MT

Here is my MovableType development wishlist. These are the features I really wish my favorite content management system had. Alternately, these are the things I really wish I could do with MovableType, which the current version does in fact support, but I haven’t yet found a way to do. If someone knows how to do any of these items using the current version, I’d sure appreciate a point in the right direction. In no particular order:

• Entry Lists by Comment Counts: This was one of my favorite features in GreyMatter and I hope to see it available in an upcoming MT release. I want to be able to display a list of the most-commented-on entries. The ability to specify that an entry has to have at least n comments to appear in the list would be marvelous as well.
• Support Links: I’d like to see a link to the support board, and not just the documentation, in the MT editing screens. Currently the menu shows, “Blog Name”, “UserName”, “Help”, “LogOut”, and the date. I think a link to the support board could fit in there quite nicely. Heaven knows I go there enough.
• True Hyper-Text Documentation: I think the MT user manuals are terrific and well-written. My only gripe is that the main manual is humongous. If I’m not on my home computer and I have to access the on-line manual, it takes forever to load and navigate. I would love it if the developers would split it into separate files, perhaps by chapter. I think it would make reading and researching much quicker.
• Copy / Move: This is probably not a very useful feature to most users, but I’d like the ability to copy and / or move entries between blogs. One of the things I’ve been doing is moving all of my older football and sports posts from my main blog to my (somewhat newer) sports blog. A quick way to do that would be handy.
• An MT Link: I wish there was a link directly to the main MT homepage somewhere on all the editing screens. For the life of me I can’t understand why Ben and Mena haven’t added one. If I created any kind of web application – and, obviously, I haven’t so I should probably keep my mouth shut – I would have a link to my own page all over it.
• Blogs Sorted on Main Screen: A minor request, I think, is the ability to sort the display of the blogs on the main screen. Right now they’re simply listed (as far as I can tell) in creation order. My most-used blog is at the bottom of the list and I have to scroll down to get to it. I know it’s a silly little thing to want, but that’s why I called this a wishlist. My Amazon.com wishlist is chock-full of silly little things I want.
• Entry List Nesting: I’d like to list, for example, the five most recent entries from each category, but I don’t want to hard code the category names. Something like this: <MTArchiveList archive_type=”Category”><MTEntries lastn=”5″ category=”<$MTArchiveTitle$>”></MTEntries></MTArchiveList> I’ve mentioned this one to Ben and he said he’s thinking about it.
• Stay at Top: Another GreyMatter feature I miss is the ability to tag an entry as “topmost”. That way you can add new entries, but the “topmost” one would stil show as the first in line. I don’t know if that’s ever going to be possible because of the way the <EntryList> tag is designed, but again … that’s why they call it a “wishlist”.
• AutoNotify: I would like to be able to set a blog to automatically send notification eMails to everyone on the notify list every time a new entry is made without having to specifically “force” the eMail to be sent.

I suppose that’s all I can remember now. I’ll update this list if I think of new ones, or if some kind soul is nice enough to tell me how to do something that I thought I couldn’t.
Thanks, Ben and Mena! You’ve created a wonderful product.