Because there is the new option of using MySQL to store your Movable Type database, I wrote up a short tutorial for how to get MySQL ready for the conversion. This is particularly for people who are using CPanel (I’m using version 4) as their control panel on their server.
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I know I haven’t been posting around these parts lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my hands dirty with some good old fashioned PHP. Most of what I’ve been doing is for pMachine (although I’d love to get into the new mySQL version of MT!) which is already documented on my site.
However, I come to you today to share my newest found and lately my favorite built in php function, substr
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Would you like to add a different graphic title for each day? Here’s a great way to do this with Movable Type and Greymatter.
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After several requests for tutorials on the MT boards, I’ve put together some tutorials and codes for Movable Type on a few different topics. These could be modified to fit other blogging software or just normal page designs as well.
The first is a 3 column layout. It is all css, based on the default MT stylesheet and my own version of the bluerobot technique for flanking sidebars.
The second is a Photoblog layout. Its also all css, and has a more indepth tutorial on how to use this format for SUPER-easy posting of your images. The design is also based on the default MT stylesheet, with similar tweaks that my own personal photoblog uses. A photoblog in MT is an ideal place to try out the Next/Previous Category hack from this site!!
I hope these help somebody! 
Blogrolling.com has made link adding pretty easy, but just to help people out, Robyn has written up a pretty nice, simple set of Blogrolling instructions. Thanks for sharing it Robyn!
Anyone with a blog that has an e-mail address has probably noticed and increasing amount of spam arriving over time. One way to stop it is by encoding your e-mail address in numerical equivalents and wrapping the results in Javascript. Rather then figuring out all the numerical equivalents yourself, you can just head on over to the Hivelogic JavaScript Email Address Encoder. For more information on stopping spam, head on over and read A List Apart: Win the Spam Arms Race.
Thanks to Robyn, I found this site with instructions on how to build a photolog in MT in 5 easy steps. Pretty interesting!
If you’re using background colors or images in table cells, and you look at your page in netscape 6+, if one of your table cells doesn’t actually have anything in it… (ie. one or more cells look like this)
<td></td>
Then nothing will show up in those cells: no background image. no background color.
CSS to the rescue!!
Put this in your stylesheet and all should be well:
table
{
empty-cells: show
}
This will let you list your 50 most referrers from google hits.
First, download the LittleGreenFootballs referrer script.
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I saw a question about some html come acrossed one of the maililng lists I’m on this morning, and thought I’d share some about it! Since it was a relatively new piece of knowledge to me, I thought maybe it would be helpful to someone.
The <base> tag: The base element defines a default reference to external resources.
There are definite advantages to being able to specify a default location. It means that you don’t need to use absolute URLs to images when using PHP or SSI headers which will be used acrossed multiple directories and subdirectories. Same goes for templates on journal/weblogs, even when you are using the design throughout the system even in archive directories. I just stick this tag inside my head before my stylesheet link:
Then the src to a image only looks like this:
So basically, it just makes sure that your pages know where they are in the directory structure instead of using a lot of relative paths that look like ../../image and trying to keep track of where in the structure you are! Isn’t it nice to know something that could make your html files smaller or save a few keystrokes?