Movable Type Installation Help

Working with Love-productions templates and the Movable Type journalling software


if you will be using skins on your site, you may wish to check out the skinning version of this tutorial. This document explains the contents for setting up the important MT templates. This document assumes that you already have set up your MT files as documented on the MT Installation Instructions page. If you need further help setting up Movable Type, check out the Blogplates resources page. This tutorial is only meant to be a side tutorial for those using Amy's tutorial to skin their site. You can use multiple love-productions templates in this manner, because all of the div classes in the stylesheets are consistant throughout the sets.

The categories are broken up into the sections, and you may need to tweak with other templates to get them to your liking. If you'd like to hire me to install a copy of MT to your server and put the templates in, please drop me an email at graphics@love-productions.com. I'd be happy to work with you!

For use with a love-productions graphic set: You should unzip the zip file you downloaded onto your hard drive and upload all of the graphics files, stylesheet, and any scripts included into a subdirectory of your journal called images before beginning.

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Log into Movable Type and click on the Templates for the blog you are configuring. I'm gonna show you examples of all of the important templates that need customizing below.

Template Name	Output File	Rebuild
Index Templates
Main Index	index.html	Yes
Master Archive Index	archives.html	Yes
Archive Templates
Category Archive	[template here]
Date-Based Archive	[template here]
Individual Entry Archive	[template here]
Template Modules
header	[copy from header.txt in zip file]
footer	[copy from header.txt in zip file]

You'll need to create the templates that don't currently appear on the list - click Create New Template Module to create the modules header and footer. For the Main Index and Master Archive Index, you may wish to change the extention of the file from .html to .php as shown on the output file, if you plan to include any php scripts inside your page.

There are also comment and trackback and popup templates which will appear on your window, but this tutorial assumes using Individual Archives for comments and doesn't customize any of the additional templates.


Rebuild all when you are done - start posting!

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Template codes updated on: 09-Feb-2010 9:10:34

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Indexes

Name: Main Index
Type: index
Rebuild: 1
<$MTInclude module="header"$> <MTEntries> <MTDateHeader> <div class="bloghead"><$MTEntryDate format="%B %d, %Y"$></div> </MTDateHeader> <a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"></a> <div class="subhead"><$MTEntryTitle$></div> <div class="blogbody"><$MTEntryBody$></div> <MTEntryIfExtended><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>">MORE...</a><br></MTEntryIfExtended> <div class="blogfoot">posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M %p"$></a> <MTEntryIfAllowComments>| <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#comments">Comments (<$MTEntryCommentCount$>)</a></MTEntryIfAllowComments></div> <br></MTEntries> <$MTInclude module="footer"$>

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Name: Master Archive Index
Type: index
Rebuild: 1
<$MTInclude module="header"$> <MTArchiveList> <a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"> <$MTArchiveTitle></a><br> </MTArchiveList> <$MTInclude module="footer"$>

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Archives

Name: Date-Based Archive
Type: archive
Rebuild: 0
<$MTInclude module="header"$> <ul><MTEntries> <li><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br> </MTEntries></ul> <$MTInclude module="footer"$>

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Name: Category Archive
Type: category
Rebuild: 0
<$MTInclude module="header"$> <ul><MTEntries> <li><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a><br> </MTEntries></ul> <$MTInclude module="footer"$>

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Name: Individual Entry Archive
Type: individual
Rebuild: 0
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> <!--// // Copyright (c) 1996-1997 Athenia Associates. // http://www.webreference.com/js/ // License is granted if and only if this entire // copyright notice is included. By Tomer Shiran. function setCookie(name, value, expires, path, domain, secure) { var curCookie = name + "=" + escape(value) + ((expires) ? "; expires=" + expires.toGMTString() : "") + ((path) ? "; path=" + path : "") + ((domain) ? "; domain=" + domain : "") + ((secure) ? "; secure" : ""); document.cookie = curCookie; } function getCookie(name) { var prefix = name + "="; var nullstring = ""; var cookieStartIndex = document.cookie.indexOf(prefix); if (cookieStartIndex == -1) return nullstring; var cookieEndIndex = document.cookie.indexOf(";", cookieStartIndex + prefix.length); if (cookieEndIndex == -1) cookieEndIndex = document.cookie.length; return unescape(document.cookie.substring(cookieStartIndex + prefix.length, cookieEndIndex)); } function deleteCookie(name, path, domain) { if (getCookie(name)) { document.cookie = name + "=" + ((path) ? "; path=" + path : "") + ((domain) ? "; domain=" + domain : "") + "; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-70 00:00:01 GMT" }; } function fixDate(date) { var base = new Date(0); var skew = base.getTime(); if (skew > 0) date.setTime(date.getTime() - skew); } //--> </SCRIPT> <$MTInclude module="header"$> <MTEntryPrevious><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>">« <$MTEntryTitle$></a> | </MTEntryPrevious> <a href="<$MTBlogURL$>">Main</a> <MTEntryNext>| <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$> »</a></MTEntryNext> <MTDateHeader> <div class="bloghead"><$MTEntryDate format="%B %d, %Y"$></div> </MTDateHeader> <a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"></a> <div class="subhead"><$MTEntryTitle$></div> <div class="blogbody"><$MTEntryBody$><br /> <$MTEntryMore$></div> <div class="blogfoot">posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M %p"$></a></div> <MTEntryIfAllowComments> <a name="comments"></a>Comments<br> <br> <MTComments> <div class="blogbody"><$MTCommentBody$></div> <div class="blogfoot">Posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink$> on <$MTCommentDate$></div> </MTComments> <div class="bloghead">Post a comment</div> <div class="blogbody"> <form method="post" action="<$MTCGIPath$>mt-comments.cgi" name="comments_form" onsubmit="if (this.bakecookie.checked) rememberMe(this)"> <input type="hidden" name="static" value="1" /> <input type="hidden" name="entry_id" value="<$MTEntryID$>" /> Name:<br><input name="author" size=30><br><br> Email Address:<br><input name="email" size=30><br><br> URL:<br><input name="url" size=50><br><br> Comments:<br> <textarea name="text" rows="10" cols="70"></textarea><br><br> <input type="checkbox" name="bakecookie">Remember info?<br><br> <input type="submit" name="preview" value=" PREVIEW "> <input type="submit" name="post" value=" POST "><br><br> <input type="button" onclick="forgetMe(this.form)" value="FORGET PERSONAL INFORMATION"> </form> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> <!-- document.comments_form.email.value = getCookie("mtcmtmail"); document.comments_form.author.value = getCookie("mtcmtauth"); document.comments_form.url.value = getCookie("mtcmthome"); //--> </script> </MTEntryIfAllowComments> <$MTInclude module="footer"$>

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Additions Added 040102 - Add on a calendar into your sidebar!!!!

Common Terms:

blog: shortened term for the word weblog. Check The History of Weblogs for more information on how this genre of websites came to be.
blogplate: (also plural form, blogplates) Weblog Templates. Many linkware and shareware graphic designers create templates which are expressly designed with blogs in mind. Blogplates.net is a webring of many of these designers sites.
sidebar: a common location for links and buttons to other related sites. Yours should include a linkback to love-productions.com for the template usage.
upload: using an ftp program to copy files from your hard drive onto your host's server. Recommended program for uploading - Leech FTP.
give credit: the idea of making sure to linkback on the same page to show where the items on your site came from. See Give-Credit for more information.

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