UPDATE: If you have any feature request I'm all ears. Gearing up for the release I want to see if there are any feature requests I can implement, I think I've fixed all the bugs that were reported so expect a release in the next few weeks.

I had released this to ProNet a few days ago but have not gotten much feedback. That can be either that people are waiting for the point release and don't want to install a beta or that there aren't many bugs in this beta. Either way I want to open up testing for MT Blogroll 2.0 (I'm still thinking about that version number). I'm going to copy my post to ProNet here to save me some time.

I've re-written Blogroll to use its own tables in the DB so...

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Introduction

SpamLookup is an anti-spam plugin created by Movable Type engineer Brad Choate, which identifies spam based on a number of unique characteristics and administrator based tests. It includes: • IP address blacklist lookups • Domain name blacklist lookups • IP address source correlation • Lookup whitelists • Link limits • Email and Link memory tests • Keyword filtering

This plugin has been updated for Movable Type 3.2 and utilizes the feedback rating framework. Each test that is enabled contributes to the final composite score of a feedback item. The final score after all tests...

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Domain name lookups

SpamLookup can perform lookups on the domain names of all URLs contained in a feedback item with any domain blacklist service. These services track domain names used in spam.

There are three settings for this tests operation: • Off - This test is not performed • Moderate - When a feedback item is received with a domain name that is listed with one of the specified blacklist services, the item is left unpublished and awaiting administrator approval. • Junk - The same as above, except that instead of moderating it, SpamLookup contributes to the item's Junk score,...

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IP Address Lookups

SpamLookup can perform IP address lookups with any IP address blacklist service. These services often contain IP addresses of known anonymous proxies which are very commonly used by the majority of comment and TrackBack spammers.

There are three settings for this tests operation: • Off - This test is not performed • Moderate - When a feedback item is received with an IP address that is listed with one of the specified blacklist services, the item is left unpublished and awaiting administrator approval. • Junk - The same as above, except that instead of moderating...

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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 of Movable Type and really pushing what it can do with detailed tutorials to setup photo and moblogs and event calendars.

It walks you through using all the APIs available in MT including XMLRPC, Atom, Perl and PHP and provides detailed examples that are very easy to understand. One of the best parts of the book, I feel, is the plugin walkthrough which is a far better guide than the current plugin docs. It literally holds your hand showing you what is possible and if I...

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UPDATE The beta blog is live. Read all the entries and download 3.2, there's plenty to play with!

Jay's just posted an announcement to ProNet with some juicy details. Movable Type 3.2 will be going into a beta sometime tomorrow in the afternoon. Here comes the best part of the announcement, its a public beta, what this means is that the beta blog will be an open environment and anyone will be able to download a copy and use it.

I've managed to get my hands on some early test builds and the new release is just staggering. So much has changed that 32 posts simply don't do it justice. Almost every single hack I've ever posted onto Movalog has found its way into this release in one way or...

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For a lot of bloggers, participating in a community online is what motivates us and keeps us blogging. Good feedback from commenters and people sending TrackBacks can keep a weblog alive and vibrant, but negative comments or, worst of all, the plague of spam, can take all the satisfaction out of maintaining a blog.

Because nothing's more frustrating than spammers or trolls ruining your community, we've tried to make sure you have strong anti-spam tools out of the box in this new version of Movable Type. But eliminating the annoyance of spam is where the new community management features start, not where they end. So, we've made a powerful new Feedback Rating System in Movable Type 3.2....

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Movable Type 3.2 features a new take on an old friend: the Junk folder. In your email program, some messages are likely to be spam, and most email applications these days offer a folder that can be set to delete junk after a set period of time.

We've brought the same convenience and power to Movable Type. Using the new feedback scoring system described earlier, comments or TrackBacks that fall below your spam threshold score can be set to be automatically deleted after a configurable period of time. (The default is 14 days.) The best part about the new junk folder? You don't have to touch it. If you just want to accept the default settings and not mess with junk comments or TrackBacks...

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This is a test with paged "more" text... implemented using a couple of PHP tricks. :)

Read on to see it in action and to see how it's done.

The implementation of paged content is pretty simple. I'll use this test entry to explain how I did it. First of all, you'll need PHP 4 installed on your server. You can use this same technique with other server-side tools like ASP, ColdFusion, etc., but this...

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DSBL is dead. Long live SpamLookup.

I happened across a WordPress plugin for checking the IP of a commenter against dsbl.org list and it was one of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments. So naturally, I ported it to MT.

Download: mtdsbl-1_1.zip

Requirements: Movable Type 3.1 or later (since it uses the MT 3 callback system and I think the ones I'm using here are new with 3.1). You should also have the CPAN Net::DNS package installed. It can also use the nslookup utility, but it's less efficient that way.

Installation is easy, just drop either dsbl_deny.pl or...

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We've just launched Movable Type 3.16, which we previewed to Professional Network members on the email list and members-only blog last week. We've heard a lot of good feedback from you about Movable Type since the launch of the Professional Network a few months ago, and this release addresses many of your requests.

The focus for Movable Type 3.16 is on code quality and cleaning up little issues and bugs that have crept into the code base, either in the past year or, in some cases, since Movable Type was first released.

To get started, you can get Movable Type now, or log in to your account to upgrade. Or, read on to find out more details.

A solid, high-quality platform

First, above all you've told...

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Lead-ins are an eye-catching mechanism usually found in print publications. Recreating that effect for the web is easy to do, but it could be easier. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a 'leadin' tag that you could use to identify the word or phrase you want to style like that? Well...

MT-Macro to the rescue! Actually, the technique described here utilizes 3 of my Movable Type plugins. All functioning...

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Multiblog is an indespensible plugin that allows you to display content from other blogs. Unfortunately, in its current version it doesn't work with dynamic publishing. A few days ago I was investigating the best way to duplicate MultiBlog's functions in the dynamic templating system. As it turns out, Movable Type's powerful dynamic templating system makes it easy to include content from other blogs.

With dynamic publishing all you need to do to pull content from other blogs is to change the blog context of the page. Every tag is parsed within a context which affects the content it outputs. For example, with the MTEntries tag the correct entries are outputted because Movable Type...

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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}...

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I really like the "Build All Templates Statically" option on the Templates page, however I really wanted a Build All Templates Dynamically option. I posted a feature request on the subject but I don't think it was taken any further, so I took the matter into my own hands, see the screenshot (click for larger image).

Open up MT/App/CMS.pm and search for the following block of text, line #4842.

} elsif ($dcty eq 'archives') { require MT::Template; my @templates = MT::Template->load({ blog_id => $blog->id }); for my $tmpl (@templates) { $tmpl->build_dynamic($tmpl->type ne 'index'); $tmpl->save(); } } elsif ($dcty eq 'custom') {...

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As the image above shows, $40 (20% of the Dropcash campaign) has been donated to the American Red Cross to help with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. A big Thank You to all the donors of the CustomFields Dropcash campaign that made this possible.

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• Newsgator Toolkit • Updates to the Style Generator • Hurricane Katrina Donation • Movable Type Style Generator • Plugins Forums • Feeds Burned • The IndiBlog Awards • Planet Movable Type • MovaDir, v2 • Preview Release • Vulnerability in Servers Using PHP • Securing your weblog - CGIWrap and SuEXEC • Syndicate This Site • Upgrading • Consulting • Movalog Sideblog • Ask Arvind •

Code Snippets

• Random Banners • Quicktags for Comments • Reset Templates • Iconize • SubCats and Contents • Tweaking Searches • Password Protection • Alphabetizing archives • Relative Dates • Automatic Acronyms •

Dynamic

• Dynamic Publishing - Pros and Cons • Troubleshooting Smarty Errors • PHP Dirification • The DB and Dynamic Publishing • Custom Error Messages • Dynamic Pages & The .htaccess • Breaking Plugins • Smarty. MT. Dynamic...

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I may experience a bit of downtime or things may seem out of flux for a while (don't quite know how long) as my host shifts me to a new server and hosting package. Please bear with me !

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Movalog has been nominated for the best science/technology IndiBlog. The IndiBlog Awards are publicly-chosen awards conferred upon bloggers from India or of Indian origin settled elsewhere. The winner of the best science/tech category wins a year's subscription to Typepad Plus.

Go vote for Movalog as the best science/tech Indian Blog.

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Ajaxify: Search Suggestions

The second plugin in the pluginset known as Ajaxify, this plugin adds a search suggestion feature to the Quicksearch box at the top when you search for entries, comments or trackback. There's very little to talk about this plugin but...

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Posted on 08/30/2005 | Permalink | Comments (9)

Ajaxify: EnhancedEntryEditing

UPDATE: EnhancedEntryEditing has been bumped up to v1.01 to fix a bug where popup windows wouldn't disappear after you were done with them. Grab the update, you only need to upload EnhancedEntryEditing.pl Ajaxify is a series of BigPAPI...

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