Hacking Movable Type (ExtremeTech)

Ready to push Movable Type to the max?

Movable Type, that amazingly powerful personal publishing application, is the superhero of the Internet age. But when you push, poke, stretch, and otherwise coax it into producing even more, the possibilities for your Web content are simply superlative. Roll up your sleeves and get moving—here's the first book to tell you how.

Discover how to do all this and more

1. Hack the perfect installation
2. Hack the database
3. Play with Atom, Perl, and XML-RPC APIs
4. Write advanced plug-ins
5. Master dynamic publishing
6. Hack a super-powered blog app
7. Ban comment spam
8. Build customized templates

? Introduced in 2001, Movable Type (MT) has been downloaded 750,000 times and now helps people update content on an estimated one million blogs and Web sites, including some belonging to Fortune 500 corporations

? Gives Web developers and administrators the power to customize and modify MT, from eliminating comment spam and creating customized templates to hacking the MySQL backend and working with third-party modules

? Written by a developer who's been hacking MT since before its release and is well known in the MT community-and featuring a foreword by MT's creators, Ben and Mena Trott

Jay Allen has been hacking Movable Type since before its first public release and has deployed MT on over a billion and a half systems, give or take a few orders of magnitude. He created the first MT plugin, called MT-Search, as well as one of the most necessary plugins, MT-Blacklist. He currently resides in the ever beautiful and weird San Francisco and works at Six Apart as Product Manager for Movable Type. He spends his off hours split almost evenly between spinning true house music, recharging personal electronic devices, and trying to find his keys.

Brad Choate has been hacking Movable Type since it was first released. He is now a Six Apart software engineer where he hacks Movable Type for a living, supporting his incredibly understanding wife and three little hackers.

Ben Hammersley is an English journalist and writer, and has been using Movable Type since version 1. He lives in Florence, Italy, with his beautiful wife and three greyhounds and is currently tending his cigar and dressing gown habit with little success. He invites you to visit.

Matthew Haughey is closing in on ten years of building websites and runs the popular MetaFilter weblog as well as half a dozen smaller weblog projects. He’s been tinkering with Movable Type since the very first private alpha that his friends, Ben and Mena Trott, let him test out. He’s been hacking away at it ever since.

David Raynes got his first taste of blogs in the first half of 2002, and was running his own by summer’s end that same year. Shortly after, his first plugin, MTSearches, was released, and the rest is history. One of his most popular plugins, SubCategories, was even integrated into Movable Type as of version 3.1. David works as a software engineer in Maryland, where he lives with his wife, Jenn, and their four cats (two his and two hers): Hans, Franz, Tim, and Gizmo. Eventually the feud between Tim and Franz will be resolved and there shall be only three.

Foreword.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

Part I: Hacking the Perfect Installation.

Chapter 1: Preparing Your Installation.

Chapter 2: Tweaking the Templates.

Part II: Hacking the Database.

Chapter 3: MT and Database Storage.

Chapter 4: Tables in the MT Database.

Chapter 5: Absolutely Necessary Database Tricks.

Part III: Hacking with APIs.

Chapter 6: XML-RPC API.

Chapter 7: Atom API.

Chapter 8: Perl API.

Part IV: Hacking with Plugins.

Chapter 9: The Wonderful World of Plugins.

Chapter 10:Writing Plugins.

Chapter 11: Advanced Plugin Writing.

Chapter 12: Hacking Dynamic Publishing.

Part V: Hacking Powerful Blog Applications Together.

Chapter 13: Photo Blogs.

Chapter 14: Linklogs.

Chapter 15: Blogroll.

Chapter 16: Events, Reminders,To-Dos.

Chapter 17: Polls.

Chapter 18: LazyWeb.

Chapter 19: Creating a Community-Authored Website.

Index.