Responding to a ProNet user who was exasperated by the complexity of Movable Type’s category filters and tags, I said
I also struggled with the category-tag mystery on our inFlightHQ blog and did the
old-school method of trying every possible combination of tags until it worked
and I honestly don’t really know how it works. I figured I just hadn’t yet
grabbed the pebble from the hand of the MT Tags masters. That or the
documentation is undecipherable.
As much as I dig MT, I often wonder if there are way better ways to do
things that I can’t figure out.
Turns out I was correct! There are better ways to build blogs with Movable Type and I just learned that from Tim Appnel. Tim helped us code the blog for our book, Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business. While I worked on the content and design with Mathew and Scott, Tim did his thing and let me know when he was done. I logged in, looked at what he coded for a while, and later exclaimed, “MTSetVarBlock Rules!”
What Tim did was create a module that is a global layout template with placeholders for various pieces of content to be plugged into (using his MTSetVar block plugin). That means instead of having 20+ templates repeating the same HTML, each much smaller template creates chunks of content (for entries, comments, archives, and more) and then call the layout template and assembles the page. That sounds more complicated than it is and Tim discusses the technique at length in his Hacks: Object-Oriented Weblog Publishing post.
The result is faster builds, cleaner code, and less template work. The blog is all chunked up.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Darren 03.11.06 at 1:21 pm
Speaking of MT, I’ve been a loyal user for years, but I have to abandon it. It’s choking on my 3000 entries and 10,000+ comments. Bring on the WordPress.
Mind you, I’m having difficulty installing it, so I may just resort to pen and paper.
-b- 03.11.06 at 2:13 pm
I hear that, we’ve been inundated with spam of late. It’s crazy and we’ll have to move servers soon.
steven e streight aka vaspers the grate 03.11.06 at 2:51 pm
WordPress is good with archive category creation, very good.
On Blogger, I am experimentally, a bit dismally, but hopefully, with a Swicki customized search engine that I’m trying to train.
steven e streight aka vaspers the grate 03.11.06 at 2:52 pm
Is this DL Byron the same as the Evolt! contributor who wrote of Flash and Window-Eyes?
-b- 03.11.06 at 5:24 pm
That’s correct and that was way back in the day.