Mt4 As A Cms, Your tips and tricks Options

[caribou sue]

I've been using MT as a CMS for a few years, and MT4 has made it far easier. Here are some tips and tricks I've put together on using MT4 to power an entire site. Please add your own!

1. Pages, entries, folders and categories: understanding the pieces of MT
For anyone serious about using MT as a CMS, I'd advise looking at the default templates provided, then ditching them and starting fresh. (Don't worry, you can always find them again here.) You'll learn more about how it all works, and you can build in as much flexibility as you need.


* Pages are the most important part of the CMS. They form the relatively static meat-and-potatoes of your site. Examples: About Us, Contact, Staff, Financial info... you get the idea. Pages differ from entries in that they simply present information, and may not be updated often.
* Folders are key for structing your site. All pages about your organization may go in one folder, pages about your work and mission in another, and pages about your publications in a third. Depending on how big your site is, you may even have subfolders. Remember that the key page in each folder should have the basename index.
* Entries are for constantly updating information. You can use entries for a news feed or a blog, for example.
* Categories, like folders, are a way of organizing your entries. They're not necessary, though -- you might prefer tags instead.
* Index templates can be full of MT template tags. These are great for Home pages, where you can bring together a bunch of updating content. They're also handy for CSS and RSS files.


Your finished site might look like this:

Home (index template)
About (folder)

* About us (page)
* Our mission (page)
o Financials (subfolder)
+ Financials (page)
+ Annual reports (page)

Blog (folder)
*Blog (index template bringing entries together, or a page with template tags (use processtags plugin)

This post has been edited by caribou: Oct 25 2007, 05:23 AM