In Movable Type, we use tags for defining the flow within a template and for accessing the database. You can influence a tag's behavior with the help of attributes. These attributes define a value for some parameter.

Unfortunately, the value for an attribute may only be a constant. However, you will sometimes have the need for setting the value to the result of another tag. Movable Type will not support such a situation, but a plugin will help.

An Example

Suppose you have a template module that you want to include from many different places. For example, you want to call this module from both an individual entry archive and the main index. Inside the template, you then want to...

continue reading ...

Movable Type knows templates and entries. The templates define the structure of the HTML pages. Inside the entries there is the content for those pages. Unfortunately the tags, which are used in the templates, are forbidden inside entries. But there is a way out.

In Entries there is Text. Why do you need Tags?

Entries mainly consist of text. But there are situations where you wished that tags were allowed. Using tags for control flow is probably not the primary wish. But using tags as variables is very reasonable.

Let us make a simple example. Most weblogs also contain images. These are usually saved into a directory »images« under the root folder. But how do you...

continue reading ...

Question

In Movable Type, entries or comments or other objects are often shown in lists. For example, the main index shows the most recent entries, a category archive also shows entries, or an individual entry archive shows comments. I preferred if not all items in such lists were styled the same. For example, there should be an alternating white / gray background. How can this be done?

Answer

Fortunately, the answer can be given in a generic way. The technique that I am going to show can be used with all types of objects (entries, comments, categories, etc.) and any number of different styles.

For showing the basic idea I will create a list of entries using 3 different styles....

continue reading ...

It is a common scenario to have a list of entries sorted by date of publication. As this list may be rather long, it is reasonable to group entries and mark each group with a distinct group header. If you want to group by day, you can use the MTDateHeader tag for this task. However, what can be done, if you prefer to group by months?

An example

Suppose you have a couple of entries. Then you might want to create a structured list as follows:

Jan 16th, 2005 - First entry from Jan 16th, 2005 - Second entry from Jan 16th, 2005 - Third entry from Jan 16th, 2005 Jan 20th, 2005 - First entry from Jan 20th, 2005 - Second entry from Jan 20th, 2005 Feb 3rd, 2005 - First entry from...

continue reading ...

For those of you with multiple MT weblogs, have you ever wanted to move an entry from one blog to another? or the entries from only one category from one to another weblog? You can copy the entries from the first weblog and paste them into the second, but how to move the associated comments or trackbacks?

Here's one fairly straightforward method.

1. Create a new index template in the weblog that contains the entries you wish to move. Give the template name any name you wish. Call the output file mt.txt. Copy and paste the following code into the new index template:

<MTEntries lastn="1000" sort_order="ascend" category="Your Category Name Goes...

continue reading ...

Movable Type is being used to store a list of classes, and we need to make those class titles available in a form field (class registration) as a dynamically linked list box. The user will be presented with two list boxes, the first with a list of categories, the second (which is disabled until a category is chosen) with a dynamically generated list of the titles in the selected category.

Ingredients

We're going to need two important things here. First, a handy DHTML script from Xin Yang called Chained Selects that's going to power our linked list boxes. The script that you'll be dropping into your directory is called chainedselects.js.

Second, a javascript file...

continue reading ...

Working with Category Tags

Problems

You need to display category data in your published pages.

Solutions

Use the template tags prefixed with MTCategory.

Discussion

Category tags can be used to display a list of categories and their information in both hierarchical and non-hierarchical forms. These tags can be used in MTArchiveList archive_type="category", MTEntryCategories, MTCategories or MTSubCategories tag contexts. Category tags may also be used anywhere in a Category Archive template.

The basic tags when working with non-hierarchical data are as follows. (For an...

continue reading ...

In Comparison needed for conditional Generation I showed how to use the Compare Plugin for managing variations of a page type. The plugin allows comparing values and optionally inserting one or the other code segment into the output stream. However, the simple condition "if one value equals another value" is just the beginning. We are also able to create complex conditions. It is not even that difficult.

Basics

The Compare Plugin offers a number of tags, as for example MTIfEqual, MTIfNotEqual, MTIfGreater, MTIfGreaterOrEqual, MTIfLess, etc. Most of them work the same way: they take at least two mandatory attributes, a and b. The plugin compares the values of those two...

continue reading ...

Here's a quickie I've been meaning to post for a while. From time to time, people ask me, "Hey Brad - how do you do those dividers inbetween each post for a single day? How do you get MT to do that?"

Well, it's not asked very often since I rarely post twice a day (or even once a day here lately). But here's how you can do it, without using even one of my fantastic plugins. 1

...

continue reading ...

I am going to describe the basics of Movable Type in a short introduction. You do not have to know anything about Movable Type for understanding it. However, when following this three-part introduction, you will learn to know the most important components and gain a good overview. • Movable Type Basics / 1 • Movable Type Basics / 2 • Movable Type Basics / 3

Templates

In the previous part we explained that entries are stored in a database. However, you will not find the website's HTML in the database. Instead, just the attributes of an entry are stored as columns in a database table. But how does Movable Type create HTML out of this?

In Movable Type there are a number of...

continue reading ...

This Movable Type plugin implements a set of template tags for displaying text in multiple columns. Your text will be broken up into approximately equal portions, and the HTML formatting you specify (i.e. a table cell) will be repeated once for each portion.

Installation

To install the Columnize plugin, upload the file Columnize.pl to the plugins directory within your Movable Type directory. If you do not already have a plugins directory, create one before uploading the file. For more information about Movable Type plugins, see the documentation.

Contact

Please address questions, comments, bug reports, feature requests, interesting usage examples, etc., to mtplugins [AT] staggern...

continue reading ...

Question

I always use the »Entry Body« and the »Extended Entry« when creating a new entry. Then a »continue reading« link appears on my start page, pointing to the Individual Entry Archive. When clicking the link, the entry appears. However, it is scrolled vertically, so that the lines of the »Extended Entry« are on top of the screen. I do not like that. Can it be avoided?

Answer

You have to modify the »Main Index Template« for achieving that. • Open your Movable Type project. • Click on »Templates« in the left menu bar. • Click on »Main Index.« • A dialog will appear. In the »Template...

continue reading ...

Updated MT-Notifier to include the change that apparently was lost earlier. Stand-alone subscription forms should work now.

continue reading ...

Introduction

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...

continue reading ...

Categories provide an alternate means to the weblog's traditional chronological form of organizing entries. Movable Type allows you to enter a list of categories using a variety of methods and assign one or more to each of your entries. You can use MT's categorization facilities to group related entries despite chronology or simply as a means of filtering entry listings in the CMS more easily.

Each entry can be assigned one primary category and any number of secondary categories. The primary category is used when you wish to display information about just one of the categories to which an entry is...

continue reading ...

You've seen it before. An article gets hot and soon you have 50 to 60 comments attached to it. Getting in on the tail end of the conversation can be annoying with that many posts to wade through. So we create a handy little convention that will highlight (change the class of) the comments posted by the author of the post.

There are many, many ways this can be done (plugins, php, etc.) and even more ways to implement it (mutliple author highlighting, specific images for certain commenters, etc.), but we're going to look at two important facets: static and dynamic.

Static vs. Dynamic

This is a debate which we will leave to the professionals. I will only...

continue reading ...

If you're looking for XHTML 1.1 compatibility, then only minor changes are needed to your default Movable Type templates. I had the most difficulty with the comments form on the individual entry archive.

The first thing that got me was the form itself. The form tags need to be outside of your block - for instance, form, then div. Close your /div, then close the /form. If you don't do this, then the validator won't read your block correctly - it will throw all sorts of errors, mostly having to do with disallowed elements.

It will also make you think that "name" isn't a valid attribute. Indeed, you can see in this reference that name is a valid attribute for the input element. But it...

continue reading ...

You can have full control over Movable Type creating the HTML for your website. For making this happen, Movable Type can be configured by a couple of templates.

The templates define the style and the contents of the created pages. In the beginning you should best leave those templates untouched. After you have mastered the Movable Type basics, you can change any template for styling the website according to your wishes.

In the Beginning there is a Mess

If you study the templates, you will very soon realize that the templates are not perfectly organized. Rather often identical parts can be found in different templates. Regarding good structure and easy maintenance the templates will...

continue reading ...

2.5 (2002.10.08)

• Localization: the MT interface can be available in multiple languages, on a per-author setting. • Integrated Jay Allen's mt-search (Thanks, Jay!). We've made the following changes from version 1.31b: • Rewrote ``new comments search'' to make it more scalable (using recently_commented_on functionality) • Added a search log through the Activity Log. • Added search request throttling, to help against denial of service attacks. • Merged mt-search.cfg directives into mt.cfg....

continue reading ...

The Better Upload File Template has been superceded by the Better File Uploader plugin.

As any regular reader of danandsherree.com likely knows, Sherree and I use the Upload File tool in Movable Type to put a lot of photos on this site. The tool works pretty well, but requires a lot of manual intervention: specify a file, an upload folder, a new entry or HTML, and a thumbnail and its size. If there are many photos to add, it becomes a lot of work!

I edited the Upload File templates to better suit our needs: "Show me the HTML" is the default option, clicking "Create a thumbnail…" will resize a thumbnail to the proper dimensions, and a "For...

continue reading ...