Using MovableType
Worrisome. I just got Movable Type (2.661) comment spam on entries in one of my blogs where the database has been set via comment closing routines to turn the allow comments to the value that closes them. How is it possible for the roach to sneak in? I had hoped that was a complete shutoff. […]
Now that the Furl-Delicious-Frassle-CiteULike-Connotea-Bag Bookmarklet Tool (a simepl web form to help you build a one click browser bar tool for adding web sites to various collections) seems to be working– I decided to make another tool. This one helps you create a browser bar button for quick searching of any MovableType weblog, as described […]
Getting back to our series on better blogging, on this one I make the bold contention (ducking tomatoes) that all (well most) weblog software packages create archives the wrong way. It is not that they cannot do it better, but for the most part, the out of the blox templates build archives the lazy way– just tossing old blog entries into one large, never ending scrolling sack.
What am I blabbing about?
Just about every blog software I have seen has nicely built systems for creating archives by date of previous writings. They organize them into links by month, day, etc. Some, like MovableType, allow user defined categories, so old entries can be grouped by any hierarchy.
But what happens, and what is wrong (in this dog’s opinion) is that the definition of an “archive” is just one long entry appended after another. If you write a lot, or create more than 40 articles in a category, it becomes almost a useless overweight to find old content that takes long to download (all pictures come with it too). It ends up being one of those big anvils that always skirts the Roadrunner and plops the Coyote (I was always more of a Wile E. Coyote fan myself, but that is another story).
But here is where it gets interesting blog heads- you do not have to accept it that way, you can roll up your sleeves, and modify your archive templates to do what makes more sense to me- publish a list of previous posts by title and abstract, with links to the full shebang.
In this edition, I aim to show you not only how to weave this magic in MovableType, but also in Blogger where I recently managed to achieve the same feat. I have to give credit to the Tweezer’s Edge, a blog where I noticed this first– if you can build a better archive, I think it makes you stand out from the crowd that is still limited to the default templates.
As reported a few times before, I have been prying time here and there to work on a prototype web site, that replaces a current, hand edited Low Threshold Applications web site with a dynamic one authored in MovableType. I am just polishing off a new add-on hack that uses PHP and mySQL to dome nifty magic.
We are making progress on moving the old content over, but one of the last features to tackle (I think) was a dynamic generated equivalent of the LTA Contributors List where it lists the authors names, emails, organizations, and a list and links to the content they had authored.
After exploring the available tags in MovableType, plugins, I was still not finding a simple way to do this. Yes, MT can sift through entries sorted by authors, but you have to know all the author username in advance, so every new author would mean a rewrite of the template. Not dynamic enough for me.
I found a solution very close to what I was after from Scriptygoddess (a heavenly MT resource), MT hacks: Master Author Archive, MySQL version and with not too much leverage, was able to customize my own. Basically, I use PHP to pull info on all the authors on this particular blog, then for each author, echo their contact details. Under each, he trudge the database again, and for each author, pull just the entry titles they have posted to build a list and links.
However doing this the way we wanted meant needing extra information on the author, as MT’s author table just lists their login name and email, and I needed their full name, and their organization/affiliation. So my approach here was to create my own local author table in the MT database, and tie it to the MT one via the MT generated author_id (I am likely losing all of the non programmers here, bye ;-).
What’s in a file name? Well it is the URL that you will publish, so make the most of it. You can make room for flexibility in your blogs if you set things so all content created is published as *.php rather than *.html.
What is PHP? A long forgotten acronym, but it is a powerful server side language for mixing in some script like commands that can make web pages be much more dynamic than static HTML. Even if you never use one iota of PHP code, your blog site can still spit out web friendly content, HTML only if you change things as described below. It is an once of prevention (well maybe more than an ounce) that creates opportunity down the road.
So in this bit of MT, we will show you how to change everything so your blog is on the PHP bandwagon, and then show you an easy way to save your individual blog posts with more meaningful urls than http://www.mycoolsite.org/blog/archives/000035.html
I’ve been at the blogging biz using MovableType (MT) since April 19, 2003, and along the way I’ve been putting aside some ideas for things I have done beyond the out of the box set up that might help others. Also, since I am still living in the free land of MT 2.661, I have […]
Appearances, aside, I copy others quite often… and reading Scott’s note on successful migration from MovableTYpe 2.x to 3.1, I am pondering dragging the CogDog up a notch. I’d resisted for a while because (a) The blog is doing fine as as; and (b) I have about 12 MT blogs on 3 different servers and […]
I am a bit amazed I never thought of this earlier… the primary use for CogDogBlog is pure selfish- tracking things or projects so I can have a record I can find later. More often than not, i am trying to remember a site or reference from a few months/years back, and the only way […]
In yet another feat of “faux syndication”, we now have our events database updating our Ocotillo Central and Action Group blog sites automatically. This provides a dynamic link from the info on the main Ocotillo Events calendar which has unique URLs for the following views: All Action Group Events General Ocotillo Events Learning Objects Action […]
flickr foto P8181355.JPGavailable on my flickr Rest a Bit on the “Restbit Bench”, Santa Maria Springs, Hermit Trail, Grand Canyon I just posted this photo to my flickr account using a nifty plugin for iPhoto (found via Tim Lauer). Basically, one can select one or more photos from your collection, select Export, add captions and […]
