MT4 - Coming from Wordpress. Customizable?

What version are you using?

If you've started from a default template set, your templates should be based on widgets and widget sets for the sidebar.

Have a look at:
Design -> Widgets

You could create widgets and then drag and drop them to your widget sets.

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru

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As stated, I'm on MT4.

I went to design -> widget sets (I don't have design -> widgets, just widget sets)

I created a new widget set, and dragged over the two widgets I want - i.e. Pages (nested) and Photos. I then published all.

I don't see any difference in my sidebar navigational menu. I guess I just don't find it as user friendly - what am I missing?

You find it not user friendly because you just came to this platform and you expect to get from it what you are getting after being for quite some time with word press.

Don't jump to a conclusion that fast, please!

When I've asked for your version I was expecting the exact version, so that I could imagine what your installation contains.

You should definitely have:
Design -> Widgets

As a navigation option inside your movable type installation.

After you create a widgetset and add to it widgets, how do you want movable type to know that you want that widget set included on your sidebar?

You have to edit your sidebar template and point it to the widgetset that you want it to use.

The coding for calling a widgetset is:
<mt:WidgetSet name="Your Widget Name Here">

I find it not user friendly because it appears I will have to modify/edit sidebar template code to make things work, which is not going to be as user friendly as a simple drag and drop for our users.

When I click on Design -> my options are Templates, Styles, and Widget Sets.

So now that I have created a Widget Set that just has pages (nested) and photos as part of it, I need to go edit sidebar code to tell it to use this widget set.

Where do I find my sidebar template? Under Design -> Templates I don't see anything about my sidebar.

After you make that change, you should also publish the site.

What does that mean?

Movable Type is much more appreciated than word press for its "static" publishing.

What does that mean?

It means that for each and every page on your website movable type creates a file physically on the server and that file could work standalone, even without movable type or a database.

In other words, when you have a traffic spike your database won't be bombarded, or won't have to serve each and every page and thus stop responding.

Large wordpress installation know the feeling with having a very high traffic and one of the main reasons why the biggest news papers use movable type is this static publishing.

However, this static publishing involves that you publish (republish) your site anytime you make changes to any component of it, unless you are using SSI or PHP includes for various layout components.

Movable Type supports also dynamic publishing, just like word press does, but the static publishing is the default template option and that is one of the reason why we all love movable type so much.

P.S.

If you are running v4.0x, which could be for instance v4.01, I would recommend you either to upgrade (if you have real content inside now) or to start from scratch with v4.37 (not supported any longer) or v5.12 (the latest release, supported and further developed every day).

In order to find your sidebar I would suggest you to go to one of your index templates, such as for instance the home page (probably called "Main Index").

Once you are inside that template on the movable type admin sidebar you should see a list of included template modules.

See which one is the sidebar and if none of them its the sidebar it could mean that your sidebar is called from the footer.

So click either on "Sidebar" or on "Footer". If there was no "Sidebar", but an included template module called "Footer", then you should find the "Sidebar" called from that "Footer" template module.

Be aware that the names of these template modules could be changed, so it could happen that you don't have these labels on your installation.

The idea remains the same. Go to your home page template and check the included modules from there to see which one manages your sidebar.

On most template sets, for the sidebar there is a template module not at the blog level, but at the system level called "Sidebar".

That usually calls widget sets, which are usually available not on the system level, but at the blog level (so that they could have different widgets, from a blog to another).

I am not asking for opinions on why you love MT vs. Wordpress. I understand that you love MT and prefer it because of xy, and z. The organization I am with is using MT and I do not have control over upgrading it. For the users at our organization, I do not find editing template code to be more user friendly than a simple drag and drop. For what our organization uses blogging for, the x, y, and z reasons you love MT are things we do not need. I just want to make it simple for our users.

I realize MT has a lot of options since you have the capability to edit code, but the majority of our users are going to be turned off by this because they are not comfortable with editing code, and thus defeats the purpose of blogging, since they won't use it if they can't modify things quickly and easily without having to learn code.

Then, it could be that this product is not for them.

There is no limit on what you could do with movable type as a publishing platform, but you need to spend some time and familiarize yourself with it.

If you are using a more decent version of movable type you would be able to play with the widgets easily.

To my understanding you are using an ancient template set from an older version of movable type.

It is like you expect to get from word press v2.8.5 what you get from v3.3, which is not the case.

You may like to know that I'm also offering word press consultancy, but the possibilities that movable type offer me are way beyond word press capabilities.

They don't have a choice on the product - it's MT4. They want to use it. I want to help them use it. Neither of us have control over the version.

As another example... you mentioned that if the sidebar contents weren't in the main.html template file, then it would be in the footer. How on earth would anyone instinctively know or think to find sidebar stuff in the footer? That's another example of what I mean by it not being user friendly for the average user.

Again, I understand MT has a lot of options and is powerful. The problem is that it's all we have as an option at my organization and our users want to be able to use it. Me trying to explain to them that they have to edit template code just to get a simple sidebar is not user friendly for them. That's just an observation. If we had a choice on what we use or the version it would be a different story, but it's not.

I now know that I have to set up widget sets (which is drag and drop) but then I also have to edit sidebar template code to make these changes. And for some reason, my sidebar code is in my footer template, which isn't very intuitive.

I appreciate your help in figuring out what steps will need to be taken to achieve what I need to achieve in our version of MT. Even after spending countless amounts of time with it, I still was unable to intuitively figure some of these things out.

<MTIf name="sidebar">
<MTIf name="page_layout" eq="layout-tw"$>
<$MTInclude module="Sidebar - 2 Column Layout"$>
<MTElse>
<MTIf name="page_layout" eq="layout-wt"$>
<$MTInclude module="Sidebar - 2 Column Layout"$>
<MTElse>
<MTIf name="page_layout" eq="layout-twt"$>
<$MTInclude module="Sidebar - 3 Column Layout"$>
<MTElse>
<$MTInclude module="Sidebar - 3 Column Layout"$>
</MTElse>
</MTIf>
</MTElse>
</MTIf>
</MTElse>
</MTIf>
</MTIf>

Where does this

<mt:WidgetSet name="Your Widget Name Here">

Well, try to understand that the assumptions I've made above with the footer or no-footer, is that I have no idea how your templates look like, because I have no idea what version you are using and what template set.

If I would have got access to it, I would have known...

The widgetset coding goes where you like it displayed :)

I don't know if under:
Design -> Styles

You've loaded a theme and if it is based on 2 or 3 columns, or if it is using the tw, wt, twt or none of the above.

These 4 conditions are present in the coding that you've pasted above.

You could see which one applies to your blog after taking a look at:
Design -> Styles

This is version 4.01.

The "style" is the only one I see - minimalist blue. Set to 2 columns, wide, thin.

I have created a widget set called SidebarWidget. I go to Design -> Templates and go to Main Index. There is no Sidebar stuff there, so I looked in Footer and found Sidebar - 2 Column Layout.

In Sidebar - 2 Column Layout there's a ton of code. Trying to simply figure out where to place the piece

<mt:WidgetSet name="Your Widget Name Here">

to edit the sidebar.

It just seems a bit convoluted to me. I am not sure what I can and cannot delete from there so that I don't mess things up - at the same time, keeping in the back of my mind that I will need to be able to explain this and make it simple for other users of the organization.

Let me start by saying that v4.01 is the second version of the 4.x series and is at old as Sep the 18th, 2007.

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/2007/09/movable-type-v401-is-launched.html

So my comparison in between word press v2.8.5 and v3.3 was quite generous.

You don't have to expect too much from such an ancient installation, and you are not enjoying a lot of features implemented on movable type v4.x over 4 years of development.

Since you are not allowed to upgrade, let me recommend you to keep backups of the template changes that you do.

I do that myself, saving templates with an incremented number in the end so that I could always see the changes I've made and revert back over time if I need to.

Since I cannot see your project, what it publishes online and what is inside that sidebar, I cannot be of much help here.

You will have to keep a backup of that on a .txt file on your local machine and experiment with the widgetset until you are happy with it.

A trick to not play with the whole site, but just an entry is if you go to:

Manage -> Entries

Open an old article from there and just click "SAVE".

That would regenerate that entry, but also a few other related pages, like the home page, category page, monthly archive.

However, it won't be the whole website and you won't have to wait too much to see the change reflected online.

If there is a problem, you restore the template or change it and save that entry again and your problem is fixed...