Regarding #2, your best bet is to just use titles and dirify, yes.

The reason you can't reset the entry ID counter is because it's shared across blogs.

I've got some problems using the entryID in tangent with Individual archives.  As per my solution, I need to use both in order to generate a random entry -without- using a dumpfile.

Basically, the random script generates a random number from 1 to $MTBlogEntryCount$ and then pads this number (with the 0's).  Then it opens the respective Individual Entry Archive file and steals the title, body and author based on the -line number- of the .shtml file.  A wee bit complex, but it does work until you start deleted entries.

For one thing, the deleted entries are still included in the script.  For example, if I have 10 entries (random numbers from 1-10) and then I delete #5 and #6, then my script generates number from 1-8 (entries #5, #6 will appear, but #9 and #10 will not).

I don't mind weird $MTEntryLink$ tags (or the fact that MT doesn't delete actual files when removing entries/templates/blogs), so my questions are:

1.  Can I randomly generate any other attribute of an entry (e.g. title)?  Please don't say dumpfile (because there is already a solution for that).

2.  If so, is there some way I could store Individual Entry Archives without entryIDs?  I was thinking about using the title (and dirify="1") as a filename, but is there some .cgi hack I can place so that the script will not let me save a new entry if two titles match (e.g. "sorry, your new/modified entry cannot be saved as a file aslready exists in that name").  That would save my entries getting overwritten.  For example if "This is a title!" was a title of a previous entry then a new/modified entrytitle of  "This is a title!!!!!!" would generate an error.

Or better yet, if only there was a button to "reset" MTEntryID back to 000001 based on the current order of the blog...that would be awesome.

Thanks.

Shared across blogs?  Oh my.  Okay, you must have had your reasons.

But, like I said, is there a hack to generate an error if a new/modified post has the same name as a previous post?  This would be better if the error takes into account entry titles after they have been dirified.