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My Ecto and MovableType Wishlist

I realize that some of these things are in fact MovableType issues, but so be it. Here, regardless of origin of fault, are my wishes for an improved Ecto and MovableType.

  1. When I attach a TrackBack URL to a story and post it to the blog as a draft from within Ecto, they should still be there when I re-open the darn thing later.
  2. Ecto needs to offer a better way to set primary and secondary categories (coming soon I hear).
  3. I'd like access to the "Future" publication scheme, please.
  4. I'd also like it if Ecto could tell the difference between published articles and those merely saved as drafts.
  5. Once the above is granted, I'd like the ability to keep all drafts in my article list, regardless of whether they're not "the most recent 15" or whatever my preference may be set to. I'd like, in effect, "last 15 + all drafts."
  6. I'd like to see a column of authors in Ecto. Not every blog is run by just one person.
  7. I'd like ecto to automatically update the articles that need updating. Manually fetching each time is tedious. MovableType saves "last changed" dates, so it should make them available.
  8. Purely MovableType: a per-author archive.

I'm sure I have others, but that's my list for now.

2 Responses to "My Ecto and MovableType Wishlist"

  1. What I'd like is an easier way to sort articles by modified date. I use MT to track my projects at work, and having the mod date used as the sort on the main page, and the archives is something I haven't set up yet.

    I haven't tried real hard either.

    MT seems to be one of those "Can do anything, but you'll be crying by the time you're done tools". 3.5 should perhaps have a better console.

  2. <rant>I've gotten requests for that damned Future flag. Let me tell you something I've started to think about MT: They love to make the XML-RPC interface as difficult as possible. First off, whoever invented the API that has become "standard" needs a smackdown: the XML that comes out of the commands is poorly marked and ambiguously structured so getting information out of it is a painful thing. Then MT added their extensions to it... when posting, you can pass a 0 or 1 for the posting option: draft or publish, basically. Of course MT, by default, publishes everything as publish, so the flag is pretty much useless. But OK, whatever.

    Know how they implimented the Future option? They created a new command that has to be called AFTER the post is up there. So the post gets posted and then has to be edited to set the state.</rant>

    Drives me nuts... which is also why it's not in SharpMT. And probably why Ecto hasn't added it yet. Painful, painful thing to ask for 😉