Problems

You want to control the naming of files for a particular archive template.

Solution

Modify the template's Archive File Path on the Publishing Settings tab.

Discussion

The Archive File Path allow you to customize the names/paths of your archive files. This allows you to define a directory structure and file naming from a weblog's archives. For each Archive Template that you use, you can define an Archive File Path in the pulldown menu to its right on the Publishing Settings tab. This pulldown includes a number of common options to choose from based on the archive type.

Also included is a "Custom" option that lets you define an Archive File Path Template. These templates are defined using a subset of the standard Movable Type template tags. The following tags can be used in Archive File Path Templates:

• MTArchiveDate and MTArchiveDateEnd for Date-based archives (Monthly, Daily, Weekly)
• MTArchiveCategory and MTCategory tags for Category archives
• Any tags for Individual archives

For instance, you may wish to file away posts in your archives based on their category. So all entries assigned to the category "Books" would get placed into a directory called books/. To implement this with an Archive File Path Template, you would use the following markup for your Individual Entry archives:

 <$MTEntryCategory dirify="1"$>/<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>.html

This template will output file names like:

 books/000007.html
 books/000040.html
 books/000072.html

When using Archive File Path Templates, you must append the file extension that you wish to use for your archive files. The file extension that you specify in your settings will not be used.