Using Movable Type as an events calendar

There are a couple of ways of using Movable Type to create a calendar of events.
One is to display future events as text entries, replacing the traditional
bloggish today-going-backwards posting order. The key to this is the fact that
MT allows you to change the date on a post, even to a future one. The other
way is to change a blog’s monthly archive template to display in a calendar-style
layout.

Note that if you want your events calendar to appear in a sidebar of your
existing text blog, you will need to create a separate blog for the calendar
and use includes to put it on your index page. The instructions below will
change the configuration of your entire blog. Use at your own risk!

Part one: the future events listing

Example: Exploit Boston

With the default MT settings, your events will display entries from the farthest
in the future and backwards. To turn it around and display posts from now going
forward, go to Blog Config -> Preferences and change the order of posts to “Ascending.” Another
(less drastic) way of doing this is to rewrite your MTEntries tag:

There are two ways to show the upcoming events and hide the past ones: categories
(manual) or date-based (automatic, requires PHP).

For categories:

Establish a category for current/upcoming events. (We’ll call it ‘upcoming’).
If you don’t have any other categories, create some (like ‘deadlines’ or ‘events’).

In your main index template, change <$MTEntries> to .
Now the only entries that will be displayed are those that are in the Upcoming
category. You will need to edit each entry and remove it from the Upcoming
category in order for the entry to “expire.”

When you post an entry, assign its primary category as something other than
upcoming. Save it. Now edit the entry and change the date to the date of your
event, and use the “assign multiple categories” button to assign
it to Upcoming. Save the entry again.

When the event has passed, edit the entry again and remove it from the Upcoming
category.

For automatic expirations using PHP:
Again, two options here. You can have posts expire at a time you set, down
to the second, on the day they take place; or you can have them expire at
the end of the day. (If you don’t really care, go with the second option;
it’s much easier to maintain.)

Option 1: In your template, add this PHP snippet inside your tags: if (time() <= strtotime ("<$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y %I:%M %p”$>”)) { ?> . . (keep your existing code here) . (source: Scriptygoddess) Be sure to change your template’s output file to .php if it wasn’t already. Save and rebuild. Note that because the PHP code compares the time stamps down to the second, you will need to edit the time (not just the date) of your future entries. If you want the entry to scroll off the main page the very minute a deadline has passed (e.g. 5 pm), you will need to set the time to 17:00:00. If you want the entry to remain on the page until the next day, set the time to 23:59:59.

Option 2: In your template, add this PHP snippet inside your tags: $now=date(“Ymd”); $entry=date(“<$MTEntryDate format="%Y%m%d"$>“); if ($now<=$entry) { ?> . . (keep your existing code here) . Be sure to change your template’s output file to .php if it wasn’t already. Save and rebuild. See this thread on the support forum for more details.

Archives will always go from latest to earliest, even if you change the display
order of your posts in your preferences. You can check this
thread for some ways to rearrange your archives using PHP.

Relevant threads on the MT support forum:
Setting
up Exploit Boston

Imitating
Exploit Boston

Dawn’s
calendar

Blog
as events list

[updated Feb. 10, 2003]

Next up: How to display your calendar as a calendar instead of a text listing…