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 Links with URLs that are no longer valid give a "404" server error when someone clicks on them.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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UPDATE files are bundled in an archive.

I was very impressed with the WordPress Suggest plugin and wanted to port it over to MT. The porting was easy but the query was very slow and pulled some bad results from the database. Chad helped me last night and we had almost cleaned it up until v0.2 was released which seems to have fixed the problems I had. Try it using the search form on the sidebar.

This plugin is similar to LiveSearch (and the MT implementation) however the difference is it lets you keep the mt-search.cgi functionality which I liked. Also this plugin works slightly differently to LiveSearch, I prefer this!

Implementing it with MT is very easy, you need to have PHP and be...

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UPDATE: I had pulled out the functionality to check spelling with this toolbar, well I've put back the functionality. Just download the quicktags.js file that coressponds to your version of MT again and re-upload it. A new button called "Dict." will appear that will query a highlighted word to dictionary.com !

Please go to the MT 2.x instructions to fix a problem with the Quicktags not aligning properly.

This tutorial will allow you to have the Quicktags I described in my previous entry but is not restricted to MT 3.01D.

The files you will need:

Quicktags.js

The MT 2.x Version | The MT 3.x Version

Upload the quicktags js file to your staticwebpath - ie the same folder than...

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The link for the rss feed has now changed. I've finally embraced Feedburner so that I can track stats etc (no ads yet don't worry). The new feed is located here while the sideblog feed can be found here I have put permanent redirects onto the old rss files (both combined and normal) to point to the new Feedburner feed. Most RSS readers will pick this up and update it accordingly. If not then manually change it if you wish to keep up to date. Sorry for the inconvenience. The link to the Planet Movable Type feeds will remain the same as I don't want to mess around with any tracking tools used by the sites that are aggregated!

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When I set about re-creating MovaDir, I wanted to create a form that would post directly into MT. I soon discovered that I would need to use the XML-RPC API to really streamline it. This is a tutorial that will guide you through setting up a form that will allow a user to manipulate entry fields and then rebuild the entry. Use of the mySQL database is required.

You will need to create a new index template called Incutio XML-RPC Library, set the output file as IXR_Library.inc.php and copy this file for the template body.

Next create a new index template called IP Tracking with an output file iptracking.php and copy this file into the template body.

This is a very neat script written by...

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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:## line:##]

This error message provides useful information that can help you...

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Tutorial cross posted on Learning Movable Type and Movalog.

With Movable Type 3.2, Six Apart launched a new markup and stylesheet structure that has also unified their three platforms. These new templates and stylesheets (from now on referred to as themes) have been called tag soup due to the sheer number of <div>s and indents.

What a mess - why did they do it?

The new themes can be quite intimidating the first time you come across them however Six Apart have created these new themes for several reasons: • First of all, Typepad, LiveJournal and Movable Type now share exactly the same markup. This means that a theme will work on any of these three platforms and designers can...

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Seeing as how Elise is having fun with PHP and databases I though I'd show you how to easily play around with the database in dynamic publishing. This is all stuff I've picked up when talking to Brad Choate, the man behind the amazing dynamic system.

Movable Type 3.1+ comes with a dynamic publishing system that has EZSQL rolled in for all the SQL databases MT supports and as a result interaction with and manipulating of the DB becomes a piece of cake. At the moment, however, this system works only for MySQL databases.

First of all to call the DB, you just need three simple lines:

<?php include('<$MTCGIServerPath$>/php/mt.php'); $mt = new MT(<$MTBlogID$>, '<$MTCGIServerPath$>/mt.cfg...

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As the campaign has been successfully completed, here's MT Blogroll 2.0. Thanks to all those that donated to the campaign, the donors will get priority if bugs or problems are faced. If you feel like donating, the campaign is now over, but feel free to use the donate button on the sidebar.

There are some new features including the ability to quickly add a blogroll entry by just entering the URI and having MT-Blogroll gather all the other information. I've also added the ability to define the the names of the author's of the blogs and the target of the blog.

I think all the bugs from the previous version should've been fixed, if you experience a bug, drop me a note.

If you are already using MT...

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Discussion cross posted on Movalog and Learning Movable Type

One of the key features that Six Apart promotes about Movable Type is MT's ability to publish dynamically. What is dynamic publishing? And what are the benefits (and downsides) to dynamic publishing over static publishing?

Elise Bauer, editor of Learning Movable Type and Arvind Satyanarayan, author of Movalog, discuss some of the pros and cons of dynamic publishing. Non-techie luddite-wannabe Elise shies away from anything that seems like it might not be worth the effort and so far hasn't even tried dynamic publishing. Plugin creator and MT hack-master Arvind has embraced dynamic publishing with his usual boundless...

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Discussion cross posted on Movalog and Learning Movable Type

One of the key features that Six Apart promotes about Movable Type is MT's ability to publish dynamically. What is dynamic publishing? And what are the benefits (and downsides) to dynamic publishing over static publishing?

Elise Bauer, editor of Learning Movable Type, and Arvind Satyanarayan, author of Movalog, discuss some of the pros and cons of dynamic publishing. Non-techie luddite-wannabe Elise shies away from anything that seems like it might not be worth the effort and so far hasn't even tried dynamic publishing. Plugin creator and MT hack-master Arvind has embraced dynamic publishing with his usual boundless...

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

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

The installation instructions in the Movable Type Install Guide contain a section in the Configuration area called Enable Security Features. These instructions tell you to uncomment the Umask lines in your mt.cfg if your server is running cgiwrap or suexec. If you don't know what CGIwrap or suEXEC are, you may be tempted to skip this step. Don't. This step gives your MT installation extra security, which we will explain. (Note that this tutorial is only appropriate for MT installations on Linux/Apache web servers.)

What is CGIWrap or suEXEC?

CGIWrap and suEXEC are features...

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UPDATE: Make your own

With Movable Type 3.12, Six Apart built in a more powerful set of quicktags and on the whole they worked pretty well and looked quite nice too. I didn't really want to go back to the clunky Quicktags of before. So here are a few hacks to port some of the most useful features (in my opinion) from the old quicktags, to the new. You will need the following files • edit_entry.tmpl, this is found in MTDIR/tmpl/cms • mt.js, this is found in your StaticWebPath (or if you have none in your root MTDIR folder)

I have decided to port over four functions, Spell Check, Encoding HTML and Insert Image

Spell Check

Add the following to the end of your mt.js file

function Spell(myField)...

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Things you probably didn't realize you could do with MT-Textile 2: • Hyperlinks for Amazon, IMDB and Google searches. For example (search term can be placed after the last ‘:', or will default to the hyperlinked text): • "James Bond":imdb:Sean+Connery becomes James Bond • "Tangerine Dream":amazon becomes Tangerine Dream • "Movable Type":google becomes Movable Type • ["MT plugins by Brad Choate":google:movable type plugin choate] becomes MT plugins by Brad Choate • Float images to the left and right; center stuff too: • !>/images/me.jpg! (floats...

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Sometimes you would like to display the age of an entry as compared to a specific date. In the case, of my daughter's blog, I've displayed her actual age at the time of each post, based on her birth date and the authored-on date of the entry.

Updated to support time difference too.

Updated to correct date_delta function's accuracy.

This is a Movable Type/PHP tip. I haven't...

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This hack is deprecated in favour of the MT Protect plugin. Please use the plugin instead of this hack!

One of the biggest wants with MT is to password protect individual entries. There are several hacks and bits of code that allow you to password protect entries but many of them are long winded and many involve separate categories. I wanted a simple way to selectively password protect entries no matter what the category, what blog etc.

So I created a new field on the entry screen (click screenshot for a larger view) that would contain the password. For this to work you will need to be using MT 3.1x, mySQL and PHP. To see this in action see the front page on my blog, enter the password "password" and you will be granted access for 10 days....

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Movable Type templates aren't too difficult to write, but they can be difficult to read. So I've whipped up another plugin to fix that. Simple Template is a plugin that provides an alternative syntax for Movable Type templates 1.

Availability

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

Installation

To install, place the ‘simpletemplate.pl' file in your Movable...

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The Touch of Hope web site is powered by Movable Type. It's more than your average blog site though. Don't let it's blogging slant fool you-- MT is a budding CMS!

The architecture is like this: • 1 blog for the site's basic content: welcome page, about page, Art for Hope page, request a site page, make a donation page, contact us page and the news and updates content. All of this is in...

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