|
More pages like
this one ..... |
Brenna Koch's EmptyPages,
particular her
Movable Type Tips
See also her MySQL, scripting, PHP, template, and tags hacks
at this page.
Mark Pilgrim's
Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days
to a more accessible web site is an online book. He has tips for all publishing
tools, and in particular, tips for Moveable Type, GrayMatter, Radio Userland,
and Blogger.
Blog editors, as a precautionary measure, can make personal archives of their own channel content. Pam does this routinely for her Library News and Ferret channels. This tip is also particularly easy and useful for moving content between blogs or to move MT content from one server to another.
To do so, click
the MT Admin "Import/Export" button, and then click the "Export
Entries" at the bottom of the page. Hold
down the option key on the Macintosh, or the Shift key on a PC, while clicking
on the link.
Note: Be sure you use a web browser such as Netscape, Opera, or Mozilla.
All versions of Internet Explorer have a bug where data marked as plain text
can be intrepreted as HTML. The symptom of this bug is that all of your exported
data will run together onto one line.
See User
Manual. If you give a category a description, you can use the MTCategoryDescription
tag inside of an MTCategories container to display the description. Use the
<$MTEntryCategory$> tag to get the category name to display after the
author name and date/time stamp.
David Raynes' MTOtherBlog plug-in allows to use content from multiple other blogs in your own blog as long as they are on the same server installation of Movable Type. One use is for creating subcategories. Once installed, treat the other blogs on the server installation as primary categories, and their ordinary categories now become subcategories. Here is David's coding example of how to do this from the user forums:
<MTOtherBlog
blog_id="2,3,4">
<h2><$MTBlogName$></h2>
<MTEntries lastn="2">
<$MTEntryTitle$><br />
<$MTEntryExcerpt$><br />
<br />
</MTEntries>
</MTOtherBlog>
This tip comes from Ben Trott and Girlie. You can syndicate feeds by category using MT's Multiple Archive Templates feature.
Mark Pilgrim provides this tip using Brad Choate’s MT-regex plugin to automatically turn straight apostrophes curly. Install the plug-in, then then create a new template module called curlyquotes that contains this code:
<MTAddRegex name="apos1">s/'([dmst])([
.,?!\)\/<])/’$1$2/gi</MTAddRegex>
<MTAddRegex name="apos2">s/'([lrv])([el])([ .,?!\)\/<])/’$1$2$3/gi</MTAddRegex>
Then, in each
of your templates, add this at the top:
<$MTInclude
module="curlyquotes"$>
And anywhere
you have this:
<$MTEntryBody$>
Change it
to this:
<$MTEntryBody
regex="1"$>
Apostrophes
can be typed straight, and will show up straight when editing, but they will
be published as curly.
Terry Davis discovered that, by default, Movable Type RSS feeds only show the first 20 words (about 100 characters) of item descriptions. If you want your feed item descriptions to include their full text, edit your feed templates (index.rdf and index.xml) by substituting MTEntryBody for MTEntryExcerpt. Here an example showing the differences between the two when parsed. MTEntryBody is wrapped by <p> by default. If you want to eliminate this spacing, go to preferences and in the blog config and turn off "Covert Line Breaks." You may want to turn it off in MT, and if you want spacing in your blog channel, achieve that using CSS.
Here's a code
snippet you can use to display links to the next N entries in your blog (as
I use it in my sidebar for "Other Recent Entries"):
<MTEntries lastn="10" offset="15">
<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>">
<$MTEntryTitle$></a>
<br></MTEntries>
Since I display the last 15 entries in my blog, I wanted to display the next 10 in my sidebar (i.e., entries 16 to 25). Combining lastn with offset is what makes it work. Change 10 and 15 to meet your needs. - Source -
Ever notice how some blogs display "permalinks" that are URL references to the story being cited? Well, by default, all MT blog entries have this permalink link, but for some mysterious reason it is linked via the time stamp. This is very unintuitive for the user. I added the permalink wording by simply making this change to one line in the index template:
<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <$MTEntryDate format="%X"$> | <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">Permalink</a>
Movable Type defaults
with the textual attribution. If you want to use a graphic, such as 
, then add this to your index template.
<div class="powered">
<a href="http://www.movabletype.org"><img alt="Powered
by Movable Type 2.51" src="mt.gif" width="128" height="22"
border="0" /><br />
<$MTVersion$></a><br />
</div>
Depending on the stylesheet you are using, you may need to make changes there
as well. I had to change my powered class in these ways:
.powered background to #FFFFFF from #D3D3D3
border-left:1px dotted #999; from border:1px dotted #999;
The open source
templating feature of MT, allows users to easily customize templates for constructing
XML feeds that conform to any RSS standard. Out of the box, MT comes with templates
for RSS 1.0 and 0.91 feeds, but only displays the RSS 1.0 feed. If you want
to display the other, you can make this change to the index template (see example).
I've also added the RDF and XML graphical icons 
as well. The wording and graphics are up to you. If you have a template for
RSS 2.0, please share it here, too.
<div class="syndicate">
<a href="index.rdf"><img src="rdf.gif" border="0"
width="36" height="14" /> Syndicate this site RSS 1.0</a><br
/>
<a href="index.xml"><img src="xmlicon.gif" border="0"
width="36" height="14" /> Syndicate this site RSS 0.91</a><br
/>
</div>
Patricia discovered this php snippet when she implemented the ScriptyGoddess show/hide script.
<?
if ( xxx == xxx ) {
?>
...stuff...
<? } ?>
My latest bit of witchery allows me to have only certain information show up
on a page. For example, the blog that publishes the static pages of my site
(about, contact etc) and the writing in the writing section is set to individually
archive entries. The problem is that I only want a feedback form and the creative
commons license info to show up for those entries tagged with the 'writing'
category. So, the above php snippet to the rescue. I added the MT category code
to the Individual Archive template, but commented it out because I don't want
it to show. Then I surrounded the feedback form and cc info with the following:
<?
if (<$MTCategoryLabel$> == "writing") {
?>
...feedback form...
...cc info...
<? } ?>
So when the page gets published, the entry category is checked, and if it matches
'writing', the form and creative commons license info shows up. By repeating
the php snippet and changing the category type to be matched, you could have
information show up for several different categories, I would imagine. Though
I haven't tried this out yet. See for yourself:
entry
not tagged as 'writing'
entry
tagged as 'writing' with feedback form and cc info
Use PHP to check for upcoming events
LC uses a snippet of PHP to check for upcoming events (based on entry dates) for the next week in a template:
<?php
$now=date("Ymd",time()-24*3600);
$seven=date("Ymd",time()+7*24*3600);
?>
<MTEntries lastn="99">
<?php
$entry=date("<$MTEntryDate format="%Y%m%d"$>");
if (($now<=$entry) && ($entry<=$seven)) {
?>
<a href="<$MTEntryLink relative_url="1" archive_type="Daily">"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br
/>
<? } ?>
</MTEntries>
Current date = MTDate format='%m/%d/%Y'
To check for upcoming events (based on entry dates) for the next week, try using SomeDays plubin in conjunction with Compare plugin, letting SomeDays get you the dates (eg. <MTSomeDays select="week">) , and Compare determine if its within the right range.
<MTSomeDays
select="7" offset="-1">
<MTEntries>
<a href="<$MTEntryLink relative_url="1" archive_type="Daily">"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br
/>
</MTEntries>
</MTSomeDays>
First you set the date to one week from today. You can accomplish this by use of the offset or week attributes. You've used the offset in your example, but week="next" would also move the date forward one week. Now your current date within the plugin is set one week forward - continuing our example with today as the date, you have 9/21/2003 as your current date. Using a negative number moves the date forward, while a positive number moves the date backwards. You then tell the plugin how much data to return. You use select="7", which pulls in 7 days, ending with the current date. No negatives are allowed in the select, as I think you can do what you need with the other attributes. For instance, if you'd like to go two weeks forward, use offset="-2" to set your date (to 9/28 if running today). If you leave select="7", you'll skip next week, and pull in the week after. If you use select="14", you'll select everything from now until then.
From Tips and Tricks.
MTEntryExcerpt
The excerpt of this entry. If you have not provided an excerpt for this entry, the first 20 words of the entry, followed by an ellipsis (...) will be used, instead.
The default setting for this tag is 20 words, but you changed it to 40 words in the previous step. This means that as long as you have the MTEntryExcerpt tag on your page, you can type as long an entry as you want in the Entry box, and it will still only display the first 40 words. So your main index page might look like this:
<MTEntries>
<b><$MTEntryDate$></b>
<br>
<$MTEntryExcerpt$><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">...</a>
</MTEntries>
LC said that I solved this using a modified version of Brad Choate's "Year archives" perl code. MT only creates monthly archives. For a year archives, you need to create an index template for each year. Brad uses the PerlScript plugin to do the work of this. See Brad's code.
LC took his technique with his MTperlscript plugin and made it project this month and the next two months into mini-calendars. I even found a followup to modify the code so the month name headers could be clickable to go to a fullsize calendar page. It's a snippet that you insert into the original code [assumes your existing code is basically the same as brad’s example]: The new code is in bold. The modification is:
sub month {
my ($month, $blog) = @_;
my $date = MT::Util::format_ts(“%B %Y”, $month.’01010101’,$blog);
my $file = MT::Util::format_ts(“%Y_%m.php”,$month.’01010101’,$blog);
my $title;
if (-f “/physical/path/to/your/monthly/archive/$file”) {
$title = qq{<a href=”/url/to/your/monthly/archive/$file”>$date</a>};
} else {
$title = $date;
}
# you can customize the format of your calendar by
# changing the HTML below. Note that the ‘MT’ tags
# have been altered to ‘ZZ’ instead so they aren’t
# evaluated BEFORE the Perl code is executed:
you’ll need to alter the format_ts(“%Y_%m.php”… part to suit your own file-naming convention, and also insert the correct physical path and url in the indicated places.Then you also need to change the line:
<th colspan=”7”><span
class=”calendarhead”>$date</span></th></tr>
to
<th colspan=”7”><span class=”calendarhead”>$title</span></th></tr>
and then rebuild.
LC says that the reason why Brad's code works so well is that it uses the ability of MT to specify the exact month you want the calendar for. I just modified his code to determine the current month and then show the next two. To display the next "few future events", you could just copy the technique I use in the events listing that I manage. I simply use some php code to cut off events that are before the date I want or much further afterwards:
<?php
$now=date("Ymd",time()-24*3600);
$thirty=date("Ymd",time()+30*24*3600);
?>
<MTEntries lastn="99">
<?php
$entry=date("<$MTEntryDate format="%Y%m%d"$>");
if (($now<=$entry) && ($entry<=$thirty)) {
?>
and at the end
of the MTentries it should look like this:
<?
} ?>
</MTEntries>
The above code is a derivative of the work I found at Sillybean (see below)
From Sillybean:
There are a couple of ways of using Movable Type to create a calendar of events.
One is to display future events as text entries, replacing the traditional bloggish
today-going-backwards posting order. The key to this is the fact that MT allows
you to change the date on a post, even to a future one. The other way is to
change a blog's monthly archive template to display in a calendar-style layout.
Note that if you want your events calendar to appear in a sidebar of your existing
text blog, you will need to create a separate blog for the calendar and use
includes to put it on your index page. The instructions below will change the
configuration of your entire blog. Use at your own risk!
Part one: the future events listing . Example: Exploit Boston.
Example: Exploit Boston
- With the default
MT settings, your events will display entries from the farthest in the future
and backwards. To turn it around and display posts from now going forward, go
to Blog Config -> Preferences and change the order of posts to "Ascending."
Another (less drastic) way of doing this is to rewrite your MTEntries tag:
<$MTEntries sort_order=”ascend”>
- There are two ways to show the upcoming events and hide the past ones: categories (manual) or date-based (automatic, requires PHP).
For categories:
- Establish a category for current/upcoming events. (We'll call it 'upcoming').
If you don't have any other categories, create some (like 'deadlines' or 'events').
- In your main index template, change <MTEntries> to <MTEntries category="Upcoming">. Now the only entries that will be displayed are those that are in the Upcoming category. You will need to edit each entry and remove it from the Upcoming category in order for the entry to "expire."
- When you post an entry, assign its primary category as something other than upcoming. Save it. Now edit the entry: change the date to the date of your event, and use the "assign multiple categories" button to assign it to Upcoming. Save the entry again.
- When the event has passed, edit the entry again and remove it from the Upcoming category.
For automatic
expirations using PHP:
Again, two options here. You can have posts expire at a time you set, down to
the second, on the day they take place; or you can have them expire at the end
of the day. (If you don't really care, go with the second option; it's much
easier to maintain.)
Option
1 (from ScriptyGoddess - see below): In your template, add this PHP
snippet inside your <MTEntries> tags: <MTEntries>
<?php if (time() <= strtotime ("<$MTEntryDate
format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M %p"$>")){ ?> . .
(keep your existing code here) . <? } ?> </MTEntries>
Be sure to change your template's output file to .php if it wasn't already. Save and rebuild.
Note that because the PHP code compares the time stamps down to the second, you will need to edit the time (not just the date) of your future entries. If you want the entry to scroll off the main page the very minute a deadline has passed (e.g. 5 pm), you will need to set the time to 17:00:00. If you want the entry to remain on the page until the next day, set the time to 23:59:59.
Option 2:
In your template, add this PHP snippet inside your <MTEntries> tags:
<MTEntries>
<?php
$now=date("Ymd");
$entry=date("<$MTEntryDate format="%Y%m%d"$>");
if ($now<=$entry) {
?>
.
. (keep your existing code here)
.
<? } ?>
</MTEntries>
Be sure to change your template's output file to .php if it wasn't already. Save and rebuild.
See this MTForums thread for more details.
Archives will always go from latest to earliest, even if you change the display
order of your posts in your preferences. You can check this thread for some
ways to rearrange your archives using PHP.
This MT Forum thread suggests.
Timothy Appnel
said: setting days to -1 produces all entries with a future timestamp.
<MTEntries days="-1">
<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle></a><br/>
</MTEntries>
Tom says that Timonthy's solution is the simplest and works like a charm. It displays all future events, however, this can be a long list.
Frugle suggests:
Create a new index template that you can include with SSI or PHP as in:
<div class="head">Events
- <$MTDate format="%B %Y"$></div>
<div class="body">
<MTCalendar month="200207" category="Events">
<MTCalendarWeekHeader>
</MTCalendarWeekHeader>
<MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTEntries lastn="1">
<$MTCalendarDay$> <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br
/>
</MTEntries>
</MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTCalendarIfNoEntries>
<$MTCalendarDay$><br />
</MTCalendarIfNoEntries>
<MTCalendarWeekFooter></MTCalendarWeekFooter>
</MTCalendar>
</div>
Omiting month= will display current month.
Omitting category= will display all categories
If you're making "older" records they won't need updating every time
you rebuild, so uncheck it when you create the template. Tom says, though, that
Frugle's code displays the month's events in list format, regardless of whether
the event has passed or not.
Trailgirl says all you need to do to get a list of upcoming events is to take the ScriptyGoddess suggestion for displaying at a future date (below) and reverse the date checking: use less than instead of greater than, as in:
<?
if (time() < strtotime ("<$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M
%p"$>"))
{
?>
Then, an entry for an upcoming event shows up, but not if the event date has passed.
From
ScriptyGoddess:
(1) "Install" the script below. (wanted to give you the instructions
first, before I threw a bunch of code at you... so skip ahead to the code to
do the installation...)
(2) Write your post, but save it as a draft.
(3) Once saved, you can edit the "date" of the post. Change the date to whatever day you want your post to actually show up.
(4) This time you save it, with "publish" as the Post Status instead.
That's it. It
won't show up on your blog, until it's the date you set. NOW the code... There's
alot of code (update: actually now there's ALOT less since I've updated it!),
but no customization... you just need to copy and paste it in the right spot
to get it to work... So, it's not as scary as it looks... ok? I promise. :)
(the code below is shown as an example of what goes on the index template...
additional code will probably be required if you use individual entries and
you don't want to have it show the "next" entry (until it's the right
time) on the previous post.) I'll put it on my "to-do" list, which
just gets longer and longer...
After your <MTEntries> tag, put the code as you see it below (I included
the MTEntries tag, just for reference...) (please see commented notes below
for what goes where). The code you need to paste is in red (the "existing
tags" are in black)
<MTEntries>
<?
if (time() > strtotime ("<$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M
%p"$>"))
{
?>
<!--
PUT THE REST OF YOUR MT TAGS FOR YOUR POST BELOW -->
<MTDateHeader>
<h2><$MTEntryDate format="%B %d, %Y"$></h2>
</MTDateHeader>
<a name="<$MTEntryID
pad="1"$>"></a>
<h1><$MTEntryTitle$></h1>
<p><i><$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M %p"$></i></p>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>">MORE...</a></p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<p align="right"><a
href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>">permalink</a>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments> | <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#comments">
<$MTEntryCommentCount$> comments
</p>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
</p>
<br>
<!--- END OF ALL YOUR MT TAGS FOR YOUR ENTRY -->
<!-- Make sure you add the next little lines below BEFORE your put your "/MTEntries"
tag. -->
<?
} ?>
</MTEntries>
<!-- Javascript
that GWB uses to open a popupwindow to send the story to a friend -->
<!--
eg. http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/archives/send000083.html -->
<!-- requires Macromedia's getflashplayer plugin for x-shockwave-flash>
<!--script
language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
function OpenPopup (c) {
window.open(c,
'sendtofriends',
'width=380,height=450,scrollbars=yes,status=no');
}
function OpenWhat (c) {
window.open(c,
'whatsablog',
'width=230,height=335,scrollbars=no,status=no');
}
</script -->