Plugins overshadowed by TrackBack
Overshadowed by the buzz over TrackBack (at least for me) is another new feature with incredible potential: plugins let you write your own MT tags. Want a tag that displays the number of unread messages in your mailbox? Just write it. Want a container tag for categories that combines and, or, and not? Just write it. Want a tag that prints the number of words in your main and extended entry texts? Just write download it, since Adam Kalsey already wrote it for you. Want my convert line breaks hack as a plugin that won’t break when a new version of MT is released, and doesn’t require any editing of MT’s own files? Um, you’ll have to wait a bit, since I wasted the whole day on a failed attempt at DTD writing. I’m not sure it’s a perfect fit for a plugin, since you would have to turn convert line breaks off and switch your template to use <$MTEntryBodySCLB$>, but it’s the only idea I’ve had so far. What MT tags do you want?
Any sighting yet of a page keeping track of any plugins people are writing?
I’ll help with that DTD if you still want it. Just let me know.
I’m setting up a page on movabltype.org that will contain links to resources — including plugins.
I’ve also created a plugin. Its called RSSFeed. It will pull a RSS XML file from a website and let you display the data in a custom format.
I’ve thought about a plugin tracking blog. I’ll host it (using MT, of course) and open it up to contributors if anyone’s interested.
What about ’MTArchiveList archive_type=”Yearly”’?
Would that be an option? I’d been looking for a way to have archives that would say:
2002
July
June
May
where the month name is a link to Month_Year.php.
Is that a reasonable expectation for the new plugin technology?
Jason
This is getting exciting…
Jason:
At this point, the MT plugin system doesn’t support the addition of custom attributes to existing tags. A whole new tag would need to be created. Something line MTYearlyArchive. The disadvantage to this is that it’s not likely that the new tag would support all of the features of the original MTArchiveList tag.
Anyone that’s interested in contributing to a plugin resource blog can email me at adam@kalsey.com
@Jason: While this may not be possible with the plug-in-system, you can do something like this with PHP. I have something similar set up on my blog, so if you’re interrested in it, here’s the code.
Another RSSFeed Release
The latest release of RSSFeed should now work on RSS documents that are invalid without choking during the rebuild in
Better than TrackBack?
Phil makes a good point: the new MT plugins could be very cool. It’s your chance to write your own