Babble On

Cutline Theme Looks Bad in IE

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:34:20 +0900

I love the Cutline Theme but it displays terribly in Internet Explorer. When viewed in Firefox, it's fine.

I've had to add lots of classes to the CSS so IE would play nicely. The navigation bar was right off the screen until I added left: 0px;.

The whole site displayed in CAPS in IE, and after I added text-transform: none;, the missing style for comments is still showing capital letters, and the content has a dotted line under everything.

On Site Design

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:03:19 +0900

An interesting article on The Blog Herald today made me take a fresh look at my site and realise I'm guilty of blog clutter. Gone is the old design along with many extras features from the sidebars.

How quickly a nice clean Theme become a garbage dump for gadgets and gizmos. The sidebar is notorious as a great dumping ground for every widget, Plugin, and gadget around.

I chose majordojo's Cutline Theme for the clean layout and simple design, keeping the style with two columns instead of three. I have lots of other blogs where I can add widgets, plugins and gadgets to my heart's content.

Do You Have a Plugin You Can't Live Without?

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:07:18 +0900

I have many plugins installed on my Movable Type installation and I often wonder which are the ones I could do without. They all seem to have their place, and so they're all still installed.

I posed a question not so long ago... How many plugins are too many? On another install I have 49 plugins. Some of these are quite old, like Acronym, Amputator and Gallery-Link. They go back to version 3.2 but then, so do the templates in some older blogs that I haven't got around to updating, and the plugins still seem to be working. TypeMover is a plugin that I used to think I couldn't live without, until it just wouldn't work on the new MT installs, and so I had to say goodbye to it.

Template Module Caching

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:44:24 +0900

My personal blog seemed to take forever to rebuild, 9 minutes plus for a blog with under 500 entries. Initially I thought it had something to do with the number of plugins I have installed: 49 when you include MT's preinstalled plugins.

Today I tried module caching with some widgets and module templates. Recent Comments, Category Archives and Monthly Archives are cached until a specific event occurs, like when a new entry, comment or category is created. The Banner Footer is cached for a 30-day period. There's nothing in there that changes dynamically so it's safe to set a time limit. Comments will be cached until a new comment is created.

Archive Page with Month and Entry List

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:20:12 +0900

I've noticed on a few sites the archive page with Month and then the list of post for that month. It took me a while to work out how it was done but finally got it. You can see it in action on my person blog.

It's really quite easy to implement. Go to the Movable Type dashboard in your browser, Design > Templates > Index Templates. Click on the Archive Index template.

Delete all the various archive types after the following line:

Action Streams Plugin

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:38:34 +0900

Everywhere I look these days it seems that many sites are using Action Streams to show what they're linking to or what they've been doing.

When the Action Streams plugin was first released I looked at it and thought it was too hard to implement. Now that I've installed it, it seems it couldn't be easier. The instructions are well written and I even managed to style it so it fitted in perfectly with the rest of the site.

It's interesting to see what other bloggers are bookmarking and I've found myself following links quite often. Every time I save a link to Magnolia or Delicious, I wished I had the action stream plugin installed so I could share my links too.

Of course, Action Streams is capable of much more than what I'm using it for. The possibilities for this plugin are endless, and new features are constantly being added by plugin developers.

Release Candidate 3 Available

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:00:18 +0900

Although the announcement hasn't been made public as far as I can see, the third release candidate for MT 4.2 is available.

After updating, I can't see any changes so I assume the release only contains a few bug fixes. I couldn't find any reference to this new release on the MTOS website.

Translate Your Website

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:28:34 +0900

After two weeks of trying to get the Translate Plugin for MT to work, I've given up and decided on a different solution that translates the entire page instead of just the entry. Language translation is important for you site to reach a larger audience since only around one quarter of the world population speaks English.

Download the script and follow the instructions for installation.

Post Office Plugin

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:52:10 +0900

I downloaded the Post Office plugin after installing the release candidate 2 of MT4.2 and am disappointed that it doesn't seem to work. I can send an email and it ends up in my Gmail inbox, but how it gets posted to my blog is a mystery.

I've had 2 goes at trying to send a post via email and I'm stumped. I've got the link at the bottom of the entry screen (strange place to have it, by the way, why would I want a link there when I'm already in the create entry interface?)

Add a Menu Bar to MT's Default Themes

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:03:58 +0900

I like the idea of a top navigation bar and today I went about adding one to my modified Unity Blue theme by following Elise's instructions for customising the default style in MT4.

The code for the menu bar is modified from Majordojo's Cutline Theme. It's really quite easy to implement.

Zemanta for Movable Type

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:28:41 +0900

Zemanta has developed a plugin for Movable Type 4.1 based on the browser extension that I had previously installed. The downside to having a browser extension soon became obvious when I tried to blog from a different computer and no longer had the Zemanta features in MT. Also, Zemanta wouldn't display if Rich Text was selected as the formatting preference.

A Couple of Plugins Worth Mentioning

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:01:49 +0900

In a previous post I noted that Joomsayer didn't work for MT 4.1 and onwards. Well that's not the case anymore since there's a new version that works fine. I installed it tonight and although there's no longer a button on the MT Entry interface, just using the blockquote tag will transform the quotes to the Joomsayer style. Make sure you add a link to the Joomsayer for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where Joomsayer displays quotation boxes. If you're upgrading from the previous version, be sure to include step 8 in the install instructions.

Looking for Help from the MT Community

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:15:08 +0900

I've had a query about using the MT4 Contact Form to report abuse from other blogs and since I know very little about what goes on behind-the-scenes in Movable Type, perhaps someone in the wider MT Community can provide us with an answer.

Plugins for Better Asset Management

Fri, 30 May 2008 22:55:00 +0900

Asset Handler is a plugin that I stumbled across today and I've been wishing for something like this ever since I updated to MT4. Most of my blogs have been around a while, and so there's been a whole slew of images that have never previously made it onto the asset listing screen.

Once I installed Asset Handler, I was able to import everything from my images folder. The plugin also has a batch editing feature where you can easily edit the title, description and tags for the assets you select.

MT 4.2 Update Released

Fri, 30 May 2008 21:33:56 +0900

A release candidate for Movable Type 4.2 was released today and I uploaded it without any problems. The new version is noticeably faster, as promised, and the layout on the plugins page is now fixed. Previously the sidebar was down around the bottom of the page somewhere.