MT Protect finally gives you the ability to protect entries and blogs within Movable Type in three different ways:
Password protection - protect your entries or blogs with a password which readers must correctly enter to gain access.
Typekey protection - enter the Typekey usernames of readers you wish to grant access and they must login via Typekey to gain access. Typekey users not on the allowed list will not be able to gain access. This type of protection is much safer than password protection as it verifies the identity of your reader.
OpenID protection - simply enter a reader's OpenID URL to grant them access to the entry. Like Typekey protection, this method verifies the reader's identity and hence is much harder to get around.
In the course of using the plugin, you may find that you are allowing access to the same people repeatedly. MT Protect's Protection Groups feature allows you to define sets of any number of people who often garner the same permissions. The protection group -- and hence all of the people in it -- can be granted access to an entry as easily as one person. For all intents and purposes, protection groups are like email aliases in that you only send an email to only one address and yet many can receive it.
You can create as many protection groups as you need to make your use of MT Protect effortless.
MT Protect is free for personal users, however, a donation of $ is greatly appreciated. Commercial users are encouraged to support this plugin by donating at least $
You must have:
To download MT Protect, select the download format you would like, .zip files are good for Windows servers while .tar.gz files are good for Unix/Mac servers.
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 (where mt-static is your StaticWebPath):
MT_DIR/
|__ plugins/
| \__ Protect/
| |__ Protect.pl
| |__ mt-protect.cgi
| |
| \__ schemas/
| | |__ (3 schema files)
| |
| \__ lib/
| | |__ YAML.pod
| | |__ YAML.pm
| | |
| | \__ YAML/
| | | |__ (4 .pm files)
| | |
| | \__ Protect/
| | |__ CMS.pm
| | |__ Groups.pm
| | |__ Protect.pm
| |
| \__ tmpl/
| |__ (12 .tmpl files)
|
|__ php/
| \__ plugins/
| |__ block.MTBlogProtect.php
| |__ block.MTEntryProtect.php
| |__ function.MTProtectInclude.php
|
|__ mt-static/
| \__ /mt-protect/images/
| |__ openid.gif
| |__ typekey.gif
Set the permissions of mt-protect.cgi to 755 and if the plugin was successfully installed, you should see something similar to this on the Plugins listing under System Overview.
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/Protect/mt-protect.cgi
On doing so, you will be greeted by the MT Protect Installation screen. Simply follow the instructions to install MT Protect. If the installing/upgrading screen appears to hang, empty your browser's cache. Recommended browser: Mozilla Firefox
Finally, go to the Plugins listing under System Overview, find the MT protect entry (as shown in the screenshot above) and click the Show Settings link. You will then get a list of all your weblogs, for each weblog that you wish to use MT Protect on, click the Enable link.
In this section, we'll look at how to use MT Protect.
There are two ways to protect an entry:
The More Actions drop down menu (on the button bar in the edit entry screen). This drop down menu will be activated once you have saved your entry, hence create your entry and save it as a draft. Once you have saved the entry, click the drop down menu and select Protect Entry(ies) and press Go
The other method of protecting entries is through the Entry Listing screen. Select the entries you wish to protect, click on the More Actions drop down menu on the button bar (at the top of bottom of the screen), select Protect Entry(ies) and press Go.
This method is useful for protecting multiple entries at once but note this method applies the same protection to all chosen entries.
Either method takes you to the protection screen.
You can view a list of protected entries by clicking the List Protected Entries link at the bottom of the entry listing screen.
There are two ways to protect a weblog:
You can protect individual weblogs by clicking the Protect Blog link under Plugin Actions on a blog's main menu.
Alternatively, you can mass protect weblogs from the Weblogs screen in System Overview. Simply select the weblogs you wish to protect and choose Protect Blog(s) from the More Actions drop down menu. Note: This method applies the same type of protection to every weblog chosen.
Either method takes you to the protection screen.
From this screen, you can select the protection method for the weblog or entry. Select the protection method (password, Typekey or OpenID) and enter the necessary information:
For password protection, simply enter a password and click Save
For Typekey protection, enter your readers' Typekey usernames into the text field, one username per field. If you have created a Typekey Protection Group, you can enter group: followed by the group's name to grant access to users within the group. If you need more text fields, simply click the More link and more text fields will appear.
For OpenID protection, enter your readers' OpenID URLs (the http:// part is optional) into the text field, one URL per field. If you have created an OpenID Protection Group, you can enter group: followed by the group's name to grant access to users within the group. If you need more text fields, simply click the More link and more text fields will appear.
In the course of using the plugin, you may find that you are granting access to the same people repeatedly. In such cases, you can use MT Protect's Protection Group feature which allows you define sets of people in any number who often garner the same permissions. To create a protection group:
Click the List Protection Groups link at the bottom of the Commenters listing in your weblog (this link provides you with a listing of all your protection groups)
Click the Create New Group link (found at the right of the Protection Groups listing screen)
You will be presented with a screen where you can define the name of the group, a short description and a list of people in this group. In v$version, a protection group can contain only Typekey or OpenID users at any one time, hence you will need to specify the type of group it is (Typekey or OpenID)
MT Protect also provides an easy way to create a Protection Group based off your registered commenters. Go to the Commenters listing in your weblog, select the commenters you wish to add to a protection group and select the Create a Protection Group option from the More Actions menu.
Refer to these instructions on how to grant a protection group access to an entry or weblog.
To use MT Protect, you must include the following template tags in your templates. Click a template tag for an explanation of what it does and how to use it.
MT Protect 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
MT Protect is free for personal users, however, a donation of at least $ is greatly appreciated.
If you have a problem installing or using MT Protect, visit our forums
You can download, install and try a fully functional version of MT Protect 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.
You can download, install and try a fully functional version of MT Protect 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.