The primary use of Movable Type is to publish entries to your blog. To create and publish a new entry
Navigate to the blog in which you wish to create a new entry by using the blog selection menu.
Click the "Write Entry" button in the main menu, or choose Create > Entry in the main menu. This will display the Create Entry screen.
Use the display options tool on the right hand side of the screen to select which editor fields you wish to display on the Create Entry screen.
Previewing: To preview your entry, click the "Preview" button. Movable Type 4 has a new feature that allows you to preview your entry in the style of your blog.
Save: Clicking the "Save" button will save your entry to your database, and optionally publish it based on the publishing status you've set (see below).
New: Auto-save Feature
Movable Type 4 provides a new "auto-save" capability for entries you are editing. This feature helps you recover work should your web browser crash or your Internet access be interrupted.
The system will automatically save your entry to the database every 30 seconds, after your cursor has left the Entry Title field. The system saves your entries to a separate table from the main entry table, and makes recovered entries only available to the user who was editing the entry when it was auto-saved. If the system has an entry available for you to recover, it will present a message at the top of the Entry editing screen.
Screencast of creating an entry
MovableType.org has a screencast demonstrating the new Create Entry screen and its functionality.
Entry Fields
The following entry fields are available in Movable Type.
Entry Title. Use this field to title your entry. It is displayed on your blog using the
MTEntryTitletag.Body. Use this area of the Create Entry screen to compose the body of your entry. Movable Type supports a variety of different text editing and formatting options. The body is displayed on your blog using the
MTEntryBodytag.Extended. Use this area of the Create Entry screen to compose any extended text of your entry. This field is typically used to display more information in an entry on an individual entry archive while the main page of your blog has the "body" of the post. The extended entry is displayed on your blog using the
MTEntryExtendedtag.
Metadata section
Tags. Use this field to enter tags for your entry. Learn more about tagging entries and pages and managing a blog's tags. Tags are displayed on your blog using the container tag
MTEntryTags.Category. Use this area of the Create Entry screen to assign categories to your entry. To assign a category to an entry, click the "Add Category" link. Learn more about adding categories to entries and managing a blog's categories.
Excerpt. Use this field to enter an excerpt for your entry. Entry excerpts are not in any of Movable Type's default templates, but can be displayed on your blog using the tag
MTEntryExcerpt.Keywords. Use this field to assign keywords to your entry. Keywords are used in Movable Type's default templates to add meta keywords to the entry page header, and can be displayed on your blog using the tag
MTEntryKeywords
Publishing section
Status. Use this option to select the entry's status, either "Published" or "Unpublished." The default for new entries can be set by your blog administrator (or by you if you have blog administration rights). Learn more about New Entry Settings in Movable Type.
Publish Date. Use this field to set the publish date for your entry. If you set the publish date for the future, Movable Type will publish the entry on that date, as long as your system administrator has configured a cron job for running periodic tasks. Learn more about running periodic tasks.
Basename. Movable Type will automatically populate this field with a file basename for your entry. For example, if your entry title is "This is a new post" the entry basename will be "this-is-a-new-post" and if your default file extension for entries is set to "html" the full file name of the entry will be "this-is-a-new-post.html".
Feedback section
Accept Comments / TrackBacks. Use this section to set whether comments or TrackBacks will be accepted on the entry. The default for new entries can be set by your blog administrator (or by you if you have blog administration rights). Learn more about new Entry settings in Movable Type.
Outbound TrackBack URLs. Use this field to enter URLs for sending TrackBack pings when your post is published. Movable Type can be configured to automatically discover TrackBack endpoints to ping when you save and publish your post. Learn more about configuring TrackBack settings in Movable Type.
4 User Contributed Notes
Won't Movable Type use the entry basename to create the entry archive page using the format specified in the archive mapping? Specifically, if my entry mapping is set to "yyyy/mm/entry-basename/index.html" then the full file name of the entry would NOT be entry-basename.html as you've stated above. Do I have that right?
Also, it should be noted that under Safari 2.0.4 (Mac): • Inserting an image -- if in Rich Text mode, the image won't appear in the entry. Switch to Format: "None" and the code for the image will appear and everything will work fine. • There's no color-highlighted code in the templates and modules -- it's all black text. • Certain features of Rick Text mode, such as converting text to lists, don't work. Again, switching to "None" mode seems to resolve the issue. You can then switch back to Rich Text to see the results.
Firefox 2(Mac) seems to not have these issues.
Does Moveable Type have a spell check feature, or if not is there anyone currently developing a plugin for a spell check feature?
Please add a feature for RTF editing page for "default link options"
we want all our links to open in new window target="_blank" and we want all outbound links to use a redirect.php so we can track the use of the click-thru's via our raw statistics. So a default link option of http://www.some-site.tld/redirect.php?site=
Hope that's not to much to ask :-)
Thanks
JK
ps - feel free to move this to another section where it might be more appropriate.