Post Archive
› May 22, 2003
Movable Type Trick
Well, not so much a trick - really just something you probably already know if you author a site using MT. Am I the only person who thought that a "rebuilding" of all individual archives is required when a comment is edited?
[Yes, this is another "hi, I'm an idiot" post.]
You see, you need to edit a comment (see previous post), so you access it via the MT cms, then you hit "save", you are brought back to the post page with a notice on top reminding you that to see changes reflected you must rebuild. So I always thought that I needed to click "rebuild" (silly me!), but unfortunately if you do that - there is no option for "rebuild only this page". So, I've been choosing "rebuild all individual archive pages", which takes a good 2 minutes because of the 7 hundred something posts we have here. No, no, no - the answer is: hit "save", as if you had edited the post itself - when you do that, only that page and it's associated comments will be rebuilt. *whew* that's a big relief, much less time and hassle. I wonder if anyone else has been making the same mistake and is therefore eternally grateful for this enlightening post? No? I'm afraid the webgraphics readership is more likely to have built their own CMSes - you bastards.
Comments
1. May 23, 2003 12:33 AM
2. May 23, 2003 03:21 AM
Richard Posted…
If your comments are in a pop-up window, you don't even have to save the individual entry, because comments in pop-up windows are dynamically displayed through mt-comments.cgi. But it's probably a good practice to save the entry anyway, since those without Javascript enabled will be sent to the individual entry page. To be further annoyingly nit-picky, I'd add that when saving an individual entry, for most MT users, all pages associated with that entry get rebuilt: the individual entry, those individual entry pages adjacent to it (through MTEntryPrevious and MTEntryNext), monthly and/or category archives, and finally the index page. But you're right: it's far, far less than having to rebuild all the individual entries.3. May 23, 2003 06:58 AM
Jack Posted…
You can trim down the amount of rebuilding further with the MT Rebuild Type mod. I haven't plucked up the courage yet, but it certainly looks useful...4. May 23, 2003 09:04 AM
Joshua Kaufman Posted…
I'm glad you caught that and posted here, Nate. That is definitely one of those must-know tips. This makes me think that it might be handy to create a concise list of the most useful MT tips, like the one you just mentioned. My first contribution: when I do have to rebuild all individual entries, I make sure I'm doing it in Internet Explorer. Why? Well, as many of you know, rebuilding can sometimes create a server error - at least it does on Dreamhost. When I'm in Firebird and a server error occurs, the only thing I can do is go back and start the rebuild from the beginning. Whereas when I'm in IE, I can right click in the rebuild window, click Back, and it takes me back to the last step of the rebuild. It's a simple yet time saving trick that I use often. Any other super-useful MT tips out there?5. May 23, 2003 09:06 AM
Scotty the Body Posted…
Sounds like you need a new host! I never get server errors on rebuild... seems shady to me. Nothing against dreamhost, but server errors are not art of the standard and shouldnt force your browser choice.6. May 23, 2003 09:38 AM
Joshua Kaufman Posted…
Hmmm... well I'm paid through December 2003 so if I do switch, it won't be for a while. Does anyone else get many server errors while rebuilding or am I the only one? I should point out that I don't really get them often, but often enough to be annoying.7. May 23, 2003 12:10 PM
Joshua Kaufman Posted…
I contacted Dreamhost support about the server errors and received this response: "Yes, a few people complain about this problem. Basically, what happens, is the script runs for a period of time. On our servers, we do not allow script to run this long, as it eats up too many server resources by doing so, so our system kills the script. We've written the author's of movable type, and they say they are working on a fix. If you need anything else, please let us know." When MT rebuilds individual entires, isn't it a multistep process? So then each process only runs for several seconds. Is Dreamhost's script time restriction too short or do the rebuild processes last too long?8. May 23, 2003 12:34 PM
Dan Rubin Posted…
Hi Nate, yes, that's a useful "trick" -- I found it about a week ago, so it must be the phase of the moon or something... :-) I've done quite a bit (for me at least) of tinkering with MT to see what I can make it do, whether Ben and Mena intended it to or not. One of these days I'll start listing some of the edits I've made to MT to alter its behavior -- my favorite so far has been modifying the Template List screen so each template has its own Rebuild button (this fixes the standard method of rebuilding templates, which requires you to enter the Edit Template screen and then click Rebuild, which is one step too many if you regularly update your templates via FTP instead of the MT GUI -- it's even better if you have templates which are not included in MT's Rebuild (e.g. static pages, etc.) Joshua: If you aren't bugged too much by the Rebuild errors, just hang on and see if Ben and Mena release a fix (this is something they've posted about to the MT Support boards). If it's really getting to you by the time December rolls around, and there isn't an official fix, then switch hosts -- I'd recommend mine, but they haven't officially launched yet (MacOS.net -- if you're a Mac-junkie, this will eventually be your host...) -- I'm on the development team and also a beta tester, and since all the hosting is on OS X (except for their mail server: OS 9 and EIMS baby!) there are no problems :-)9. May 23, 2003 01:19 PM
Jennifer Posted…
If we're sharing tips/tricks - here's one of my little secrets (kind of along the same lines of what you posted): when changing a design, if I want to see how it's looking on the individual archives - again, don't do a full rebuild (otherwise, if something breaks, they ALL break! And of course, there's the time to wait for the whole site to rebuild - when you're just testing something) Rather, pick a post maybe a few weeks/months old, and hit the "save" button on it - so just THAT individual archive page gets rebuilt... then check your layout/design. (The only problem comes if someone leaves a comment during this "live testing" - then the page they're commenting on will be rebuilt too.) Hope that helps someone. :)10. April 7, 2004 01:39 AM
Mark J Posted…
You're not alone. I also made this discovery... and felt really stupid.
I like how you force a comment preview first... I might consider doing that myself. I just installed an "Edit This Comment" feature, actually. Not for me to edit comments, for the commenter to edit them. They get 30 minutes to go in and edit any mistakes after posting, and after that, it's locked.
Your preview force brings up an issue... if someone hits preview and then edits their comment, it's not immediately clear that they need to again press preview. A look at your source shows that pressing "post" will post the old version. You could use JavaScript to do an onchange(); event for this textform, disabling the "post" button once a change is made. I like to tinker, can you tell?
11. April 7, 2004 08:59 AM
nate Posted…
Mark - frankly I'm quite unhappy with the current comment system for other reasons too. The issue you mentioned is a real problem, and I also dislike how HTML is handled, and the subscription to comment thing. A revamp to the comment system is waiting on either MT version 3 release, or a solid block of my spare time - either of which are anyone's guess. :-)
evan Posted…
Indeed, the discriminating web app programmer prefers Web-Graphics ;)Happy belated birthday, Nate. My 26th is coming up in 6 weeks, which will mark my first year of feeling old.