MovableBlog: Archives: Movable Type

A weblog about the Movable Type Publishing Platform and other geekery

November 20th, 2004

My Name in Print »

Rogers Cadenhead is someone I've had respect for as a writer on RSS, Java, and especially—though I used the software all of twice—Radio Userland. In March of this year, he asked my permission to publish a screenshot of the Trackback listing of my review of the TypePad hosted blogging service in his then-forthcoming book on Movable Type. I agreed, being honoured just for having been asked. This month, his book Movable Type 3 Bible, Desktop Edition hit the stores. While in Portland, Oregon, visiting friends, I stopped by the Powell's Technical Bookstore and asked if they had a copy (but not before looking for it myself). When presented with the copy, looking at the section for Trackback, and seeing myself and my website referred to in print—for the first time, my knowledge—over two pages no less, the purchase decision was an easy one.

The following are the relevant paragraphs:

Figure 11-1 shows how trackback links are presented in MovableBlog, a weblog by Richard Eriksson (http://movableblog.com/). His site is devoted to poking around Movable Type, and when he wrote an entry reviewing Six Apart's TypePad hosting service, his review was discussed on six other weblogs. These weblogs sent trackback messages to Eriksson's server that were received by Movable Type and saved to his weblog's database.

As a means of receiving feedback on your work, trackback is comparable to receiving comments in response to an entry— but in this case the comments are hosted on someone else's weblog. On MovableBlog, Eriksson presents trackback links on the same page as comments, enabling his visitors to see the kind of feedback each of his entries has received. Mena and Ben Trott, inventors of the protocol, call it a form of remote commenting.

Posted by Richard at 01:38 PM

October 19th, 2004

Infrequency »

In August, I pseudo-complained that Six Apart wasn't promoting actual uses of their software on their site. Anil Dash seems to have stopped link-blogging at his personal site—which is a shame, since I liked the stuff he had about politics and race and Prince (not that it matters: he has been blogging some of that stuff in the features section)—and moved it to the rather excellent Six Apart Professional Network weblog. 6A employees Mark Paschal, Brenna Koch, Paul Lindner and Ezra Cooper have also blogged at the site, but it is mostly Anil Dash's show. That weblog, along with unofficial weblogs Movalog and Learning Movable Type, are what MovableBlog set out to be and could never attain. Lack of time due to a full-time job and and a partial divestment of the emotional investment I had in the software is leading me to focus on matters other than MovableBlog as well as the Asides, so if updates seem less frequent than their usual infrequency, those are my reasons.

Posted by Richard at 02:21 PM

August 19th, 2004

Six Apart and Dog Food »

With the hiring of Brad Choate as a software engineer at Six Apart, I discover the existence of a list of 6A bloggers. (That's what I get for nor reading the HTML versions of weblogs.) I'm not as heavily involved with Movable Type in the creation of my personal weblogs—of the too many weblogs I write, this one is the only one powered by MT—nor with my independent consulting—there's a reason for that, although the details haven't been finalized—so my only real source for MT-related news is Anil Dash's links weblog. He pimps MT pretty hard in that section, but then again, can you blame him?

I'm probably not going to follow MT as much as I did in the past (see vague reference above), but I did whip up an OPML file of the Six Apart bloggers. This is not a comprehensive list, so I'd appreciate a heads up on errors and omissions, and I had to actually search for some of them. Why are the board members and executives and board members with weblogs not linked in the Six Apart about page? If it were up to me—and there are doubtless good reasons why it's not—I would link to all employees to show what can be done with the software they produce with a standard disclaimer about the opinions expressed on their weblogs being their own. Of even better, embrace their diversity of opinion without a disclaimer. Okay, that should be reason enough why it's not up to me.

Most of their weblogs discuss very little about the company itself. One just recently posted photos of her cat. (I hang my head in shame that, as a blogger, not only have I never posted photos of my cat, but I don't even have one.) I recently overheard a woman who said that she does not want her developers writing weblogs. She wants them developing software while on company time, and that's fair. If you're hired to do something, but instead you do something else, then by definition you're not doing your job. I subscribed to one 6A blogger who stopped talking about their code and what the company was doing and focussed on their personal life. (Don't worry, I won't say who it is, but that's only because I've forgotten who it was.) I unsubscribed from the feed thinking "This is not what I subscribed for."

I stand by my unsubscription (I stand by everything I've done and said as an accurate reflection of the way I felt at the time), but only by looking at the weblogs of 6A employees do I understand that they are more than "just" employees of a hip Bay Area software company: they're people who define themselves by more than what they do to pay their bills, even if what they do to pay their bills happens to give them great satisfaction. That's what blogging is supposed to be: it's about telling the world how human you are and how human you can be. It's about saying as much or as little as you want to say about yourself, which is why the company needs to, to use an ugly geek expression I only heard used repeatedly and unproblematically just recently, not only eat their dog food but show how their employees are eating their dog food. Because as the OPML file shows, they do just that.

Posted by Richard at 05:56 PM

May 14th, 2004

The Reports of Movable Type's Death are Greatly Exaggerated »

Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured I was on the Internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world.
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?
Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.
Comic Book Guy: Worst episode ever.

Six Apart did absolutely the right thing in charging for the developer's edition of their software and offering a free version. MT 3.0 breaks some plugins and third-party software, so 6A released an edition that developers can use to upgrade said plugins and software. Not "crippleware": that's where you install fully-featured software which disables itself after a set amount of time. The free version of Movable Type—you know they offer a free version, right?—is full-featured and stays that way, and licensing has none of the limits are hard-coded. Also, if 2.661 works well for you, you are not a developer, and you do not want to pay for the licences, there is no reason to upgrade as it is.

Yesterday, over and over, I read people Comic Book Guy after Comic Book Guy, saying that they felt somehow betrayed that, months after of becoming a for-profit enterprise, that same enterprise would go ahead and do exactly what those types of enterprises are supposed to do. They gave you a great, easy-to-use, very well-supported (albeit by a volunteer community), great-looking, free piece of software that enabled you to speak your mind to potentially millions of people. Even if only you and your cat knew about it, Movable Type, along with the other great blogging software (some of it free software), lowered the entry barriers. Yes, the power law applies, but Movable Type, its predecessors, successors and competitiors made the tail end longer.

Also, when you downloaded MT 3.0D, did you read the license? (The following applies to the licence for Movable Type Free; I haven't seen the other licenses.) Gone is text that said you couldn't charge for services relateing to Movable Type. They not so much created a market opportunity for developers—loosely defined to include those who want to install and customize Movable Type for clients—as legitimized it, as they recognized that as it was, the licence was unenforceable. Not only that, but the new licence ends up helping everybody: the more people that can develop around Movable Type, the more commercial licenses Six Apart sells. Clients willing to pay for a high-quality weblog win. Developers win. Six Apart wins.

Six Apart did make some mistakes. You have to sign up for TypeKey—which I have my own, unrelated, problems with—to download even the free personal version. Many experienced non-developer users of MT will be inclined to think that the pretty overhaul, comments and Trackback moderation don't deserve a full integer upgrade. Yes, it's not a 'feature' release as Mena says, but some users might say "you're not kidding". They also sprung the pricing structure on the alpha/beta community, the very community that is most passionate about the software. That is their prerogative, but something like "in the next few days we will be announcing a significantly changed pricing structure" might have avoided some of the appalled reactions among the group. From informal chats I've had throughout yesterday, it also appeared they upset a higher proportion of highly skilled users, who generally have some sway over what lower-skilled established (and wannabe) writers who want to start a weblog than they intended. (I confirmed early this morning that at least one high profile blogger is switching away from MT.) There are also some minor bugs in the download that need ironing out, but that is happening.

In the end, Six Apart will finally make some money from selling what is an excellent product, a publishing system that higher-end users can use on their host of choice to take advantage of their coding skills and create a truly customized experience. Those who cannot afford the pricing structure have alternatives which can be purchased or downloaded (and even distributed) for free. The people who pay for Movable Type licenses, though, are getting a world-class piece of blogging software with professional support from 6A. Did I mention that this is a developer's edition with a free personal version? The reports of Movable Type's death are greatly exaggerated.

Posted by Richard at 11:56 AM

April 14th, 2004

The Real Problem With TypeKey »

There has been much ado about TypeKey, Six Apart's comment authentication service, and the thread had died down until Sarah brought it up again and Jay commented that opinion was split between those who used it and those who haven't. Phil Ringnalda hosted a lively discussion about distributed moderation and authentication, and some of the usual suspects said some of the usual things about the matter. Rogers Cadenhead wondered why 6A offered a centralized tool when its bread and butter are decentralized tools (although TypePad is a centralized alternative to Movable Type). I can't—so therefore won't—claim that I've read every last weblog post about TypeKey, because I'm a busy man (increasingly true) and nobody is saying what the real problem with TypeKey is.

It's not that it's centralized and it's not that Six Apart and its employees have bills to pay along with the possibility of retiring to a beach house to think about. It's not because it increases the ability of Six Apart or weblog owners to censor others. Actually, that gets close to it: weblog owners have the ultimate say as to whose comments get edited or left on the site. I have yet to see a compelling reason to let others dictate what goes and what stays on a website that I not only pay for in terms of hosting fees and domain names, but also in terms of time spent and thinking, designing and writing. Weblog comments and message boards and wikis—along with other similar types of websites—are free speech on someone else's dime. Now don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with giving someone else the ability to write on your site. If you pay for it (through either time, money, effort or all three), you get the priviledge of saying pretty much what you want and allowing others to say pretty much what they want. Of course there are limits: in North American societies, at least, you are not allowed to slander or libel anyone, nor are you allowed to threaten someone with bodily harm or death.

The problem as I see it is not that TypeKey is too centralized, but weblog comments themselves are too centralized. By commenting on someone else's site rather than commenting on your own weblog, you are increasing the chances that the owner of the weblog you commented will edit or delete your comment. We saw that last year with the introduction and enforcement of weblog comment policies. Most weblogs do not have comments feeds, so keeping track of comments is difficult to begin with. (Phil Ringnalda, if you'll permit me this parenthetical comment, not only implements comment feeds, but also <wfw:commentrss>.) How many times have you commented on a weblog entry only to forget that it was there or stop caring about the conversation once the number of weblog comments reached a certain level? And how many times was the person's remarks so insignificant to you that you did not feel the need to reply?

I've taken comments off on my weblogs primarily because your one-button confessionalism is best done on your weblog. I do wish to point out a hypocrisy or two, which will have the very much intended effect of promoting two of my other projects: improvident lackwit and Vancouver Webloggers are two sites that I pay for that have comments open. The former because of laziness and the latter because it's a group weblog, and I need the criticisms resulting from blanket elimination of the ability to comment like I need another hole in my head. In an ideal world, though, no weblog would have comments enabled, but everybody would have their own weblog. You remember that old cliché, the freedom of the press goes only to those who own one. Well, there is remarkably little stopping you from owning one these days. Is the fear of having to install complicated software getting in your way? TypePad, Blogware and other paid hosted blogging solutions have a pretty interface and are setup ready to go. You can't afford to pay for a monthly subscription to a blogging service? LiveJournal and BlogSpot are free. Don't have access to the Internet from home? Your public library—which you pay for already through your taxes, and if you don't pay taxes, some rich guy is helping you out—probably has free machines for its patrons. You don't have access to the Internet at all? Then how are you reading this? (In the event that someone has printed this out for you to read, and you really don't have access to the Internet, then you can't own a printing press like so many other bloggers do. One day someone will find a way to make a tidy fortune off sending weblog entries by snail mail, but that day is not today.)

I have another point of hypocrisy, one that points out the benefits of having comments enabled. A new project of mine, Urban Vancouver will have comments enabled on as many pages as possible, including the events calendars and other non-weblog sections. Because we can't be everywhere at once, and people who experience the events around the Greater Vancouver Area will want a place voice an opinion. Also, authenticated users will be allowed to have their own weblogs, which will most likely have comments enabled. (That will be the blogger's choice, of course.) All this benefits the editors of Urban Vancouver in terms of finding out great things about the people and places in Vancouver, but in terms of free content that a) search engines index, increasing the number of and ranking for valuable keywords and b) ad serving programs (or even third party companies who recognize the importance of certain keywords and want to advertize) will analyze Urban Vancouver pages and pay us. Users will benefit by getting a voice, organizations or people benefit by being linked to a highly-ranked web page, and we benefit with fame and/or money. (Fame and money are evidently convertible commodities.)

Six Apart is wise to address the comment spam problem, and have figured that there is business value in providing a solution like TypeKey. What I am trying to suggest is that TypeKey encourages people to use commenting systems of other people's weblogs when these same people could easily and cheaply get a much more substantial voice by commenting having their own weblog. That way, the only people that can censor you are your hosting provider (they have asses to cover too) or, sometimes, the state. Or if you've decided to quit blogging, you only have yourself to blame.

Posted by Richard at 07:01 PM

February 24th, 2004

Weblog Consulting »

Free time doesn't pay quite like it used to, so I am making myself available to help people overcome the technical barriers to blogging. My personal projects give a good indication what I'm capable of in terms of design and content, and this weblog is a good indication of my technical expertise. My resume doesn't promise anything other than what resumes are supposed to do.

I can:

You can contact me using this form.

Posted by Richard at 03:25 PM

December 19th, 2003

Another Way To Integrate del.icio.us in Movable Type »

There are already two methods of including del.icio.us links in your Movable Type weblog: this one using the GetXML plugin and this one using Perl and cron. There's no law saying there can't be another one, so after installing the MT-RSS plugin, place this code, with your modifications, somewhere in your index template:

<h4><a href="http://del.icio.us/username">del.ico.us</a> links</h4> <MTRSSFeed file="http://del.icio.us/rss/username"> <ul><MTRSSFeedItems lastn="5"> <li><a href="<$MTRSSFeedItemLink$>"><$MTRSSFeedItemTitle$></a> <MTRSSFeedItemDescriptionExists> - <$MTRSSFeedItemDescription$></MTRSSFeedItemDescriptionExists></li> </MTRSSFeedItems></ul> </MTRSSFeed>

Replace username with either your username. Alternatively, you can replace username with /tag/custom-tag (changing custom-tag to a del.icio.us tag like css), making the RSS URL http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/css. If you want, you can set a cron job to call mt-rebuild.pl to make any links you add to del.icio.us appear on your site, say, within the hour. That way, you wouldn't have to rebuild manually every time you post a few links to del.icio.us.

Posted by Richard at 02:14 AM | TrackBacks (9) | Comments (2)

August 10th, 2003

Plugins Work in Archive File Templates »

If anybody's wondering how Mark Pilgrim has shorter permalinks to his posts (like the URL for this entry), the answer lies in using Movable Type's Entry Keywords field and the MTIfEntry plugin. He may do it differently: the following worked for me in an experimental installation of MT. He did tip me off to his using the Entry Keywords, however.) Plugins, as I found out recently, can be used in the Archive File Templates.

Update Aug. 14, 11:25 PM: Mark has written up an article on how he did it.

This is how I have the Archive File Templates, for the Individual Archive, setup in my experimental installation:

<MTIfEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.php</MTIfEmpty><MTIfNotEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryKeywords dirify="1"$>.php</MTIfNotEmpty>

You can get rid of cruft even further, even if you rely on PHP inside the Individual Entry archives. One could take permalinks come tantalizingly close to permalinks for the Ultimate Blogging System. The Individual Archive File Template would look something like this:

<$MTEntryDate format="%Y/%m/%d/"$><MTIfEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$></MTIfEmpty><MTIfNotEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryKeywords dirify="1"$></MTIfNotEmpty>

To parse as PHP (my host automatically parses .php files, but it's not automatic for other files), one could put the following line in .htaccess, and your archives folder would be a good candidate for the file's location:

ForceType application/x-httpd-php

So the link to this entry, instead of being fairly crufty (and lacking the year in it), would, if I had typed the word "Permalinks" in the Keywords field (without quotes), look something like http://www.movableblog.com/archives/2003/08/10/permalinks. But if there's no words in the Entry Keywords field, the Entry Title is used to create the filename. Of course, that depends on actually putting in something for the Title, but that's never a problem for me.

But the moral of this story is that plugins work inside the Archive File Templates, which means a lot of fun can be had with constructing MT blog's URLs.

Posted by Richard at 07:39 PM | Comments (5)

July 27th, 2003

richarderiksson.com Now Powered by MT »

Taking my cue from Brad Choate, Matt Haughey and Adaptive Path, my personal site is now using MT as the CMS.

Posted by Richard at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

June 24th, 2003

MT License Debate »

There is a long (and sometimes heated) discussion about using MT as a hosted service at On The Third Hand. Some of it is misinformed, and as is their wont, Mena and Anil have stepped in to try to clarify some of the issues. This quote from Mena in the above discussion is relevant to my experience (and is also a reiteration and elaboration of what she said in the message boards):

It is *not* true that you can not offer for pay Movable Type support services. The payment of the $150 commercial license (by either the client or the contractor) entitles you to charge for support (installation, customization, design work). When we came up with that number, we figured that most contracts would far exceed the $150 amount and for most contractors, the fee would be nominal. We *never* imagined that a market of providing services for personal users would have flourished. We assumed that businesses (that could easily pay the $150 fee) would be contracting support services. We underestimated the personal user as client demand.

In a later comment she admits that the license needs clarification to include paid installations and other specific services with the payment of a commercial license. Update 11:46 PM: see Mena's comment to this post.

Other reactions here (not in chronological order):

Update June 26, 11:00 AM: Tweezer's edge points out that there is a thread about this that pre-dates the current debate by two months. Anil has a lengthy reply.

Posted by Richard at 11:55 AM | TrackBacks (8) | Comments (4)

June 21st, 2003

Extract URL from HTML Link in MT »

Read this post to get regex which will extract URL http://www.foo.com/ from HTML in the format of <a href="http://www.foo.com">Foo</a>. You will need the MTRegex plugin to do this in MT. Thanks go to Adam (and Chunshek who also took time out to help).

Posted by Richard at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

June 14th, 2003

Trackback Without Installing Trackback »

Adam Kalsey has unveiled Simpletracks, a web interface for those without Trackback but still want to ping a Trackback URL. Kind of like how my form was (when it was up), but on a grander scale. (For details on how I set my form up, see this post.)

Posted by Richard at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 11th, 2003

Return From America, MT Discussions »

Sorry for the unannounced hiatus. A trip to Portland, OR, precluded blogging, but did not preclude reading others' blogs.

For the very few who haven't read them yet, A List Apart interviews Anil Dash with respect to TypePad, Dave Winer complains that MT users are flaming him (just now I went to Technorati and found that he is probably referring to, among other things, this, this, and this, although that last post's author does not use MT) and another interview with Anil Dash.

Update 3:10 PM: the interview with Adam Kalsey is worth a read too, as it touches on MT as failed full-fledged CMS (Adam recognizes it is not designed as such), and how Zempt came to be.

Update 3:35 PM: as per the A List Apart interview, Anil says "there are still hundreds of millions of machines and devices that we want to ensure are able to access the TypePad application and, more importantly, the sites that our users create with it". I have no reason to doubt that this means MT and TypePad will soon be a lot more accessible under Lynx.

Posted by Richard at 12:42 PM | Comments (3)

May 28th, 2003

MT Maintenance Release »

Most true MT nerds have seen this already, but Movable Type has issued a maintenance release.

Update May 30, 10:30 AM: I forgot that upgrading overwrites the search templates, which can be seen at the search page of this site. D'oh!

Update May 30, 3:40 PM: okay, that's fixed, and I modified my mt.cfg to have it load a different default template than the one in future upgrade packages, which should prevent future overwrites.

Posted by Richard at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

May 18th, 2003

Edit This Entry in MT »

Excellent! There is a PHP solution to 'Edit This Entry' in MT. Now there can be 'Edit" links can be dynamically created based on a user's (you, the blog owner) IP address. A friend and I investigated using the cookie generated by MT to verify that a user is logged in, but evidently the script needs to be in the MT directory.

Posted by Richard at 07:37 PM | TrackBacks (1) | Comments (2)

May 17th, 2003

Edit This Page in Movable Type »

Dave Winer writes that MT doesn't have an 'Edit This Page' button. He is quite right, but there is a workaround, suggested here, which admittedly doesn't cover "every bit of text" as mentioned in his earlier piece on the subject. Just the weblog post text, and not any sidebar text etc.

It's not a new solution either. David Gagne has had it for a while now (scroll down to '"Hidden" Entry-Editing Link'). And it doesn't show up just for authenticated users, but for every user (the username and password is required if MT hasn't already set the cookie on the machine being used).

Here is the HTML I'd use (if I used it, which I don't):

<a title="this link is for admin use only" href="<$MTCGIPath$>mt.cgi?__mode=view&#038;_type=entry&#038;id=
<$MTEntryID$>&#038;blog_id=<$MTBlogID$>"> </a>

The above is placed somewhere between the MTEntries tag, preferably in the line that says "posted at" or whatever you have as tagline. It makes a space character into a link that edits the blog entry in question. (My modifications from David's code are to change &amp; to &#038;, target remove the Javascript elements and to replace &middot; with a space. Use whatever character you like.) As mentioned in a previous post, MT's public search function automatically generates an "Edit This Entry"-type link dynamically through the template.

So although Dave is correct that MT doesn't come with an "Edit This Page" button out of the proverbial box, something like it can be added with a little template tweaking.

Update 5:15 PM: I'm pretty sure I'm telling him what he already knows as to why it's happening, but Erik at nslog() reports his implementation of a 404 page which calls mt-search.cgi through PHP does not create an edit link for him dynamically.

Update 7:01 PM: just wanted to bring this more detailed tip, with extra 'security' measures using Javascript and CSS, to the front page. [via Trackback to this post]

Posted by Richard at 04:01 PM | TrackBacks (4) | Comments (1)

May 16th, 2003

Plural Comments »

Jesper has developed MTPlural [more info] [MT support thread] which will not only add an 's' to the end of your, but allows for alternate comments link text depending on whether there are a) no comments; b) one comment; or c) multiple comments.

For those that think doing this dynamically is a better idea (and it's not), here's the PHP code I use at China Weblog:

<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<p><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#comments"><?php

if (<$MTEntryCommentCount$>) {
print("<$MTEntryCommentCount$> comment");
if (<$MTEntryCommentCount$> > 1) print ("s");
}
else {
print("Comment");
}

?></a></p></MTEntryIfAllowComments>

The plugin idea is a better one, since it cuts down on the processing the back-end needs to do each time a person visits your site.

Thanks to Paulo for the fodder heads-up.

Posted by Richard at 02:52 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

May 9th, 2003

Rich Text Editing in Movable Type and Mozilla »

Pinder at Blogzilla has found a hack to the MT template which allows rich-text editing—which means you get buttons for bold, italic, underline and a link just like in IE—while browsing MT in Mozilla. Be sure to check his post, because evidently the hack as originally written didn't work for him.

(I don't intend to use this hack, because upgrading MT always requires re-hacking it, despite there being some really great hacks out there, I don't really want to keep track of them all and then figure out how to utilize them in any upgraded version.)

Update June 27th, 2003, 2:03 PM: Okay, I caved and installed the hack in two of my MT installations and will do so in the other two. That's the cost of using Mozilla full-time I guess.

Posted by Richard at 11:09 PM | TrackBacks (1) | Comments (0)

May 8th, 2003

Pre-Game 7 Links »

With nothing better to do before a big Game 7 for the local sports team, here are some links that need to be cleared from my bookmarks and aggregator.

Okay, almost time for the game.

Posted by Richard at 06:38 PM | Comments (2)

May 4th, 2003

Defer Entries in Movable Type »

MovableTypeTrickle allows you to delay the publishing of a post. In other words, you save an entry to draft, and set the category to Deferred, change the date to some time in the future, then periodically run trickle, and it will publish those entries in that category after your specified 'publish' date. [via Anil]

This is probably a better alternative to my Tape Delay tip.

Posted by Richard at 04:13 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

May 3rd, 2003

Movable Type Wiki »

Another Movable Type resource to check out: MT Wiki. I'm not really into wikis (besides, I have enough trouble keeping up with the MT support board, which is still the first place I go to get a question answered), but maybe this wiki will change my mind. [via scriptygoddess]

Posted by Richard at 08:38 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 27th, 2003

In Progress: OPML Template for MT »

I'm calling on people who are smarter than me to fix an OPML template for Movable Type that I've made. It outputs well-formed XML (see my output), but it (from what I gather) crashes Userland's Radio, which is a Bad Thing. I'm under the impression that my output is valid against the OPML spec, but corrections to that impression are welcome.

So, before proceeding, note that this template is a work in progress, and is not sanctioned by anybody. But maybe you can fix it. An XML expert I consulted believes the problem is not the encoded HTML in the resulting file, but the paragraph tags and title attribute in anchor (link) tags, and the individual paragraphs need to converted into individual outline elements, all the while stripping out tags that will not render in Radio, whatever those may be. In other words, a MT Text Formatting filter is needed.

Or perhaps there's a better way to write the template?

Posted by Richard at 11:27 PM | TrackBacks (1) | Comments (3)

April 26th, 2003

Dave Winer tests Trackback »

It's always interesting to see designs and development in progress, especially when the designers and developers make their notes about them available to the public. Zeldman and dive into mark are the prime examples, and now Dave Winer is implementing Trackback in his products, and linking to those accepting Trackback pings from his demonstration site. He has also written an in progress document, Trackback in the UserLand environment.

Posted by Richard at 11:15 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 23rd, 2003

Six Apart Announces TypePad »

Sidebar ping Anders Jacobsen TypePad

Via Anders, linked above: Battle of the blog builders by Ben Hammersley; I work for Six Apart by Anil Dash; Six Apart milestone (check the Trackbacks for that last link: sure to be commentary from around the web linked there).

Posted by Richard at 09:32 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 19th, 2003

Trackbacks on Individual Entries »

Trackbacks are enabled only for the sidebar and individual entries that have to do with Movable Type. This site now uses the PHP code for including Trackback pings on individual entries, modified for formatting. That should eliminate all pop-up windows on this site. The method provided by Mark Pilgrim, using .htaccess and SSI didn't work for this site. That's not to say it won't work for you, because on my end, it was probably because of the .php extensions. Using the virtual() function in PHP didn't work either, but that is evidently because of Content-type problems.

Posted by Richard at 03:39 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

Some MT Hacks, Tips and Tricks »

The MT support board remains the best resource for tips and tricks for Movable Type. Some examples (threads were updated in the last few days):

Update Sunday April 20, 11:57 PM: looks like Ben and Mena are changing forum software. No word on whether links to old posts will work. Methinks not.

Update Monday April 21, 11:15 AM: okay, so the links to old posts do work. Same goes for linking directly to a particular forum.

Posted by Richard at 02:02 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 14th, 2003

xhtml:body in MT »

How (and why) to include an xhtml:body in a Radio Userland RSS feed. This, LazyWeb, is your mission, should you choose to accept it: "I hope users of Movable Type and other platforms will offer similar tutorials."

Posted by Richard at 02:09 PM | TrackBacks (1) | Comments (0)

April 9th, 2003

Movable Type Syndication Templates »

Mark Pilgrim has provided various syndication format templates for MT, as well as the templates to diveintomark.org (under a Creative Commons license). Note that many of his templates require MT plugins, which he seems to have not yet listed.

Update 11:50 AM: he has listed the plugins.

Posted by Richard at 10:06 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 4th, 2003

Amazon Links with MT »

Easy Amazon Links in MT: this could come in handy, since I always edit Amazon.com URL's by hand (cutting & pasting the ASIN, then going to the Amazon Associates home page, loging in, and pasting in the ASIN is too much work), and especially for days like tomorrow, when there will be a post with lots of Amazon.com links.

Posted by Richard at 11:34 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

April 3rd, 2003

Replacing By Mistake? »

Are you worried that you'll press "Replace" by accident in MT? Well, Mena has posted a usability fix.

Posted by Richard at 11:14 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 31st, 2003

Redirecting to New Archive Pages With .htaccess »

Jim Ray: Movable Type file rewrite. This seems like a better solution than my own (not yet implemented): replacing each individual template file with a PHP header() redirect, and the (temporary) Individual Entry Template was going to look something like this (depending on the format of URL I wanted of course):

<?php

header ("Location: <$MTBlogArchiveURL$><$MTEntryCategory dirify="1"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.php");

?>

But using one file (i.e. .htaccess) seems a lot more efficient.

Posted by Richard at 01:21 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 30th, 2003

Late Night Links »

Posted by Richard at 02:30 AM | Comments (0)

March 26th, 2003

'Ben & Mena' »

Our favourite CMS developers, Ben and Mena Trott, now have a song about them. No audio here at my alma mater's computer lab, but thankfully the lyrics are available. To quote Principle Skinner, oh mercy. [via MJK]

Posted by Richard at 05:01 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 24th, 2003

Explaining Trackback »

You may have seen it elsewhere by now, but there is a Trackback for Beginners page available at movabletype.org. Trackback, that I get. Trackback's siblings, well, that's another story. But with Trackback, understanding it and explaining it were two different things, and the Trackback for Beginners will be a useful resource.

A short rant follows.

Posted by Richard at 04:48 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (3)

March 20th, 2003

Developing MT Plugins »

Developing Movable Type Plugins by Timothy Appnel: the article "cover[s] the MT plugin framework, its complete API, and the basics of hooking into the core systems operation and its data persistence service."

Posted by Richard at 01:55 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 19th, 2003

Introducing Zempt »

It's been announced on the MT-Dev mailing list, so I guess it's okay to announce here: Adam Kalsey and a friend of mine, Bill Zeller, are developing Zempt, a LiveJournal-like Windows client for posting to your MT-powered weblog. Bugs and feature requests can be reported using the support page. It's very much in the initial stages, and it's very promising. Evidently Mac and Linux versions are also planned.

Posted by Richard at 01:54 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 15th, 2003

Starting a Blog With MT »

The introduction to starting a weblog with Movable Type is making the rounds, and for good reason. Near the end, the advice against "endlessly fiddling with your entries - editing, etc." is sound, but difficult for people like me who make a million typos in their posts and then spend 20 minutes editing, saving, editing, saving, etc. It's a bad habit I picked up from college.

Posted by Richard at 07:19 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

Mobile Edition with MT and MT-Macros »

dive into mark: create a 'mobile edition of your website with MT-Macros (and supplied templates). Quoth Mark: "XHTML Basic has no basis in reality. Ignore it."

Posted by Richard at 04:07 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

MT Archives Indicator »

As for the code that I use for the archives indicator (click on a monthly archive in the sidebar and it not only disables the link for the archive, but changes the background colour of the text), here it is.

<p><b>Archives</b><br />

<MTArchiveList archive_type="Monthly">
<?php

if (!eregi("<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y_%m"$>", $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']))
print "<a href=\"<$MTArchiveLink$>\"><$MTArchiveTitle$></a>";
else print "<span class=\"greyback\"><$MTArchiveTitle$></span>";

?><br />
</MTArchiveList>
</p>

It exists on every page with a sidebar (with a few exceptions) because the above code is in a Template Module called "Archives Listing". I then put <$MTInclude module="Archives Listing"$> in where the sidebar appears in my regular (i.e. Index, Individual and Monthly) templates.

In your CSS, you will need something like this:

.greyback
{
background-color: #CCCCCC;
}

Of course, you can chose any colour you want, with an appropriate CSS class name.

Posted by Richard at 01:36 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 14th, 2003

My Time Adjustment PHP Code »

Here's the code I promised:

For your where you want the blog data, put this code in (modified as
necessary):

<MTEntries>

<div class="<$MTEntryAuthor dirify="1"$>">
<!-- in your CSS, include a class named after each other's name, all in lower case, so that you can differentiate colours and whatnot for each other -->

<p><$MTEntryTitle$></p>

<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p>[<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#more">read the rest of this
post...</a>]</p></MTEntryIfExtended>
<p class="postedline"gt;Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> on <a
href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><?

/* begin time adjustment code */

if ("<$MTEntryAuthor$>" == "Richard") /* replace Richard with your name */
{
$minusHours = (mktime(<$MTEntryDate format="%M, %S, %m, %e, %Y"$>))-3,
/* replace the number 3 with the number of hours behind you are */

print date("M. j \a\\t g:i A", $minusHours);
print " Pacific";
/* replace Pacific with your time zone */
}

else
{
print "<$MTEntryDate format="%b. %e at %l:%M %p"$> Eastern"; /* replace Eastern with the time zone of your co-author's time zone */
}
?></a> <!-- insert your MT comments tags here -->
</div>

</MTEntries>

When I used this code, the time zone for the blog was set to my friend's time zone, even though the blog used my installation of MT. See? Pretty convoluted, huh? Like I said, the scriptygoddesses do it simpler, and besides, this is something I wish MT did internally by itself.

Posted by Richard at 11:09 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 12th, 2003

Adjusting the Time with PHP »

Adjust the time with PHP: this is a neat hack, and it was similar to what I coded for a now-defunct blog of mine with a friend, who was three hours ahead of me on the East Coast. Necessarily, it was much more convoluted (I had a function which turned a date produced my MT into a Unix timestamp, and then...well it was pretty complicated and took me forever). I'm thinking maybe there should be a setting in MT's Author profiles for what time zone the author is from, and then have a tag like <$MTEntryAuthorDate format="etc."$>.

I'll share the code for the way I implemented it soon, but rest assured, the implementation over at scriptygoddess.com is much simpler.

Posted by Richard at 10:24 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

March 9th, 2003

MT Wins a Bloggie »

MT wins a 2003 bloggie. As if there were any doubt. [via kadyellebee].

Posted by Richard at 06:03 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

MT-Email Plugin »

David Raynes is introducing his MT-Email plugin, which is very early in development. Looks interesting though. Posting by email has long been discussed as a possible feature for MT. [via his introduction in this MT Support Boards thread]

It's getting to be a little scary how prolific David is getting in terms of MT plugins. He also has Post-It/Comeback (now in beta), MT-Form, MT-Vote and a bugs tracking system for MT plugins (okay, that may have been kristine's doing, but he announced it on the MT-Dev list), and is among the top in amount of plugins already developed.

Posted by Richard at 12:14 AM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (1)

March 6th, 2003

MT Mention in Slate »

MT gets a mention in this article on Google's acquisition of Blogger in the political affairs magazine Slate. [via The Shifted Librarian]

Posted by Richard at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

March 3rd, 2003

Exclude Categories Plugin »

scottandrew comes through with a "miserable hack" of a plugin, which excludes specified categories inside an <MTEntriesExCat>; container created by the plugin.

Actually, it's surprising he didn't make it an attribute of the <MTEntries> tag itself, like <MTEntries exclude_categories="foo AND bar">. His plugin instead replaces <MTEntries> with another container, <MTEntriesExCat>. Is it possible to add attributes to the <MTEntries> container via plugins?

Posted by Richard at 03:06 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (1)

March 2nd, 2003

WYSIWYG Editor for Movable Type »

Install htmlArea for your Movable Type CMS: get a WYSIWYG editor for your entries in MT! I tried the installation instructions, and thought it was nice and pretty, except for it inserted uppercase HTML tags. Not very XHTML-friendly. It probably would have been better to check to see if there was a setting in htmlArea to have lowercase tags (is there one?) but I got frustrated early and uninstalled it. [via etc.]

Posted by Richard at 09:28 PM | TrackBacks (0) | Comments (0)

February 26th, 2003

Ethics of TrackBack »

PB wonders about the ethics of using a form to post a TrackBack to a site. I'm not worried. The resulting links on my site don't contain author information, just a link to a post and an excerpt in the title attribute. (The author information, correct or not, gets sent to me by email.) Now, is there potential for abuse in the excerpt? Sure. Does it matter at this point, seeing as how I get only 200 visits a day? No. (Aside: there hasn't been any pings in the last few days: did I break it?) Plus I can—and do—delete the TrackBack's that are not related in some way to Movable Type. As for pinging my sidebar with a post written by someone else, again, I have no problem with that: there's no author information that goes public, and I envisioned the sidebar as content (not very much content, that is) that my only my readers have control over. It's just like putting a link to a post on your own weblog, except, well, it goes on mine.

Be sure to read Mena's response in the comments, too. [link via Anil]

Posted by Richard at 03:26 PM | Comments (1)

February 24th, 2003

MT 2.63 »

MT releases 2.63 update, also offers nightly builds. From the changelog: "Fixed bug where Next and Previous links on edit entry screen skipped drafts." This evidently was consistent with draft posts and not just new entries set to draft, as I thought.

The nightly builds are an interesting and unexpected addition. I like the idea of nightly builds, and until recently was pretty obsessed with getting the latest Mozilla and Phoenix builds.

[via Brad Choate]

Posted by Richard at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 23rd, 2003

Close Comments Script »

Ever wanted to close comments on your past weblog entries but didn't have the time to go through all 273 of them? (That's how many, at this writing, are on Vancouver Webloggers.) Now you can with Tubedogg's closecomments PHP script. Note that it requires MT 2.6 and must be running the MySQL version. Necessarily, you also need PHP on your system. [via scriptygoddess]

Posted by Richard at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

February 20th, 2003

Clarification on Pay Installations »

Mena Trott clarifies a point for me on paid installations for commercial clients:

You can charge for support services (installation) as long as a commercial license is purchased, by you or the owner of the site.[...]

What isn't allowed: Someone buys one license and charges multiple clients or installs multiple instances of the software. I.E a host buys one copy of MT and then offers customers pre-installed MT.

Thanks Mena!

Posted by Richard at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

KABLOG »

KABLOG facilitates blogging from your cell phone using Movable Type (or "other blog servers that support blogger.getUsersBlogs as well as metaWeblog.newPost". (Well, it would facilitate it for me if my cell phone didn't suck!) It would be cool to have though, because a) I don't have a laptop, and b) I always have these great blog post ideas while on SkyTrain and not while sitting at home sitting at my computer.

Path: RSS > Anil > Now Bloggers Can Hit the Road > KABLOG

Posted by Richard at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

February 19th, 2003

PHP, RSS and MT »

Some links found while traveling while browsing the Syndic8.com site and through web searches:

Posted by Richard at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Ping Error Not MT's Fault »

If, after posting in Movable Type, you're getting error messages like the following...

One or more errors occurred when sending update or TrackBack pings. Check the Activity Log for the error.

...and it directs you to your error log, giving you something like this...

Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: HTTP error: 500 read timeout

...then you need not worry too much. This from Ben in the support forum:

This isn't a problem with MT. The pings were always failing--MT just started telling you about them, because for many people, they didn't know why they weren't appearing on the updated lists, etc. So it's helpful to know what is going wrong.

The fact that the error (the first quote above) appears in red led me to suspect that it was indeed a problem with MT, but evidently, like Ben says, MT is just letting you know about what has always been occuring on weblogs.com (or blo.gs, as the case may be) anyway.

Posted by Richard at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 17th, 2003