reBlog Plugin 1.0 for Movable Type 3.x

[Note: screenshots are from MT 3.2x, but everything should work now with MT 3.3x]

Installation/Upgrade

See the INSTALL file in this directory named for instructions.

Configuring the reBlog plugin

  1. Within Movable Type, navigate to the Main Page or the "Entries" page for the blog into which you will be importing reBlog posts from a Reblog Source feed.

  2. Scroll to the bottom, click on the Plugin Action labelled "Configure your Reblog Source Source Feed"

  3. On the configuration page, input the URL of a reBlog Source feed and submit. Most likely it is the rss.php page of your reFeed installation.

    If your reFeed installation is in a directory that requires HTTP Authentication (the in-browser login/password) you can include the requisite login/passwod in this URL. For example: http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@www.reblog.org/refeed/out/rss.php

Importing from a reBlog Source Feed

  1. Within Movable Type, navigate to the Main Page or the "Entries" page for the blog into which you will be importing reBlog posts from a Reblog Source feed.

  2. Scroll to the bottom, click on the Plugin Action labelled "Import Entries from your Reblog Source Source Feed"

  3. This will automatically import new posts from your Reblog source feed and rebuild the appropriate pages in Movable Type. Also, note that if you update a post in the source feed, that post will be updated and rebuilt in Movable Type.

Categories

The reBlog Movable Type plugin will now import categories from your Reblog Source Feed and creates the necessary categories in Movable Type's category database. It iterprets the value of the <dc:subject> element as a set of del.icio.us style category 'tags'. That is, tokens separated by whitespace are considered separate categories. Also, within one category, double-colons '::' will be interpreted as denoting a hierarchy (Movable Type has sub-categories). And, URL-style, a '+' will be interpreted as a space in the category name.

For Example, "blogs feeds::RSS::1.0 feeds::Atom with+space" would result in the following category tree being created and attributed to the reBlogged item:

  • feeds
  • with space
  • reBlog template tags for attribution

    The reBlog plugin also implements several new template tags for display attributive metadata along with the content of imported reBlog posts.

    Tags for reBlog metadata for one entry

    Tags for showing your list of reBlog sources

    Example Templates

    We have also provided example templates in the ./tmpl/ directory of this installation:

    note: these templates are for Movable Type 3.2. The ones for MT 3.1x are in ./tmpl/mt3.1x and have the same names as those described above.

    Auto-Trackbacking

    Movable Type 3.x has a feature for auto-trackbacking, which can be enabled by clicking the checkbox entitled "Enable TrackBack Auto-Discovery" in Weblog Config -> Preferences.

    Thus, if you have this enabled and you reBlog a post that contains a link to an MT blog with trackbacking enabled, it should auto-trackback for you. (note: this is totally untested)

    And, fortunately for you, reFeed by default includes a link to the original post in the content of the post being spat out by its feeds. Notice the "Via XXX" link that is automatically generated when you 'publish' an item but select a link different than the one it came with in its originating feed.