Demo

How does Movable Type handle multiword tags?

It's easy to add a multiword tag--you don't even need quotes. Tags are separated by commas.

In the database the tag is stored in mt_tag table. The tag_name field stores the human-readable label.

The mt_entry table joins to the mt_tag table via mt_objecttag:

• mt_entry.entry_id is mt_objecttag.objecttag_object_id
• mt_tag.tag_id is mt_objecttag.objecttag_tag_id

Adding a multiword tag actually adds 2 entries to the mt_tag table:

• A "normalized" entry that removes spaces and special characters and lowercases the string
• The regular version, which references the normalized version in the tag_n8d_id field.

More you should know about tags:

• Tags can be associated with assets, pages, or entries. A tag associated with one is not available to be applied to the others; an identical tag must be created.
• Tags must be associated with one of those 3 items. You cannot prepopulate tags for a given blog (as far as I can tell).

Thanks to a tip from the Movable Type forums, it turns out that PerlMagick was the missing ingredient to get ImageMagick to work with Movable Type.

(The message on the tools page could be improved to let users know that.)

Now, let's try it out:

Full size

Resized in the rich-text editor

Thumbnail

This is another issue I noticed after migrating to the new server:

Mail::Sendmail

Your server does not have Mail::Sendmail installed, or Mail::Sendmail requires another module that is not installed. This module is required for sending mail via SMTP Server. Please consult the installation instructions for help in installing Mail::Sendmail.

I renamed the mt-config.cgi file and ran the installation wizard (mt-wizard.cgi) again. The wizard successfully sent a test e-mail, so it must have found Sendmail, but the mt-check.cgi page does not reflect that.

I would love to see what ImageMagick can do for Movable Type. My server says it has ImageMagick installed:

#yum list installed | grep "Image"
ImageMagick.i386                         6.3.5.9-1.1eapps       installed

The usual suspects are in /usr/bin, e.g. convert and mogrify.

Unfortunately, the mt-check.cgi page says otherwise:

Image::Magick

Your server does not have Image::Magick installed, or Image::Magick requires another module that is not installed. This module is needed if you would like to be able to create thumbnails of uploaded images. Please consult the installation instructions for help in installing Image::Magick.

I have no idea why Movable Type isn't finding it or how to give it proper directions.

I recently migrated osric.org from a Fedora Core to a CentOS5 server. There was one hiccup along the way: apparently the groups on the old server didn't exactly match the groups on the new server, so I got internal server error 500 when attempting to log in.

The error logs showed that there was an issue with suexec, and the suexec log (in the Apache log directory) showed the mismatch. Once I changed the group on the files and the directories, everything worked again.

[update]: not quite everything--on the System Information page I'm getting the following error:

Movable Type could not find the script named 'mt-check.cgi'. To resolve this issue, please ensure that the mt-check.cgi script exists and/or the CheckScript configuration parameter references it properly.

Which is strange, because I can access that file directly via a web browser.

[update x2]: I fixed the System Info issue by installing HTML-Parser.

In the actual image, the color bars are all 100x100 pixel squares. Within the rich-text editor (either Movable Type's default or the FCKeditor, at least) you can change the height and width of the displayed image, although I have not found a way to constrain the proportions.

I installed the FCKeditor plugin. After which, I updated to FCKeditor 2.6.3 (this required that I update the fckconfig.js file to include the MTDefault toolbar set). I also added the asset upload button, the files for which are available in the FCKeditor plugin SVN repository (but not in the packaged plugin).

Although I think the standard silver and Office2003 skins looks suitable without any modifications, other FCKeditor skins are available. I wonder why no one has made a Movable Type FCKeditor skin? I would love to roll out the FCKeditor and not even have my clients notice the change.

I included only a selection of the possible rich-text editor elements:

• Bold
• Italic
• Underline [perhaps I should rethink this--never use underline on the web]
• Link
• Unlink
• Ordered List
• Unordered List
• Outdent
• Indent
• Blockquote
• Left Justify
• Center
• Right Justify
• Justified
• Image
• Asset
• Paste-from-Word
• Source

I also set FCKConfig.ToolbarCanCollapse = false, which frees up just enough horizontal space so that all the buttons fit on one line (using the silver skin).

This is a blockquote within the main body.