Content Management

SmartBody Plugin

2 Jul 2002

MTSmartBody is a Movable Type plugin that inserts a post’s excerpt if it has one and the post’s body if it doesn’t.

A bonus tag included with MTSmartBody is the container tag MTEntryIfExcerpt. The contents of this tag will be displayed if an entry has an excerpt.

Why would you want such a thing? It’s a useful replacement to auto-generated excerpts. In your RSS file or your main index template, it would be nice to display the excerpt if you wrote one, but you’d rather not see a truncated copy of your post used if you don’t have an excerpt.

Tim Appnel has taken over the maintenance and support of this plugin as of Oct 2004.

Download

You can get SmartBody by downloading SmartBody.zip.

Installation. Once you’ve downloaded and unzipped SmartBody.zip, connect to your FTP server and open the directory where you have Movable Type installed.

Create a directory there called plugins if there isn’t one already.

Copy SmartBody.pl to the plugins directory and set the permissions to 755.

Using MTSmartBody

Once you’ve installed MTSmartBody, using it is as simple as placing a new Movable Type tag in your template.

The <MTEntrySmartBody> and <MTEntryIfExcerpt></MTEntryIfExcerpt> tags go between the <MTEntries></MTEntries> tags. MTSmartBody will check to see if an entry has an excerpt and insert it if it does, or insert the body if it doesn’t.

MTEntryIfExcerpt will also check to see if an entry has an excerpt and insert the contents of the tag if it does.

Example:

<MTEntries> 
	<MTEntrySmartBody> 
	<MTEntryIfExcerpt>
	<br><a href="<$MTEntryLink$>">Read more...</a>
	</MTEntryIfExcerpt>
</MTEntries>

License. Like our other freeware, this plugin is released under the open-source MIT License. In plain English, that means you can do whatever you want with the software, including modifying it, selling it, or eating it, but we’re not responsible for anything that goes wrong.

Revision History

1.0 - July 2, 2002
Initial release.

Recently Written

Your OKR Cascade is Breaking Your Strategy

Aug 1: Most companies cascade OKRs down their org chart thinking it creates alignment. Instead, it fragments strategy and marginalizes supporting teams. Here's what works better than the waterfall approach.

Your Prioritization Problem Is a Strategy Problem

Jul 23: Most teams struggle with prioritization because they're trying to optimize for everything at once. The real problem isn't having too many options—it's not having a clear strategy to choose between them. Without strategy, every decision feels equally important. With strategy, most decisions become obvious.

Behind schedule

Jul 21: Your team is 6 weeks late and still missing features. The solution isn't working harder—it's accepting that your deadlines were fake all along. Ship what you have. Cut ruthlessly. Stop letting "one more day" turn into one more month.

VC’s Future Lies In Building Winners

Jun 21: AI and megafunds are about to kill the traditional venture model, forcing smaller VCs to stop hunting for hidden gems and start rolling up their sleeves to fix broken companies instead.

Should individual people have OKRs?

May 14: A good OKR describes and measures an outcome, but it can be challenging to create an outcome-focused OKR for an individual.

10 OKR traps and how to avoid them

May 8: I’ve helped lots of teams implement OKRs or fix a broken OKR process. Here are the 10 most common problems I see, and what to do instead.

AI is Smart, But Wisdom Requires Judgement

May 3: AI can process data at lightning speed, but wisdom comes from human judgment—picking the best imperfect option when facts alone don’t point the way.

Decoding Product Leadership Titles

Mar 18: Not all product leadership titles mean what they sound like. ‘Head of Product’ can mean anything from a senior PM to a true VP. Here’s how to tell the difference.