WEBLOG CONFIGURATION

### Movable Type User Manual: WEBLOG CONFIGURATION

« Table of Contents

- WEBLOG CONFIGURATION

- Core Setup
- Preferences
- Archiving
- IP Banning

# WEBLOG CONFIGURATION

Movable Type supports many options for configuring the way your weblog works. There are four different screens in the `Weblog Configuration` section:

- Core Setup
  The core values that are required when setting up a new weblog; in fact, when you create a new weblog, these are all of the fields that you need to fill out.

- Preferences
  Assorted preferences that you can use to configure your weblog, its appearance, and the Movable Type system. When you create a new weblog, these settings will all default to reasonable values.

- Archiving
  The archiving configuration for your weblog, where you select the types of archiving that you would like to use, and associate Archive Templates with each archive type. When you create a new weblog, these settings will default to reasonable values.

- IP Banning
  The IP Banning screen, which allows you to ban certain IP addresses from commenting on entries in your weblog and from sending TrackBack pings to your weblog. When you create a new weblog, by default all IP addresses are allowed.

## Core Setup

- Weblog name
  The name of your weblog; this name will be used for display within the Movable Type system itself, and it will also be sent to weblogs.com when sending an XML-RPC ping (if you have enabled this option--see Notify weblogs of updates, below).

- Local Site Path
  The path to the directory where you main index `file(s)` will be located. When you use ``Rebuild'' to publish your site, your index templates will be generated into this directory.

  An absolute path (a path starting with `/`) is preferred, because it is not dependent on the location of your Movable Type directory; but if you choose to use a relative path, the path should be relative to your Movable Type directory.

  This is a required field.

  Example: /home/melody/public_html/blog

- Site URL
  The full URL (including `http://` and your site's domain name) to your public weblog. This URL should not include the filename of your index file; for example, if your index file is located at http://www.your-site.com/blog/index.html, then the value for `Site URL` should be http://www.your-site.com/blog/.

  This URL will be sent to weblogs.com when sending an XML-RPC ping (if you have enabled this option--see Notify weblogs of updates, below).

  This is a required field.

  Example: http://www.your-site.com/blog/

- Local Archive Path
  The path to the directory where you archive files will be located. An absolute path (a path starting with `/`) is preferred, because it is not dependent on the location of your Movable Type directory; but if you choose to use a relative path, the path should be relative to your Movable Type directory.

  Note that, if you wish to place your archive files in the same directory as your index files, the `Local Archive Path` and the `Local Site Path` should point to the same directory.

  This is a required field.

  Example: /home/melody/public_html/blog/archives

- Archive URL
  The full URL (including `http://` and your site's domain name) to the archives section of your public weblog.

  This is a required field.

  Example: http://www.your-site.com/blog/archives/

- Timezone
  Your local timezone. Note that this should not be the timezone where your server is located, if your server is located in a different timezone; it should be the timezone where you are located.

  This is a required field.

## Preferences

- Weblog description
  The description of your weblog, to be displayed in the Movable Type Main Menu, and in your weblog templates if you use the `<$MTBlogDescription$>` tag.

- Number of days displayed
  The number of days displayed by default on your index templates. Note that you can override this behavior in your `MTEntries` tag; this is merely the default, used when you do not supply `MTEntries` with any attributes.

  For example, if you wish to display the last `15` entries that you have posted to your weblog, you could use the `lastn` attribute to `MTEntries` instead of relying on the default behavior:

      <MTEntries lastn="15">
      ...
      </MTEntries>

  Note that, if you choose `7` days, 7 days means the last 7 consecutive days, not necessarily the last 7 days on which you posted an entry. So if you have posted on just 3 of the last 7 days, only the posts from those 3 days will be listed on your main indexes.

  Note also that a ``day'' is defined as the time from 24 hours ago to now, where ``now'' is the time at which you are rebuilding your site. It does not mean from 12 AM to now on the current day. As an example, if you are including `1` day on your index and you posted an entry one day at 6 PM, that entry will show up on your index until the next day at 5:59 PM.

  This is a required field.

- Language for date display
  Selects the language used for date and time display on your weblog; specifically, this influences the month and week names, and the AM/PM specifiers.

- Default Text Formatting for new entries
  Movable Type offers a variety of formatting options for the text in your entries. The default conversion, for example, encloses paragraphs within `<p>` and `</p>` tags, and converts line breaks into `<br>` tags. You can customize the text formatting setting on a per-entry basis, meaning that you can specify one formatting option for one entry, and another option in another entry. You indicate your preference per entry when creating a new entry, or editing an existing entry, in the Text Formatting setting.

  The Default Text Formatting for new entries setting in your weblog configuration controls the default value for Text Formatting. You should select the text formatting option that you use most often, for the sake of convenience.

- Number of words in excerpt
  When you use the <$MTEntryExcerpt$> tag, and you have not defined an excerpt for your entry, the excerpt is auto-generated from the first `N` words of your entry.

  The number of words in the excerpt defaults to `20`.

- Welcome Message
  When authors of your weblog view the main `Editing Menu`, they will be presented with a message welcoming them, and providing a link to the manual and some introductory text. You can edit this welcome message in the Welcome Message configuration field to send specific messages to your authors, post news about your weblog, etc.

- Creative Commons License
  Here you can select a Creative Commons License to apply to the contents of your weblog. Learn more about the available licenses at http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/. If you select a license, the index page of your weblog will automatically be updated to include information about the license you have chosen, and the same metadata will be added to your RSS 1.0 feed in machine-readable format.

  Keep in mind: Once you publish your work under a Creative Commons license, and someone accepts the terms you've offered, you can't revoke the license. You can always take your work down if you change your mind, of course, or specify that future entries in your blog are available under some new licensing terms or full copyright protection, whatever the case may be. For more information about the details of Creative Commons licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/fullrights.

- Preferred Archive Type
  Movable Type allows you to select multiple types of archiving. When linking to an archived entry--for a permalink, for example--or when creating a master archive index, the system needs to know your preferred archiving method; you can think of this as your default archiving type. You can always override this default, if you choose.

  If you have not selected any archive types (`Archive Frequency`, above), you should select `No Archives` for your `Preferred Archive Type`.

- Notify the following sites when I update my weblog
  weblogs.com and blo.gs are services that keep track of recently-updated weblogs; in order to notify the services that your website has changed, Movable Type sends an XML-RPC ping to their servers. When they receive this ping, the services check your site to determine if it has changed since the last time you sent a ping. If it has, your site will be marked as updated.

  If you would like Movable Type to notify weblogs.com and/or blo.gs of updates to your site automatically--whenever you post an entry on your site--check the corresponding box.

  In addition to weblogs.com and blo.gs, there are other services that provide similar functionality. If you would like to ping such services automatically, and if they support the weblogs.com XML-RPC ping interface (http://www.xmlrpc.com/weblogsCom), you can add the URLs for those XML-RPC servers to the Others box. Separate the URLs with carriage returns.

- Recently updated key
  If you have supported Movable Type by making a donation, you can appear on the list of Recently Updated weblogs at movabletype.org. When you have made a donation, we will send you a unique key that you can enter as your `Recently updated key`. This key will then be sent to movabletype.org whenever you update your site, and your site will be marked as recently updated.

- Google API key
  If you wish to use any of the Google API functionality (listing Google search results on your site using `<MTGoogleSearch>`, for example), you will need to sign up for a Google API key ( http://www.google.com/apis/ ), then paste your API key into this field. Your key will be sent to Google's servers whenever you use Google API functionality.

- Turn on TrackBack auto discovery
  When you write a new post in your weblog, Movable Type can look through your entry for links to external sites. It can then attempt to determine the TrackBack ping URL for those sites, and automatically send a ping to that site, just as if you had determined the TrackBack URL yourself and entered it in manually.

  This takes all of the work out of using TrackBack. You only need to link to permalinks as you always have, and Movable Type can do the work for you. You will be notified of the sites that are being pinged on the `Pinging...` screen.

- Text Formatting for comments
  Specifies the text formatting option to be used for visitor comments on your weblog. For example, the Convert Line Breaks option encloses your paragraphs in `<p>` and `</p>` tags, and converts line breaks to `<br>` tags. The option selected here will be applied globally to all comments in the system. Note that Text Formatting is executed after the comment is cleaned up using Sanitize.

## Archiving

- Archive Frequency
  The frequency/type of archiving that you would like to use on your weblog. You can select multiple archive types; doing so will require that you define templates for each archive type (see TEMPLATES). Note also that selecting multiple archive types will slow down the rebuild process, because there are simply more files to rebuild; the extra files will also take up more of your allotted space on the system.

  You do not have to select any archive types, if you don't want archiving on your weblog; just leave all of the boxes unchecked.

- Archive Templates
  For each type/frequency of archiving that you choose, you have the option of assigning multiple Archive Templates to be applied to that particular archive type. For example, you might wish to create two different views of your monthly archives: a page containing each of the entries for a particular month, and a calendar view of that month. Or, you could use different templates to create hi-fi and lo-fi versions of your archives.

- Archive File Templates
  Allow you to customize the names/paths of your archive files, using standard Movable Type tags. This allows you to impose a directory structure and hierarchy on your archives. For each `Archive Type` that you use, you can define an `Archive File Template` in the box to its right on the configuration screen.

  For example, by default monthly archive files are stored directly in your `Local Archive Path`, and are called YYYY_MM.html (2001_12.html, for example). You might prefer your monthly archives to be stored in 2001/12/index.html. To do this, you can set the `Archive File Template` for your `Monthly` archives to

      <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m/index.html"$>

  Another example: by default individual archive files are named by the padded form of the entry ID (000002.html, for example), and are stored directly in your `Local Archive Path` directory. You may wish to impose a hierarchy on your archives, based on the category into which you've placed them; for example, you would place all entries in the category `Books` into a directory called books/. To do this, you can use the following `Archive File Template` for your `Individual` archives:

      <$MTEntryCategory dirify="1"$>/<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>.html

  A final example: by default `Weekly` archives are named using only the start date of the week (week_2002_01_06.html, for example). If you would like to include both the start and end dates in the filename, you can use the following `Archive File Template` for your `Weekly` archives:

      week_<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y_%m_%d"$>-<$MTArchiveDateEnd format="%Y_%m_%d"$>.html

  `Archive File Templates` are defined using a subset of the standard Movable Type template tags. The following tags can be used in `Archive File Templates`:

  - `<$MTArchiveDate$>` (doc) and `<$MTArchiveDateEnd$>` (doc) for date-based archives (`Monthly`, `Daily`, `Weekly`)

  - `<$MTArchiveCategory$>` (doc) for `Category` archives

  - `<$MTCategory$>` (doc) for `Category` archives

  - Any of the `<$MTEntry*$>` (doc) tags for `Individual` archives

  NOTE: when using `Archive File Templates`, you must append the file extension that you wish to use for your archive files (as in the examples above). The file extension that you specify in `File extension for archive files` will not be used.

## IP Banning

To ban a certain IP address from commenting on entries in your weblog and sending TrackBack pings to your weblog, you can use the IP Banning screen (part of the Weblog Configuration set of screens).

Note that IP banning is not an exact science, and that it should not be considered true security for your site, because an IP address does not necessarily ``mark'' a user as unique. IP addresses are often dynamically assigned by ISPs, for example; this means that a user's IP address may change from one session to the next. In addition, computers at public sites (a library, for example) may always have the same IP address, but the user using the system will certainly not always be the same.

In other words, you should be careful when banning IP addresses.

To add a new banned IP address, enter the IP address into the `IP Address:` box, and press `ADD TO LIST`. To remove an IP address that is currently banned, check the checkbox next to that IP address in the `IP Ban List`, and click the `DELETE` button.

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