Problem

You want to post a new entry.

Solution

Click the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet.

Discussion

Since entries are what weblogs are all about, it should come as no surprise that there are a number of ways to create them in Movable Type.

The two most likely ones are either to use the New Post button in the Weblog Toolbar or use a Quickpost bookmarklet that MT can help you create. See "Making posts quickly from your browser" for more on Quickposts.

When creating a new entry, you will have the chance to set the following fields:

• Title

  The title of your entry does not necessarily have to appear on your weblog, but is required for sorting and display purposes by Movable Type itself.

• Primary Category

  You can choose a primary post category for categorization or archiving purposes. Movable Type supports entries assigned to multiple categories, but one category must be designated as the primary category for each entry.

• Assign Multiple Categories

  The Assign Multiple Categories link opens a control for managing the secondary categories to which your entry is assigned. See

• Entry Body
• Extended Entry

  Collectively these two fields make up the body of your entry. Splitting up your entry gives you more flexibility and control over how it is displayed.

• Excerpt

  You can enter an excerpt from your entry, or use this field to provide a summary of the content therein. If you do not provide an excerpt, it will be automatically generated. MT will select the first 20 words from your entry, followed by an ellipsis.

• Keywords

  The Keywords field can hold whatever type of metadata or keywords you choose. It is searched when a user performs a public search on your site, so you can use it to tag entries with words that may not normally appear in the entry body.

• Post Status

  An entry can have a status of "Unpublished," "Published" or "Scheduled". Entries with a status set to "Unpublished" are stored in your database, but are not published to your weblog. Entries marked "Published" are displayed in your weblog. "Scheduled" status means a post is completed, but should not be published until a specific point in time. See "Posting to the Future".

• Authored On

  Movable Type allows you to pre-date or post-date your entries by modifying the authored on date and time for an entry. If you change this value, you must use the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

• Allow Comments

  Allow Comments is a checkbox that enables readers to post comments for that entry.

• Text Formatting

  Specifies the text formatting to apply to the Entry Body and Extended Entry fields' content.

  Text formatting provides an easier means of authoring content in MT's browser-based interface for users who are not HTML savvy. These engines handle the conversion of structured text notation into HTML markup.

  Movable Type ships with a text formatting engine called Convert Line Breaks. The "Convert Line Breaks" option encloses your paragraphs in <p> and </p> tags, and converts line breaks to <br> tags.

  Others engines can be added using the Movable Type API or from third-party developers. If you do not want any text formatting applied select "None."

• Allow TrackBacks

  Specifies whether you would like to enable this entry to accept TrackBack pings.

• Outbound TrackBack URLs

  A list of TrackBack URLs that you would like to ping for this entry.

You can use the Preview button to preview your entry before posting or click Save to create/modify the entry in the database.

Upon saving an entry that is marked with a status of Published, your archives for that entry, along with all of your indexes, are automatically rebuilt. Thus you do not need to manually rebuild (publish) your files after posting a new entry or editing an existing one.

Entry-Editing Shortcuts

If you are using Movable Type on Internet Explorer for Windows, or Firefox, you can make use of a few keyboard shortcuts to automatically insert HTML formatting tags while editing entries. To use these shortcuts, select the text you wish to format in your entry, then press the appropriate keyboard shortcut combination:

• Bold - Ctrl-Shift-b
• Italic - Ctrl-Shift-i
• Underline - Ctrl-Shift-u
• Hyperlink - Ctrl-Shift-a