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Sunday, November 9, 2008

TypePad Anti-Spam: The Best

25-10-08.gif

9-11-2008.jpg

The image on the left is a system-wide snapshot from October 25, followed by a snapshot from today. Obviously the spammers are loving my sites more and more, because the default on all my blogs is to delete the spam after 14 days. There's definitely been an increase in the number of times I've been hit.

TypePad Anti-Spam is doing the best job of all the anti-spam tools I've used on Movable Type over the last 4 years, and I've used quite a few different approaches over those years, sometimes relying on MT but most often relying on plugins or a combination of plugins, including comment challenges. I posted how pleased I am with TypePad Anti-Spam very recently, and have written numerous posts on the virtues of other plugins over time, but I can't stress enough just how good this latest Movable Type product is. I've had no spam comments, but plenty of trackback spam, and TypePad Anti-Spam hasn't missed a beat marking the nasty ones.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Typepad Anti-Spam Doing A Great Job

My Spam Blocked I've had lots of problems with spammers over the years and have tried a number of different products and plugins trying to fight them off. Typepad Anti-Spam is doing a fantastic job, as you can see from the number of blocked comments and trackbacks. There's 8 blogs on this system and so far nothing has passed through that shouldn't have. Sometimes I've had to "unspam" a comment or two, but that's rare.

TypePad AntiSpam engine learns from your behaviour and gets smarter every time you report spam. If an unwanted comment ever does slip through, click the "Report Spam" button in the Comments screen and it will adapt to ever-changing spam techniques.

TypePad AntiSpam is available as a free plugin for bloggers on other platforms, including TypePad, Movable Type and WordPress. Just download the free plugin and get configure it with a free API key.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Notepad Chaos Theme for Movable Type

For the last 4 days I've been trying my hand at converting a theme designed for Wordpress (a php-based blogging platform) to be used in Movable Type. It's been a really frustrating 4 days to say the least. The theme is truly beautiful and fully worth the effort, though it is limited from expansion due to the design itself. It would make a lovely theme for a personal blog. I created a test blog to view the modifications and to make sure it all went together properly, and I'm happy with the result.

notepad-preview.jpg

I had to do some heavy modifications on some of the MT templates and minor modification on the theme, most notably, the date tag. For some unknown reason I couldn't get this to display fully, so I've made another little post-it note that I think looks better anyway. I've packaged it all up into a plugin that I hope can be made available to the wider MT community. I'm waiting on permission from the designer, Evan Eckard, and Smashing Magazine to allow me to do this. For any Wordpress users, the theme is available for free.

Creating a plugin for the template set was made very easy after looking at how Jim Ramsey did the same thing for his Mid-Century Template Set. I hope to be able to make it available once permissions are in place.

Update:Notepad Chaos has all the permissions and is now available for download. I've tested it as a new install, and also as an template upgrade on an existing blog on MT4.21 Pro. Let me know in the comments if you have any problems installing it.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Movable Type Has Best Security Track Record

I’ve been reading about the problems other bloggers are having with their sites being hacked or getting blocked and I’m grateful I don’t have those worries. A news release from Six Apart today reassured MT users that their platform is secure and I have to agree. I’ve had fewer problems of late from the spammers.

The latest MT4.2 update even allowed me to uninstall a couple of plugins that I was using for extra security and it’s doing a good job of keeping the site secure. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s own reports, Movable Type has the best security track record of any popular installable blogging software. That’s a high recommendation, and here’s proof to back up the claim.

MT vs WordPress for Security

Friday, June 6, 2008

Upgraded to MovableType 4.2

Tonight I upgraded to the release version of Movable Type Open Source 4.2. It was with some anxiety because last time I tried to upgrade to MTOS I had a few problems and ended up reinstalling a backup to get me back to MT. Tonight the upgrade went very smoothly without any problems at all.

The first thing I did was update my user profile, and add a user pic. To my surprise I saw there were two other users, supposedly added by "System". Zeroth and Zoe didn't last long as users because I deleted them straight away, and Zeroth uses Wordpress, so how did he end up as a user on my system??? Neither had permissions to do anything, and Zoe was a pending user, but how they got there in the first place is a mystery to me. Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

My motive for the upgrade was my frustration with FCKeditor. I had it saved in my config as the preferred rich text editor, but it would not display. It works fine on another installation I have that uses the latest MT version. Tonight I changed the rich text editor to the YUI Rich Text Editor, and still it wouldn't show up. After upgrading, the new editor is working perfectly, and is a breeze to use. I like it better than the FCKeditor.

MT 4.2 is faster and more efficient than previous versions, and the upgrade was worth it.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Upgrade to Movable Type 4.01

The upgrade to Movable Type 4.01 turned out to be easier than I expected, even though it took quite a while to complete. Not surprising when 8 different blogs needed changes made.

Movable Type has made no reference to Fast CGI with the new version so I can only assume that this version incorporates the benefits proclaimed for FCGI. I had so many problems with this that I'm glad to see it go.

I read lots of articles before I upgraded and would recommend that anyone thinking of an upgrade do the same. The MT Upgrade Guide lists important changes you may need to make, including plugins that are no longer compatible with version 4.0.

To set up reCaptcha on all the blogs I followed the instructions from Retrofit Your MT3.x Templates With New MT4 Comments. This article explains how to take advantage of the new commenting features of MT4 and is easy to do.

If your old blog listed categories in the sidebar, these won't show up in MT4. You need to edit the template and change <MTSubCategories> to <MTTopLevelCategories>. Remember to change the closing tag too.

read more »


Monday, October 1, 2007

Version 3.3 No Longer Valid For Me

It's been a while since I posted on this site and that's because this blog only deals with Movable Type 3.3. My main site has been upgraded to MT 3.5 and since the release of version 4 this blog has become obsolete for my needs. (I'm sure there's plenty of people of out there who are still using 3.3 and may find the posts here interesting though.)

I have set up a couple of blogs with version 4 and am finding that the range of plugins available now has made it more attractive for an upgrade from 3.5. Since I have 8 blogs on the 3.5 install, there's lots of work to do to get the templates to work correctly and I'm not ready to do that just yet. Version 4 is so different from previous releases that it's turning into quite a challenge to learn how edit the templates. The stylesheets are very different too and editing the new ones to look like the old themes will needs lots of free time and clear thinking.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

MT 4 Release Candidate 4

There's been one beta release after another for MT4 and I've been hard-pressed to test them all. It has been an interesting experience though, and I've managed to make a couple of contributions to the latest version with bugs that I've found and working out how to do things. The interface is totally different from previous versions and I'm eagerly awaiting the final release.

I won't be changing all my blogs over until the plugins catch up with the new version. So far there's very few that are compatible. One new plugin that I've already found indispensable is Bookmarks, a plugin that allows users to maintain a list of bookmarks to any page in the application. The list is easily accessed through a "Bookmarks" menu, which is used for managing and adding items to the list as well.

Another new plugin for MT4 is reCaptcha, though I had one hell of a time trying to implement it. After two days of ripping my hair out I finally got it to work, though not how the developers intended, I'm sure.

Template modules are a great feature of MT4 that take the hassle out of having to edit several templates. This was a problem for versions after 3.1 where it was no longer okay to use header includes, because the headers for all the templates were different. I'm pleased to see this has been addressed in the new release.

As I said before, the incorporation of Live Preview into the program has made entry previews that much better. That's only one of the new features. Movabletype.org has a list of new features and improvements that should change the mind of anyone still unsure about wanting to install the new version.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

MT 4 Beta 2

A new version of MT4 has been released called beta2. I installed it last night on a new blog I called Babble On. Since MT4 is still in beta it really is just a testing blog at the moment. The latest version includes "live" preview. It shows you what the entry would look like on your blog. It's one up on Arvind's Live Preview plugin, because it's standard. So is auto-save, which I have as a plugin on this MT3.5 version. I can't wait for the full version of MT 4 to be released. Sixapart thought about 6 weeks, so it must only be 5 now. I should have a cool countdown or something. :0

Another interesting feature of MT4 is template modules. There's header, footer, sidebar, etc, etc. I'm not sure yet how these work, I tried adding a footer to the main page but it didn't show up. There'll certainly be some trial and error concerned, but movabletype.org is compiling documentation as they go with this release, so let's hope there's a how-to to go with the innovative ideas.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Movable Type 3.35 Released

Six Apart has released a new version of Movable Type to fix a few bugs and vulnerabilities, and an enhanced installation process. New installs will be made much easier.

Default templates have been modified to include the encode_html="1" attribute to properly escape user submitted data found in the "Comment Preview" system template. Users are required to apply this fix manually to any pre-existing blog they may have in their system.

The MTDate tags have been fixed so they display the correct timestamp under daylight savings, which means they will now publish properly adjusting for DST when using the "utc" attribute.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Quicktags for Comment Formatting

Today I added a slightly modified version of Alex King's JS Quicktags for formatting comments. Using instructions from Movalog, and styling options, I was able to produce formatting buttons that can enhance comment entries.

Download the modified code and upload to your blog's root folder.

Follow Arvind's instructions and insert into the individual entry and comment preview templates.

Adding this style to your stylesheet will give a variation on the buttons, although leaving off extra styling will allow it to fit into the current theme.


.quicktags {
   padding: 0px; 
   text-align: left
}

.quicktags input.ed_button {
   border: #d6d3ce 1px solid; 
   background: #f4f4f4; 
   margin: 1px; 
   font: 0.8em 'helvetica neue', 'helveticaneue', 'helvetica', 'lucida grande', 'arial', sans-serif; 
   width: auto; 
   color: #000000; }

.quicktags input.ed_button:focus {
   border: #686868 1px solid; 
   background: #ffffff; 
}

.quicktags #ed_strong {
   font-weight: bold
}

.quicktags #ed_em {
   font-style: italic
}

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Implementing a Sand Trap

I've been reading my site error log nearly daily recently and have noticed a lot of calls to scripts which no longer exist. Since I was getting hit with a huge amount of comment and trackback spam, I often renamed those scripts but the spammers are still trying to access them.

Annoying Old Guy has written code to thwart the spammers that I've tried using a couple of variations.

My first attempt was to create a couple of files called mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi (since the real scripts now have an fcgi extension it's okay), and copy the following code into them. Give 755 permissions, and next time they're requested, the spammer get sucked into the sand trap.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
local $|=1; # Disable buffering

print <<HTML;
Content-Type: text/html

<body>

<div style="font-size:200%;
            text-align:center;
            background:red;
            color:white;
            margin-bottom:1ex;
            ">
Invalid Access
</div>

<p style="border:2px solid red;padding:1ex;">
There is no reference to this script from anywhere else on the Internet.
You can only have accessed this script by guessing its name.
There is no legitimate reason for doing that. 
Cease your annoying abuse.
</p>

HTML

sleep 30;

print "</body>\n";

This works perfectly, and there's nothing else to do except sit back and let the script do it's thing. I found myself creating a third cgi for a send to friend script I deleted a few weeks ago and realised I could have half a dozen of these scripts when I saw the error log and realised the spammers were trying all the names I called my scripts.

Another approach, which I now have implemented, is to create a PHP file, and write a redirect into the .htaccess file in the root directory.

<body>

<div style="font-size:200%;
            text-align:center;
            background:#822;
            color:white;
            border:2px solid red;
            padding:1ex;
            margin-bottom:1ex;
            ">
Sand Trap
</div>

<p style="border:2px solid red;
          padding:1ex;
          ">
You have been redirected to this script because
you have used an obsolete resource to which
no references exist on this website. This makes
you presumably a junker, and therefore your
session has been bogged down with this webpage.
</p>

<?php
ob_flush();
flush();
sleep(30);
?>

<p style="text-align:center;
          border:2px solid red;
          padding:1ex;
          margin-top:1ex;
          ">
If you are going to abuse me, I will abuse you right back.
</p>

</body>

Name the file sand-trap.php and place in the root directory of your site. Edit the .htaccess (or create one) and enter the following lines, changing the names of the files:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi /sand-trap.php [last]
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi /sand-trap.php [last]
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/mt/death-to-spammers.fcgi /sand-trap.php [last]
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/mt/mt-friend-holler.cgi /sand-trap.php [last]

I have several more lines in the .htaccess file but this gives you an example. The script works fine. You can test it here.

You'll find these instructions and more on the Solid Wall of Code website.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Still Struggling With FastCGI

I've upgraded to the latest version of MT (3.34) and although everything seemed to be working correctly I had an error log that was going crazy with line after line of problems. The StyleCatcher, Widget and Google API plugins didn't get along with FastCGI at all, and after disabling the plugins there's no more errors.

This is not, however, an ideal scenario, and I shouldn't have to disable anything! The switch to FastCGI with 3.34 is the easiest of all the versions and the improved speed of rebuilds and entry saves has been worth the effort.

I've been dilligently reading lots of blogs with the latest version and FastCGI implemented to see if any had the same problems as me, and after many searches I feel like I'm on my own. The only thing I can think is the old templates I'm using on Toni's Corner of the World. I've read that older templates can be the cause of many problems.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Create Scheduled Posts Using Shell Access

I've used cPanel without problems to set up scheduled posts and recently moved my hosting to Dreamhost. Once my Movable Type installation was set up, I had to do a quick course on using the shell access to enable crontab jobs.

Sixaparts instructions have an error that has frustrated me for days, and I've searched the internet for a solution to solve this problem.

Instead of this:

0,15,30,45 * * * * cd /path/to/mt/; ./tools/run-periodic-tasks

Which will produce the following error:

/bin/sh: line 1: /home/username/path/to/mt/: is a directory

You need to type this, without the trailing slash after mt:

0,15,30,45 * * * * cd /path/to/mt; ./tools/run-periodic-tasks

This is the same command as previous, only shorthand:

*/15 * * * * cd /path/to/mt; ./tools/run-periodic-tasks

Be sure to set the permissions for run-periodic-tasks to 755.

My thanks to the Dreamhosters Forum for help with this problem.

Other useful links include Crontab on Dreamhost, and Installing Movable Type on Dreamhost.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Fighting Spam

The spammers and spambots are taking the joy out of blogging these days, and numerous web logs no longer accept comments on their sites. Two days ago I entered "comments disabled" in Google, and got 37,700,000 results. Today I entered the same search and it returned 40,700,000. In just two days there's another 3 million results for the same search string. Until recently I'd never even heard of a spambot.

The comments from these sites share the same theme:

  • Due to a spam attack on our site today we have now disabled comments.
  • I've temporarily disabled the posting of new comments.
  • As an FYI, we’ve temporarily disabled the comments due to a flood of comment spam that’s slowing down our servers.
  • Due to some recent comments spam, I've disabled comments.
  • I have disabled the comments functionality on the site, because comments spam is driving me crazy.
  • Comments disabled again. The blogspam is bad. Real bad.
  • Anonymous Comments Disabled...
  • Spammers are annoying the hell out of me, comments are disabled for this one...
  • Well, I've had enough of dealing with blog-comment-spam for now, so I've decided to disable comments.

And so it goes... Everyone is getting hit the same. For a while there I had a "Why me?" period and was taking it rather personally. Now I'm taking an aggressive approach and checking the logs on my server to see which ip addresses I can ban and adding them to the .htaccess file on my site. IP addresses seem to change with every new hit and I wonder if I'm fighting a losing battle.

I have upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type and installed FastCGI in the hope that it will help me win the war, and am still using MT-Akismet and MT-Autoban.

As an extra measure of security I deleted the Post button from the comment forms on all my blogs to force commenters to use the Preview screen. I hope it will foil attempts by the automatic comment spambots that get through my defences.

I now have all trackbacks moderated.

This fight will go on and the spambots will get clever and breach these defences too. We just have to keep fighting, and not go the way of so many blogs and turn comments off. Where's the community in that?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Beware Changing to Dynamic Publishing

Yesterday I read an article by Jay Allen from Six Apart about a way to solve the comment spam server load issue and was at the point where I would try anything. My hosting providers had disabled the comment and trackback scripts because every 30 minutes these two scripts were causing their servers to run at a crawl.

Anyway, I took the plunge and set all my blogs to publish archives dynamically. Unfortunately none of the individual entry pages would load because of other plugins that I had installed that weren't compatible with the way Smarty does the dynamic publishing. Plugins including Markdown, Gravatar, Favicon, and Inline Editor no longer worked. I was able to find a PHP version of Markdown that worked well with Smarty, and another for Gravatar that I couldn't get to work. Then it was a matter of stripping out all the obsolete code from the templates.

This task took me the better part of 8 hours, with 6 blogs that I was working on. In the end I was able to get comments and trackbacks working again, in the hope that what I'd done had pleased my hosting providers and stopped the server-overload problem.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Spam Attacks Cause Server Overload

I have 6 websites hosted by 27Hosting.com that I've been locked out of because of the spam attacks that I'm under. The 27Hosting servers went haywire and the hosting providers have disabled running any scripts on the site. As you probably know, Movable Type cannot work without CGI support. The sites are all still viewable, but comments no longer work and I cannot log in to post anything new, or even try to fix the problem. I renamed mt-tb.cgi, and have deleted a mailentry script via FTP, after viewing some of the server logs that showed heavy traffic for these two scripts. I think the hosting providers think the culprit is mt.cgi, which I absolutely need to be able to use if the site is to be of any use to me.

If anyone has a solution to the problem I'd love to hear about it. Looks like I may have to look around for a hosting provider that has better security, or more knowledge. Locking me out of the site should not have been the first option. It took several emails to even learn what the problem was.

I'm not a happy customer.

I briefly considered alternatives to Movable Type, but don't want to migrate. I love MT. I'm at a loss about what to do, and my hands are tied at present because I can't log in.

I might add, it is not this server or this website that is the problem. I considered moving the whole kit and caboodle to this server, but when I tried to log in to the CPanel to see how much web space and bandwidth I could use, I got the following error:

Sorry for the inconvenience!
The filesystem mounted at / on this server is running out of disk space. cPanel operation has been temporarily suspended to prevent something bad from happening. Please ask your system admin to remove any files not in use on that partition.

It's just not my day!

Friday, October 6, 2006

Mandatory MT Update Available

While reading Planet Movable Type today, words like mandatory and imperative update jumped out at me and impelled me to act quickly. Movable Type has released version 3.33 to resolve a number of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, and according to the MT News site, "This is a mandatory update due to the severity of the combined vulnerabilities". The product security updates are available for free to all users immediately in the following forms:

  • A full downloadable version of Movable Type 3.33 and Movable Type Enterprise 1.03, accessible from your Movable Type account.
  • For advanced/experienced users: Patch distributions for v3.2 and v3.32 including only the changed files are provided in the post on our Professional Network blog.

The update installed quickly and without incident and there are no discernible changes. If you've added code to the "mt.js" file in the mt-static folder as I had, then you will need to remember to back up the original and add your changes. Remember also to check your saved template (tmpl) files against the new versions.

Sixapart strongly urges users of MT versions prior to 3.2 to upgrade:

If you are running a version of Movable Type older than 3.2, it is especially imperative that you to migrate immediately to version 3.33 due to the importance of fixes for the current issues as well as several significant security enhancements which have been made since your version was released.

Movable Type 3.33 has a nice ring to it.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Movable Type Styles

Movable Type comes with lots of style themes to change the look of your site. The easiest way to utilise these rich style repositories is through the built in Style Catcher plugin in Movable Type. Style Catcher allows you to browse styles and install them on your blog with a few clicks. Below are the URLs you should type into Style Catcher to utilize the Six Apart and Style Contest repositories.

Repositories
Six Apart: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/styles/library
The Style Contest: http://www.thestylecontest.com/browse

If you just want to tweak the colors of your template, or if you want to build a custom 3-column layout for your site, you can use Arvind Satyanarayan's Style Generator to make a new stylesheet for your site. and with the StyleCatcher plugin you can change the theme with the click of a couple of buttons.

The theme I'm using on this weblog is similar to the theme on Everything LJ (as in Live Journal). I've also seen it used on other sites, and that is thanks to the style repository at The Style Contest, soon to be called The Style Archive, where there is over 130 themes to choose from. You can download the themes from The Style Contest site but it's much easier to use StyleCatcher.

I love this theme and want to give credit to it's designer, Carrie Petrie, who designed nine themes for The Style Contest. Carrie has a few weblogs and this one is a good read too. A very talented website designer, by the way.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Error: file user_styles.css does not exist

I read the error log for my site on a regular basis, more often if I'm having problems with something. You need to have administrative access to your cPanel to view this, if your site uses cPanel. Since upgrading to MT 3.1 I've had an error about a userstyles.css not existing in my mt-static folder. I did a search for userstyles.css and came up with the following post on the Movabletype Community Forum.

Arved asks, which is my own question too:

Since upgrading i get a lot of entries in the errorlog that mt-static/user_styles.css is not there. Is this a bug, or did i do something wrong?

Here's the reply from lisa:

That hook is there so you can customize the Movable Type interface without having to edit mt-static/styles.css. You can create a blank user_style.css if you want to get rid of the errors in your logs.

I've followed Lisa's advice and have created a blank user_style.css and uploaded it to the mt-static directory. One day I might be brave enough to tackle an MT interface customisation, and the file won't need to be generated. Until then, no more annoying error messages about this file.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Improved Performance?

Hank posted a question about the performance improvements using MT 3.3.

I can't say that I've noticed any improvement in comment and post times.

This being a completely new install, you would expect it to be faster than my other blogs that are loaded down with plugins and ping addresses but I haven't noticed any difference. From one night to the next I've noticed a difference in performance. Some days it's fast and at other times it takes forever to save a post or comment.

I imagine there are many variables that change at any given time. On rare occasions the server is so bogged down you can't even access pages, other days everything loads quickly. Sometimes it's the broadband that is slow, other days it's lightning fast.

In a perfectly controlled environment I'm sure you could accurately detect performance improvements. I wasn't expecting any improvement in performance because I was never dissatisfied with the performance of 3.2. My reason for upgrading had more to do with security and user improvements.

read more »


Sunday, July 23, 2006

Upgrading to MT 3.3

I've taken the plunge and upgraded to Movable Type 3.31 after weighing up the pros and cons about the plugins I would lose. Updates for the broken plugins are coming fast and (fingers crossed), most of them will work with 3.3. I followed the instructions at Learning Movable Type for A Safe Way to Upgrade to MT 3.3, and after fumbling around with a few configuration tweaks, especially the folder permissions, all is working well now.

LivePreview was one plugin I was most concerned about, but there's now an upgrade for MT3.3, so I can rest easy. Elise wrote a great article about plugin compatability and made a list of those compatible, those newly updated, and those that won't work. It's worth a look if you're thinking about an upgrade and is being regularly updated.

Other plugins that I have updated with 3.3 compatability are:

  • FormatList - adds buttons to the edit and entry screens to create bulleted and numbered lists easily.
  • CCode and TCode - protects against comment and trackback spam.
  • MT Blogroll - a powerful link manager capable of synching with Technorati for last update times.
  • Multiblog - a plugin that provides the user with the ability to include templated content from other blogs in their MovableType installation.
  • Plugin Manager - install and upgrade Movable Type plugins, just point Plugin Manager at a URL, or upload the plugin into MT directly, and Plugin Manager will do the rest.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Movable Type 3.3 Available

movable_type_33.gif

Six Apart has released a new version of Movable Type that offers better support for tags, better junk and spam management, resizable text areas, better password and permissions management, and plenty of other improvements.

The improved functionality allows you to describe your entries with tags so readers can easily find any content and subscribe to custom feeds. The new widget capability allows you to arrange and manage your page just by dragging and dropping. Widgets can include your own content or content from other web services and feeds.

There are a number of important behavioral and compatibility changes in Movable Type 3.3 that are crucial to be aware of if you are upgrading from a previous version of Movable Type.

Carefully read the changes in MT 3.3 before upgrading because there are a number of issues that are important to understand. This release offers a downloadable User Manual and Installation Guide that wasn't available with version 3.2. For those interested in pushing Movable Type to its limits, more in-depth resources are available at Six Apart.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

MT Mail Entry

MovableType comes with an mt-send-entry.cgi that allows your readers to email a link to an entry. I currently have this feature set up on Toni's Corner of the World with an Email to a friend link. You might prefer to send a user the actual entry (or an excerpt) instead of just a link. MT Mail Entry is a CGI script that will do that.

The mt-mail-entry.cgi allows you to specify the templates that are used to create the email message. The email may be sent using plain text, HTML, or both formats. When an email is sent, the entry ID, sender and recipient are logged in the activity log.

There is a fair amount of setting up to do but Stepan has provided clear and easy to follow instructions.

read more »


Thursday, May 25, 2006

Help Ease Your Server Load

I read an interesting article on Elise's Learning Movable Type about reducing the load on your web server by removing a line of code.

If you've had your MT blog for a while, since before version 3.2, you may have upgraded your MT installation, but didn't bother to make changes to the code in your templates. In the templates for one of the earlier versions of MT, if you use Typekey authentication, the Individual Entry Archive Template calls the comments.cgi script to invoke a javascript file that reads back to the commenter their name. Turns out that every time a page displays that includes a Typekey-authenticated comment, the CGI script will run.

I don't imagine my page hits are anywhere near LMTs but removing the code from the upgraded templates on Toni's Corner of the World may have the benefit of improving server loads and so my site has to benefit from that.

Friday, May 5, 2006

Backup Your MT Files

I was reading how different people handle the task of backing up their weblogs. Since TypeMover is no longer an option for MT 3.2 I was interested to find something else, and saw a comment from Arvind about his solution. It's so quick and simple. He uses a script called dbsender.php http://www.phpfreaks.com/script/view/11.php which he cronned for every day. It automatically zips up his database and then emails him!

There were lots of other comments with lots of solutions, but I've decided to go with Arvind. I downloaded and configured the script, careful to follow the instructions. I've set up the script as a cron-job to run weekly and email me the zipped file. Restoring in case of an emergency is as easy as uploading the file.

read more »


Sunday, April 2, 2006

The Style Contest

The Style Contest for Movable Type, Typepad and LiveJournalFor those of us Movable Type users who want a different look for our website, a contest has just been launched that will benefit all MT users with a style repository that will be chock-full of great new styles. The Style Contest has just been launched with some excellent prizes for web designers, thanks to the efforts of MT community members Arvind Satyanarayan, Elise Bauer and Jesse Gardner.

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