Movable Type Enhancements
In trying to determine whether Movable Type (MT) was a feasible backend for OK/Cancel, I found a variety of sites and discovered just how big the MT community really was. If there’s a function you can think of (and many you can’t), somebody’s already done it and posted about it.
Before I go on, for all of you on Blogger who haven’t moved because you don’t want to lose your comments, somebody’s figured out how to import everything. I haven’t read in detail but the person also mentions why the move from Blogger/Comments was made. I know Blogger Pro recently got rolled into Blogger so it’s definitely less compelling but after seeing all that’s possible in MT, I’m pretty sold that I made the right decision. I also just noticed that MT came out with TextPad which is their answer to BlogSpot I guess. So users can run MT without going through installation pains but it’s not free (it’s also not adware). There’s a 30 day trial though.
While researching, I discovered so many plugins and modifications that I had to start creating a wishlist for things I will be doing to the Blog. Probably well before I ever get to a redesign unfortunately. I’ve linked the relevant tutorials as well:
- make links section a server side included blog of its own
- modify photos section to put links into body instead of title
- add comments leaderboard [1]
- add comments excerpt [1]
- add automated backups [1] [2]
- add winamp playlist [1]
- include category icon to show in search page [1]
- combine bloglet with notification [1]
- advanced search by category and fields see [1]
- remove redundant comments [1]
- add mt-medic for more powerful control [1]
- add a “mail this entry” link [1] [2]
- obfuscate commentor e-mails to prevent spambot harvesting [1] [2] [3]
- add voting poll [1]
- inline comments [1]
- mt based guestbook [1]
- fix “remember me” problem [1]
- hot topics (most comments) [1]
- comment permalink [1]
- merge trackback and comments [1]
- subscribe to a thread [1]
- add notification when someone adds name to maillist [1]
- blogtimes function [1]
In addition, I’m looking into certain functions that are more important for OK/C than for this blog but may be incorporated into both:
- ok/c author icons [1]
- weekly archive dropdown [1] [2]
- meaningful archive naming [1] [2]
- ok/c login page [1]
- changing the weekly cycle [1]
Slightly related note, whilst browsing all of these sites, it’s interesting to see that almost all of them are at least peripherally interested in interaction and information design, linking to sites like k10k, boxes and arrows, core77, kottke, etc.
Finally, a quick nod to Joshua for linking to my comic already! Josh is studying with me at UCLIC.
3 Comments