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Dan Wolfgang
danwolfgang.myopenid.com at 2007-02-10 19:12:41.
Several others have posted some fantastic ideas and requests for MovableType4. Being redundant surely helps to gauge the value of a requested feature, but I'd hope that by now there's already a huge list of popular requests. But to chime in:
- Pages, a Master Template or some other good way to build non-entry pages in a weblog.
- Paginate
- Custom fields, including editable field names ("Entry Body" to "Summary," etc).
- Kill the "blog" nomenclature.
- Multiblog functionality
But I'd like to suggest some possibly more obscure things to improve upon:
Installation
Help me through the installation a little more: after I go to mt-check.cgi, provide a link to mt-wizard.cgi, then to login. It's minor, sure, but a great help to let me know what kind of progress is being made.
For that matter, just tell me to use mt.cgi for the initial install (and obviously, for subsequent logins). If this is the first time MT's been run, go to mt-check.cgi, then on to mt-wizard.cgi, then to login. I like the idea of only needing to go to one URL to install and use MT.
Weblog Creation
One of the things I've longed for is easier weblog creation. Adding a new weblog (whether to a new or existing site) takes quite a bit more work than I think it should: the "New Weblog Settings" page leaves me to do a lot more work after the fact.
How about a wizard?
- Ask for the weblog name, description, path and URL on one page, as it is now.
- Walk me through many of the other Settings: publishing settings, comments/TrackBack setup, etc.
- Help me set up my templates. This is the big part! What kind of archives do I want? Create a master archive index, main index, Atom feed, etc? 1-, 2-, or 3-columns? Use Widget Manager? How about an option to use an existing blog's templates (good for a familiar starting point).
Template Setup
Similar to above, but without creating a new weblog: how about a plugin or something to let me easily jump from a 1-column to 3-column setup, for example. The Style Contest/Archive has been great to get more styles out there, but--as a user--how am I to know how to create a 3-column layout? This has driven me nuts for quite a while.
Does 6A want me to use Widget Manager? Out of the box, I don't think so. Help me integrate it easily.
Admin UI
I know I've heard noise about revamping the admin interface for v4. Please, proceed with caution. The biggest reason I love MT is that the admin interface really is great. Yes, there are a lot of niggles and details to it I'd like to change, but don't go overboard.
A few things I'd like done to the admin interface:
Tags & Categories
- Give me a way to sort these based on the number of entries associated with them.
- Especially for tags, how about a "possible duplicate" filter of some sort? I've got photos, Photos, and PHotos in use, as well as Adobe InDesign and InDesign, amongst others. I don't always notice what the popup is suggesting when entering them, and this would help me keep things clean.
- Related: a better tag-suggest feature. If I type InDesign, how about suggesting Adobe InDesign as an option?
- Better batch-tagging capability: the current one works, but certainly could be better. For those of us who use an entry for each photo and a category for a gallery, batch tagging is frequently-used.
Notifications
- Give me a way to immediately send a notification when a scheduled entry is published.
- Let me sort the notification list by date or e-mail address.
...more to come when I get a little more time!
danwolfgang.myopenid.com at 2007-02-10 19:12:41.
