UPDATE: An updated entry can be found here This is now out dated !

I loved the quicktags available in WordPress. They were just so much more powerful that then four offered within MT. So Carthik pointed my to quicktags the javascript used my WordPress.

So I hacked MT to remove the pathetic little buttons and put these more powerful ones on there - see the screenshot.

You will need two files: •

The Quicktags Javascript - put this file in your StaticWebPath •

edit_entry.tmpl - this file should go in MT_DIR/tmpl/cms/

I've not yet get it to work properly with the Extended Entry, currently it only work with Entry Body. If anyone is able to help me with this I'd appreciate it !

UPDATE: I uploaded another...

continue reading ...

This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Arvind Satyanarayan of Movalog. Tutorial cross posted on Movalog and Learning Movable Type

If you move from static publishing to dynamic publishing in Movable Type, you may encounter a variety of confusing error messages in Smarty, the system MT uses to create its dynamic pages. This tutorial will explore several of the errors you may experience, explain what they mean, and show you how to solve them. This is by no means a complete guide to every error you may experience; I will continue to add to this tutorial as I come by more of them.

The Basics

Many of the error messages you may see will take the format: Smarty Error: [in mt:##...

continue reading ...

Movable Type is being used to store a list of classes, and we need to make those class titles available in a form field (class registration) as a dynamically linked list box. The user will be presented with two list boxes, the first with a list of categories, the second (which is disabled until a category is chosen) with a dynamically generated list of the titles in the selected category.

Ingredients

We're going to need two important things here. First, a handy DHTML script from Xin Yang called Chained Selects that's going to power our linked list boxes. The script that you'll be dropping into your directory is called chainedselects.js.

Second, a javascript file...

continue reading ...

I've updated the edit_entry.tmpl file in the Alternate Template Collection with a new feature: a "Now" button. Clicking the Now button will update the Authored On field to the current date and time!

Download the edit_entry.tmpl alternate template or learn more about this and other alternate templates I've created.

If you found this article useful, please consider supporting this site through a donation.

continue reading ...

•

01: Installation and Upgrade

• Introduction • Choosing the Right Weblog Platform • Finding Perl on your Server...

continue reading ...

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...

continue reading ...

One of the great things about RSS is that you can display, or "feed" in, headlines and content from other people's websites directly onto your own website. In another article, we've already covered what "syndication" is, and RSS, and how you can use a newsfeed reader to efficiently read and browse through the latest content from your favorite weblogs and news sites. The focus of this article will be on the other main use of RSS - feeding external content into your site. An example of this can be found here on my recipe website. Clicking on a sidebar link opens a new page with several feeds from various food and cooking websites. Check the page at a later time, and if there...

continue reading ...

Reorganizing Category Assignments En Masse

Problem

You want to reorganize the category assignments of entries en masse.

Solution

Use the Power-Editing mode to change the primary category assignments as needed.

Discussion

As your weblogs evolve over time, a reorganization of category assignments may eventually be necessary. A good way to handle such a reorganization is with the Power-Editing tools that can be accessed from the Entries Listing. Using this tool you can view all entries as editable records and change their primary categories. This technique only works for category...

continue reading ...

2.5 (2002.10.08)

• Localization: the MT interface can be available in multiple languages, on a per-author setting. • Integrated Jay Allen's mt-search (Thanks, Jay!). We've made the following changes from version 1.31b: • Rewrote ``new comments search'' to make it more scalable (using recently_commented_on functionality) • Added a search log through the Activity Log. • Added search request throttling, to help against denial of service attacks. • Merged mt-search.cfg directives into mt.cfg....

continue reading ...

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...

continue reading ...

The default Movable Type MT3.2 templates come with a sidebar on the right side of the Main Index page, but not on any of the individual entry, monthly, or category archive pages.

There are two basic ways to add a sidebar to archive pages. The easiest for beginners is just to copy and paste the existing sidebar code into the correct place in the archive templates. The slightly more involved, but much preferable method is to create a separate file with the sidebar code and use a PHP include or an MT include to include the file into the various templates. You can also very easily move a sidebar from the right to the left side of your weblog pages.

Where is the Sidebar Code?

The MT3.2 stylesheets and...

continue reading ...

Controlling What an Author Can Do in the System

Problem

You want to control which weblogs an author can access and what they have permission to do.

Solution

Click the Authors System Shortcut on the Main Menu and then click on the username that you want to edit. Select the weblog and weblog features you want to enable/disable based on the user's role.

Discussion

Movable Type uses a role-based system to grant access to authors, allowing them to perform actions related to a specific weblog or to the system overall.

For instance, you might have one user who is helping to design a...

continue reading ...

Updated June 12, 2005. Originally posted in Spring of 2004.

The default Movable Type installation automatically publishes RSS feeds for your weblog. The three formats supported are Atom, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. You can find the templates associated with these syndication formats in the templates section of your MT edit screen.

The default RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 syndication feed templates for MT version 3.x produces a feed with the content in your MT entry body. The default Atom feed template produces a feed with both the entry body and the extended entry. The default RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds in MT version 2.661 generated feeds with only the entry excerpt.

You may or may not want to...

continue reading ...

When you are first setting up a new weblog, Movable Type prompts you to choose a file extension in the weblog config preferences section. The default setting is HTML.

If your server allows PHP scripts, and you would like to add customization features that aren't part of the default Movable Type system, it is highly recommended that you choose PHP as your default file extension preference in place of HTML. Doing so allows you to take advantage of many freely available PHP scripts to help customize your weblog. PHP is an open source scripting language that is powerful, stable, and extremely popular for adding dynamic elements to websites. In your Movable Type weblog, PHP scripts can...

continue reading ...

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...

continue reading ...

Updated Sept 14, 2004

A sideblog is a separate weblog which appears in the sidebar of your main weblog. Sideblogs are often used as a convenient way to list out interesting links, something akin to a frequently-updated, public list of IE favorites. Rather than mixing in your "this link is cool" entries in with all of your other entries, with the accompanying overhead of code for individual entries, comments and trackbacks, you can streamline your links into a linkblog.

A great example of a linkblog can be found at MovableBLOGthe Asides section in the right sidebar.

Making a sideblog is pretty straightforward; it can be accomplished by creating a new weblog in Movable Type and using...

continue reading ...

Co-authored by Elise Bauer and Arvind Satyanarayan. 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...

continue reading ...

From this screen, you may define what users can do throughout the parts of the system you control. All options will be defined below although their presence in the user interface depends on your own author permissions.

General Permissions

• System Administrator - Enables a user to access any part of the Movable Type system and perform any action, typically through the System Overview section of the application. In addition, this permission is required for any user who wishes to perform a system upgrade. • User can create weblogs - Allows a user to create new weblogs in the system. The user creating the...

continue reading ...

Updated April 30, 2005

Once in a while you might just want to show actual code - HTML, PHP, or Javascript - in an entry you make in Movable Type. For example, say I want to show the A HREF tag and code to get to elise.com. It looks like this:

<a href="http://www.elise.com">elise.com</a>

However, if I simply type that code in while I'm writing the entry, the resulting page will not show the tags and code, but the actual link: elise.com.

So how do you display code in entries? There are several methods:

1. Manually write out the symbol equivalents of your code. If all you want to do is write a short tag, the easiest way may be to write out the < and...

continue reading ...

UPDATE Fixed a bug with moderation set on Typekey users. Bit to be edited is the code in edit_comment.tmpl

The moderation queue is one of the most powerful features that MT 3 has, and some advocate an aggresive use of it when paired with plugins. Currently, you are able to approve a comment but not unapprove a comment. This hack will add an unapprove button to the edit comment screen that will throw the comment back into moderation.

Open lib/MT/App/CMS.pm and around line 32 find

'approve_comment' => &approve_comment,

and add beneath it

'unapprove_comment' => &unapprove_comment,

Next find

sub list_commenters {

and add above it

sub unapprove_comment { my $app = shift; my $perms = $app->{perms}...

continue reading ...