December 2007. Dan's Dad maintains the list of Boy Scout merit badge counselors in the Mohegan District of the Connecticut Rivers Council. For years he's used an Excel file to track the counselors and merit badges. We recently moved the data to a Movable Type blog, making it much easier to manage and use the Mohegan District Merit Badge Counselors list.

How did we leave our mark?

There are undoubtedly some people who prefer to have a copy of the old Excel file saved on their computer for quick access. A copy of the counselor list can still be downloaded from the site, now in the popular comma-separated csv format. This file is generated directly from MT, allowing the list to be maintained entirely from within MT.

Another minor but important feature is that the "Welcome" page is not the traditional Main Index template, but a Page. This is a great change because it allows the Welcome message to be easily updated and customized with MT's entry editing tools.

July 2007. Emily's photography business was taking off, and we were asked to build a Movable Type-based site where she could share her work. It was easy to build Flom Designs and Photography because we were given a clear mock-up and all the artwork needed to build the site -- but we still worked our own special touch upon it.

The sidebars to the site were built with flexibility in mind: using the Widget Manager plugin (bundled with MT) made a modular approach easy and provided a great way for Emily to simply reorganize content anytime she liked. Similarly, breaking the big sidebar down into small modules meant she could find her way around each of them easily and edit them as necessary in the future. (In fact, there have already been a number of minor changes and additions since we completed her site.)

May 2007. The Hot Date plugin for Movable Type is a great tool for anybody looking to schedule when an entry publishes: it provides a simple, clear interface to select a publishing date and time using a pop-up calendar and dropdown time selectors.

February 2007. As you type an entry, the Wordometer plugin for Movable Type will count the number of words you've written in the Entry Body, Extended Entry, Excerpt, and Keywords fields, and the number of tags you've added to the Tags field.

December 2006. If you like to work with HTML when writing an entry but require more than the simple formatting buttons provided by the Movable Type interface, MT-Quicktags is the plugin for you. MT-Quicktags uses Alex King's Javascript Quicktags to offer a limitless number of completely customizable buttons.

November 2006. Better File Uploader, a plugin for Movable Type, is a tool to help you upload files: multiple file uploading, control over formatting and HTML, thumbnailing and watermarking, amongst many other features.

November 2006: Publishing Buttons is a simple plugin for Movable Type that replaces the Save button with Publish and Save as Draft buttons; it's a little timesaver that eliminates the publishing options dropdown selector.

May 2006. An entry in The Style Contest, Bulletin Board was dreamed-up by Sherree and executed by Dan, including a good deal of advanced CSS to "break the mold."

Bulletin Board presents a site in a less linear fashion than many other blog designs by placing entries on note paper across the screen, rather than down the screen. The design presented unique challenges for cross-browser compatibility, but the effect and feel of the design remains well-communicated.

April 2006. Scrapbook: Blue was an entry for The Style Contest based on the Scrapbook theme used on danandsherree.com.

Scrapbook: Blue actually provides a few different designs depending upon the layout you choose to use. For example, the yellow category and search boxes at the top will be used in the three-column layout, but not the two-column-left layout -- just to offer more choices. Some design changes had to be made to Scrapbook to reach the level of flexibility Scrapbook: Blue has, such as using straight text for the weblog title rather than a graphic -- but I think they were worthwhile changes.

April 2006. Dan's first entry into The Style Contest was Trail Mix. Trail Mix offers up some fun design elements with a zip-lock bag top, a few hand-drawn elements, and -- most importantly -- the duct tape title.

The duct tape title was initially put together in Photoshop, and pieces were supplied in the style download for you to make your own title -- but only if you also had Photoshop. Dan rectified this by writing a fun tool: the Duct Tape Title Generator, which allows you to type the title of your site and returns a complete duct tape title, ready to drop into the Trail Mix style. The result is a uniquely-customized style for your site without needing the knowledge or tools to create the art.

December 2005. The big brother to Smilies, Icon-o-matic is a plugin for Movable Type. What makes it the big brother? Support for a limitless number of icons of any size, folder-based sorting, and control over the inserted HTML -- along withthe same one-click easy image insertion that made Smilies popular.

November 2005. Smilies is a plugin for Movable Type that provides clickable emoticons on the Edit Entry interface. After seeing many people in the MT forums struggling with hacks that weren't working, Dan decided to create this simple drop-in solution.

October 2005. Dan's Movable Type tutorials and plugins was growing and growing, and needed a new home. Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type was born, and features a restaurant theme to add a light and fun aura to the topic.

In addition to the visuals Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type provided, some more "tricks" were added to make the site stand out within the Movable Type community: a Today's Special section highlights only the most recent activity, quirky excerpts draw the reader, and MT-ized movie and TV quotes round out the site. Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type remains a focal-point for sharing Dan's MT experiences.

Dan's rough logo sketch was refined into a fantastic piece by Jesse Gardner of PlasticMind Design, a fellow devotee to the world of Movable Type.

September 2005. Better Entry Preview is a plugin for Movable Type that allows you to customize MT's Preview screen with your own CSS.

September 2005. Scouts have so many great adventures, and Scouting Stories is a place to share them.

Dan doesn't get too excited about cheers or songs around the campfire but wants to participate, so he likes to tell some stories about his time and experience as a Scout. The Scouts all enjoy them, and others probably will, too -- that's the whole premise behind Scouting Stories. A rating system helps make it fun for the reader to give feedback, and a one-way navigation encourages you to keep reading.