« love is simple | Main | Mr. Elliott »

Tue | February 28, 2006

mt notification

The Movable Type (3.17) notifications feature doesn't send out an email every time someone posts, which is what I initially thought it did.

It gives the poster the option to send out an email containing the post and/or a message and/or an excerpt of the post to everyone on the list.

MT comes with a CGI script by which people can add themselves to the list. The user manual contains HTML for a form using this script. You paste the form into your template, probably in the side menu. (QED- do the MT tags work in an entry/ post?)

Then the manual mentions that you have to define a verification phrase in your mt.cfg file, but doesn't really explain what the hell that means. Generally, movable type gives you the information but doesn't always tell you what to do with it. Or actually I find this is true with most computer/ tech stuff. It's just the way it's written.

1. Download your mt.cfg file (I transferred in binary mode, which I think is correct, but I have trouble remembering the difference between binary and ASCII because I don't actually know the reason behind it)

2. Open with Wordpad.

• At the end, put the line

  EmailVerificationSecret putwordhere

  where "putwordhere" is your hard to guess verification phrase.

  Notes:
  No quotes are needed.
  Don't misspell "verification," as I did and then spent about an hour trying to figure out what might be wrong.
  



• Uncomment the line

  # EmailAddressMain name@domain.com

  Put whatever address you want people to see the verification email coming from. Mine is from postmaster@asianwriting.org
  

3. Upload the file.

« Previous | Posted by Lily in Web/Tech | on February 28, 2006 07:48 PM | Next »