The Entry Settings screen allows you to configure how entries are displayed on your blog and how Movable Type's Create Entry and Create Page screens behave when you create new entries and new pages, respectively.

Display Settings

The Display Settings section allows you to configure how entries are displayed on your blog, how Movable Type generates automated excerpts of your entries, and how Movable Type generates URLs for your entries and other blog content.

• Entries to display: This setting allows you to define the quantity or duration of entries to display on your published blog's main index or on any other index template wherein an MTEntries tag is used without the lastn or days attributes to override it. This quantity is defined in terms of the actual number of entries OR number of consecutive 24 hour days.

• Entry Order: This setting controls the order in which entries are displayed in your blog as well as printed out by the MTEntries tag when no sort_order attribute is included with the tag. By default, entries are displayed in reverse chronological (descending) order.

• Excerpt Length: If an author has not explicitly provided an excerpt for an entry or a page, the system will automatically generate one when needed using the first N words of the entry body where N is defined by this setting. The default is 40 words. This is done after applying the entry's specified text formatting filter and removing any HTML that may have been included. Note that this setting does not override the display of an excerpt that has been explicitly provided by the author through the Create Entry or Create Page screen.

• Date Language: This setting controls the language used for date and time display on your published blog; specifically, this influences the month and week names, and the AM/PM specifiers.

• Basename Length: Determines the default character length for the computed entry and page basename (the core of the individual entry's file name) for new entries. The default is 30 characters, but may range anywhere from 15 to 250 characters. Note that users can override the default computed basename on the Create Entry and Create Page screens.

New Entry Defaults

The New Entry Defaults section allows you to configure default settings for new entries and new pages.

• Entry Status: Specifies whether the default status for a new entry or new page is Published or Unpublished.

• Text Formatting: Specifies the default Text Formatting option (e.g. WYSIWYG, Markdown, etc.) when creating a new entry or new page.

• Accept Comments: Specifies whether new entries and new pages will accept comments by default.

• Accept TrackBacks: Specifies whether new entries and new pages will accept TrackBacks by default.

Replace Word Chars

The Replace Word Chars section enables you to configure whether and how Movable Type will automatically strip malformed characters out of content pasted in from Microsoft Word documents andother sources.

• Smart Replace: Movable Type can automatically replace high-bit characters with either HTML entities or ASCII equivalent characters. The recommended configuration and default for new blogs is to replace high-bit characters with ASCII equivalents.

• Replace Fields: With these settings you can configure whether Movable Type will perform this on titles, entry and page bodies, extended entries, keywords, excerpts and tags. The recommended configuration and default for new blogs is to turn this behavior on.

Default Editor Fields

The Default Editor Fields section allows you to customize the display of the entry and page editing screen for all authors who have not previously set a preference for that blog.

• Editor Fields: Choose from either of the two predefined layouts (Default or All), or a Custom layout that includes the fields of your choice.

• Action Bar: Specify the location of the entry editor's action bar in relation to the entry fields as Below, Above or Both.

Note: These settings can be overridden by individual users via the Display Options tool on the entry and page editing screens.