Plugins

Google Translate 1.0 final has been released

2010-03-15T01:33:51Z

Version 1.0 of my Google Translate plugin is officially released.

How to associate an asset with an entry

2010-03-10T22:17:51Z

As far as I can tell, there is not much documentation out there for associating an asset with an entry in Movable Type/Melody, so here is a straight forward explanation. In the entry editor, a plugin developer can latch onto the functionality that the entry editor already provides by simply adding some additional elements to the asset list. Here is a JavaScript function built around jQuery that illustrates the process.

That is taken from $MT_DIR/tmpl/cms/dialog/asset_insert.tmpl and modified to be able to be called from within the template editor. It should be callable from a plugin-created dialog window using window.parent.addAssetAssociation. The options parameter is a configuration object that takes in asset_id, asset_file_name and asset_thumbnail as properties.

This is how you create an association in Perl code using the MT::ObjectAsset object:

The datasource property doesn't have to be 'entry'. It can be dynamically set using the datasource method of the MT::Object subclasses like this: $object_asset->object_ds( $obj->datasource() ); That allows any number of object associations like ones between an object from a new plugin with assets.

Image Gallery 3.0

2010-03-08T22:28:11Z

On the OpenMelody mailing list, Byrne Reese sort of challenged me to create a plugin using ExtJs to demonstrate what it could offer Melody and Movable Type plugin developers. It's not finished yet, but I think that this version so far is a lot cleaner than the 2.X series. If ExtJs catches on with Movable Type developers, hopefully someone will create a theme for it that matches the look and feel of Movable Type.

Round up of latest Movable Type/Melody work

2010-02-19T22:36:48Z

Plugins

Updated Comment Flag to make it send an email to the blog administrator when a comment is flagged.
Released a new plugin called MT Closure Compiler which creates seamless integration between Movable Type's template editor and Google's Closure Compiler REST service, allowing JavaScript index templates to be minified and even optimized by the service as they are published.
Released a WXR (WordPress Extended RSS) template for Movable Type which appears to work. It can be installed by simply dropping it into an existing Movable Type blog's template editor as an index template.

Themes

Dark Relief
Dark Smoke
zFirst
I Like Content
Poetry
iBlog2 - not formally released, but coming soon!

GitHub commits summary

2010-01-27T00:04:48Z

Some plugin and theme updates.

Added support for dynamic publishing to Comment Flag.
I'm adding support for email notification of a comment getting flagged to Comment Flag (first commit is ready, but not uploaded yet).
Created a new repository for MTCollect. I took Kevin Shay's plugin and converted it into a config.yaml-based plugin.
Made a bunch of commits to Movable-Type-Styles to get five new themes ready for an initial release.

mtTouch Preview

2010-01-07T16:59:16Z

For over a week, I've been working on converting WPtouch into a Movable Type/Melody plugin. Here is a demo of the work so far. It is steadily progressing to the point of being ready for a beta release. This will be a hybrid template set and plugin, as some of the template's behavior will be controlled by configuration settings made in the admin console. I have just a few more finishing touches and GitHub commits to make before it is ready for 1.0 beta 1 status.

YAMLizing some MT/Melody plugins

2009-12-07T21:14:48Z

Version 4 of Movable Type introduced YAML as a way to set up plugins. Besides being a lot easier to read than the old Perl file-based approach, it brings the benefit of reducing Movable Type's overhead because the Perl interpreter no longer has to load and execute a Perl script for each plugin. The YAML file configures Movable Type appropriate, and Movable Type loads and calls the Perl code referenced in the plugin now only as needed.

Recently, I have worked on converting the following plugins (with more to follow):

Privacy
Feeds.App Lite
Textile2
mixiComment
Blog Cloner
LinkRoller

More to follow as time permits.

Test Post

2009-12-03T18:23:31Z

Testing Ping.FM...

Good news about MT-Privacy

2009-11-12T14:44:54Z

It's still not 100%, but it works just fine on Movable Type 4.261. Remember the old caveats about using it until it is "release-ready," but it showed no signs that the MT::Auth::OpenID drivers were conflicting. Once I get some time, I may submit a patch to Melody to actually fix the issue with OpenID that requires this hack.

LinkRoller now has a blogroll editor

2009-11-06T01:20:27Z

For those who are interested, I've completed my last major commit to CREATE_BLOGROLL which is the Git branch of LinkRoller for adding the blogroll editor. There will be some minor updates, and this isn't a release, but it's there now for people who want to try it out. My next work on this plugin is going to be to convert LinkRoller.pl to a config.yaml file. That should go a long way toward reducing the impact that this has on Movable Type's memory footprint (probably not very much, but it will definitely help).

Preview of an update to Linkroller

2009-11-02T18:15:38Z

Blogroll creation and management coming soon...

A request for testing my branch of MT Privacy

2009-10-29T16:20:03Z

At the start of this month, I started hacking away at my fork of MT Privacy, Arvind Satyanarayan's plugin for Movable Type which allows entries, pages, categories and entire blogs to be made private. I have it running on my blog, which is running MT 4.32. It works with passwords, Movable Type user accounts and every OpenID system I've thrown at it (Google, WordPress and AIM as far as I can remember). I even got it working with dynamic publishing, with the tags for PHP and Perl being roughly identical in functionality and use.

What I am looking for is feedback on the following things:

What's broken.
Test it with other OpenID systems.
Test it on MT 4.1 and 4.2.
Test out the private categories and blog features.
Report any conflicts with the comment system.

Now this is important, so read this point carefully; there is a reason I am trying to get your attention with bold text!

The Movable Type OpenID module, MT::Auth::OpenID, has a hard-coded reference to the comment script in it. There was no way that I know of to trick it to behave differently, and that's important because Privacy is guilt on top of the underlying modules that power the comment system. So there is a possibility that there will be conflicts with the existing copy of MT::Auth::OpenID and the one bundled in this package. I am relying on the assumption that Movable Type normally loads its lib and extlib directories before loading the lib directories of plugins; my mt-privacy.cgi script loads its lib directory before the Movable Type library locations so that it will hopefully pick up my modified copy before it sees the system-wide copy.

So for me, the two can coexist peacefully. I have no conflicts. What I want to know is what others experience when using this.

News for the end of October

2009-10-26T16:14:41Z

I have released two new plugins, Comment Flag and MakeExecutablesHarmless. The first one is a reporting mechanism which allows people who are visiting a Movable Type-driven website to report a comment to the blog administrator for violating the rules. The second one is a simple plugin which prevents non-administrators from uploading certain types of executable files such as PHP files through the Movable Type file uploader without making them incapable of executing. It does that by renaming the file such that the server won't recognize its type as executable and it updates the mt_asset reference for the file so that asset tags don't break.