FAQ

Can I use PHP code in my blog?

2012-01-09T19:09:12Z

Yes. Our PHP preprocessor version is 5.1.6. But first, you must do two things:

Change your index templates' output file extensions to *.php

Change your archive templates' default file extension

Log into UThink and select your blog from the dashboard
Go to Preferences > Publishing
Change the default extension from HTML to PHP. You might want to also consider changing the Server Side Includes setting to PHP Includes.
Go to Design > Templates
Open each index template that you plan to modify with PHP code, then go to Template Options. In the Output File field, change the extension .html to .php. Feeds (.xml) and Stylesheets (.css) should remain unchanged.
Save, then refresh your entire blog

What you should know about uploading videos to your blog

2011-12-05T15:26:23Z

What you should know about uploading videos to your blog

-videos can be saved in UThink (Create > Upload File), or kept on Media Mill. Media Mill gives you a way to automatically push a video directly into a new UThink entry: http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/help.php?helpDoc=uthinkPost

-If you want to set up a vodcast (that is, a feed that someone can follow to get your latest videos), you need to use RSS and not Atom (RSS allows media enclosures.) To install RSS templates on your blog, go to Design > Templates, then on the right side, click on Install Templates. Choose Podcasting Templates, then Continue. You'll notice a new index template called "RSS".

Now you have a new feed at the URL http://blog.lib.umn.edu/example-url/rss.xml . But how are people going to find it? Strictly speaking, you should have a line of code on your home page that says:

That would go between and in your Main Index template. You could also create a sidebar widget with a link to the RSS link.

-Any other suggestions or corrections? Please post a comment.

Is it possible to create a new post by email?

2011-11-11T21:02:50Z

Yes! You can use a third-party service called Posterous. This does involve giving a third-party service a password to create entries on your blog.

I have instructions on how to set up Posterous to auto-post here:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/heinz062/uthink-forum/2011/04/how-can-i-auto-post-to-uthink-using-posterous.html

The design of the Posterous site may have changed in the last six months. The most important part of those instructions is still accurate: how to obtain your Web Services Password.

Instead of auto-posting, look for "New Post via Email".

Adding a Facebook Like button to your entries

2011-11-10T14:27:12Z

With a Facebook Like Button, your readers can post on their wall that they like the current entry in context. To test this functionality, I liked one of my entries on my blog "Test Blog Test":

To add a "Like" button to the entry summaries on your blog's home page, follow these steps:

Log in to UThink and select your blog.
Go to Design > Templates
If you created your blog since June 2009, look under Template Modules, click Entry Summary. If you don't see this, let me know, and I can find a solution for you.
Finding the right spot in the code to add the button is tricky. You might see these four lines of code:

| <$mt:EntryCommentCount singular="1 Comment" plural="# Comments" none="No Comments"$>
| <$mt:EntryTrackbackCount singular="1 TrackBack" plural="# TrackBacks" none="No TrackBacks"$>

Leave this code intact, but follow it with this:

| &layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true">

5. Click Save.

5. Now repeat steps 2-4, except that in step 3, you're looking for the Archive
Template called "Entry" rather than the Template Module called "Entry
Summary". This will place the "Like" button on individual entry pages, not just your home page.

6. Click Save and re-publish your site.

Create a Social Media Widget

2011-11-10T14:24:05Z

Follow these instructions if you'd like to add a Social Media widget to your blog's sidebar:

In UThink, with your blog selected, go to Design > Widgets
Under Widget Templates, click "Create widget template"
Give the widget a name. I called mine "Social Media"
In the body, paste this code:

5. Make any customizations you'd like. Modify the code above for your own Twitter account. You could change the link to your own Flickr set, or just disable it by deleting or surrounding the code in comment tags. When you're done, click Save.
6. Go to Design > Widgets
7. If you have a 2-column layout, click "2-column layout - Sidebar". If you have a 3-column layout, you'll have to choose whether you want to add it to your primary or secondary sidebar.
8. Now you'll drag the Social Media widget from the right column, "Available Widgets" to the left column "Installed Widgets". Click Save Changes, then re-publish your blog.

Ways to Fight Spam

2011-11-09T15:04:09Z

Some blogs get spam comments, and others get 30,000 spam comments in a weekend. It can be quite frustrating. Before you even make any changes to your UThink blog, you already have two plugins working hard to filter spam before it comes to you: TypePad AntiSpam 1.0 and SpamLookup. But these well-intentioned tools are not perfect, and when they fail, one of two things can happen:

(1) Spam is allowed through the filter
(2) Legitimate comments are filtered and never seen

Recovering Legitimate Comments

The default spam setting is to delete spam comments after 14 days. To recover legitimate comments marked as spam, go to Manage > Comments. On the left side, you will see Quickfilters. Click on "Spam Comments". Find any comments that are legitimate and check the box next to them. Then take two steps:
(a) Under the More Actions... menu, choose "Trust Commenter(s)".
(b) Click "Not Spam". That will publish the comments that you checked.

Fighting Spam, Strategy 1:

Switch your comment authentication method to require a University of Minnesota x500 and password to comment. This is the best way to prevent spam comments for those who have blogs that are only intended for the University of Minnesota community. Even if you have one or two regular commenters, you could have them set up a guest x500 to use: https://www.umn.edu/dirtools/guestportal?

An additional step that I would recommend with this strategy is to adjust the spam threshold. Go to Preferences > Spam and change the score to -10.

But for many blogs, this just isn't practical.

Fighting Spam, Strategy 2:

Add a "captcha" box to the bottom of your comment forms. You've probably seen one of these before on other sites. It's when you are required to look at an image and type the letters and numbers that you see. With UThink, this is really easy to do:

(1) Go to Preferences > Comment
(2) Under Comment Display Options, there's a Captcha Provider box that's set to "None". Change that to "reCaptcha" and save changes. No need to re-publish your site yet.
(3) Go to Design > Templates. In most blog configurations, you are looking for the Comments template module.
(4) In the Comments module, somewhere around line 94, you will see "

". Change this to "

<$MTCaptchaFields$>

"
(5) Save the module, then re-publish your entire site.

Fighting Spam, Strategy 3:

Between strategies 1 and 2, you probably won't need a third strategy. But it's worth mentioning that you have the option to ban IP addresses and ranges. Go to Preferences > IP Banning. Here, you can type the precise address that spam is coming from (e.g. 124.90.251.222), or type a portion of the IP address (124.90.251) to ban any IP address that has those numbers in it. This requires a lot more maintenance than the other strategies, there's more room for blocking something unintentionally, and it is hard to predict where spam will come from next week. But it's a tool you can use.

Fighting Spam, Strategy 4:

Like Strategy 3, Strategy 4 is not nearly as effective as 1 and 2. This strategy simply involves adjusting the spam score threshold. The spam score threshold is a sliding scale that our spam plugins (TypePad AntiSpam and SpamLookup) uses to decide how aggressive it should be against incoming comments. Go to Preferences > Spam to adjust the score up and down.

Fighting Spam, Strategy 5:

Another partial strategy is to add keywords to the spam filter that identify a comment as spam. Go to Tools > Plugins, then click on "SpamLookup - Keyword Filter 2.1". Click on Settings. You'll have two boxes: Keywords to Moderate and Keywords to Junk. If you put the word "buy" in "Keywords to Moderate", any comment with that word will be sent to you for approval rather than being immediately approved. "Keywords to Junk" is a box for words that should never be in a legitimate comment. Anything filtered as "junk" will never go to you for approval.

Templates 101 : core concepts behind creating customized templates

2011-10-24T21:00:06Z

UThink Blog Support (uthink@umn.edu) is the only resource on campus that helps students with UThink, and we do not go extensively into customizing templates. The possibilities for customization seem endless, the time it would take to help each person is disproportionate, and there are risks involved. The farther your templates deviate from the original code, the more likely you are to introduce code that undermines how basic UThink functions work, like authenticating and commenting.

That said, the best learning tool out there is the Movable Type Template Tag Reference:
http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/tags/
Everything I know I learned from that page and trial/error.

The basic concept that you need to understand is that a Movable Type template tag uses a hybrid of traditional languages (HTML, CSS, etc) and the Movable Type language. There seem to be two types of Movable Type tags in the language: container tags and display tags. Container tags simply set a context for the display tags, the ones that actually generate something that gets displayed. Here's an example:

By themselves, these two container tags do nothing. All it says is "open up the entries table and run through all of the entries on this blog." But now I'll add something in between.

<$mt:EntryTitle$>

Notice how there are dollar signs on the inside of the brackets. That's what indicates that it actually displays something. So now, it says, "open up the entries table and run through all of the entries on this blog. At each entry, display the title of the entry, followed by a break tag." So on the public side of your blog, you get something like this:

10/24 - Today's Blog Entry
10/23 - Today's Blog Entry
10/22 - Today's Blog Entry

You can do the same thing with other types of data in your blog, like the names of authors:

<$mt:AuthorDisplayName$>

This would make a bulleted list of all of the names of your authors. You could even make a table:

Name	Entries Written
<$mt:AuthorDisplayName$>	<$mt:EntryTitle$>

This is a table that displays the name of each author on the left side and links to all of his or her entries on the right side. I had to use a new concept in order to do that: variables. On the seventh line, I only wanted to show entries of one author. But since the code I've written moves through each author, I couldn't simply say, "". The name needed to be allowed to be variable. So, each time UThink calls up an author, the variable $usernamevar gets reset to the current author's username (not their display name). This is definitely an advanced topic.

With these basics, plus the Template Tag Reference, you can build lots of great index pages, like an author archive page, a page for instructors to keep up on their students' work, or RSS feeds by category. You can also create custom widgets for your sidebar.

Good luck!

Is it possible to change the order of custom fields in the Create Entry form?

2011-10-24T18:52:39Z

Yes, but it only works per user. So if you change the order, it won't affect any other blog author's view. In a new entry form, in the upper right, click on "Display Options". You should see your custom fields in the list, along with the system fields (e.g. title, body, keywords). Click and hold one of the custom fields and drag it to a new spot. That's it! That changes the order in which the fields display whenever you are logged into this blog.

How do I create a custom entry field?

2011-09-16T15:38:03Z

"Title" and "Body" are not the only entry fields you can use. UThink (Movable Type) gives you the option to create your own custom fields for entries, pages, categories and folders.

The following instructions will require basic knowledge of HTML and how to manipulate UThink / Movable Type templates.

Log into UThink and select your blog
Go to Preferences > Custom Fields
Click "New Field"
Select the type of custom field (for entries, for pages, for categories, or for folders)
Give it a name. The description will appear below the field as it appears on a "create new entry" form, for example.
Choose a Type. The most common types are single-line text, multi-line text, checkbox, and radio buttons.
The following fields will depend on the type you chose. U of M affiliates may email uthink@umn.edu with questions.
Basename will be auto-populated for you.
Before you save, grab the "Example Template Code" (select and copy)
Now save.
Go to Preferences > Entry
Under "Default Editor Fields", check the box next to the custom field you just created.
After saving your changes, you can verify that your custom field is working by going to Create > Entry. At this stage, you can save data in a custom field, but it won't appear on your blog until you add the "Example Template Code" that you copied in an earlier step.
Go to Design > Templates
Choose "Entry Summary" under Template Modules. If you created a custom entry field, "Entry Summary" is most likely where you want your new field to appear. "Entry Summary" is often used by the "Entry" Archive Template and the Main Index template.
In "Entry Summary", look for the tags that populate the other fields, like title and body. Look for <$mt:EntryTitle$> and <$mt:EntryBody$>.

Further steps would likely depend on your particular blog setup. If you need assistance, feel free to contact UThink Blog Support at uthink@umn.edu, or check out the Movable Type documentation online. I find the Template Tag Reference particularly useful: http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/tags/

How do I embed a calendar of assignments on my class blog?

2011-08-31T14:30:30Z

Audience: University of Minnesota instructors

For class blogs, a clever combination of UThink and Google Calendar is to embed a class assignment calendar in your sidebar. Here's what you do:

Creating an Assignment Calendar:
(1) Open your Google Calendar: http://calendar.umn.edu
(2) Create a new calendar. On the left-hand side, under "My Calendars", click "Add". You could call it "PHIL3313W-Assignments" or something like that.
(3) Again, under "My Calendars", choose "Settings."
(4) Click on the calendar you just created
(5) Look for the section "Embed this Calendar"
(6) You will see sample HTML code. Click on the link above that, "Customize the color, size, and other options."
(7) Most of the options are straightforward.
(a) Default View: For readability, I would recommend "Agenda" as the default view.
(b) Width: This should be the maximum width available on the sidebar of your blog. If you are using the "Classic Blog" UThink template, you only have about 190px to work with. The embedded calendar works best at about 450px. Any narrower and you will lose some of the controls on the top. Most of those controls are removable.
(8) Once you have it configured as you want it, click "Updated HTML". You will copy/paste this code later.

Adding the new code to your blog as a separate page:
Given the constraints on width, you might want to embed the calendar on a whole new page that you can link to from your blog page. The following instructions are for those who use the "Classic Blog" template.
(1) Log into UThink and select your blog
(2) Go to Design > Templates
(3) Check the box next to "Main Index"
(4) Using the "More Actions..." dropdown menu, choose "Clone Template", then click "Go".
(5) Click on the new template, "Copy of Main Index"
(6) Change the name to something like "Assignments"
(7) Click on Template Options
(8) Change the Output File to "assignments.html"
(9) Now look at the code. Try to find about four lines that start with "" and ends with "". Delete those tags and everything in between. Now paste your calendar code into that deleted spot.
(10) Save & Publish your blog
(11) Add a link to your new page:
(a) Go to Design > Widgets
(b) Choose "Create widget template". Alternatively, you could clone an existing template to mimic the look of an existing section of your sidebar.
(c) In your new widget template, give it a name like "Assignments Link".
(d) Design your code with simplicity in mind. My example:

Assignments Calendar

(e) When you are finished, click "Save"
(f) Go back to Design > Widgets
(g) Do you have a 2-column or 3-column layout on your blog? If 2-column, click on "2-column layout - Sidebar". If 3-column, click on "3-column layout - Secondary Sidebar".
(h) You should be looking at "Installed Widgets" and "Available Widgets". Find your new widget "Assignments Link" on the right-hand side and drag it to the left.
(i) Save Changes.
(j) Re-publish your entire blog

Adding the new code to your blog sidebar:
Instead of creating a separate, linked page (see previous instructions), you could try to add a very narrow calendar to your blog sidebar.
(1) Go back to step 7b in "Creating an Assignment Calendar".
(2) Change the width to 190px.
(3) Change the height to something like 400px (or your preference)
(4) Change the default view to Agenda
(5) Modify the Calendar Title to be short enough to fit
(6) Un-check some of the "Show" features. I would un-check Date, Print icon, Tabs, and Time zone.
(7) If you are finished, click "Update HTML". You'll copy/paste this code later.
(8) Log into UThink and select your blog
(9) Go to Design > Widgets
(10) Choose "Create widget template"
(11) Give the new widget template a name, like "Assignments Calendar"
(12) Paste the embed code from step 7 into the body of the widget template
(13) If you are finished, click "save"
(14) Go back to Design > Widgets
(15) Do you have a 2-column or 3-column layout on your blog? If 2-column, click on "2-column layout - Sidebar". If 3-column, click on "3-column layout - Secondary Sidebar".
(16) You should be looking at "Installed WidgetS" and "Available Widgets". Find your new widget "Assignments Calendar" on the right-hand side and drag it to the left.
(17) Save Changes.
(18) Re-publish your entire blog

Voila! Please submit comments if you find errors in these instructions.

How do I redirect users from my old blog to my new one?

2011-08-03T21:11:40Z

There are at least a few ways to re-direct any website, and they each come with pros and cons.

(1) The Meta-Refresh Method

Adding this bit of code to your blog "Main Index" template will mean that your blog's visitors will be immediately redirected to this UThink Developer's Corner blog:

You might want to add a short time delay to the refresh to allow users to see a message, like, "Click here if you are not automatically redirected in 5 seconds." To do this, change content="0" to content="5".

(2) The PHP method

If your blogs are using PHP (the extension of your blog's main index page is *.php), then you can add this bit of code:

header( 'Location: http://www.yoursite.com/new_page.html' ) ;

There are lots of other redirect methods, but these are the two most commonly used. The first method (meta-refresh) is said to be "W3C non-compliant", since it breaks the normal use of a user's browser back button. (If a user goes to your redirect page, gets automatically redirected to the new site, then hits "back", they are taken to the redirect page, which forces them forward again.)

How do I rename my blog?

2011-07-08T20:04:27Z

To simply change the name of your blog:

Log into UThink and select your blog from the dashboard
Go to Preferences > General
The first field is your blog name. Change it according to your heart's desire, then click Save Changes
Now re-publish your entire blog site.

It might take a couple weeks before search engines update their results for your blog.

If you also want to change your blog's URL, I have another blog entry on that topic.

How do I protect my blog with a single username and password?

2011-06-28T14:28:41Z

I call this the ".htaccess method" because you will be creating a file called ".htaccess" (note the dot that precedes the word). You will also create a ".htpasswd" file. To set up .htaccess password protection, follow these instructions:

Log into UThink and select your blog from the dashboard. You should now see the name of your blog in a tab in the upper left corner, adjacent to "Write Entry". Double-check to make sure that you're not password-protecting the wrong blog.
Go to Design > Templates
Click on "Create index template"
Give your new index template a name, "Htaccess file"
In the body, paste in this code:
AuthUserFile /htdocs/blog/[your Internet ID]/[your blog directory name]/.htpasswd
AuthName "You need to log in to view this content"
AuthType Basic
Allow from all
Require valid-user

But note that [your Internet ID] needs to be replaced with your x500. Similarly, [your blog directory name] needs to be replaced with your blog directory name. It might not be the same as your blog name. Look at the URL for your blog. The blog directory name is the last name in the URL. For example, in the URL http://blog.lib.umn.edu/heinz062/uthink-forum/, the blog directory name is "uthink-forum".

For individuals with custom URLs, your x500 might not even be in the URL. If your URL is http://blog.lib.umn.edu/myblog, then the first line of the .htaccess file should read:

AuthUserFile /htdocs/blog/myblog/.htpasswd

Before you save, expand the Template Options menu (if it's not expanded already.) In the "Output File" field, type: .htaccess

Don't forget the period.

Now click Save.

For the following steps, you'll need an encoded password. Use this htaccess password generator to encode the password you want to use. You'll get something like this: goldy:I2ZU0L1SBgrMw
We'll use this in a moment.

Go back to Design > Templates, then click on Create Index Template again.

In this second template, call it "Htpasswd file"

In the body, paste in the password that you generated before. It would look something like: goldy:I2ZU0L1SBgrMw

Expand the "Template Options" menu if it's not expanded already. In the Output File field, type: .htpasswd

Save your new template

Re-build your entire blog site.

That should do it! Now your blog is password protected.

Note: it is possible to protect your blog with x500 authentication, just like other U of M web services. Search this forum for the words "password" and "x500".

Clicking on a blog's RSS feed gives me an error. What do I do?

2011-06-27T21:01:22Z

If you get an error message like this:

--------------------------------------------------------------
This service is not available

iGoogle is not available for umn.edu. Learn more about Google products you can use with *******@umn.edu.

If you are the Google Apps administrator, please read these articles to learn more about controling user access to Google Apps services and turning services on/off for certain users.

Did you use this product with a different Google Account? Sign out of your current Google Account and then sign in to the account you want.

©2011 Google - Google Home - Terms of Service - Privacy Policy - Help
---------------------------------------------------------------

The problem is with the way your browser is configured to handle RSS feeds. Sometimes clicking on a feed on a website opens up Live Bookmarks. Other times, it opens up Google Reader. This error (above) is from an individual who has her version of Firefox configured to automatically open web feeds in Google Reader. But since she is also logged into U of M Google Apps, she gets this error (above) when she is redirected to her account. That's because Google Reader picks up on the fact that she's logged into an institutional account that doesn't subscribe to that app.

Short-term solution: Log out of U of M Google Apps.
Long-term solution: re-configure your browser. In Firefox 4, go to Tools, then Options, then click on Applications (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Options%20window%20-%20Applications%20panel?s=applications&as=s). In the list of content types, scroll down to "Web Feeds" and change "Use Google" to "Preview in Firefox" (or another alternative.

That should fix it!

How can I follow comments and activity on a particular entry?

2011-06-14T21:14:07Z

You might know about the MT-Notifier plugin that's used to sign up for email alerts on blog changes, but there's also a version of this for following a particular entry. Basically, you get a box on the home page labeled "Subscribe to this entry". Email addresses can be added one at a time to sign up.

Here's how you install this plugin:

Log into UThink and select your blog from the dashboard

Go to Tools > Plugins

Click on "MT-Notifier 4.31", then choose Settings.

The very last section is for "Widgets". Choose "Click here to install the MT-Notifier Entry Subscription Widget".

You should now be looking at a new widget form that has already been filled out. I would recommend one additional modification to the code. On the very first line before any other code, type:
On the last line, type:
Save your new widget.

Now go to Design > Widgets to add the new widget to an existing widget set.

Most UThink users will have a widget set called, "3-column layout - Secondary Sidebar". If you use a 3-column layout, I would recommend adding the new widget there. Click on it.

Now drag the widget named "MT-Notifier Entry Widget" from the right column to the left column. The order in which it appears matters. If you put it last in the list, it will appear last. To change the order, drag and drop it on top of an existing widget in that column. You might have to play around a little bit to get it just right.

Save and re-build your site.

Your new widget should appear only on the entry archive pages, not the home page of your blog. Voila! Feel free to contact uthink@umn.edu if you need tips on a different custom application of this entry widget.