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March 14, 2004
Blogmarking with MovableType
Update: Since typing this up, I took a cue from Phil Ringnalda's take on this and dropped the cutesy icons in favor of a (c) for comments I'm tracking and a simple text (via) for sources.
My blogmarks are powered by MovableType.
There are three kinds of information I want to be able to track about each entry: The link to the resource itself, where I got the link, and whether I'm engaged in some sort of conversation involving that resource. What I've got set up was pretty simple to do and it takes advantage of all the little bookmarklets and tools I already use to put Puddingtime! together.
Here's the layout for the basic blogmark template. It's generated within its own blog under MovableType (because I didn't want to go through the hassles of separating out "blogmark" entries from all the others, and to preserve flexibility with the design during its early stages) and used as a php include in the pages of PuddingTime proper.
<MTEntries lastn="10">
<div class="blogmark">
<MTIfNotCategory name="conversations">
-
</MTIfNotCategory>
<MTIfCategory name="conversations">
<img src="/images/conv.png" align="left" />
</MTIfCategory>
<MTEntryBody>
<MTIfNotEmpty var="EntryExcerpt">
<a href="<$MTEntryExcerpt$>">
<img src="/images/via.png" border="0"
align="absmiddle" alt="via">
</MTIfNotEmpty>
</div>
</MTEntries>
And a sample blogmark entry under MovableType looks like this:
<a title="Find Your New Imaginary Girlfriend Today!" href="http://imaginarygirlfriends.com/">Imaginary Girlfriends</a> Or just target someone's marriage for destruction.
Excerpt:
http://memepool.com
If the excerpt field is left empty, nothing happens. If it has a URL, as with the entry above, it plops down a little via icon (
)
and wraps the URL and icon in an anchor tag. I've preserved the extended entry field (where the 'via' info went when I first set everything up) for additional comments I don't want cluttering up the part that was meant for PuddingTime's sidebar. I don't use that much and probably won't. Pithy's fun.
I also like to keep track of places I've left a comment or sent a trackback ping, so with the use of the supplemental category tag plugin and the creation of a "conversations" category, this code:
<MTIfCategory name="conversations">
<img src="/images/conv.png" align="left" />
</MTIfCategory>
puts a little dialog icon (
) next to the entry so I can have a quick reference to conversations I'm trying to keep track of.
The rest is just an exercise in fiddling around with the design for the blogmark index, archive index, and monthly archives pages.
What I'd really like to work out is a way to have each day of blogmark entries include an index of links to the stuff that went up on Puddingtime! that day, as well. My head's not quite working around that yet.