Movabletype

[kaseytraeger]

Hi all,

 

TCH-Lisa helped me install MT to my web site last week. Currently, to access the blog, you would type www.blog.kaseysdomain.com. I've been playing around with the MT GUI just trying to learn my way around the system. One of the things I found was the stylesheet editor, so I spent some time with that. OK, so I've played around with the base style sheet, but now I want to add some pictures to my blog, most notably, a photo for the "banner" and various buttons and what-nots around the page.

 

My first question is ... where is the best place to store these images? I'm not sure if my installation differs from what most people have because I used a subdomain instead of a directory under my mail domain. Is there a standard place that MT uses for image storage? I searched through the MT user manual, but I didn't see any reference to images. However, if it's there, I wouldn't be surprised because I'm often "selectively" blind such that I can't see the very thing I'm looking for.

 

Another question. I want to be able to add buttons and things to blog. Do I simply hard-code those right into the page itself? I guess I'm shy to do this because I know that when it comes to MT, you have to "rebuild" each page. Does the rebuild process wipe out all of your hardcoding? If so, how can you truly customize your blog in addition to stylesheets?

 

Hmm, I think that's all the questions I can think of right now. Sorry for being a newbie pain, but honestly ... I do try to look this stuff up before I post here (cross my heart and hope to die!)

 

Oh, one last thing...I've heard about special MT tags, and when I've viewed the source code on other people's MT blogs, I actually see them in use. But when I look at the source code for my blog, there are no special MT tags. Am I doing something wrong? Or are the special MT tags a customization tool?

 

Thanks

[arvind]

MT's default images are stored in the images folder either in your main mt folder or in the static web path you've specified. I have my images however in the public_html folder under images as I prefer thi sorganisation as all my images go there.

 

When you rebuild a page what happens is the current page is wiped and what you've freshly coded is uploaded onto the server. Customization of your blog is completely upto you, you can find many style sheets especially on blogstyles.com

 

Special MT Tags get parsed during rebuild and unless you've posted an incorrect MT tag or a non-existant oe it shouldn't display on the source code of the blog you see. If you use the tag and everything works the way its meant to then you're doing everything correctly

 

Just experiement that's how I learned Movable Type, read the manual especially the bits about templates and template tags to see all of Movable Type's build in tags. Check out mt-plugins.org to see how you can extend the functionality of Movable Type

 

There's lots to do and plenty more once MT3 comes out (keep an eye for that its amazing )

 

Hope this helps and if you have any more queries don't hesistate to ask

[kaseytraeger]

MT's default images are stored in the images folder either in your main mt folder or in the static web path you've specified. I have my images however in the public_html folder under images as I prefer thi sorganisation as all my images go there.

Well, I have an 'images" folder inside a folder called mt-static... it's path is like this...

public_html/mt-static/images/

But I know that these images are what the Movable Type GUI uses, so I don't want to put any of my images here.

 

My "mt" folder is actually inside cgi-bin, as follows: public_html/cgi-bin/mt

 

But the files for my blog are actually stored in another directory called public_html/blog_subdomain because I set my blog up as a subdomain. Using the information you've provided, and taking into account the way my blog is structured within my web space, let me see if I understand what you're saying about how to store, save and display images.

 

I create a new directory within /blog_subdomain/ called "images", like this ... public_html/blog_subdomain/images

 

All well and good? If this is the case, then let's say I want to add an image to the index page of my blog, called index.php. I insert the image directly into the index.php file. So if I add the line of code

><img src="images/graphic.gif" />

to index.php, then I should be able to first save the index.php file and then rebuild it. Movable Type won't overwrite my new line of code, and it will display the image as long as I've saved the image as public_html/blog_subdomain/images/graphic.gif

 

Is that about right?

 

Believe it or not, I do know how to build web sites and have a very workable directory structure. But this Movable Type ... boy, I'm just a bit intimidated. Well, not just a bit, but a lot! I know that everything can be fixed, even if I screw it up. But it can be a real bother and a tedious, time-intensive task to fix some things, so I'd just rather I get it right before jumping in and perhaps making a mess of things.

 

Thanks for your help!

[schussat]

I create a new directory within /blog_subdomain/ called "images", like this ... public_html/blog_subdomain/images

 

All well and good? If this is the case, then let's say I want to add an image to the index page of my blog, called index.php. I insert the image directly into the index.php file. So if I add the line of code

><img src="images/graphic.gif" />

to index.php, then I should be able to first save the index.php file and then rebuild it. Movable Type won't overwrite my new line of code, and it will display the image as long as I've saved the image as  public_html/blog_subdomain/images/graphic.gif

That should do the trick. Once you get the hang of thinking of everything relative to the Movabletype base directory, things fall into place pretty well. I think you're on your way!

[LisaJill]

kasey,

 

If you use a relative path when linking images in MT, make sure you use the beginning /, ie:

 

><img src="/images/wickedwithofthewest.jpg" alt="Wicked With of the West" />

 

The reason that I suggest this is that the posts, especially, will be saved and viewed from multiple folders; if you use a relative path it may not find the image from some of those locales. Safer to tell it to find it from the root. =)

 

Also, if you want valid code, include the alt tag and the /> - you'll thank me if you get involved with standards-based code and validation.

 

Hope that didn't confuse you. =)

[kaseytraeger]

Also, if you want valid code, include the alt tag and the /> - you'll thank me if you get involved with standards-based code and validation.

 

Hope that didn't confuse you. =)

Lisa,

 

Thanks for the info about relative paths versus absolute paths. It's definitely appreciated.

 

And yesiree, I'm definitely aware of the whole "web standards" movement...I even purchased and read the book by J. Zeldman called Designing with Web Standards! It was definitely worth every penny, and I refer to it often, so I'm getting good mileage out of it!