Theme Assistant for Movable Type 5+

If you are familiar with the Melody/Endevver approach to theming with Movable Type 4, you are also likely familar with the Theme Manager plugin. Theme Manager did a lot of great things to make themes more manageable on Movable Type 4, however Movable Type 5 introduced a more comprehensive theming system, largely negating the need for Theme Manager's capabilities.

But, there are still some things Theme Manager does that we missed in MT5 -- most notably, setting Template Module and Widget caching options automatically and the ability to update Custom Fields. (Theming in MT5 supports installing Custom Fields, but not updating them.)

Prerequisites

Movable Type 5+

Installation

To install this plugin follow the instructions found here:

http://tinyurl.com/easy-plugin-install

Use

Specify your Custom Fields and caching options in YAML. Note that Theme Assistant currently only looks at template_sets (the MT4 way of theming) to find these values. Some abbreviated example YAML:

template_sets: my_awesome_theme: label: 'My Awesome Theme' templates: module: my_helper_module: label: 'Cached Helper Module' cache: expire_type: 1 expire_interval: 60 include_with_ssi: 1 fields: entry_extra_text_field: label: 'Extra Text Field' description: 'This is a text custom field.' default: 'Replace this default text with any value.' required: 1 obj_type: entry type: text tag: EntryExtraTextField

Set Caching and Include Options

Caching options can also be specified for Template Modules and Widgets with the following keys (if you've used the UI to set caching, these options should all be familiar). Module Caching must be enabled, though Theme Assistant will automatically enable caching if it's not already set.

cache - the parent key to the below options
expire_type -
- 0: No caching (the default method)
- 1: time-based expiration ("Expire after x minutes")
- 2: event-based expiration ("Expire upon creation or modification of object")
expire_interval - This key is used only if expire_type: 1 is used. Specify a time to expire in minutes.
expire_event - This key is used only if expire_type: 2 is used. Specify a valid object to cause expiration. Valid objects are as follows:
- asset
- author
- category
- comment
- entry
- folder
- page
- tbping

Another import aspect to caching is using "includes." The key include_with_ssi allows the specified module or widget to be included as an external file, saving server resources and making it easy to keep content updated site-wide. Possible values are 1 and 0 (the default). Within the UI, this option corresponds to the "Process as [SSI method] include" option found when editing Template Modules and Widgets.

Server Side Includes must be enabled at the blog level (enable this in Settings > General).

Install and Update Custom Fields

Many sites require the use of the Movable Type Commercial Pack's Custom Fields (part of MT Pro). If fields are specified in your theme's config.yaml they can be automatically created when you apply your theme.

The following example shows how to add a text custom field for Entries to the theme we're building.

template_sets:
    my_awesome_theme:
        label: 'My Awesome Theme'
        fields:
            entry_extra_text_field:
                label: 'Extra Text Field'
                description: 'This is a text custom field.'
                default: 'Replace this default text with any value.'
                required: 1
                obj_type: entry
                type: text
                tag: EntryExtraTextField
                scope: blog

Custom Field definitions appear beneath the key fields.

The key entry_extra_text_field is the basename of this field.

The description, required, default, and scope keys are optional.

The key obj_type is the type of object this field targets; entry, page, category, folder, and author are valid. These correlate to the System Object field in the GUI, of course.

The key type is the type of field to be created. Note that this is the key name of the field, not the public-facing name you see in the GUI. The Commercial Pack defines the following types of fields with these keys:

Text: text
Multi-Line Text: textarea
Checkbox: checkbox
URL: url
Date and Time: datetime
Drop Down Menu: select
Radio Buttons: radio
Embed Object: embed
Post Type: post_type
Asset: asset
Audio: asset.audio
Image: asset.image
Video: asset.video

If you have other custom fields available they may also be specified in your theme's config.yaml; you just need to specify the key correctly.

To create a system-level custom field (necessary is you use the author object type), include the scope key:

template_sets:
    my_awesome_theme:
        label: 'My Awesome Theme'
        fields:
            author_bio:
                label: 'Author Bio'
                obj_type: author
                type: textarea
                tag: AuthorBio
                scope: system

License

This plugin is licensed under the same terms as Perl itself.