to • Append year/month/ to the upload path • Create a new entry or show HTML • Select a thumbnail size • Build photo galleries quicker

Better File Uploader is also the successor to A Better File Upload Template.

Installation

Better File Uploader requires the BigPAPI plugin. BigPAPI is included in the below distribution. Better File Uploader requires Movable Type version 3.2 or higher. • Download BetterFileUploader.zip and unzip. • Upload to your plugins/ folder, preserving directory structure. The result should one file in the...

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Note: This tutorial was first published on October 29th for members of the Professional Network. If you'd like to get access to the benefits of membership in the network, sign up now.

Our last tutorial covering dynamic publishing provided a high-level technical overview of its implementation. In this tutorial, we will examine the way you create plugins for the PHP dynamic publishing model. It varies a bit from the Perl model, since we have built the template processing on top of Smarty, a popular and powerful templating engine for PHP.

Use the Source, Luke!

To get you started, there are a whole host of MT tags that have been ported from Perl to PHP. These would be the core...

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The hundreds of plugins available for Movable Type are what define its power and flexibility for a lot of users, and we've tried to do justice to the creativity and innovation of our plugin developers in version 3.2.

Movable Type's plugin architecture dates back three years to version 2.2. In that version, we added the ability to create custom template tags, and version 2.6 built on that framework by adding custom text formatting plugins and the ability to store data for use by plugins.

In version 3.0, we radically revamped the plugin architecture to support the creation of full applications on top of the Movable Type platform. And version 3.1 extended this power with...

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This plugin has been deprecated. The Santize plugin was incorporated (and extended) into Movable Type 2.6. For more information about this and how you would go about uninstalling this plugin, please read this article.

Sanitize is a Movable Type plugin that allows you to clean HTML and other markup that might exist in an comment entry. Read on for more information about how it works and what it's for. If you're using Movable Type and allow HTML comments on your site, you really need to read this...

...

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This is a question I've seen a lot, through emails, bug reports and on the forums. First a little general background information.

The 'Plugin Envelope' method was something introduced with v3.0 and one of the first plugins to use it was MT-Blacklist. This is where a plugin creates its own subdirectory within the main plugins/ directory, for example MT Blacklist has plugins/Blacklist, MT Protect has plugins/Protect and so on.

The problem many people are facing are the hundreds of errors that these plugins spit out and look similar to this: Plugin error: /home/.../.../cgi-bin/plugins/Blogroll/Blogroll.pl Can't locate Blogroll/Blogroll.pm in @INC (@INC contains: plugins/Blogroll/lib...

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<MTPerlScript> is tag for Movable Type templates. If you know how to write Perl code, this custom tag gives you remarkable flexibility in producing pages from Movable Type. You can literally do any kind of manipulation you can think of using your Movable Type data.

This tag was written with a 'trust-the-programmer' mentality (or in this case, the template writer). There aren't any restrictions...

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Question

I found a plugin that I want to use on my site. How do I install it?

Answer

These are the basic instructions for installing a plugin, but you should always review the readme file for the plugin if one is included. Some authors will require files be placed in a different directory structure, so follow their instructions on this. • Download and unzip/decompress the plugin file from the author's site.

• Use your FTP client to log into the directory where MT is installed on your server. If a plugins directory isn't there yet, create one.

If you use...

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This screen displays information about all plugins currently installed on your system. For most modern plugins, this will include plugin name, version and a short description. If the plugin name is linked, in indicates that there are one or more additional configuration screens.

On the right, you may see some or all of the following depending on what the plugin author has chosen to display: • Enable/Disable - You can enable or disable each plugin system-wide • Link to plugin documentation • Plugin Resources - This includes template tags, functions and text formatting options, provided by the plugin. • An author link...

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Plugins are bits of code that, once installed, extend the functionality of Movable Type. The word plugin is often used by software developers to describe a third party application that "hooks" into a main application to extend its functionality. Movable Type hosts an active plugin developer community whose plugins have greatly enhanced the capabilities of Movable Type. You can find a directory of MT plugins at http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/plugins/. To use a plugin, you will need to use an FTP program to load the plugin files to your server. When you upgrade your MT version, you must be careful not to overwrite your plugins file. Either that, or reload the plugins after the...

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Yes, I realize Movable Type is not a general-purpose content management system, but if you're in a pinch it can do wonders. Especially with this plugin, which allows you to associate other bits of data with your entries which can be extracted conviently in your templates. (Click the more link for more information.)

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtkeyvalues-1_53.zip

Installation

To install, place the...

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Current version: 1.01 (updated 2005/09/24).

The Better Entry Preview plugin's purpose is to make the entry preview screen more useful. The included styles give the entry preview environment a feel that a traditional editor might like by using larger type, more line spacing, and a serif font. Tapping the beginning of what is possible, floated elements will now float around text, rather than falling above or below text. With customizable styles, the entry preview window can be made to mimic your web site's look quite easily.

Better Entry Preview is the evolutionary step of the preview_entry.tmpl alternate template, and is a plugin based on BigPAPI.

Download Better Entry Preview and BigPAPI as a .zip file. Extract, and upload to your...

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My MT Activity Logs were FULL of plugin errors pointing to Blacklist, BookQueueToo, Blogroll, and QuickLinks. (essentially, any plugins that are in their own dedicated directories inside mt/plugins) These plugins have always worked without fail from the front end, so I was mystified at the copious error messages suggesting they could not be found.

Here is just one sample of a variety of similar messages:

Plugin error: /home/user/domains/domain.net/public_html/mt/plugins/Blacklist/Blacklist.pl Can't locate Blacklist/Plugin.pm in @INC (@INC contains: plugins/Blacklist/lib ./plugins/BookQueueToo/lib /home/user/domains/domain.net/public_html/mt/

Searching the MT Support Forums and google pointed me to a very simple solution. In each plugins .pl file I edited the "use lib" line to include the full path per the following example:...

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Do you like seeing those little smiley emoticons in other people's blog? Then this is the plugin for you!

This plugin will add 13 smiley faces to your Movable Type edit entry screen. With a click, you can add any of the emoticons to your entry's body and extended entry fields, as in the screenshot at the left.

Installation

Smilies requires the BigPAPI plugin, which is included in the distribution. Smilies has been tested on version 3.2 of Movable Type only, but should work with MT 3.16 and higher - I'd appreciate hearing if anybody is successful with other versions. • Download Smilies.zip and extract. (A donation will support continued development...

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Question

How do I install the StyleCatcher Plugin?

Answer

• Download the StyleCatcher plugin1 and unzip the file to your local computer. The files should be organized into two folders within a StyleCatcher folder. For example, after unzipping the file for version 1.0 of the plugin, you would have the following two folders, each with other folders and files inside them:

• StyleCatcher-1.0/mt-static/ • StyleCatcher-1.0/plugins/

• Open your FTP program and log into your server.

• Navigate to your mt-static directory2, and upload3 the contents of the StyleCatcher-1.0/mt-static/...

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This plugin allows you to define search and replace parameters for elements you produce from Movable Type templates. Keep reading for the details.

More details forthcoming-- for now I'm just providing the download link. The readme.txt in the zip file has all the relevant information.

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtregex-1_61.zip

...

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