MT Plugins

The power of Open Source software is that the code is available to the entire developer community so they can tinker with it, improve it, and add customizations to make it dance - and then share it over the web. A remarkable example of this is the MT Plugins directory, where you can find openly distributed snippets of Perl code that add features to the Movable Type blogging system.

I kid with Colleen that you rarely encounter a unique problem in the world of web coding. A solution usually exists, and if it does, Google can usually find it. That's true for the widely used MT system. As I've tinkered with it and thought of new things I'd like to try, I've consistently been able to find an existing plugin that does the job.

For example, I wanted to include a weather report in Lawrence Online. Voila! How about an RSS news feed or an auto-updating graphic showing the national terrorist alert level for Triumph Over Terror. Found 'em! Hmmmm ... I wonder if it's possible to have a blog that pulls entries from several of my other blogs and includes them automatically as I update? Check out Princeton Tech News, which aggregates content from two other MT webblogs. Amazing stuff. This is why the folks from Microsoft are worried about Open Source.