I'm a great fan of MovableType, don't get me wrong. It's just that, I could save a lot of webspace by using a weblog tool that generate dynamic pages instead of static pages. Therefore I've been having a look at Worpress. Switching might solve my problem. But after doing some tests with Worpress, I decided I prefer the MovableType interface. So instead of switching the tool, I'll be switching the pages and the output of the tool.
The first step in the process, and the easiest I guess, are the externals. The externals is a sort of sideblog I created a few months ago. Since I've been blogging externals for quite a while now, the single page was taking on length. A single page just wasn't going beat it anymore. So I needed archives.
Instead of creating some template in MovableType I opened my php editor and started coding away. Well sort of. I first had to work out what the script needed to do:
- I wanted to keep the same location for the externals.
- The RSS feed had to remain.
- Te main page should only show the entries of the current month.
- Archives: by year, by month and an option to view all.
To achieve all the above I got rid of my externals folder and replaced it with the file 'externals'. No extension. Thanks to .htaccess I could force the server to parse the file as php.
<Files externals> ForceType application/x-httpd-php </Files>
So now the exterals are being handeled by a single file. All pages generated dynamicly. Just as I wanted. The next step is to work this out for the original archives aswell, wich is going to be much more complicated. But I'll manage.