With the most difficult part of running Movable Type -- the installation -- behind you, it is time to get started using MT.

It all begins with The Movable Type Content Management System (CMS). This script is the heart and soul of what makes powerful weblog publishing possible.

The CMS contains the majority of the intelligence and work flow that makes Movable Type what it is. Whether it involves posting an entry, adding a colleague as an author, or publishing your content with a whole new style, it is the CMS that is doing the heavy lifting.

By default the CMS script is named mt.cgi, although this...

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Learning Movable Type is now hosted on a new server and now has its own domain name - http://www.learningmovabletype.com. In the process of changing servers and changing URLs, we may have created some broken links or other site hiccups. If you encounter something that just doesn't seem to be working properly, please email me using the contact form.

Humongous thanks to Chad and Arvind for their invaluable assistance with this move.

If you link to Learning Movable Type (and we hope you do) please, please, please change the URL in your link to the new one. That way, Google will find us more easily, and those using Google to find things regarding Movable Type will find us more easily too....

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This is a grouped list of all entries. It is sorted by title ascending.

You can also read a commented Sitemap or a simple list of all entries.

Basics

• In the Beginning nothing but Problems • Movable Type Basics / 1 • Movable Type Basics / 2 • Movable Type Basics / 3 • Weblog Spamming Basics

Installation

• Installation under Windows 2003 • Migrating to MySQL

Configuration

• Date Formats • Grouping a List of Entries by Month • Organize your Templates with MTInclude • What is a Permalink?

Plugins

• A Tag within a Tag • Avoid Spam Comments • Build Conditions with the Compare Plugin • Comparison needed for conditional Generation • Enabling Tags in an Entry...

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Setting Up Google Enabled Entries

Problem

You want to integrate Google search results into your entry.

Solution

Provide Movable Type with your Google API Key and use the MTGoogleSearchResult template tag.

Discussion

Movable Type is capable of making Google search queries and inserting the results into site layouts. This built-in functionality is geared toward inserting related links into an entry or a specific topic such as an author's name rather than providing unfettered access to the full power of the Google search engine. This is more a limitation of the Google API...

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This is a simple list of all entries. It is sorted by title ascending.

You can also read a commented Sitemap or a list of all entries grouped by category. • A Tag within a Tag • Avoid Spam Comments • Build Conditions with the Compare Plugin • Comparison needed for conditional Generation • Contact • Copyright • Date Formats • Deadline for 'Link And Win' is near • Design Change and Starting the FAQ • Disclaimer • Enabling Tags in an Entry • Error Page 404 • FAQ: Avoid Scrolling when opening Individual Entry Archive • FAQ: Bad ObjectDriver with MySQL • FAQ: Correcting Typos and Grammar • FAQ: Designing the Movable Type Weblog • FAQ: Different Templates for different Categories • FAQ: Entries or Comments with alternating Style...

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08.25.2005

Announcing Movable Type 3.2

We're proud to announce that Movable Type 3.2 is now available. This release improves upon what is already the most powerful blogging platform by offering a better experience at every step. This new version combines the strengths and innovations you have come to expect from Movable Type over the past four years, boosted by the addition of over 100 unique new features that will help your blogs truly shine.

Best of all, it's a free update for any licensed user of Movable Type 3.x. Personal users will be happy to find that the Free edition now offers unlimited blogs. And personal users who want a multi-user license...

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Power Tools is one central place to get lots of open source code and components that Six Apart's team has released. Power Tools help you build better sites, apps, and platforms and to connect your applications to the rest of the web.

Most Power Tools code is released under open source licenses, making it possible to build on the work here in your own applications and services. Note: Power Tools are provided as technology demonstrations for our community, but we can't offer technical support for their use, installation, or configuration.

Plugins

• StyleCatcher 1.01: StyleCatcher is a simple but powerful plugin built for Movable Type 3.2 that lets you easily swap out any one of...

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For those who may be wondering, I have obtained the 'Recent Comments' and 'Recent Trackbacks' stuff in the sidebar of the homepage using the following template code.

encode_xml is used to guard against quotes, ampersands and the like. encode_ampersands is a plugin that does the same job for URLs, changing & into & in order that the page does not become invalid.

<MTIfPingsActive> <div class="module-trackbacks module"> <h2 class="module-header">Trackbacks</h2> <div class="module-content"> <p>Received Pings</p> <ul class="module-list"> <MTPings...

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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...

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This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Mike Everett-Lane of Ishbadiddle.

A Subject Index can give context to your posts and makes it easier for your readers to browse what you've written on specific topics. Unlike Categories, which are limited, top-down, and hierarchical, Subject tags are open-ended and limitless. While your blog's Category system is like the Table of Contents of a book, a Subject Index is like the book's Index, one that is constantly updated.

First, you might want to read my blog post on how the use of Subject Indexes can improve the organization of your blog. You can see it in action there as well as here on LMT. For instance, here's the index of all my subjects, and the index of all my posts on the subject of...

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Posting a New Entry

Problem

You want to post a new entry.

Solution

Click the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet.

Discussion

Since entries are what weblogs are all about, it should come as no surprise that there are a number of ways to create them in Movable Type.

The two most likely ones are either to use the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet that MT can help you create. See "Making posts quickly from your browser" for more on Quickposts.

When creating a new entry, you will have the chance to set the...

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Using includes is a wonderful way to reuse code through modularity on your site. Elise over Learning MovableType has a great tutorial on using includes, and I suggest you read it if you haven't already since this article will take off where hers leaves off and discusses a problem that dynamic site owners encounter when trying to use includes.

In a dynamic environment most people feel that PHP includes is the way to go and generally they are right. When they try to include MovableType tags in a PHP include, however, a problem raises its ugly head. This article will explain why this happens, and how to fix it. NOTE: This article only applies to dynamically generated pages.

I won't go into how great PHP...

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Content Omissions

The following topics have not bee sufficiently covered in the user manual but will be included at a future date. • Save & Rebuild button on New/Edit Entry Screen. • Creative Commons Licensing. • IP Banning. • Throttling. • Author Listing Screen. • Deleting a Weblog. • Plugins Listing Screen. • Atom ID in author profile. • General discussion of Listing Screens in Getting Started Introduction. • Expiration of sessions if Remember Me option not used. Include configuration directive and purpose of feature. • Background Tasks. Testing, purpose/explanation and configuration. • Defining Default Templates for All Weblogs....

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Question

How do I convert from one database type to another?

Answer

Convert from Berkeley to SQL

To determine whether your server supports a SQL database, and the Perl libraries required to connect to it, run mt-check.cgi and look at the status for any of the following modules: DBD::mysql, DBD::Pg, or DBD::SQLite. If any of these are installed, your server will support that version of Movable Type. If none of these are installed, you will need to contact your host to have them installed if you wish to use a SQL database.

If you are interested in...

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Apologies to Prof. Dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra for the paraphrase of the caption of his famous letter.

Current browsers are very forgiving; they quietly correct or gloss over many common HTML errors. This makes it easy for people to experience the joy of creating their own web pages with a minimum of frustration – if a page displays correctly, then it's "right."

Unfortunately, by hiding the need for structure that the web will require as it moves towards XHTML and XML, these forgiving browsers have helped create a world of structural HTML illiterates. As long as browsers continue to parse and display HTML that isn't well-formed or valid, we...

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1.4 (2002.01.07)

• New default templates no longer use &lt;label&gt; tag in the Remember info? checkbox for the ``remember me'' JS, because it was breaking XHTML validation. • Fixed Linked File Templates so that, when linking a template to a new file that doesn't yet exist, the permissions will be set correctly (based on umask settings in mt.cfg). • Added new default templates and made them customizable by stylesheets. • Added the Comment Error Template to specify the layout of the page a user receives when there is an error with his/her...

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Choosing the Right Weblog Platform

Problem

You are trying to determine whether Movable Type or TypePad is right for you.

Solution

Decide what is most important to you: simplicity or control.

Discussion

TypePad is a complement to Movable Type, not a replacement. The two tools share a common core designed to address the needs of users with different requirements and capabilities. So, the question that will often be asked is, which is right the tool to use, Movable Type or TypePad? The answer comes down to simplicity vs. control. TypePad's centralized design and focus on...

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One of Movable Type's most powerful traits is its flexibility to adapt to practically any weblog design or use you can imagine. For the average user, most of this flexibility comes from Movable Type's template engine.

The template engine is crucial to automating the process of publishing and is what makes a publishing system go. When a rebuild is performed, templates are merged with content to create a page that visitors can view in their browsers.

These templates are what control the design and layout of your site and what keeps that design separate from the content. Templates describe where you want...

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Installing Plug-ins

Problem

You want to extend Movable Type's functionality and install a plug-in.

Solution

Installing a basic plug-in requires you to place a file with an .pl extension into the plugins directory; however more advanced plug-ins may have additional steps.

Discussion

Plug-ins are Perl scripts with a .pl extension that reside in the subdirectory named plugins under the Movable Type application directory. (If you are running an older version of MT that was upgraded and have not installed a plug-in before, you may have to create this directory.) Each time MT is...

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04.28.2005

Blogs as a complement to newspapers

Forbes online picked up an Associated Press story about the eleven blogs being published by the editorial staff of the News & Record in North Carolina.

The broad range of Movable Type-powered blogs have earned high praise from others in the journalism business. As Editor & Publisher said:

"When the paper's overhaul is complete, it may be a model for the sort of 21st century paper that many journalism big thinkers have been talking about, chewing over, and confabbing on for the last few years," wrote the industry-watching magazine Editor & Publisher. "Greensboro will be the first place where this conceptually...

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