I'd like to be able to set more system-wide (cross-blog) defaults. A couple examples that come to mind for that I've dealt with:

1. I have 13 blogs. I recently learned of the dirifyplus plugin that allows me now to set the individual archive format to use dashes instead of the default underscore. In order to apply this new format, I had to paste the new formatting into 13 different settings. Not a huge task I admit, but what about 100 blogs? Moreover, everytime I now create a new blog, it's one more step I have to remember. I can't set the default formatting for all blogs now and in the future.

2. This next example is similar to the above. I have the 13 blogs, but they all use the same look and feel. I currently have 16 templates per blog -- that's 16 additional actions that need to be done for the creation of a new blog that is to use the current look and feel. I would like to be able to create a default set of templates and have each newly created blog inherit the defaults. I could customize from there if I wished.

I'm sure there are other instances people can think of.

Thanks

I have used the linked templates function happily. I currently have one template that is loaded into each of my three blogs. When you enter a linked filename for the template, it creates or looks in the blog folder. For example, one blog is found in /blog. If you give the blog template a name index.tmpl, it will be saved as /blog/index.tmpl. What happens if you give it a full path?

I tried /home/user/htdocs/blog/index.tmpl in my other blogs. It accepted and loaded the template without a problem. When I edited the template in one blog, it automatically changes it in all blogs.

You still have to visit each blog to rebuild it however.

Nick

njesson,

I also use the linked file feature for all 13 of my blogs. When I update a template in one blog, it updates across all templates.

The problem I have with that is the very first time you create a new blog, you have to link up the templates. There is no way say automatically, "Create new blog and use all the templates from my previous blog."

As for having to visit each blog to rebuild, I recommend you try to PowerRebuild module. Then you don't have to visit each blog to rebuild.

You can do this by customizing the files in the default_templates folder; they're used whenever new weblogs are created.

Or, if you want to keep the original default files intact, you can make copies of them to another folder (ex., new_defaults, and specify that location to be used instead, in mt-config.cgi:


If you want to have some additional custom templates set up with each blog, that gets a little tricker; you'd need to edit the lib/MT/default-templates.pl file to incorporate those.

And (I believe, as I've not tested this in a while to make sure it still works) that you could also edit that same file to specify linked files for each template, like so:

shelley,

Thank you for the tips of modifying the default templates.

The following was passed on to me, so I'll pass it on here. There appears to be a new plugin designed to more easily set up one's own default templates (including custom). It can be found here

I have not as yet tested the new plugin, so I can't vouch for it.

Cheers

I hear that MT 3.3 is in the works, any thoughts about more system wide (blog wide) defaults such as ...

1. Easily creating a new blog from a set of custom templates.
2. Uniformly applying dirify
3. Uniformly applying pinging defaults.

I'm sure there are more.

As it stands now, basically each time a blog is created (I have 13 on the system) the blog is "born" with the "off the shelf MT defaults" and I have to customize everything to my liking (I follow a check list). What seems needed is some sort of "blog profile" that gets inherited each time a new blog is created.

Additionally, there seems the need to be able to "push" a new custom template across multiple blogs. An example of this might be the following:

Suppose I have a "header" module. That module is linked to all 13 of my bogs, so of course changing it affects all my blogs. This is fine. Now I decide I want banner rotation and rather than placing the code in the header module, I opted for more separation of functionality and create a "banner rotation module" that is called from within the header module.

Adding the call to the header module is easy, but now I have to create 13 custom "banner rotation module" templates. From the programmer's point of view, what is really happening is "Hey I created this new template, now I want to associate it with all my blogs (or optionally x of my blogs)".

Comments?