Movable Type

  • Sharing Resources Across Multiple Sites Using Movable Type

    April 16, 2009

    Problem: We have several different sites that are powered by one Movable Type install. These sites have common elements that need to be shared across all of the blogs—something like services, staff or course descriptions. Unlike global template modules, these shared items have lots of meta (like categories, tags, etc) and really need the framework... Read More

  • HashMT: The Pulse of the Movable Type Community

    December 5, 2008

    I often find myself so busy using a tool that I don’t usually have time to talk about how I use it. This seems to be the case with many of the developers in the Movable Type community: lots of awesome things being done, not a lot of time left to share their creations and... Read More

  • Six Apart, Yo.

    October 30, 2008

    Six Apart is celebrating several anniversaries tonight: Movable Type turns 7, TypePad turns 5 and Vox turns 2. Since I couldn’t attend the anniversary party, I figured I’d put together a little something for the good people over at Six Apart. This shirt’s been a long time coming: Unfortunately, Printfection’s (and CafePress for that matter)... Read More

  • Virtual Movable Type, First Impressions

    September 19, 2008

    What Is It? Ok, the first question that nearly everyone asks when they hear about Virtual Movable Type is: “What’s the virtual part all about?” From the readme file: JumpBox virtual appliances are the easiest path to running server based applications. A JumpBox bundles the operating system with the application and all its dependencies into... Read More

  • Custom Field Gotchas

    September 2, 2008

    Consider this a public service announcement to anyone debating about using Movable Type Custom Fields for a site: 1. You cannot create system level asset custom fields. This precludes sharing asset fields across larger blog networks where global templates are used. 2. There are no formatting options for editing Custom Fields. If you’re using Custom... Read More

  • Clarification On Asset Conversion, From RightFields to Custom Fields

    June 25, 2008

    If you don’t use Movable Type or either one of these plugins, you can stop reading now. I hope you’ll forgive the long, intimidating title. It’s just that there has been some confusion regarding the move from Right Fields to Custom Fields, specifically when it comes to asset related fields. First, let’s talk about the... Read More

  • Movable Type, Easy As Twitter?

    June 13, 2008

    In the previous article, I explained how to set up Movable Type as a Fluid application to run on your desktop. But Arvind suggested one better: why not install the iMT plugin and have Movable Type run as a MenuExtra? For those of you that don’t know, MenuExtras are the little icons on the right-hand... Read More

  • Movable Type as a Desktop App

    June 13, 2008

    Websites As Applications Tabbed browsing really is a modern marvel. If you haven’t tried it, you should. And while your at it, have you heard about running water? Trouble is, when you’ve got your Gmail, Facebook, Google Calendar, Basecamp, Flickr, Digg and all the other sites a web savant needs to survive, things get pretty... Read More

  • PlasticField, A Plugin For Movable Type

    June 3, 2008

    Thanks to Jay and Arvind, I’ve finally finished my first plugin, PlasticField. I’d appreciate any feedback on it you may have. Overview This plugin gives you a new custom field type (‘Formatted Multi-Line Text Field’) with familiar formatting buttons as well as resizing controls instead of the bare boxes that CustomFields provides by default. Extremely... Read More

  • Migrating CustomFields to Movable Type Professional 4.1

    March 14, 2008

    Installing CustomFields Upgrade Assistant If you’re upgrading an MT 4.0 install that was using Arvind’s CustomFields plugin to MTP 4.1 which has CustomFields built in, the first thing you need to know is that MTP will not automatically import your old CustomFields data. You need to install the CustomFields Upgrade Assistant plugin to do the... Read More

  • Get An Email List of All Authors On Your System

    March 13, 2008

    This little snip of code will dump out a list of all the users and their email addresses on your install in a comma-delimited format that you can easily import into your email client. It’s particularly useful on larger installs: <mt:Authors include_blogs="all"> <mt:IfNonEmpty tag="AuthorEmail"> <mt:IfNonEmpty tag="AuthorDisplayName">"<mt:AuthorDisplayName />" </mt:IfNonEmpty> &lt;<mt:AuthorEmail />&gt;, </mt:IfNonEmpty> </mt:Authors> And the Authors... Read More

  • Image CustomFields in Movable Type 4.1

    March 5, 2008

    Dilemma: Image Link Instead of Image Many of the sites I build use CustomFields to place a masthead image at the top of an entry. This takes the hassle out of uploading and really just makes it easier for customers to have a consistent look and feel for their posts. Trouble is, when I upgraded... Read More

  • Movable Type Template Map (.PDF)

    February 25, 2008

    For those of you just upgrading to Movable Type 4, I’m sure you’re experiencing a considerable amount of confusion regarding the new modular template approach. If you’ve just gotten on board, it probably makes even less sense. I won’t go into too much detail on this modular approach, because I’ve already dealt with it previously... Read More

  • List Random Authors (via PHP)

    January 24, 2008

    It’s been far too long since I posted to the Tweak. Sometimes it’s hard to document when you’re working, but one of my resolutions is to do better with this (especially with the phenomenal strides Movable Type has taken recently). In the mean time, you’ll probably find more frequent, shorter posts that may not have... Read More

  • Rotating Banner Ads MT Style

    October 10, 2007

    10/10/2007: Updated for Movable Type 4.x A recent customer asked me if they could have an easy to manage banner ad setup, with the ability to add advertisements and specify links and alternate text. All of this while being able to manage them easily. Sounds like a job for… Movable Type! Despite the title, this... Read More