The Movable Type User Manual

NOTE: This documentation is for Movable Type 3.2. If you are using a newer version, please see the documentation for Movable type 3.3x or Movable Type Enterprise.

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By default, Movable Type offers two formatting options for the text in your entries: None and Convert Line Breaks. The former leaves your entry intact without any conversion and is appropriate for HTML-formatted entries. The latter includes basic formatting of paragraphs and line breaks allowing you to write as you would normally.

The Movable Type Plugin API allows you to add additional options via plugins such as the popular Markdown and Textile.

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The entry title is displayed with the MTEntryTitle tag. It is not a required field, but is highly recommended at least for organization's sake within the MT administrative interface. If you don't wish for it to show up on your published weblog, you can always remove the MTEntryTitle tag from your templates.

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These fields allow you to choose one primary category and any number of secondary categories. The MTEntryCategory tag displays the primary category for an entry. Secondary categories can be displayed using the MTEntryCategories tag, as in <$MTEntryCategories glue=", "$>.

Movable Type supports the use of subcategories, with a more complex set of template tags necessary for display. For more information on this and other topics related to categories, see the Categories chapter of the manual.

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This field, along with the Extended Entry field, make up the body of your entry. The contents of this field are displayed with the MTEntryBody tag.

Movable Type allows you to split up your entry for more flexibility in the display of that entry; for example, if you write very long entries, you may want to display MTEntryBody on your index, Monthly and Category templates, but use both MTEntryBody and MTEntryMore (for the extended entry) on your Individual archive.

The entry body is transformed upon publishing according to the text formatting you've selected for that entry. If you wish to disable that conversion in a particular template, you can use the convert_breaks global attribute in that template. Example:

<$MTEntryBody convert_breaks="0"$>

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This field, along with the Entry Body field, make up the body of your entry. The contents of this field are displayed with the MTEntryMore tag.

See Entry Body for more information on its usage.

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You can enter an excerpt from your entry, or use this field to provide a summary of the content therein. This field is displayed with the MTEntryExcerpt tag and used by the system in a number of places to provide a summary for your data. (See the knowledge base article "Using entry fields for custom data" for details)

If you do not provide an excerpt, it will be automatically generated (when specified in a template using the MTEntryExcerpt tag) by selecting the first forty (40) words from your entry, followed by an ellipsis. The length of the excerpt can be controlled from the weblog's general settings screen.

Related topics:

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The Keywords field can hold whatever type of data you want to put in it; it is geared for holding metadata or keywords about your entry, and is not normally displayed on your public site (though you can display it using the MTEntryKeywords tag).

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.

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The Entry status controls the display of entries on your weblog.

  • Published directs Movable Type to include the entry on the published weblog upon the next rebuild.
  • Unpublished keeps the entry private and accessible only through the Movable Type admin interface
  • Scheduled instructs Movable Type to keep the entry private until a proscribed date at which point it becomes "Published". See "Posting to the Future" for more details.

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The "Authored On" field is the official entry date and time displayed with the entry on your weblog using the MTEntryDate tag. In reality, it is the time at which you began writing the entry.

Movable Type allows you to edit the date and time in order to pre-date or post-date your entries. If you change this value, it must be in the form of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

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For most users, this field indicates base filename (without extension) of the individual entry archive. For example a basename of "my_trip_to_disneyland" might lead to a URL like:

http://www.example.com/2005/06/my_trip_to_disneyland.html

It is based on the entry title and automatically calculated upon entering text into that field. The basename is dirified (spaces replaced by underscores, other punctuation removed) in order to create a valid URL.

If, in creating the entry, the basename field is left unedited, Movable Type will check for basename collisions with other entries. In case of a possible collision, an underscore and incremented number will be appended to the basename (e.g. title1, title2, etc) and the new basename will be displayed after the entry is saved.

If you choose to edit the basename, collision checking is turned off. If the basename you choose collides with another entry, it could cause one to overwrite the other on the published weblog. Also, if you edit the basename of a published entry, it will very likely change the published filename, hence breaking incoming links to the entry. Both of these actions are not recommended unless you know what you are doing.

The entry basename can be displayed using the MTEntryBasename tag. This tag is most useful as part of your Archive Map File Path.

Note: If you have customized your Archive Map File Path to use something other than the basename for your individual entry archives or a different dirification (e.g. using dashes instead of underscores), this change is not reflected in the basename field. This will be addressed in a future version.

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Specifies whether you would like users to be able to post comments on this entry. This setting is dependent on comments being allowed in the weblog feedback settings (Accept comments from...) and the System settings (Feedback Master Switch » Disable Comments).

This option has changed in Movable Type 3.2. Prior versions had three statuses: None, Open and Closed. The "None" choice, which removed both the comment form and the listing of any existing comments, has been eliminated for the sake of simplicity. This means that existing comments are always shown.

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Specifies whether you would like to accept TrackBacks on this entry. This setting is dependent on TrackBacks being allowed in the weblog feedback settings (Accept TrackBacks) and the System settings (Feedback Master Switch » Disable TrackBacks).

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A list of TrackBack URLs that you would like to ping for this entry. This is for use when pinging a particular entry on a remote site--if you wish to ping a remote site every time you place an entry in a certain category, associate the URL(s) with that particular category. See Categories for more details.

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Movable Type allows you to customize the entry editing screen to fit with your usage of the system. This customization is done on a per-author, per-weblog basis. In other words, as an author, you can have different screen layouts for each weblog that you post to; and when you customize the screens, your preferences will not trample over those of any of the other authors in the system.

The system lets you choose between two predefined layouts (Basic and Advanced), or allows you to create a custom layout, where you choose the fields you would like displayed.

  • Basic

    As the name implies, Basic is the simplest possible layout. It displays editable fields for the entry title and entry body; a pulldown menu for the Post Status; and an uneditable authored-on date.

  • Advanced

    Advanced is the default layout for all authors and displays the most commonly used fields and controls for working with entries. These include Title, Entry Body, Extended Body, Excerpt, an editable Authored On timestamp and pulldown menus for Primary Category, Post Status, Comments and Text Formatting.

  • Custom

    The Custom layout allows you the most flexibility; it allows you to choose exactly which fields you would like to appear on the New and Edit Entry screens. Simply check off the ones you want. (Title is required and therefore always displayed.)

In addition to configuring the fields that you would like displayed, you can also control the position of the button bar containing the Save, Preview, and Delete buttons. The button bar can be displayed either at the top of the page (above the entry-editing fields), at the bottom (below the entry-editing fields), or both.

Click Save when you are finished.

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