Recently in Movable Type Category

A common blog widget is the Recent Comments widget, which strangely enough has not been included in the default Movable Type templates. If you want to show the last five comments in your sidebar, follow these steps to adapt your templates:

First open your sidebar template module and find the place where you want to show the recent comments. I suggest that you place them under the recent entries widget. Insert the following code in the template:

<MTIf name="module_recent_comments">
<div class="widget-archives widget">
<h3 class="widget-header">Recent Comments</h3>
<div class="widget-content">
<ul class="widget-list">
<MTComments lastn="5" sort_order="descend">
<MTCommentEntry>
<li class="widget-list-item"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#comment-<$MTCommentID$>"><$MTCommentAuthor$></a> on <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></li>
</MTCommentEntry>
</MTComments>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</MTIf>

Save the template and open the template of the page where you want to show the comments on, for example the Main Index or the Entry Archive. Add the following line to the template:

<MTSetVar name="module_recent_comments" value="1">

A few days ago, Six Apart released version 4.01 of their Movable Type publishing platform. As with all software upgrades, you want to be careful implementing it, as existing sites might break. Today I present you the method I use for upgrading MT on the Ai-No platform, with the benefits of having a possibility to quickly roll back the update without modification of existing URI's.

• Download the files from the Six Apart site;
• Backup the database;
• Upload the *.tar.gz file and extract the files;
• Copy the following files from the old (current) directory to the directory of the new version:
  • mt-config.cgi
  • plugins/ (only the files not present in the new directory)
    
  • mt-static/support/*
  • mt-static/plugins/ (only the files not present in the new directory)
  • extlib/ (only the files not present in the new directory)
  • addons/*
• Create a symbolic link to the new directory: ln -s MT-4.01-en mt

The trick is of course the symbolic link, making that Movable Type is always available under the /mt directory. Simply by changing the symlink I can quickly change from one version to another.

[Update 2007.10.4] I added some dirs based on Su's feedback.

All weblogs on the Ai-No platform are now powered by Movable Type 4.01. This latest release solves a critical cross site scripting vulnerability and test users also reported a performance increase.

Yesterday I transferred El Canasto to my centralized Movable Type installation. I kept this particular weblog for the last, as I wanted to have some experience before making the transfer. Actually, I already practised the transfer a few weeks ago on my old Movable Type installation, and noticed that it is very easy to import a WordPress weblog. I was surprised to find that the WordPress import feature works better than the import of a MT blog, as the WRX import also created assets and pages.

At this moment I have three English blogs and one Spanish blog. I am now preparing Movable Type to transfer the Spanish blog to this account, as I want to manage all blogs from a single interface.

I installed MT in English to create the first blogs. In order to create the Spanish blog, I simply switched the MT user interface to Spanish by clicking on Hi Jeroen in the upper right corner and created a new weblog. After configuring all preferences I published the blog and set my user interface back to Spanish.

Ready for blogging in Spanish!