April 2005 Archives

A cool feature of Movable Type is the ability to use alternate templates for the MT application itself. Instead of hacking MT's default application templates directly, you can create a directory for alternate templates (in the same directory where mt.cgi resides), configure the path in mt.cfg, then upload your hacked/tweaked templates for MT to find there.

In mt.cfg add the following:
AltTemplatePath ./tmplx

(You can name your Alternate Templates folder whatever you like. I use /tmplx so the folder will reside directly beneath /tmpl when I'm accessing it via FTP.)

mt 316
no rest for the weary geek
hacks complete... now sleep

Sometimes I want to make a post "sticky" so it stays at the top of my entry list for an extended length of time, even after posting newer entries. There are several ways to accomplish this.

One, perhaps the simplest, is to post-date the "sticky" entry so that it will stay in place as long as that date is still in the future or no entry has usurped it's place by post date.

Another option is to just hard-code the sticky text into your index template where you want it. (yuck, but it works)

A third option and my preferred method is to use the MTEntry plugin which gives you the MTEntry tag, allowing you to call one specific entry id...

Notice some "mystery" xml files appearing in your blog directory? (with names such as 37.xml, 88.xml, etc) These are TrackbackRSS feeds generated automatically by MT. I have no need for these so I "killed" them. To do this, uncomment the "GenerateTrackBackRSS 0" line in mt.cfg and you're good to go.