Tildemark blogs

Adding captcha to comments in Movable type 4

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:33:57 +0800

When i disabled the anonymous comment on my blog, people also stopped placing their comments. It might be because the people who commented were actually bots? Maybe or maybe not. Now, i got freaked because people really stopped commenting, as in zero comments. So, i started to look for ways to make post some comments again. I tried installing some plugin that allow users from other blogs like WordPress or other sites to use their login to comment on my blog using the OpenID technology.

Here's the list of plugin that i have installed in addition to the builtin options:
AOL/AIM
Yahoo
WordPress

But still, only a few commented. Now, I'm trying to enable reCaptcha hopefully people might come back and start to comment. If you are using MT4.1, you might need this. Otherwise, if you are using an older version then visit josh carter's blog for a workaround.

Enable reCaptcha on your Movable Type 4.1 blog

Get a public and a private key from the reCaptcha website
Get copy of the reCaptcha plugin from your mt4 installation folder. Its located at /extras/examples/plugins/reCaptcha from your mt4 folder
Paste them to the plugins folder at /plugins/reCaptcha inside your mt4 folder
There is a README file read it for instructions.
On your blog go to Preferences > Plugins
Click on the the reCaptcha and enter your Public and Private keys you had when you registered at their website
Click on Save Changes
Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Comment
Scroll dow below to the Comment Display Options
Change the Captcha Provider from None to reCaptcha
Save Settings
Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Spam
Check if the spam slider is at zero. If its not return it to zero, otherwise you will have to moderate all the comments again.
Go to Design > Templates
Click on Template Modules
From the README file: Edit Comment Form template, so it renders MTCaptchaFields unconditionally. In practice, this means replacing these lines

    <$MTCaptchaFields$>





to these lines:



    <$MTCaptchaFields$>
Click on Index Templates
From the README file, Edit Javascipt index template, to remove these lines of code which calls delayShowCaptcha:

    captcha_timer = setInterval('delayShowCaptcha()', 1000);
Save and Rebuild you blog.

Thats it you have enabled reCaptcha on your blog.

Error in Movable Type: No such file or directory

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:59:22 +0800

I fell like posting a new blog post yesterday but when i tried logging in, i got this message:


Got an error: Error opening file '/mt-config.cgi': No such file or directory

I was stunned, like being hit by Skeleton king's hammer. I haven't done anything to the installation and why this incident has happened? I begin checking the server hoping to find any problems, but there were none. I tried the forums and the documentation but there were no instance of the same problem recorded lately. Lastly i tried contacting my host to see if they have done something to the server. Well the only solution they have is to edit my cgi scripts manually and add a $ENV{'MT_HOME'} tag in it.

Here's is what i did before adding the lines above.
1. Check if your mt-config.cgi is really missing or what. if its there and you can edit it fine then it shouldn't be the problem. if its not there then edit the file mt-config.cgi.original, fill in the necessary fields and save it as mt-config.cgi.

2. If the error persists, check the file security of your mt-config.cgi. It should be 755. if its not, issue a CHMOD command.

3. If at this point the error is still there. Edit your mt.cgi script and the following line just below the use strict; line. Please note that this depends upon the location of your movable type files. In my case its at /cgi-bin/mt4 your might be different.

BEGIN { $ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/mt4'; }

your mt.cgi should look like:

use strict;
BEGIN { $ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/mt4'; }
use lib $ENV{MT_HOME} ? "$ENV{MT_HOME}/lib" : 'lib';
use MT::Bootstrap App => 'MT::App::CMS';

4. Do the same with your mt-search.cgi. Insert the line above just below the use strict; line

UPDATE:

There is a much easier fix to this error. Instead of manually editing your .cgi files, edit the Bootstrap.pm located at

{MT HOME}/lib/MT/bootstrap.pm

Insert this line right after sub BEGIN {

$ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/userfolder/public_html/cgi-bin/mt';

Edit the line above to match to your settings.

Adding adsense to your movable type 4 blog

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:40:48 +0800

Don't know which template to put in your adsense codes?

With movable type widgets, adding in new stuff to the side has become more easier. Its so easy, all you need to do is to drag your newly created widget and drop it into your installed widget set.

If you have your adsense code right now, follow this simple steps:

1. Lets save our adsense code on a notepad, just in case we might accidentally copy something to the clipboard.

2. On your blog template list, go to the quickfilters pane and click on Widgets

3. Create a widget template, assign a desired name, like (vertical ads, horizontal banner, etc)

4. Paste in your adsense code from the notepad we have saved previously.

5. Navigate to your Widget Sets, select the desired widget set

6. Drag and drop your adsense widget on the available widgets to the installed widgets pane

7. Save and publish your blog.

8. Repeat the above steps to create more adsense ads. There a limit of 3 adsense ads and 2 adsense list ads per page.

Blog Statistics with Movable Type 4

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:03:20 +0800

The new version comes with additional tags. Although these tag s were not new t o Movable type using them together with the widget add in makes it easy play with movable type templates. Tracking the number of posts as displayed in the dashboard is very nice to keep us updated with our blog. It would even be better if its added to the blogs main page. We will be using 4 movable type tags namely:
- Used to count the categories within a blog
- Used to count all the published entries in a blog
- the total number of comments
<$mt:AssetCount$> - the total number of assets uploaded

Lets start by making a Blog Statistics Widget:
1. Navigate to your blogs templates and on the quickfilter click on Widgets
2. Create a widget and name it Blog Statistics
3. Paste the following:

4. Save your new widget
5. Navigate to your Widget sets
6. Drag and drop Blog Statistics from the Available widget to your Installed Widgets
7. Click on Save Changes

Login Widget for Movable Type 4

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:40:50 +0800

Whats good with Movable type 4 is its enhanced widget system. Without touching the core movable template, we are able to add a new features to it with just a little additional code. Adding a login field for my multi authored blog is necessary since some my co-authors are not familiar with the Movable Type and i don't think giving in a complete path like cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi can easily be remembered..

Here's how made it.

1. Navigate to your Blog Templates
2. On the Quickfilters click Widgets
3. Click on Create New Tempate Widget link
4. Paste the following:

5. Place in Login as its widget name
6. Click on Save
7. On the main Menu, Select Design-> Widget Sets
8. Depends on how many sidebar you have, click the appropriate widget set. Im using the 3 column widget set, if your using the same, click on it.
9. On the Available widgets column look for the Login widget we have created and drag it into the Installed widget column
10. Click Save Changes
11. Rebuild and publish your blog.

Category RSS with Movable Type 4

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:00:30 +0800

Its been almost a month now since i moved into MT4, it's a new world of blogging with MT4's new features. I would suggest you do the same with your MT powered blogs.

During my move, i found out that my RSS category feeds were lost. Now, im looking for some ways to restore the RSS Categories. Im not really fun of hacking or messing with my movable type installation and im pretty new to editing with MT templates. With a little bit of help from old blogs posts and the MT4 documentation, i was able to successfully restore my RSS category feeds.

Making a Category RSS feed
Let us start making category rss feeds by going to your blog templates section:
1. On your blog templates, click on your RSS feed template, the one with the file name index.xml
2. Highlight all contents and copy everything inside the template into the clipboard.
3. Click on the shortcut List index templates link on the right.
4. Now you are back to your blog templates page.
5. On the quick filters menu, click on the Archive templates.
6. Create an Entry Listing archive template
7. From the content you copied to the clipboard paste it into the textbox.
8. Assign a meaningful name to your new template, everybody is using Category RSS
9. Save your new template.
10. Create an archive mapping of type Category
11. At the path textbox place in categories/<$MTArchiveCategory dirify="-" $>/index.xml. Please note that movable type will store all the rss feeds into the categories folder you specified. You can also rename it to another name if you'd like to. I'm using rss as my folder for the rss feeds
12. Save your template.
13. Rebuild your Index templates, by clicking on the Publish icon

You can check if your work by visiting your blog thru your favorite FTP client. If categories folder is created then its good to go. Now we can insert the code into our main index template right before the category name. As for me, i placed an image as my rss feed link. try http://www.tildemark.com/rss/

14. Go back to your blog templates root
15. Click on the Widgets
16. Click on the Category Archives link.
17. Navigate into the list item

18. Paste the following right after:

/index.xml">/images/status_icons/feed.gif alt=" Category RSS feed" />

title="<$MTCategoryDescription$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$>
(<$MTCategoryCount$>)

19. Save your template
20. Rebuild and Publish your blog. The output should look something similar with my category lists on my main page.

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