As we've just announced, we'll be supporting the new rel="nofollow" attribute for comment and TrackBack links with our platforms.

With the introduction of the new spec, it's worth reviewing the initiative for Professional Network members who'd like an overview of the entire effort. • What is nofollow?

The HTML specification allows a tags for hyperlinks to include a rel attribute. This attribute is used to specify a link type describing the relationship between the document hosting the hyperlink and the document that is the target of the hyperlink. • Is this valid HTML?

Yup. Though the rel attribute has been relatively obscure (it's used in XFN and Technorati's tags, but...

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Question

How do I make changes to the default search template visitors see when searching my weblog?

Answer

You can modify the search template by downloading the search_templates/default.tmpl file from your server and editing it with a plain text editor. Then upload it back to your server in ASCII mode.

Power Tip

You can more easily manage your default search template (and any alternate search templates) by linking them to a new Template Module.

Create the new Template Module, and enter the full server path to the default search template in the...

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Every so often I'm reminded of how the simplicity of the web is belying of the underlying power.

Generally speaking, the web provides a simple user interface that has the ability to power increasingly complex back-end interactions. The more I delve into the nuts and bolts of how things like HTTP work, the more I realize that the implicit transparency of it all creates prime opportunities for even know-nothing coders like myself to build more and more sophisticated interfaces and applications.

Once the data hits the server it's mostly smoke and mirrors to me. But the data that hits the client side is quite transparent, and easy to tweak at will. The web is built on...

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There are several ways to get statistics about your Movable Type weblog. Most web hosts give you access to some statistics regarding your site as a matter of course - referral logs (list of sites that link to you in which someone has clicked on the link to get to your site), number of hits, number of page views, etc. If you want more information, i.e. the search terms used to find your site, the most recent entry pages to your site, the mix of browsers and OS platforms of those viewing your site, the length of time people spend on average on your site, you can use a site statistics service, also known as a hit counter. These services work by having you put a small piece of code on the...

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I really need to learn Perl. I can look at some code and stumble through it to figure out what's happening, and I can hack it with minor changes - but I really don't know what I'm doing. And once I learn Perl I can learn to write some MT plugins.

I've had ideas for a few plugins floating around in my head: • A plugin to change the file upload behavior. I've hacked the file upload template and CMS.pm to add a Photo Gallery option that formats the URI as I need it and insert it into a new entry; I think this could be made into a plugin with BigPAPI. Done: Better File Uploader. • A file management plugin. It doesn't need to be terribly...

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Well, it looks like this weblog is becoming just a Movable Type how-to blog. Well, in keeping with that theme, here's a little "part two" companion piece for Doing your whole site with MT (one of my worst blog titles, ever).

Now that you've got your whole site MT-powered, what about your RSS feed? Chances are you, have one for your weblog, but what about one for everything? I've created one for my site, called sitewide.rss. It lets folks keep track of every update that happens to my site, whether it be part of my weblog or not.

To get it to work, you have to do a little bit of...

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Technorati, a leading blog search engine and index, has made it very easy for blog authors to get their "tagged" blog entries into Technorati's tag index. What is a tag? A tag is a type of category, and the process of tagging a simplified categorization method for your entries. The concept of tags has become popular with services such as del.icio.us and Flickr. By creating tag classifications for your weblog entries, you make it easy for Technorati to index your blog entries by tags that you specify. With Technorati tagging, you get to choose how you want your weblog entries to be classified, in contrast to algorithm-driven search engines like Google that make their own...

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0.02 (2001.09.25)

• Added FTP URLs to installation instructions. (Daniel Talsky) • Fix some warnings. (Caroline van Oosten de Boer) • Fix bug with spaces at the ends of lines in mt.cfg file. (Caroline van Oosten de Boer) • Fix bug with saving new entry--author was not being set for the new post. (Matt Haughey) • Fix bug with profile link in header linking to the wrong profile on the entry-editing page for an entry by another author. • Fix bug where creating a new author would switch your login credentials to those of the new author (ie. you...

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We've all been conditioned over the last few years of using the web to find stuff by searching, instead of having to browse through a hierarchy to find information. Even Movable Type has had, since the early days, a basic internal search and replace feature. But we wanted to go further to make sure that pervasive searching was part of the platform with Movable Type 3.2.

Search (almost) everything

Movable Type 3.2 introduces a whole new search and replace interface. Now you can search not only entries, but a wide variety of items in the application: • Entries • Comments • Commenters • TrackBacks • Activity Log • Templates

What's more, once you're viewing your search results, all the power...

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Question

I have a paid license. Do I have to keep the "Powered by Movable Type" links on my site and in my notification emails?

Answer

The "Powered by Movable Type" link in the default templates and the slug in the notification emails are governed by the license terms of "A Little Credit".

So, for those who hold a paid Personal or Commercial license, maintaining these credit links are optional; for those using a free Personal, or any Educational or Not for Profit license, maintaining these links is required. • To remove the credit links from your pages, edit your...

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Movable Type is set up for doing date-based archives by day, week, and month, but not by year. There are a few plugins and methods out there that will help you create a yearly calendar of your archives, for example, Brad Choate's Year Archives in MT Perl script plugin will produce a calendar archive ( example). Lummox JR's ArchiveYear plugin will produce a similar calendar ( example).

I prefer a yearly archive to show a list of entries by month, as I've set up on one of my blogs ( example). An archive page like this can be accomplished using the ArchiveYear plugin with some simple changes to the sample code given. Update August 1, 2005 The ArchiveYear plugin seems to not be in its...

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In creating templates for your Movable Type installation, you'll find that the <MTEntryCategories>, <MTCategories>, and <MTParentCategories> container tags have a "glue" attribute. The glue attribute is used to separate items with a string. For example, joining category/subcategory names together with a comma or slash to create breadcrumbs (a path tracing your entry's hierarchy). A simple example of breadcrumbs might look like this:

Category Subcategory Entry

Often it is desirable to use an HTML tag as the "glue," though quickly trying it you'll find it doesn't work. The extra greater-than and less-than signs...

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Update April 9, 2005: Brad Choate has released a new anti-spam plugin called SpamLookup. Jay Allen, the creator of MT-Blacklist recommends SpamLookup over MT-Blacklist.

Spammers have discovered Trackback and have recently been leaving their trail of unwelcome links all over the blogosphere. To get a sense of what we are up against, read The Register's interview with a link spammer. Listed here are some defensive measures you can take.

MT-Blacklist

As with comment spam, your first recourse is Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist. The blacklist will help you delete the trackbacks and ban the URLs the spammers leave. Note that if you are using MT2.661 and MT-Blacklist 1.65, Jay has special instructions for deleting trackback spam pings....

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We waited a while for it, but it's finally here. *much rejoicing*

The beta testing went on for a while, but really it was worth the wait. I'm rarely opposed to waiting for a program to get better; and I wasn't disappointed. The end product is a versatile program that adds both strength and flexibility to it's already powerful core.

And functionality! Some of my personal favorites: • Plugin Central: Plugins add a great deal of functionality to Movable Type's already powerful core. But installing plugins to previous versions would sometimes go forgotten because once the files were copied over, you'd never have any indication that they were there (like Scripturizer or...

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Sometimes you may want to keep an entry, or all entries within a certain category, at the top of your weblog, above all of your other entries. For example, you may want to highlight announcements at the top of your site, or you might have a site explanation or introduction that you wish to maintain at the top. There are several ways to accomplish this.

1. Changing the date of the entry.

If all you want to do is to put one particular entry at the top of your blog, perhaps only for a limited time, the easiest way to accomplish this is to give it a date that is posted at a later date than all of the other entries. To do this, in the edit entry window, scroll to the bottom of the page....

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You should just be able to copy and paste this style sheet into the master style sheet of your blog and you'll get a nice little site refurb, on the house:

 # Waters of the Hudson # CSS distributed by # PlasticMind Design # http://plasticmind.com body { margin: 0px 0px 20px 0px; background-color: #000033; text-align: center; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; } a { text-decoration: none; } a:link { color: #336699; } a:visited { color: #336699; } a:active { color: #336699; } a:hover { color: #ACBED5; border-bottom-width:...
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If you have installed the basic MT package and are including the default search function on your blog, you may have noticed a check box for "Regex Search" that appears underneath the search box on your search results page. There is also a check box for "Match Case", but that is more self-explanatory. What is a "Regex" search? And how can you get rid of that check box so you don't confuse your visitors?

What is a Regex search?

Regex stands for "Regular Expression". It is a programming term. Doing a Google search reveals several definitions:

Regular Expression is a sentence written in a language to describe patterns.

or

A regular expression is a way of describing a group...

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If you are using Movable Type default templates, the titles of your entries on the main page of your MT blog are just that - titles. They look pretty but go nowhere. If you want to get from the entry on your main blog page to its individual entry page, you need to click on "Permalink" or "Continue reading".

Setting it up so that the titles of the entries themselves are hyperlinks to the individual entry page is fairly straightforward and requires edits to two templates - your Style Sheet and the Main Index template.

If you are using the default MT3.2 templates

1. The Stylesheet The MT3.2 default stylesheet is a huge file. The last time I printed one out it took 18 pages. It...

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Far from dirtying diapers and burping up formula and mushed peas, Movable Type is aging quite well. It's gone from the experimental code Ben and Mena first cooked up to a full-fledged, more-than-you-bargained-for CMS that has everyone talking (read: powered by and fuel for discussion). And the future looks bright, with people like Jay, Chad, David, Arvind, Elise on board doing their thing. I swear, one of the biggest reasons I'm such an ardent fan of MT is the community of professionals that keep this well-oiled machine running. Keep doing what you're doing, it's great stuff.

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Movable Type is the premier weblog publishing platform for businesses, organizations, developers, and web designers. Powerful customization gives you control over everything you publish and the elegant interface keeps things simple and clear.

Features

• Unlimited Blogging

Movable Type offers the ability to publish an unlimited number of blogs quickly and easily through a single installation of the application. And the platform supports posting by as many authors as you need, with no limit on the numbers of entries, comments, or TrackBacks the system supports. • Powerful management...

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