Question

How do I apply a new style from the Style Library?

Answer

Note: Styles from the Style Library are only compatible with the new 3.2 Default Templates.

Applying the Style Manually

• Download the zip file for the style of your choice from the Style Library and unzip it to your local computer. All of the files should be organized into a single folder named after the style and prefixed with theme-. For example, after unzipping the file for the Beckett style, the folder would be named theme-beckett.

• Open your FTP program and navigate to your mt-static...

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Many thanks to Elise over at Learning Movable Type for allowing me to reprint this tutorial, in it's entirety, here.

Applying MT3 Style Templates to MT2.X

Movable Type 3.0 ushered in a whole new look for its default style templates, based on what we've seen with Typepad default styles. The new stylesheets can be found here in the Movable Type documentation.

The new stylesheets do not work with the default templates for MT2.661 or earlier versions of Movable Type. The old stylesheets are no longer posted on the MT website, but they can be found here at the Internet Archive.

You can update your MT2.661 (or earlier version) stylesheet with one of the new MT3 default styles (with or...

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Movable Type 3.0 ushered in a whole new look for its default style templates, based on what we've seen with Typepad default styles. The new stylesheets can be found here in the Movable Type documentation. The new stylesheets do not work with the default templates for MT2.661 or earlier versions of Movable Type. The old stylesheets are posted on the MT website here. You can update your MT2.661 (or earlier version) stylesheet with one of the new MT3 default styles (with or without updating to MT3), but if you do so, you need to change your templates so that they will work with the stylesheet. The new MT3 templates are posted on the Movable Type website here. The templates that you...

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Movable Type comes with a default search capability that your site visitors can use to search for keywords in your weblog entries. You can add functionality to the search form that people see on your site, and make adjustments to the templates that govern how the results are displayed.

Keyword Search Templates

Suppose you want to change the way the search results look when someone uses the default MT search function to do a search on your website.

Movable Type's templates that govern the MT keyword search results pages operate differently than the other weblog templates. (You may have noticed this if you have changed the name of your default weblog stylesheet away from...

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Updated. Originally posted in early 2004.

The template edit windows and the New Entry edit windows in Movable Type can easily be made larger with a simple adjustment.

MT3.2

In the folder that contains your static MT files on your server, open the file style.css in a text editor.

To change the edit-entry window, find the following lines of code:

#edit-entry .full-width { width: 577px; }

Add a height dimension after the width.

#edit-entry .full-width { width: 577px; height: 400px; }

To change the template edit window, find the following lines of code:

#edit-template textarea.wide { width: 618px; }

Add a height dimension after the width.

#edit-template textarea.wide...

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This plugin enables you to use WYSIWYG editor easily and customzably in Movable Type. There are many available open WYSIWYG editors. I've used HTMLArea and FCKeditor. Both are very good, even though they give some loads to your PC. But as time goes by, this load could be trivial.

My alogblogMTinterface plugin uses many alternate templates. Therefore the users who use my alogblogMTinterface might have some troubles in personally adapting other WYSIWYG editors. Of course I also have the same trouble whenever new W~G editors or its MT plugins are released. So I decided to provide W~G in it independently.

One of the powerful features of FCKeditor is the Media...

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Providing contact information on your weblog can be useful to your site visitors who may want to email you directly rather than submit a comment to one of your entries. You can choose to write out your email address, provide a mailto link (see MailTo Syntax for how to write out a mailto hyperlink), or you can provide a contact form. Contact forms are often preferred because they can easily hide your email address information from the spammers who regularly scour the web looking for email addresses to harvest.

I have researched and tested two free PHP-based contact form scripts - TheSiteWizard Feedback form and DodosMail - either of which you can easily implement to add a contact form...

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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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Movable Type uses a template system to generate the pages of your weblog. To change which content elements and how they are displayed on the pages of your blog, you need to make changes to the appropriate templates.

Selecting "Manage Templates" from the sidebar navigation in your weblog edit screen will show you the list of templates, but what do they all do? And, if you are trying to conserve storage space on your server, are there any you can delete?

Index Templates

Index templates have individual output files, specific to the template. Let's go down the list.

Click on image to enlarge

• Atom Index - The Atom Index produces an Atom syndication feed, atom.xml for those...

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01.21.2002

MT 2.0

Development on MT version 2.0 is going smoothly and we're looking at a early March release. Can you believe it's almost February?

A list of definite 2.0 features: • Multiple category support: The ability to assign multiple categories per entry • Multiple archive template per archive type • Interface modifications, application navigation and icon improvements based on findings from professional usability testing • Power edit screen: Apply title, category or author changes to multiple entries -- using one screen and all at once • More sorting options for the MTEntries tag: alphabetical by title, most recently commented-on, ascending and...

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The default Movable Type MT3.2 templates come with one sidebar on the right side of the Main Index page. With a little template manipulation you can have an additional sidebar on the left - a 3-column layout.

The MT3.2 stylesheets and templates are designed to have the columns laid out in order, starting with the column named "alpha". The columns, in order are alpha, beta, gamma (for a 3-column layout), and delta (a hypothetical fourth column that one could create). In the default MT3.2 Main Index template, the sidebar is on the right and is in a column named "beta.

To add a third column, you will make a copy of the default "beta" column code and put it before the "alpha"...

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I've assembled some templates to build a photo gallery with Movable Type. What makes mine different and special from all the others? Easy: it's compatible with MT version 3.2. That means it'll work with the StyleCatcher plugin and the Movable Type Style Generator!

The only special requirement to use these templates is PHP. PHP is used to calculate the image size. The plugin Better File Uploader - with its For Photo Gallery button - will make adding photos go much quicker.

I've created a small example gallery, if you're interested in seeing the result before trying it yourself.

Setup a New Weblog

First, you'll want to create a new...

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I've assembled some templates to build a photo gallery with Movable Type. What makes mine different and special from all the others? Easy: it's compatible with MT version 3.2. That means it'll work with the StyleCatcher plugin and the Movable Type Style Generator!

The only special requirement to use these templates is PHP. PHP is used to calculate the image size. The plugin Better File Uploader - with its For Photo Gallery button - will make adding photos go much quicker.

I've created a small example gallery, if you're interested in seeing the result before trying it yourself.

Setup a New Weblog

First, you'll want to create a new...

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Updated September 23, 2004 There are two basic ways to create an about page in Movable Type. The first is to just create it as any ordinary entry. Then use the permalink URL to link to it from your main page. Unless you want comments and trackbacks on your About page, disable them for that entry. The other method is to create a new index template just for your About information. The steps for this method are outlined as follows: 1. From the templates menu, select Create new index template. Name the template something recognizable as referring to an about page. Pick a name for the output file and enter it in the output file field. Use either the .html or .php extension for the...

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This tutorial is written by LMT author Arvind Satyanarayan of Movalog. Tutorial cross posted on Movalog and LMT.

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 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...

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Looking for a way to incorporate a Photo Gallery into your MT blog? Check out Photo Gallery Templates from StopDesign.com.

There are many ways to create a web-based photo album or photoblog in Movable Type. This tutorial addresses just one method for creating a photo album, and is based on the steps I took to create my MT-based photo album. This tutorial is for experienced MT users and assumes familiarity with plugins, CSS, creating a new weblog, category archiving, and uploading images. Although long, the tutorial is easier than it looks, especially if you want a photo album that works just like mine. It's always the customizations that take time. In this tutorial I will give...

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A very simple but elegant design featuring a dark background with lighter "panes" for the content areas.

Click image for a full size sample. (opens in a separate window)

Black Cherry Coffee Dark Sage Dark Teal Dusty Rose Jade Plum

Posted by The Style Monkey at January 9, 2005 11:24 PM

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We made a rather messy mistake of naming the default stylesheet included in 1.4 "styles.css" because that clashes (if stored in the same directory) with the name of the stylesheet used by the MT app.

If you haven't downloaded 1.4 yet, don't worry -- a correction has already been made to the distribution.

If you have downloaded 1.4 and just happened to wipe out your MT system stylesheet, you will need to re-upload the styles.css that was in the distribution into the directory containing mt.cgi. Then go into MT, and change the name of the Stylesheet index template to "styles-site.css" (or something), then change each of the templates to use this new stylesheet name (rather...

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Adding a background pattern to your weblog is pretty straightforward in Movable Type, requiring the change of only one line in your stylesheet.

1. Pick a pattern. You can make your own pattern using a tool like Photoshop, or you can pick a pattern from one of the many sites that offer patterns for free (for non-commercial use).

Patterns from Kaliber 10000.

Patterns from Squid Fingers

2. Make a tile.

Patterns are based on tiles, small files of the design that, once repeated, create a full pattern. Once you find a pattern you like, you need to save the gif or jpeg file of the tile upon which the pattern is based. One way to do that is to view the source of the HTML of the...

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Updated. Originally posted March, 2004 There are a couple of ways for one to easily add a poll to one's blog. 1. BlogPoll BlogPoll is a free service that can host your poll. You use Javascript to display the poll on your site. Note that the BlogPoll script uses a stylesheet that has a "content" class that may override your CSS "content" class in your blog stylesheet, causing some funky coloring on your site. If you experience this problem, to fix it, add a link rel tag right after the BlogPoll script code like so: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.yourblog.com/styles-site.css" /> Adding the link rel in that spot is not exactly valid...

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