Hi,
My company is investigating adding blogs to our website to support our products and services. The idea is to have staffers write posts for topic-based blogs and allow registered visitors and customers to comment on these posts. Since our site is written in Perl, MTOS seems like a natural choice. MT's administrative interface looks like it would work great for managing content, comments, and user accounts, but I could use some guidance on how to get started with some other requirements.
We need to be able to embed MT blog posts into our existing website, and even as components in dynamically generated web pages. Can anyone offer advice or direct me to the right docs on how to integrate MT like this (i.e. specific API classes, example Perl code, etc.)?
We need to authenticate commenters against our existing user accounts database without making them log into MT. What's the best way to go about developing this (a plugin or component?) and where can I learn about how to do it?
Thanks in advance.
- Simon Miner
Thanks Simon for your question. Let me see if I can help.
1) The number of options for integrating MT with existing CMS's is almost too numerous to list here. But let me list a couple off the top of my head:
You can do virtually anything if you load data directly using MT's perl API. For this I would send you to consult the MT::Object API documentation.
Custom authentication is also supported. Documentation is light, but it exists. I would recommend the following resource to help you get started:
http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/man/MT/Auth.html
Feel free to ask follow up questions here.
Byrne
Thanks for the quick response, Byrme.
Can you point me to information on publishing HTML fragments for entries? Do/can these fragments include comments on the entries?
I looked at MT::Auth, and I also found some articles which mention it. From skimming these, it looks like I might need to subclass MT::Auth and add this subclass to the MT registry (as a plugin?). Am I on the right track with this? If so, how do I specify the callback functions to do the authentication?
BTW: I was unable to reply directly to your comment and had to actually log into the MT administrative interface to do so. Is there some permission on my account that's not set correctly?
Thanks again.
Thanks for the quick response, Byrme.
Can you point me to information on publishing HTML fragments for entries? Do/can these fragments include comments on the entries?
I looked at MT::Auth, and I also found some articles which mention it. From skimming these, it looks like I might need to subclass MT::Auth and add this subclass to the MT registry (as a plugin?). Am I on the right track with this? If so, how do I specify the callback functions to do the authentication?
BTW: I was unable to reply directly to your comment and had to actually log into the MT administrative interface to do so. Is there some permission on my account that's not set correctly?
Thanks again.
@Simon - I have no idea why you were unable to reply, but I have someone looking into that.
To publish HTML fragments you want to create an "Archive Template" - I would create an "Entry Archive" specifically. Then create an archive map for that template (the archive map determines the pattern for the unique path/url for each entry on your blog/site). This will result in a file being output for each entry. Then include that file in your other CMS system.
As for MT::Auth - you are correct, you need to subclass MT::Auth to check the user's credentials against a different database. If auth succeeds, then you need to create a user in MT corresponding to the user in the external system. If you driver enabled "external user management" then that will prevent admins from creating users in MT. Your external system will then be the source of record for all user accounts.
Thanks, Byrne,
We would like to enable our staff to post to and manage blogs, while allowing our site visitors to comment on blog entries. From your last comment, it sounds like we need to choose between setting up MT user accounts for posters and commenters alike (which would likely result in thousands or more of "comment-only" MT user accounts), or user auth outside of MT entirely. Can I set up an MT::Auth subclass which allows our staff to work with their blogs via MT user accounts, but manages visitor comment auth via an external system and does not require an MT user account for every commenter?
Thanks, Byrne,
We would like to enable our staff to post to and manage blogs, while allowing our site visitors to comment on blog entries. From your last comment, it sounds like we need to choose between setting up MT user accounts for posters and commenters alike (which would likely result in thousands or more of "comment-only" MT user accounts), or user auth outside of MT entirely. Can I set up an MT::Auth subclass which allows our staff to work with their blogs via MT user accounts, but manages visitor comment auth via an external system and does not require an MT user account for every commenter?