Cyril Dangerville

In his presentation in Fall, Tony Piazza said we should experiment with the blogs. Therefore, failing to be a prolific blogger, I have played with the stylesheets and the templates of my blog. Not much, but I tried a few things. In particular, I was having a hard time to upload all the files coming with a stylesheet (images, scripts, etc.), since you can upload only one file at a time with the Upload file option in Movable Type (MT). So I figured out this StyleCatcher plugin featured on MT's Style Sheets & Templates page could be useful after all. In fact, the setup of the plugin was not thoroughly straightforward. (If you want an idea of the trouble this caused to people, look at blogs like Movable Type StyleCatcher: Broken Broken Broken.) In short, it is great, but it doesn’t work… unless you work at it. But I could install it on our CICSWORLD.ORG, it works and you can play with it. Instructions follow…

[I will use theme and style interchangeably here.]
Movable Type has a short how-to for StyleCatcher users, but I don’t like it (vague on some points and only gives one way to use it, which is not my favorite).

You do it in 3 steps : find StyleCatcher, select a style/theme, apply it to your blog.

Step 1: Find StyleCatcher

From the main menu page (where you arrive just after you log in to maintain your CICS blog), click on Templates. At the bottom, under Plugin actions, click on Select a Design using StyleCatcher.

Step 2: Select a style

In the text box, you can enter the URL to (2 cases):

1. Any styles repository for MT 3.2 that you have found on the web. The default URL is the MT (3.2) styles library whose hyperlink is given just above the text box, in case you want to browse them on your own.
2. The URL to the stylesheet (file with extension « .css ») you want to apply. Example: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/styles/bold_palettes/theme-forest_green/theme-forest_green.css

Click on Find style . In case 1, StyleCatcher will give you the list of styles found on the repository with a short description and a preview. Now, select a category on the left. If you already used StyleCatcher on the server and used it to apply a design at least once, you may view 2 categories: one for your current theme, and another for your locally saved themes, so that if you already used a theme, they are made available locally for future use, once and for all. In case 2, StyleCatcher will give you only one style obviously, the one matching the URL (to the CSS file) you entered. Select the theme on the right side where you see all the nice previews.

Step 3: Apply the style to your blog

N.B. : If you are afraid to lose your current style when you apply the new one, be aware that StyleCatcher creates a backup of it in your templates, so that you can restore it via the Templates page.

Click on Choose this Design at the bottom. If you did not select any theme, you will get a message telling you to do it. Otherwise,

that’s it. You are done, go to your blog (you may have to refresh the page) and see for yourself.

Any question or issue is welcome.
Last but no least, if you are not happy with the MT themes you find, you can make your own one with the Style Generator. Experiment! Moreover, when you use StyleCatcher to apply a new theme to your blog, it is made available to everyone else. (Well, there is an additional tweak to make that happen though.)

Posted by Cyril Dangerville at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)