restarting MT entry numbering

April 8, 2005 2:45 PM

Help me reset the entry numbering on my MT blog.

I've got an MT 2.6x blog that is being restarted, for convoluted reasons, in a fairly convoluted way, and I'm having trouble with resetting the entry numbering.

There were about 400 entries on the blog, which I've deleted (from within the MT control panel, and by deleting the /archives/ directory). I will be importing 400 new entries, but I would like the entry numbering (ie, ######.php filenames) to restart at 0000001. Currently, even though I've deleted all antecedent posts, the database has a memory and starts numbering things from x+1 the highest (now-deleted) post.

How can I make it so that the posts I import are numbered starting at 000001? Thank-you!

posted by Marquis to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I guess, in other words, how do I clear my MT's database of 'muscle memory', related to previously-existing-but-now-deleted entries, without reinstalling the blog.
posted by Marquis at 3:02 PM on April 8, 2005

Can you manually edit your database tables? If so, brownpau tells you which tables you need to truncate to do what you want.
posted by jessamyn at 3:15 PM on April 8, 2005

Just make sure to use the "truncate" command and not "delete" since delete will not reset the numbering on the table.
posted by babar at 3:18 PM on April 8, 2005

Why does it matter what the numbers are? You shouldn't be using them in links anyway, as they will change if you have to re-import them for some reason.
posted by kindall at 3:22 PM on April 8, 2005

thanks jessamyn! exactly the kind of article i couldn't find.

this is the problem, kindall -- and it's something i've only just learned. so from now on i'm going to use named links, not numbered ones.

it leaves huge continuity problems, though, which is really frustrating.
posted by Marquis at 3:24 PM on April 8, 2005

there's ways to not use numbered entries at all, as MT3 does by default.
posted by anildash at 3:01 PM on April 9, 2005