Movable Type Template Tips & Tricks

Getting list of all the blogs with a specific type with FieldDay

Fieldday is one of the most powerful plugins for MovableType however documentation is limited and it doesn't have sufficient examples. If you want to get a list of blogs that are from a specific type (ie. socal), you can use the following snippet. Notice that blog type is defined as radio select blog fields at system level.

<mt:Var name="temp_socal_blog_ids" value="">
<mt:Blogs>
  <$mt:BlogFieldValue field="blog_type" trim="1" dirify="-" setvar="blogType"$>
  <mt:If name="blogType" eq="socal">
    <mt:BlogId setvar="current_blog_id">
    <mt:SetVar name="temp_socal_blog_ids" value="$current_blog_id" function="push"> 
  </mt:If>
</mt:Blogs>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="socal_blog_ids"><mt:Var name="temp_socal_blog_ids" glue=","></mt:SetVarBlock>

Creating custom template sets with MT Export TS

If you always wanted to create your own template set but never sure where to start, check out Byrne Reese's MT Export Template Set Plugin. This plugin helps you to create a new template set based on your existing templates in a specific blog. Template files will be exported as a plugin which can easily be installed on MovableType.

This plugin is the real solution where hundreds of blogs needs to be managed within one MT instance. The best way to follow is to create global templates and include them in your blog level templates. Implementing this architecture, all the blogs using this template set can be updated by modifiying only the global templates and your changes will be in place after all the blogs get republished.

The readme file is really helpful and self explanatory thanks to Beau Smith.

Listing categories in hierarchical order

<mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled type="Category">
  <mt:TopLevelCategories>
    <mt:SubCatIsFirst><ul></mt:SubCatIsFirst>
    <mt:If tag="CategoryCount">
        <li><a href="<$mt:CategoryArchiveLink$>" title="<$mt:CategoryDescription$>"><$mt:CategoryLabel$></a>
    <mt:Else>
        <li><$mt:CategoryLabel$>
    </mt:If>
    <$mt:SubCatsRecurse$>
        </li>
   <mt:SubCatIsLast></ul></mt:SubCatIsLast>
  </mt:TopLevelCategories>
</mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled>

Displaying entries with featured images

If you want to create a featured area like which will display featured entries from all the blogs in MT with featured images and entry title, the following snippet will do it for you. If an entry asset is not tagged as @footer-featured it will automatically grab the first asset linked to the entry.

<ul class="clean-list">  
    <mt:Blogs blog_ids="all" >
        <mt:Entries tag="@footer-featured">
            <li> 
                <mt:ignore>Display the featured image tagged @footer-featured if not found display another asset that belongs to the entry</mt:ignore>
                <mt:Var name="is_featured_image_found" value="0">
                <mt:EntryAssets lastn="1" limit="1" tag="@footer-featured"> 
                    <a href="<$mt:EntryPermalink$>" rel="bookmark"><img class="footer-featured-image" alt="<$mt:EntryTitle$>" src="<$mt:AssetThumbnailURL width="150" square="1"$>"/></a> 
                    <mt:Var name="is_featured_image_found" value="1">
                </mt:EntryAssets>
                
                <mt:If name="is_featured_image_found" eq="0">
                    <mt:EntryAssets lastn="1" limit="1"> 
                        <a href="<$mt:EntryPermalink$>" rel="bookmark"><img class="footer-featured-image" alt="<$mt:EntryTitle$>" src="<$mt:AssetThumbnailURL width="150" square="1"$>"/></a> 
                        <mt:Var name="is_featured_image_found" value="1">
                    </mt:EntryAssets>
                </mt:If>
              
                <h4><a href=""><$mt:EntryTitle$></a></h4>
            </li>
        
        </mt:Entries>
    </mt:Blogs> 
</ul>

MovableType Templating Tips & Tricks

It is taking so much time to create the same functionality over and over again when I am working on the client work. There is no need to re-invent the wheel so I will be posting my MT template snippets here...