blogtech

If you’re using MovableType to maintain your blog, you can add the following bit of code to allow readers to automatically add themselves to your Update / Notify list:

<form method=”post” action=”<$MTCGIPath$>mt-add-notify.cgi”>
<b>Get updates via email:</b><br />
<input type=”hidden” name=”blog_id” value=”<$MTBlogID$>” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”_redirect” value=”<$MTBlogURL$>” />
<input name=”email” size=”18″ />
<input type=”submit” value=”Sign Up!” />
</form>

If you visit http://www.davidgagne.net/ you’ll see a period - . - before each link to an entry’s comments. That period is a link to the editing window for that particular entry. As long as I am logged in to MovableType, I can click on that link and immediately begin editing the post. Here’s the link to add to your main index template:

<a target=”_blank” title=”admin” onmouseover=”window.status=’edit this entry’; return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=’ ‘; return true;” href=”<$MTCGIPath$>mt.cgi?__mode=view &_type=entry&id=<$MTEntryID$> &blog_id=<$MTBlogID$>”>.</a>

Note that you should use &amp; instead of & to make sure your page is (x)html compliant.

Oof! It took a lot of work, but I finally converted all of my main blog to MovableType. All the comments were imported, too, so I’m pretty happy about that. Now every little piece of this domain is converted. I can finally get to blogging again. And finding a job.

It took a few hours, but I finally converted almost all of my Hemingway site into The Hemingway Blog. It’s in MovableType now and I’m very pleased with the result. I still have to get the dozens (multiple dozens!) of essays on the author into some sort of bloggable format, but that’s just a bunch of find and replacing with good ol’ EditPad.

I’m trying to decide if I want to convert bling (my main page) to MT yet. Ben and Mena say that they will soon add the ability to import GreyMatter comments into an MT blog. But I know I can hack it myself a bit to do this. I just know that if I do it, though, it probably won’t be as pretty as if I wait until they’ve got an “official” way to do it.

Ben has written a tutorial on adding weblogs.com XML-RPC PING functionality to your MovableType blog. Woo!

What does this mean? It means that if you follow the steps in the tutorial, whenever you add an entry to your MovableType blog, MT will automatically ping weblogs.com to alert that you have updated.

If you’re using MovableType to run your blog, here’s the HTML to include ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons (with a ‘Home’ button in the middle) on your individual entry pages:

<div align=”center”>
<form>
<MTEntryPrevious><input type=”button” value=”<$MTEntryTitle$>” onclick=”window.location=’<$MTEntryLink$>’;”></MTEntryPrevious>
<input type=”button” value=”Home” onclick=”window.location=’<$MTBlogURL$>’;”>
<MTEntryNext><input type=”button” value=”<$MTEntryTitle$>” onclick=”window.location=’<$MTEntryLink$>’;”></MTEntryNext>
</form>
</div>

I’ve created a “Last Updated” system in my MT network and, although I’m sure it can be done better, I thought I’d share.
I have five separate MT blogs running now. On my main page (which will be converted to MT once the ability to import GreyMatter comments is part of MT) I wanted to display the “Last Updated” timestamp of each of my sub-blogs.
Here’s how I did it:
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I completed another of my web development tasks tonight. One of my sub-blogs, the good stuff is now a MovableType blog. The good stuff is the sidebar list of ten links. These are links that I want to bookmark for one reason or another, but about which I don’t feel like writing an entire blog entry. They’re quick bytes of webby goodness. They also can be loaded into your side pane if you’re using Internet Explorer 4 or better. So if you click the title (”the good stuff”) or the archive link (”more …”) you can carry them with you while you surf. That’s a pretty high nift factor, eh?

I found an excellent Introduction to XML tutorial at WebMonkey. The new features included in MovableType have allowed me to easily create XML versions of my blogs. So what? Who needs ‘em? Read the article at WebMonkey and you’ll see why this is cool.

I made a hunka buncha changes to the Song of the Moment MT templates. The comments are now in pop-up windows, which is great because I only wanted to archive monthly instead of individually. I relied heavily on information from Mena’s post about in-line vs. pop-up comment systems.

The extended text of this entry contains my Individual Archive template. Cool if you want to know how I got those buttons in there. Is it obvious that the icons are the permalinks? I wonder if I need to make it more clear …
Look here for the Main Index template. My css directory is open to all, by the way. There is a link to it in the drop-down combo box in the sidebar.
Your comments are always appreciated.
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The extended text for this entry contains my entire MovableType Main Index Template.
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Well that was easy enough! I just switched my Song of the Moment blog from Blogger to MovableType. It was a cinch to import all the entries from Blogger to the new cms. I have a bunch of template-editing to do, but otherwise it was painless.
Make a note! You have to chmod your mt-import.cgi file to 755 or else you’ll just get a 500 Internal Server error.

I’ve written a little tutorial. If you’re in a group / community blog at blogger and can’t access the “Settings” page to give yourself the right-click “Blog This!” menu, here’s how.

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