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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Question

I have a couple of categories. When using the MTCategories tag, these are sorted by name. However, I preferred if I could choose the order manually. There is a logical order of the categories, and the categories should be listed in that order. Can it be done?

Answer

Movable Type does not have a built-in function for achieving an arbitrary ordering of the category list. We have to use a plugin for that.

The idea for implementing the ordering is as follows: we will prefix all category names with some text, which is removed right before the category name is output to HTML. As an example please look at my top-level categories in the sidebar. These are... • Basics • Installation...

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One of Movable Type's biggest strengths is the platform's support for an unlimited number of weblogs. Once you've got a thriving community of bloggers creating entries and publishing their thoughts, though, it quickly becomes necessary to manage the weblogs on your system.

To meet this need, we've introduced an entire new area of functionality in Movable Type 3.2: The System Overview. We've chosen the System Overview as the first feature to highlight in this new release because it represents a single home for administrators. It's one place to go to oversee everything that's happening across your installation, whether that's a single blog for your site, dozens of blogs managing...

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Installing Movable Type with FTP

Problem

You want to install the Movable Type software using FTP.

Solution

Download an FTP application, uncompress the software onto your desktop and take care of any necessary configuration before uploading.

Discussion

• An FTP (file transfer protocol) program is used to send the files from your computer to your server. If you don't yet have an FTP program, there are many available for free. SmartFTP is a good FTP program for Windows, and offers a free trial version. Transmit is a good FTP program for Mac users on OS X, and it has a free...

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1.4 (2002.01.07)

• New default templates no longer use <label> 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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One of the best ways to improve the community around your weblog is to encourage accountability. But to make that happen, you have to have a consistent identity for each of the people who contributes comments to your site, so that you can know who each person is. This is especially important in Movable Type 3.2, where each commenter has an individual page where a blog owner can see all of that person's comments across all the blogs in the system.

To make this kind of accountability possible, we introduced the TypeKey authentication service last year. Since then, millions of people have signed in with the service, and dozens of tools have sprung up around TypeKey, either serving as...

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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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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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Introduction

Weblogs are not just a one-way medium for publishing. With the use of a singular, often conversational voice, enhanced by the loosely coupled nature of the Internet and lightweight syndication formats, weblogs are akin to conversations, regardless of the size and makeup of the audience. "A" writes about something on their mind -- an experience, the news, or a project's status. "B" reads it and expresses their take. "C" finds both posts interesting and notes something A and B has not mentioned and so on.

Not everyone has a weblog (sadly) and not everyone wants to make...

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Movable Type is the platform that introduced TrackBacks to the web, and now in version 3.2 we've given you the most powerful interface for managing, moderating, and editing TrackBacks that you receive.

TrackBacks are finally equal citizens in the Movable Type platform: Just like comments, they can be directed to go into moderation, and any TrackBack that's been received can be edited. These two features have long been requested by our users, and we're glad to include not just these improvements, but a full suite of TrackBack management options including the new junk folder for spam TrackBacks, and a powerful new user interface for performing bulk actions on TrackBacks including...

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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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The full URL (including http:// and your site's domain name) to your public weblog. This URL should not include the filename of your index file; for example, if your index file is located at http://www.example.com/blog/index.html, then the value for Site URL should be http://www.example.com/blog/.

This is a required field.

Example: http://www.example.com/blog/

You should never set your Site URL to the same value as your Movable Type application URL (i.e. your CGIPath). Publishing your weblog content to the Movable Type directory is a security hazard and can lead to numerous problems such as...

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Configuring Search for One or More Weblogs

Problem

You want to enable your system to provide users with search capabilities across one or more weblogs.

Solution

Add configuration directives to mt-config.cgi that are related to the search engine.

Discussion

The MT search engine features a number of configurable options which are maintained in the mt-config.cgi file rather than in a web interface. The search functionality is not tied to a specific weblog, and its configuration is applied system wide.

Because these functions are not tied to a specific weblog and due to...

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1.3 (2001.12.11)

• Fixed bug where days="N" would override category="Foo" in <MTEntries> tag. (cwodtke) • Added DBM file locking (shared lock when reading, exclusive when writing). • Export process now exports excerpts, and import now imports them. • When you upload a file, if a file by that name (at that location) already exists, you now get a confirmation screen to overwrite the file, or not. (Requires that File::Temp is installed.) • Added search and replace functionality. • You can now upload files into specific directories...

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05.31.2005

Movable Type Cheat Sheet

One of the great things about Movable Type being localized into a number of languages and having such a broad international presence is that we get great contributions from our community around the world. The latest contribution is Jörg Petermann's Movable Type Cheat Sheet, which he's published in both German and English.

The Cheat Sheet, available in both PDF and PNG formats, covers all the standard Movable Type template tags, as well as common attributes for the tags and the date format used for output. Most of these tags also apply to TypePad's advanced templates as well, so it's worth keeping a copy of the Cheat Sheet...

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This document describes the format required by the Movable Type import mechanism, which can be used to import entries and comments from other content management systems.

The basic import format is a list of entries, separated by the string -------- (that is eight - characters, followed by a carriage return). Each entry can be broken into two main sections; these sections are separated by the string ----- (that is five - characters, followed by a carriage return).

If you have HTML in the data that you are importing, it should not be encoded into HTML entities; the data that is in your import file is...

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Several users of MTLookup reported that sometimes the result lists' sort order seemed to be strange. Important entries were on position 10, and not so important entries reached top positions.

I analyzed the situation and compared the result lists that were generated by MTLookup with those that were created by Google and Yahoo. Some important facts could be found.

What is most important, the MTLookup ranking could be improved. Now it works consistent - no matter whether the keyphrase contains short or long words, or it contains words that appear often or seldom it the database.

I could even find some situations, where Google and Yahoo produced not so perfect result lists. It was...

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Tutorials in Alphabetical Order

"Email Me" Contact Forms A Safe Way to Upgrade to MT 3.2 Add Your Links Here Adding a Footer Adding a Sidebar - MT3.1 and Earlier Adding a Sidebar to the Default Archive Templates Alphabetize Your Entries Amazon Web Services An Overview of the MT Program File Directories Applying MT3 Style Templates to MT2.X Background Patterns Backing Up Your Blog Banner Images Blog Maintenance Blogger Audioblogging with Movable Type CGIWrap and suEXEC Category Archive Pages Category Customizations Closing Comments Colors - Background, Banner, Headline, and Font Colors - Experimenting With, Using MTSetVar and MTGetVar Combining Multiple Blogs Into One Concerning Spam Converting from Fixed to Fluid Style...

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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...

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A container tag whose contents will be displayed if the entry in context was posted on a different day than the following/next entry in the list.

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MTDateHeader

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