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 you how to create the library javascript that allows you to browse themes, it simply shows you how to make your themes discoverable by StyleCatcher. In this tutorial, I shall use the example of Vicksburg, the default theme with 3.2.

Every style or theme should be in its own folder (with no subfolders) which should contain: • The css stylesheet. • Two thumbnails named thumbnail.gif and thumbnail-large.gif. These two files are used in StyleCatcher as previews of...

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New to MT 3.12x is the tag <MTHTTPErrorCode>. This tag is only applicable to dynamic pages but we can use this tag and a bit of PHP to serve different error messages for different error codes -- currently no matter what the error message 403, 500 etc, mtview.php just says "The requested page could not be found."

For example, replace the contents of the Dynamic Pages Error Template with this

<?php $err = $this->tag('MTHTTPErrorCode'); if ($err == 404) { ?> This is a 404 Error <?php } else { ?> <$MTErrorMessage$> <?php } ?>

If the error code is 404 (Page Not Found) the error message displayed will be "This is a 404 Error" otherwise for all other error...

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For you Movable Typers who also use PHP, here's a little function that will let you link to content from previous years. Read on to see it.

This routine lets you link dynamically (or statically if you prefer) to blogs from prior years. Small caveat-- this requires that you archive entries on a daily basis. Here's the code-- just make necessary changes to the "archive_path" and "href_path" variables...

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Safari users can now enjoy the Template Tag Bookmarklet by simple installing the Saft extension (which is a highly recommended extension), grabbing the template tags plugin and unpacking it into ~/Library/Application Support/Saft/Sidebar/. Alternatively, you can also open the destination folder by turning on sidebar in Safari ('View' > 'Show Sidebar') and clicking the '+' icon at the bottom-left corner the the browser window.

A big thank you to Lola Lee and Joe D'Andrea (who, incidentally, has an awesome plugin called Seeker which you can try out on Movalog by searching!)

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From PhotoMatt I found a service called Zoto It seems to be an interesting photo managing service that can merge directly with your blogging software - at the moment it supports only Blogger, MT or Custom HTML. At the moment I am uploading 60 MB of photos to see how this will work.

I was always unhappy with Gallery because I wasn't able to integrate it with MT . Why must everything be MT because I want to be able to access most parts of my site via MT to keep everything organized - just the way I am.

Watch for follow up entries on Zoto as I play around with it !

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In an attempt to provide a proper environment for support, I've created the Plugins Forums, I was getting too many support and feature requests in Trac's bug tracker. Please use these forums to get some help on the plugins, they're also the best place to request for new features. The exams are nearly over but my time is still limited, as always donors receive priority support, if you wish to donate use the button on the sidebar.

Although the forums are powered by PunBB, I've hacked a lot of the files so that you can use Typekey to login and use the forums. I'll be releasing the hack sometime in the near future!

If you do face a bug in any of the plugins, please file a ticket so that I can address it more appropriately....

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Random Banners

In my recent re-design on Movalog, I had three banners and unfortunately I liked them all and couldn't figure out which one I liked best. As a result, I decided to use them all. First I moved all the images...

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Posted on 06/23/2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Quicktags for Comments

Many people wanted to know how I implemented these guicktags into my comments form. So here's a quick tutorial for that. In your comments form find Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) and replace it with Comments:...

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Posted on 01/21/2005 | Permalink |...

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Hacking Movable Type

I finally got my copy of Hacking Movable Type and finished reading it last night. Written by the biggest names in the Movable Type community, the 300 pages of Movable Type goodness guide you through getting the most out...

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Posted on 08/21/2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firefox Search Plugins

I had forgotten to share these little goodies that I frequently use. The little search bar in Firefox is indespensible for me and I have all sorts of search engines there including many Movable Type resources. Here are three...

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Posted on 03/20/2005 |...

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It's been fun to watch Mark Pilgrim enjoying the time saving benefits of the plugins I've written lately. It's even popped up on the Daypop 40 (in spite of the title including the phrase "regular expressions" no less)! Daring Fireball was inspired to take the smart-quote thing a step further. Fully documented in their post Movable Type Smart Quote Devilry. Educate your quotes.

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I really liked Phil Rignalda's PreviousNextInCategory that would basically show the Previous/Next entries in the same category as the current entry (kinda like <MTEntryPrevious> and <MTEntryNext>)

Unfortunately this plugin didn't work under the dynamic publishing system. So announcing PHP PreviousNextInCategory. There are two files in the zip file that will need to be uploaded to the php/plugins/ directory. The two files will provide the container tags <MTEntryPreviousInCategory> and <MTEntryNextInCategory> exactly like the perl version and are to be used in exactly the same way eg

<MTEntryPreviousInCategory> <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">&laquo; <$MTEntryTitle$><...

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Announcing MovaDir v2 This directory uses MT and Typekey technologies to create a pretty powerful directory script. This is how it is set out in MT: • Categories in the directory are categories in MT • Links listed in the directory are entries • Any reviews of the links are stored as comments • Use of Brad's Key/Values plugin to track who submitted the link (Typekey profile only!)

Signing in with Typekey really opens up the power of the directory, signing in allows you to • Submit links to the directory -- these go through an approval system • Suggest categories • Maintain a favourites/bookmarks list -- similar to the hotlist here, save your favourite links • Comment on links • Email listed sites to...

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Although not directly related to Movable Type, many bloggers I know have been asking for such a tool. The Newsgator Toolkit is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that will eventually provide you with a series of complex and powerful tools that will make it even easier to use Newsgator.

For the moment, however, it simply sits in your statusbar and acts as a notifier displaying the number of unread posts and giving you a detailed view of which feeds have been updated.

More information is available on my personal blog.

Note: This version is completely unsupported, please do not email me any bug reports or support requests (something many people have taken the liberty of doing the past few...

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Movable Type 2.6 incorporated my Sanitize plugin. So if you've upgraded to MT 2.6, you no longer need the plugin files. So here's what you would do to remove them.

Again, these steps are only necessary if 1) you installed the Sanitize plugin on your pre-MT 2.6 blog; 2) you've since upgraded to Movable Type 2.6 or later. • Locate the ‘sanitize.pl' in your Movable Type plugins directory. Delete that file. • Locate the ‘sanitize.pm' file in your extlib/bradchoate directory. Delete that file.

Now, you may be wondering what to do about the sanitize="..."

attributes you have...

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MT Protect 1.2

UPDATE: Version 1.21 has been released that fixes the password protection bug under static publishing. Please download the new version and re-enable protection on all your blogs. MT Protect is a plugin that allows you to easily protect entries so...

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Posted on 09/03/2005 | Permalink | Comments (6)

MT Protect 1.1

Hot on the heels of v1.0, here's version 1.1. The only new feature is the availability of dynamic tags, i.e. those of you that wanted to use MT Protect on dynamic templates now can! Download MT-Protect_1.1.zip and follow the installation...

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The following new Movable Type plugins are now available. Click-through to read more about them: • Custom Post-Processing Handler • Proper Case Global Tag Attribute • Regex Global Tag Attribute

You can download these using the following links: • Custom Post-Processing Handler: mtpostproc-1_3.zip • Proper Case Global Tag Attribute: mtpropcase-1_2.zip • Regex Global Tag Attribute: mtregex-1_6.zip

Enjoy!

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I had previously written on how to add quicktags to the comment form. This tutorial, however, will show you how to add a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to the comment form. The WYSIWYG editor in question is tinyMCE, the same one used in EnhancedEntryEditing. Of the various WYSIWYG editors available, I felt that tinyMCE was the best in terms of flexibility and options and the easiest to get started with!

First things first, you will need to download the latest version of tinyMCE and extract it to a suitable location on your server (EnhancedEntryEditing plugin users, already have tinyMCE in /mt-static/plugins/Ajaxify/tinymce/).

Next, you'll have to add the tinyMCE code to...

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CustomFields has been bumped to v1.11 due to some odd bugs with the v1.1 distribution whereby I seem to have not included the up-to-date files. I recommend everyone who uses CustomFields upgrades to v1.11 to ensure that you see all the new features you should be seeing. Many thanks to JSDopefish who reported the issue on my support forums. Go grab the update.

As a sidenote, I've become aware that the donate buttons scattered across Movalog have stopped working. Paypal has thrown my account into an incredibly restricted mode which I will only be able to sort out this weekend. A big thank you to all the readers who notified me of this problem.

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If you're lazy like me, you'd like to link to Amazon items and put your associate ID in there, but who remembers that URL format? With publishing systems like Movable Type, you shouldn't have to remember, so let's make MT do the work for us.

Ingredients: • 1 MT-Macro plugin • 1 MT-IfEmpty plugin • 1 MT-Regex plugin

Technique:

Define a pattern to match the Amazon URL (today they use the www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/ASINCODE/… So we use this to transform the regular Amazon link into an associate link: <$MTSetVar name="amazon_id"...

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This version of CustomFields implements several of the feature requests I've received since releasing 1.0: • Custom entry fields now appear directly on the edit entry screen which makes it much more simple to edit those fields. It also means that you no longer have to save an entry before being able to edit those fields! • Textareas are re-sizable. Rather than clutter up the interface (and make it more complicated) by allowing dimensions to be specified for each field, I've allowed textareas to be resizable the javascript way i.e. simply drag the textarea to the size you want. The default sizes are also more suitable. • Textareas now respect the Text Formatting selection i.e. you can format your...

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During the comment spam crisis, before 3.14 was released, my host installed something called mod_security. I have noticed that ever since it was installed, the comment spam flood I normally experienced turned into a trickle. mod_security helps with a lot of things. It's good for helping block a lot of the script vulnerability attacks like cross-site scripting, bad PHP includes, etc so there's a good chance it will be installed on your host, if not ask them.

If you do have mod_security installed, I will guide you through setting it up such that it blocks of comment spam. What is the advantage of mod_security over MT-Blacklist? mod_security scans the comment before it hits MT-Blacklist or...

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