Orangescale Studio

If you're Movable Type users, you will find that there are many (too many?) menus in your Movable Type user area. I have some weblogs created in my single Movable Type installation. Here are few things I usually do in my Movable Type interface:

• Jump between weblogs, and go to a spesific pages/settings.
• Rebuilding templates/weblogs after I make changes on my templates.
• Closing comments and trackbacks for old entries.

I want to be able to work in an efficient way. I want to be able to jump quickly to a spesific pages/setting. I want to rebuild some templates and weblogs. I want to close comments and trackbacks easier. Can I have those things? Yes, I can.

Movable Type has many great plugins. Not only for the weblog output purposes, but also for the adminstration area. Here are some plugins I install as solutions:

• AcceptCommentsPings by yosshi
• PowerRebuild by Arvind 'Movalog' Satyanarayan
• WeblogsActionMenu by Kevin Shay

AcceptCommentsPings Plugin

From the plugin documentation page:

AcceptCommentsPings Plugin is a plugin for switching entries 'Accept Comments/TrackBacks' status from plugin action menu in entries listing page.

This plugin will be very useful if you have many entries, and you want to change some comment/trackback entry statuses at once. Select the entries from the list, and choose an action.

PowerRebuid Plugin

PowerRebuild is a plugin that allows you to rebuild comments, trackbacks, templates and blogs by simply choosing the items you wish to rebuild and clicking a button.

If you made modifications in your template directly from template textarea or using a linked template file, you need to rebuild your templates to see the changes. Rather than rebuilding your entire index template, if you want to rebuild a spesific index template, you can just choose the template you want to rebulid. You can do the same mechanism for your weblogs (rebuild a spesific weblog).

WeblogsActionMenu Plugin

The dropdown menu of available weblogs in the header of every Movable Type screen is a handy way to jump from one weblog to another. What's not so handy is that you have to first go through the other weblog's menu in order to do anything with that weblog. WeblogsActionMenu lets you jump directly to a specific action for a different weblog than the one you're in.

You do not have to install those plugins, it's optional. Without having those plugins installed, you Movable Type will be just fine. So far, I find that those plugins are very useful.

This entry was taken from my journal.