Comments on: Immovable Type?

Question: Immovable Type?

Asparagirl — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:39:08 -0800

Movable Type question involving the counting and sequential numbering of entries within one specific blog on a multi-blog system.

Let's say I have six Movable Type blogs on the same system/install, each containing 100 entries.* I create a new seventh blog, with only 5 entries in that one. Within the individual entry archive template for the seventh blog, how do I structure my tags to output "this is entry #N of 5 in this blog" on the resulting pages? (N would be replaced by the actual sequential order of that entry in the blog, such as "3 of 5", "4 of 5", etc., as determined by either the entry's published date or just the sequence in which the entry was added to the blog, it doesn't matter.)

It sounds simple (and maybe I'm missing something here), but the only likely tag I've found for this, MTEntryID, exports the system ID of the entry in question (which could be #703 or something, or 000703 if you use leading zeroes). That is, it's being counted sequentially relative to the overall install/system, and not to the one blog in which I'm interested.

I can get a total count of entries within just the seventh blog -- the "...of 5..." part -- using MTBlogEntryCount, so that's no problem. But isn't there something similarly blog-specific with regards to entry numbering?

*In actuality, the largest MT install I manage has 95 blogs on it and over 400,000 comments.

By: anildash

anildash — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:30:27 -0800

ah, good question. MT doesn't natively offer a sequential count of posts per blog in version 3, as I recall. There may be a plugin for it, but it might also be a useful impetus to move to MT4. Email me, 'cause any blog with 400k entries should have enterprise support which can take care of this pretty quickly.

The short answer is, though, there's no native tag for the count you want to display.

By: Su

Su — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:04:41 -0800

If this is important and you feel like being a guinea pig, (and upgrading isn't an option) I've got an obscure plugin that outputs this number. I can't remember the last time I used it, but MT's support for legacy plugins has a pretty good record. Either way, can't hurt; it'll just either work or not. Address is in my profile.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:59:07 -0800

Thanks, Anil, but we're not planning on upgrading to 4.0 Enterprise until later this year or early next year. (That's a tribute to how well even good old version 3.2 has held up!) I was hoping there was some code I could pop in for the present time to tide us over... Also, we're at 400,000+ comments, not entries.

And thanks, Su, I'm willing to try out that plugin! E-mail coming your way shortly.

By: anildash

anildash — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:16:35 -0800

Sweet! If you have the time/inclination, do pass along word of how that worked. Su, as always, my hero! :)

By: fooljay

fooljay — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:51:01 -0800

Asparagirl, what version of MT are you using?

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:21:01 -0800

Su's Movable Type plugin "EntryNumber" is tiny and perfect and is doing exactly what needs to be done (and on an old version 3.2 system at that). Hooray!

(Jay offered me one of his plugins too. Thanks!)