Archive for the ‘Movable Type’ Category

1. Pagination. Paginates your home page like WordPress.

2. Simply Threaded. Allow threaded comments.

3. YUI Editor for Movable Type. Very useful, flexible and stabel rich text editor.

4. User Profiles. Allow registered members to create profiles. Inch your blog toward social networking.

5. MT Forum. Turn your comments into a full message board.

More and more people are using their smart phones to access the internet, which obviously includes blogs. So it’s important to make sure your blog is mobile friendly.

When researching I was surprised to find that while WordPress had a nice selection of plugins, apps and other options for making blogs mobile friendly, Movable Type had very little. So for today we’ll just discuss WordPress, and maybe in the future I can outlines some options for Movable Type, which would probably require some behind the scenes scripting to work.

My mobile phone is an iPhone, so it’s tempting for me to assume everyone else has one, too. Be that as it may, there is a handy iPhone app, http://iphone.wordpress.org/, for managing your WordPress blog via your iPhone.

The plugin I’ve found most useful is WPTouch. I just installed it here, and have used on several clients’ blogs. Unfortunately it only works for iPhones.

For other phones you’d need the WordPress Mobile Pack. It catches all the other types of phones (and both plugins can run simultaniously).

I’ll also note the iPhone Interface for Movable Type, which is a plugin you can install to allow you to manage your MT blog via your iPhone, but apparently doesn’t provide a mobile frontend for your MT blog.

There’s a simple way and a hard way to do this. The hard way also adds a shortened url, allowing the reader to include more of the headline in the 140 characters twitter allows.

First the easy way.

WordPress…

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=<?
the_title('','',FALSE);
?>%20<?
the_permalink();
?>" target="_blank">re-Tweet this</a>

Movable Type…

<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=
<$MTEntryTitle$>%20<$MTEntryPermalink$>
" target="_blank">re-Tweet this</a>

Now the hard way involves going to http://bit.ly/pages/tools/developer-tools/ and joining. Get your API Key and username. Then create the following PHP file (you can name it whatever you want, but just remember the name, because we’ll be using it). Make sure to replace [bitly username] with your bitly username and [API Key] with your bitly API Key.

<?
$link=urldecode($_GET['l']);
$title=urldecode($_GET['t']);
$rtData=implode('',file("http://api.bit.ly/shorten?
version=2.0.1&longUrl=$link&login=
[bitly username]&apiKey=[API Key]"));
$out=json_decode($rtData, true);
$results=$out['results'];
$articleLink=$artData['article_link'];
$myLink=$results[$articleLink];
$shortUrl=$myLink['shortUrl'];
header("Location: http://twitter.com/home?
status=$title%20$shortUrl");
exit();
?>

Once that’s created with the correct username and API Key, save it to your server in a location reachable from the web. Let’s say you save it at http://myserver.com/retweet.php. We’ll then use the following for out links.

WordPress…

<a href="http://myserver.com/retweet.php?t=<?
the_title('','',FALSE);
?>&l=<? the_permalink();
?>" target="_blank">re-Tweet this</a>

Movable Type…

<a href="http://myserver.com/retweet.php?
t=<$MTEntryTitle$>&l=<$MTEntryPermalink$>
" target="_blank">re-Tweet this</a>

This then will take the title and url, convert the url into a shortened url and make your twitter status look something like this…

How to make a "Retweet this post" link http://bit.ly/ddmFZr

This is actually even easier. First, because titles and urls will reformat if placed in regular urls, unlike email links, and second because Facebook has widgets that also make it easier.

Facebook has a page to show you how to create a share link, but in order to get it to work with each individual post, you’d need to use the respecting blogging platform tags. On and individual page, the code generated by the Facebook widget would work, but if you still want links from you mian page, where there’s a long list of posts, and the link should be to the individual post, then you’ll want a customized link.

For WordPress…

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<?
the_permalink();
 ?>&t=<?
the_title('','',FALSE);
?>" target="_blank">Post this to Facebook</a>

For Movable Type…

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?
u=<$MTEntryPermalink$>
&t=<$MTEntryTitle$>"
target="_blank">Post this to Facebook</a>

Again, if you’d like to use an image you can find some nice Facebook icons at http://www.iconspedia.com/pack/web-2-0-social-bookmarks/ . I suggest using the linux version, since it has the type of images you’d need for a web site. Just make sure you set the border=”0″ or some browsers will put an ugly blue border around the image as it becomes a link.

Maybe this is really simple for many, but I still see people without an email link on their individual posts. The reason for it is if a reader finds the post very useful, then they can easily email it to a friend, helping increase the readership of your blog.

For WordPress…

<?
$emailTitle =urlencode(the_title('','',FALSE));
$emailTitle = str_replace('+', ' ', $emailTitle);
?>
<a href="mailto:?subject=<? echo $emailTitle;
?>&body=Check this out!%0A%0A<?php the_permalink()
?>">Email this Post</a>

For Movable Type (if your static pages are PHP)…

<?
$emailTitle =urlencode('<$MTEntryTitle encode_php="q"$>');
$emailTitle = str_replace('+', ' ', $emailTitle);
?>
<a href="mailto:?subject=<? echo $emailTitle;
?>&body=Check this out!%0A%0A<$MTEntryPermalink$>"
>Email this Post</a>

If your MT static pages are not PHP, then I doubt it will work for you.

If you want to use a little envelope graphic, there’s a tons of icons at http://famfamfam.com/. Grab the “Silk” package, and make sure you give him a link back. You’d want to format the image part like this…

<img src="envelope.png" title="Email this Post">

The title tag is needed so the text will appear when the image is mousedover.