Easy Blogroll in Movable Type 4

Movable Type 4 doesn't come with blogroll support right out of the box unless you're willing to perform a few tricks. You can wait until MT-Blogroll is ported to MT4, but if you desperately need your blogroll right now, there is something else you can do.

The secret is that your default MT4 installation includes the MultiBlog 2.0 plugin, which lets you include contents from another blog in your blog. By creating a new blog and using that for blogroll entries, you can include that blog in your current blog, and voila: you have your blogroll.

Create the Blogroll

Create a new blog named, say, "blogroll". In "blogroll," use an entry for each link, entering your blogroll links as follows:

• Use categories to divide your blogroll into categories.
• Each entry is a blogroll entry, where:
  • The title field is the title of the link.
  • The body is the actual link.
  • The extended body is a piece of non-linking text that appears together with the link.
  • The excerpt is a description of the link appearing when the visitor hovers the mouse over the link.
• Then fill your blogroll with links.

Add Template Content to Your Existing Blog

In your existing blog, add the following section to your template where you want the blogroll to appear; I recommend creating a new widget template. This section includes the following lines of code, which will copy your "blogroll" entries and present them as links ordered by category and title:

<MTOtherBlog include_blogs="3">
<div class="blogroll widget">
<h3 class="widget-header">Blogroll</h3>

<div class="widget-content">
<MTCategories>
<div class="category"><$MTCategoryLabel$></div>

<ul>
<MTEntries sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
<li>
<a href="<$MTEntryBody convert_breaks="0"$>"
  <MTIfNonEmpty tag="EntryMore">title="<$MTEntryExcerpt$>"</MTIfNonEmpty>
><$MTEntryTitle$></a>
<MTIfNonEmpty tag="EntryMore">
<span><$MTEntryMore convert_breaks="0"$></span>
</MTIfNonEmpty>
</li>
</MTEntries>
</ul>

</MTCategories>
</div></div>
</MTOtherBlog>

In the above, change include_blogs="3" in line 1 to use the ID of your new "blogroll" blog.

Finally, go to your blog's plugin settings for the Multiblog plugin. Create a new trigger and select the "blogroll" blog, choosing to rebuild indexes when the blog publishes an entry.

You're all set! You can always modify the style sheet template for your blog to fine-tune the appearance of your blogroll.