MT Blogroll Manual

MT Blogroll brings powerful link management to Movable Type. Create unlimited blogrolls and import links from other link managers through the OPML Import feature and group these links using Link Categories. You can even get recently updated times of blogs on your blogroll (just like Blogrolling.com!).

MT Blogroll is free for personal users, however, a donation of $ is greatly appreciated. Commercial users are encouraged to support this plugin by donating at least $

Prerequisites

You must have:

  1. Movable Type 3.2 or higher.
  2. An SQL database (MySQL, PostGreSQL or SQLite) — MT Blogroll hasn't been thoroughly tested on Berkeley DB

Download

To download MT Blogroll, select the download format you would like, .zip files are good for Windows servers while .tar.gz files are good for Unix/Mac servers.


Installation

  1. Extract the distribution and preserve the directories. The directories that have been extracted correspond to the directories in your Movable Type installation. Upload these directories to your Movable Type installation such that file structure looks like so:

    MT_DIR/
|__ plugins/
|  \__ Blogroll/
|     |__ Blogroll.pl
|     |__ mt-blogroll.cgi
|     |__ update-links.cgi
|     |
|     \__ lib/
|     |  \__ Blogroll/
|     |  |  |__ Blogroll.pm
|     |  |  |__ Category.pm 
|     |  |  |__ Links.pm
|     |  |  |__ Placement.pm
|     |  |  |__ Update.pm
|     |  \__ URI/
|     |  |  |__ Escape.pm
|     |  |  |__ Title.pm
|     |
|     \__ schemas/
|     |  |__ Blogroll_schema.mysql
|     |  |__ Blogroll_schema.postgres
|     |  |__ Blogroll_schema.sqlite
|     |
|     \__ tmpl/
|     |  |__ (18 .tmpl files)
|
|__ php/
|  \__ plugins/
|     |__ (18 .php files)

    Set the permissions of mt-blogroll.cgi and update-links.cgi to 755 and if the plugin was successfully installed, you should see something similar to this on the Plugins listing under System Overview.

    MT Blogroll Registration

  2. Enter the following into your address bar changing it as appropriate for your website and Movable Type installation

    http://www.yourdomain.com/path/to/mt/plugins/Blogroll/mt-blogroll.cgi

    On doing so, you will be greeted by the MT Blogroll Installation screen. Simply follow the instructions to install MT Blogroll. If the installing/upgrading screen appears to hang, empty your browser's cache. Recommended browser: Mozilla Firefox

Usage

Each blog in Movable Type is given its own individual blogroll. To access a blog's blogroll, go to its Menu and under Plugin Actions click Edit My Blogroll

MT Blogroll Link

Clicking this link will take you to a screen that looks similar to:

MT Blogroll Registration

As you can see, the screen closely resembles Movable Type. Actions available in MT Blogroll are listed along the left hand side — Add a link, Import OPML etc.

You can switch between blogrolls using the drop down menu at the top.

At any time, you can click the Back To Blog link to return to Movable Type.

To configure the gathering of last update times for blogs on your blogroll, go to the Plugins listing in System Overview and click Show Settings for MT Blogroll. You will see a screen similar to

MT Blogroll Recently Updated

To have MT Blogroll get the last update times:

  1. Check the Enable box which will cause further settings to appear.
  2. Chose a Duration. The value of this field will be used to evaluate the MTBlogrollEntryIfUpdated tag - the tag compares the time of rebuild to the link's last update time and if the difference is within the duration selected, the tag is evaluated as true.
  3. Enter your Technorati API Key. One can be obtained here

  4. You will need to periodically run the update-links.cgi script found in the MT Blogroll folder. The easiest way to do this is via a cron job. You can use the following command and set it at intervals that correspond to the duration you selected. 

    cd /full/path/to/MT_DIR; ./plugins/Blogroll/update-links.cgi

The MTBlogrollEntryIfUpdated tag compares the time of rebuild to the link's last update time and if the difference is within the duration selected, the tag is evaluated as true. If you statically publish, this tag will only be evaluated at the time of rebuilding. As a result, if you want real-time checking, you'll need to use dynamic publishing.

However, you only need to create one dynamic template with the blogroll code in there and you can include that template into your static template using the following code (this template will need to be a PHP template - i.e. have a .php extension)

<?php
    include('<$MTCGIServerPath$>/php/mt.php');
    $mt = new MT(<$MTBlogID$>, '<$MTConfigFile$>');
    $mt->display("mt:templateid");
?>

where templateid is the ID of the dynamic template. For example, if my dynamic template had an ID of 35, I would use this code 

<?php
    include('<$MTCGIServerPath$>/php/mt.php');
    $mt = new MT(<$MTBlogID$>, '<$MTConfigFile$>');
    $mt->display("mt:35");
?>

Template Tags

The following template tags are available and need to be used in your templates to display your blogroll. These template tags can be used in both static and dynamic templates.

Examples

Here are a few examples of how to use the template tags.

  1. This code block will list all links in your blogroll with its description. The time the blog was last updated can be viewed up hovering over a link:

    <MTBlogrollEntries>
    <p><a href="<MTBlogrollEntryURI>" <MTBlogrollEntryIfRel>rel="<MTBlogrollEntryRel>"</MTBlogrollEntryIfRel> target="<MTBlogrollEntryTarget>" title="Last Updated: <MTBlogrollEntryUpdated>"><MTBlogrollEntryName></a><br />
    <MTBlogrollEntryDesc></p>
</MTBlogrollEntries>

  2. This code block will go through each Link Category and list the links in the category along with its description. The time the blog was last updated can be viewed up hovering over a link:

    <MTBlogrollCategories>
    <h4><MTBlogrollCategoryLabel></h4>
    <MTBlogrollEntries>
         <p><a href="<MTBlogrollEntryURI>" <MTBlogrollEntryIfRel>rel="<MTBlogrollEntryRel>"</MTBlogrollEntryIfRel> target="<MTBlogrollEntryTarget>" title="Last Updated: <MTBlogrollEntryUpdated>"><MTBlogrollEntryName></a><br />
         <MTBlogrollEntryDesc></p>
    </MTBlogrollEntries> 
</MTBlogrollCategories>

    Note: This will only work if you have created Link Categories and assigned links to them

Support

MT Blogroll is free for personal users, however, a donation of $ is greatly appreciated. Commercial users are encouraged to support this plugin by donating at least $

For support, visit the forums

Personal Users

MT Blogroll is free for personal users, however, a donation of at least $ is greatly appreciated.

If you have a problem installing or using MT Blogroll, visit our forums

Commercial Users

You can download, install and try a fully functional version of MT Blogroll for a 30-day evaluation period. If, after this period, you wish to continue using the plugin, you are expected to purchase a commercial license for $. Purchasing a commerial license entitles you to priority support via The Helpdesk.

Buy Now

Enterprise Users

You can download, install and try a fully functional version of MT Blogroll for a 30-day evaluation period. If, after this period, you wish to continue using the plugin, you are expected to purchase an enterprise license for $. Purchasing an enterprise license entitles you to priority support via The Helpdesk.

Buy Now