Burnt Orange Report

Categories!

By Byron LaMasters

Thanks to Charles step by step guide, I finally figured out this categories thing. I tried setting up categories several weeks ago, but I didn't have much success, and I pretty much gave up. Yesterday, I decided that I had procrastinated long enough, and that I'd figure out categories however long it took. So, I did. Charles has a great guide in a .txt file, so it's easy to read. I got a little bit confused at one point, I think because Charles uses Moveable Type version 2.21, and I use version 2.64. The line that he directs you to in the index template was a little different, but I figured it out pretty soon. Charles directs you to this line in your index code (this is partially for my own reference, so bear with me):

<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M %p"$></a>

In order to include the category of the entry at the footer along with the time posted, name and comments / trackbacks, Charles directs you to add the bold code to the line:

<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M %p"$></a> to <a href="<$MTEntryLink archive_type="Category"$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryCategory$></a>

My footer code, however, looked like this:

<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%X"$></a>

I figured it out, and changed it accordingly:

<div class="posted">Posted by <$MTEntryAuthor$> at <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryDate format="%X"$></a> to <a href="<$MTEntryLink archive_type="Category"$>#<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"><$MTEntryCategory$></a>

I also added several categories that previosly had not existed, so that all of my posts since this site began have now been categorized. I haven't organized my old entries on the Live Journal page, but that might be a future project. As you can see, we've written a lot about redistricting, and I hope to expand on to other topics soon, but redistricting has been a fascinating story, and its been fun to blog. My next blog project, which I hope to tackle sometime this weekend, is to clean up my blogroll. I'm thinking of creating a new blogroll just for Texas bloggers, but its still in the planning stage. I also figured out how to change the templates of the archives pages, the individual entry pages, and the categories pages. By making those templates match the index page, it adds my Site Meter code to all of the archives pages, which is good for me, because it gives me a better reflection of my referrals, as I'm slightly obsessed with my Site Meter traffic reports (and I'm proud to report that we received over 1000 hits this week for only the second time - the first was back on the Live Journal page, the week of the Killer D's quorum-busting trip to Ardmore) . I'm also wondering why the footer is double spaced. I can live with it, but it's a little annoying, so if anyone can tell me how to single space the footer, I'd love to know. Anyway, let me know what you think, and if you have an suggestions. Thanks!