Template Installer is a plugin for Movable Type that makes it easy to install new template sets for your blogs. Combined with Template Exporter plugin, this makes is very easy:

• For bloggers to share templates / widgets with others
• For designers to package, sell, and distribute template sets.
• For companies to deploy template sets to company blogs

Currently, sharing templates requires a lot of cutting and pasting, a very time consuming process. Using Template Installer it takes only a few clicks to install a partial or complete template set in your blog.

Screencast

The following screencast shows how easy it is to install new templates using Template Installer. In this example, the user chooses to install the "Default Templates", which is handy when you want to revert back to the defaults. The same process would be used to install a completly new set of templates. Click on the video below to watch:

As you can see, it is very quick and easy. As you can see from the last screen, Template Installer will back up your existing templates if they have been customized from the MT defaults.

The missing step from the above example is to upload the desired template set to the /plugins/TemplateInstaller/template_sets directory. No need to edit any files or settings. Once you have uploaded the set, it will appear as an option when you click "Install Templates" from the right side of the Manage Templates screen.

Requirements

• MT4+
• Template Refresh plugin (included with MT4)

Installation

1. Download and extract the zip file, and upload the contents of 'plugins' folder to the 'plugins' directory of your Movable Type installation.
2. Go to Design > Templates and then choose the "Install Templates" link from the lower right of the page.
3. Choose a template set from the drop-down box, then click continue.
4. View the results, then click "return to templates", and you are done.

Included Template Sets

The current version of Template Installer includes 3 template sets:

• Default Templates - These are the default templates that come with MT4. While you can also use the Template Refresh plugin to re-install these, Template Installer provides easy access to do so. This set is also a good example set to see how it works.
• Default Templates with Prefix Notation - A version of the default templates that use the new prefix notation. For example, <MTEntries> becomes <mt:Entries>, and so on. This template set will have the same output in your published blog as the default set, only the notation used is different. Note that the tags in this are not complete lowercases (it used mt:EntryTitle and not mt:entrytitle) Thank you to Marleen Zachte for creating this set and giving permission for its inclusion with this plugin!
• Page Template Only - This set will install the MT4 default "Page" template, as well as the included "Page Detail" module. This set will be useful for those upgrading from previous version of MT, since the Page template is not automatically installed on existing blogs, during the MT4 upgrade.
• 2 Column Layout Header - This set provides a replacement to the "Header" template module. The default MT4 templates use a 3-column layout. If you want to eaily change your blog to a 2-column layout, just install this template set.
• Template Installer Widget - The set includes a widget template that you can use with the MT Widget Manager to show your support and spread the word about Template Installer. It is also a good example of how Template Installer can be used to distribute and install blog widgets.

Want more template sets?

Template Installer is new, so there are currently not many template sets available. If you have template sets that you would like to share, I will post a link to them here. Please contact me using the contact link in the menu above. You should also check and post your template sets to the following page on the MT wiki: Template Sets for MT4.

Get Template Installer

Template Installer is free to MT Hacks members for commercial or non-commercial use:

Download Now:

Downloads: 4711

A Feature for Plugin Developers

For certain plugins, it makes sense to distribute custom template or widgets along with the plugin code. In the past, I included a special template installer routine to help users install such templates. In future, I will be use Template Installer for this purpose, and you can too. Rather than ask users to upload your template set to the Template Installer directory and ask them to install the set, I have include a "side door" feature that can be used instead. Using this approach, the templates are stored in a sub-directory of your plugin. Then you can simply present a link to your users to install the templates. The link would look something like this:

<a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="return openDialog(false, 'install_blog_templates', 'template_path=$your_template_path&set=$your_set_name&blog_id=$blog_id &magic_token=$magic_token&return_args=$your_return_args')">Install Templates</a>

Of course, you will likely use template tags to form this url, but the key things are to make it open a dialog, to set the "template_path" parameter to the path to your template files (relative to the mt root directory), the "set" parameter to name of your set, and you can also set the "return_args" to return the user to your plugin screen after the templates have been installed. When users click this link, they will bypass the "choose a template set" screen and your templates will be installed immediately.

How do I Export Templates for use with Template Installer?

While you could do it manually, and it wouldn't be too hard, you probably want to use the sister plugin, Template Exporter, which automates the process in a single click.

As always, thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Visitor Stats is a plugin for Movable Type 4.0 that displays visitor and page view statistics on your MT Dashboard.

It looks like this:

Visitor Stats also provides a "stats counter" tag (and widget) that you can place on your site to display your stats.

Visitor and View Stats

Visitor Stats tracks two key statistics for your blog:

• Visits - A visit represents a real person who visited your blog. Even if the person views 20 pages of your site, it only counts as one visit (per day).
• Views - Also known as page views, a view represents the viewing of a single web page on your site. If the person views 20 pages, it counts as 20 views. If a person refreshes the same page several times, each time counts a view.

How it Works

Visitor Stats tracks visitor and view information and records that information directly into your Movable Type database. After placing a single template tag in your templates, Visitors Stats will begin recording stats automatically using a combination of JavaScript and PHP (note that you do not need to enable MT's dynamic publishing feature). Then, when you view the admin dashboard for your blog, you will "Visitors" and "Views" tabs on the Blog Stats widget, which will display a graph of your stats (see image above). On the System Overview dashboard, you will see aggregate graphs of your stats for all blogs on the system.

Template Tags

Visitor Stats provides 2 template tags:

• <MTVisitorStatsTracker> - Place this tag before the </head> tag in every template where you want to track stats. Only place one of these per template.
• <MTVisitorStatsCounter> - This tag will display the total number of visitors or views for your blog, just like a web stats counter. There is one optional argument:
• • type - the type of stats that you want to count, which either be "visit" or "view". The default is "view". Example: <MTVisitorStatsCounter type="visit">

Requirements

• MT4.0+
• Template Installer plugin
• mySQL
• PHP

Installation

1. Download and extract the zip file, then upload the contents of the 'plugins' directory into the 'plugins' directory of your Movable Type installation (often /cgi-bin/mt/plugins/).
2. Login to MT and you should be redirected to an "Upgrade" screen that will update your database automatically.
3. For each blog that you want to track, go to Preferences > Plugins and then click on "Visitor Stats" and then click on "Settings". Now click the link labeled "Click here to install the Visitor Stats templates".
4. Now go to Design > Templates and insert the <MTVisitorStatsTracker> tag before the </head> tag for all templates that you want to track. Note that if you are using the new MT4 default templates, then you only have to do this in one place: click on "Template Modules" from the right side of the page and open the "Header" template module and insert the <MTVisitorStatsTracker> before the </head> tag and then save the module.
5. Now Publish (rebuild) all your files.
6. (Optional) Add the <MTVisitorStatsCounter> tag to your templates or use Widget Manger to add the "Visitor Stats" widget to your sidebar.

Get Visitor Stats

Visitor Stats is free to members of MT Hacks.

Download Now

Downloads: 1981

Want More Features? Visitor Stats Pro is Coming Soon!

Visitor Stats Pro will be a premium version of the plugin with more stats and many cool features. While it will include some of the typical web stats metrics, the focus of Visitor Stats Pro will be on providing meaningful stats about Movable Type items such as entries and authors.

Here are some of the potential features:

• Visitor and View stats on a per entry basis, so you can see how popular your entries are.
• Stats on a per author basis. If you have a blog with multiple authors, see which authors are generating the most traffic.
• Template tags and widget to display a list of "Most Read" entries.
• Drill-down into statistics. See a list of recent visitors. See which visitors are registered commenters. View the traffic history for a single visitor or registered commenter, see how they navigate through your site and which pages they viewed.
• View referrer information to see where visitors are coming from (the page they were on prior to arriving on your site).
• Search engines and keywords.
• And more...

Do you have some ideas for features? If so, please reply to this entry and submit those ideas. Suggestions are appreciated.

When Visitor Stats Pro is released, I will send out an email to MT Hacks members. So if you haven't already done so, register now.