Hybrid News Theme for Movable Type
Hats off the WordPress community and Matt Mullenweg's insistence to promote open source design. Thanks to his philosophy and the courage of designers from the WordPress community, I am able to bring the Hybrid News Theme to Movable Type.
The Hybrid News Theme is the first newspaper theme for the Movable Type platform and enabled users to easily create a newspaper style web site:
If you are looking for the Hybrid News theme for WordPress, please visit their website.
Live Demo
View the live demo.
Download the Beta
This theme requires Movable Type Pro at is relies on custom fields for many of its advanced features.
Bug Reports
This is beta software and is constantly being improved. Please submit bug reports at the following web site:
- Lighthouse Hybrid News Project
- Or submit them via email, making sure to use a descriptive subject header.
Installation
This plugin requires Movable Type Pro. It does not yet work with Movable Type Open Source. It is certainly my intent to support MTOS and Melody, just not at this time.
This plugin is installed just like any other Movable Type Plugin.
You will also need to install the following plugins:
Features
- SEO enhanced:
- Alternate HTML
tags - Google Web Sitemaps
- Google News Sitemaps
- Associate content with official Google News categories
- Alternate HTML
- Front door slideshow of new and interesting content.
- Easily feature content on the front door.
- Easily designate content to your Hybrid News blog.
- Display summaries from each of your site's categories on the front door.
- Pull-down menus for easy site navigation.
- Customizable page navigation.
- Category, Comment and Entry feeds.
- Photo Gallery Support
- Create custom cropped images for placement on the front door, within the slideshow and else.
- Much, much more.
About the Designer
See the Hybrid Theme Community About page.
License
This theme is licensed under the GPLv2.
Excellent Theme! Thanks Byrne!
Where is the installation documentation for this?
This plugin is installed like any other Movable Type plugin. I am sorry I did not include a link - a total oversight on my part.
http://www.majordojo.com/2008/12/the-ultimate-guide-to-installing-movable-type-plugins.php
I've installed it ok, one folder in cgi-bin the other in mt-static, but I get an error, when I try to publish:
Publish error in template 'Main Index (Blog)': Error in <mtinclude> tag: error in module Banner Header: Publish error in template 'Banner Header': Unknown tag found: HybridBannerAdTop
Matthew - please also install the Config Assistant plugin. I will update the documentation above.
Thanks for the help, it's now got this message (sorry to be a pain..)
When I go to publish: Publish error in template 'Stylesheet': Unknown tag found: CustomCSS
which is from this I think: /* My customization are below */ < $mt:CustomCSS$ >
cheers, Matthew
btw. the template looks really good and thanks for putting it 'out there'
Again, sorry. You stumbled upon another prerequisite: Custom CSS. The link has been added to the list of plugins needed for Hybrid News above.
this should be the last one: the css is installed but is not active: http://www.redtoolbox.net/running_news/
no error messages, just a normal publish
It appears that your stylesheet cannot be found:
http://www.redtoolbox.net/mt-static/plugins/HybridNews/css/style.css
Do you need to place your mt-static files into a separate directory for MT to work? Do you know?
Yay! it works, thanks
Oh wait...sorry,
error message:
An error occurred publishing date-based archive 'Monthly20090601000000': Publish error in template 'Monthly Entry Listing': Error in <mtEntries> tag: Error in <mtinclude> tag: error in module Entry Summary: Publish error in template 'Entry Summary': Error in <mtif> tag: Invalid tag EntryFeaturedImage specified.
What version of Movable Type are you running? Open Source or Pro? Hybrid News requires Pro currently. I could work on an MTOS version as well, but it is not ready yet.
Yay for betas!
I have Movable Type Pro version 4.25 with: Community Pack 1.62, Professional Pack 1.3
OK, I tried to install this.
I upgraded my MT Pro install to 4.25 before I did this (was at 4.23). I then installed the CustomCSS & ConfigAssistant. They seem to be installed fine.
However, when I try to go into any of the blogs on this installation, I get a rather strange error. It's actually empty. "An error occurred", but no info came after that! See this:
http://joe.siegler.net/images/mterror.png
Any ideas? I've temporarily disabled the plugins so I can access the rest of my site.
@Dopefish - this issue has been fixed. The bug was with CustomCSS which has been fixed. Please download CustomCSS 0.93.
OK, I unstalled 0.93, and I got further. Got the new test blog started, published the blank site, and I went to post a single entry to see what happened, and got this when I went to publish:
An error occurred publishing date-based archive 'Monthly20090601000000': Publish error in template 'Monthly Entry Listing': Error in <mtEntries> tag: Error in <mtinclude> tag: error in module Entry Summary: Publish error in template 'Entry Summary': Error in <mtif> tag: Invalid tag EntryFeaturedImage specified.
I went to edit the template, and saw this at the top:
One or more errors were found in this template.
I'm guessing it's as simple as adding these two custom fields, but shouldn't the plugin take care of that for me?
OK, I went and added those two custom fields, then I got another error.
An error occurred publishing entry 'Have any reviews?': Publish error in template 'Entry': Error in <mtif> tag: Invalid tag EntryHTMLTitle specified.
Something seems hosed. Any idea?
You are not the only person to report this. Technically these custom fields should be installed automatically when you apply the template set to a blog.
I wonder though - maybe they only get installed when you do a refresh of an existing blog's templates? Not sure why I would think that except to offer a suggestion as to what you might try to get these fields installed for you according to the theme's requirements.
I will be investigating this soon.
Byrne, great theme. I installed version 0.2. I did notice that in my installation and in your live demo, the footer was a little "messed up" compared to the WordPress demo (footer doesn't stretch across, margin at the bottom).
I experimented and found out that if you move the footer-container outside of the container div (but still inside the body-container) it works great. For example, in the Frontdoor index template, if comes before the last div, instead of the next-to-last div, it looks perfect.
Thank you so much Michael! I had been struggling with that one. Keeping track of all the divs was making my brain hurt. So I gave up hoping a kind soul like you would figure it out. I just released 0.3 and also updated the list of prerequisites to make it clear that Config Assistant 1.01 is required.
Byrne, thanks so much for the awesome theme! Is this the right forum for bug reports, or is there a more official venue?
The 0.3 version tries to link in "/mt-static/plugins/HybridNews/css/cleaner-gallery.css?ver=0.5", but that file is not in the 0.3 package. Just started playing with it minutes ago so not sure what that affects, but there you are.
Can you provide any insight on replacing the test blog name with a custom (graphic) header?
To all Hybrid News beta testers: I wanted to let you all know that I fixed a critical bug in the theme that many of you reported, having to do with unrecognized template tags. This has been fixed in version 0.4 of the plugin, which is now available for download.
Hello from Mexico
Can i install this theme in Movable Type Open Source? Or only in MT Pro? Do you know where can i find news or magazine themes for MT OS?
Thanks
Right now this theme requires MTPro, but I can begin work on a fully open source version soon -- once the MT Pro one is complete.
Still getting that bug, and I've got version 0.4. Help? How can I fix this?
Can you at least say what "type" of custom fields each is supposed to be, so that I can fix this myself?
As in... Are they all "Entry" fields? And are they of type 'image,' 'textbox,' etc...?
To everyone subscribed to the post, I want to let you know that I just released Hybrid News Beta 0.5. Please pay attention to the prereqs: Order and Image Cropper.
This plugin does not yet work with MT 4.3 (due to bugs in MT). I have reported bugs to Six Apart which will hopefully be addressed soon.
As a reminder, this plugin requires MT Pro.
New features in this release include a new Hybrid News Photo Gallery theme. A demo will be posted soon.
You should also add to requiments ImageMagic.
Truly, I can't thank you enough for working on this! My husband is a high school newspaper adviser and he has been wanting me to develop a newspaper website where all the students need to do is write articles, take photos and post them. Well, I have four children 5 years old and younger. Needless to say, my days of being able to spend hours on end working on some web project are behind me (for a time at least). I am beyond elated to see this!
However, when I tried to download the current beta version the file couldn't be found at this address: http://www.majordojo.com/projects/downloads/HybridNews-0.5.zip
Let me know when/where I can download it and I will (I've subscribed to the comments). Thanks.
Thanks for fixing the link. :)
What exact version of MT are you running the demo off of? I've run HN on 4.3 (before I realized you already said it didn't work in 4.3), 4.2 and 4.23, but I haven't been able to get it to work in any of them. It worked best in 4.3, but I couldn't get the images to associate with the entry (but everything else showed up fine). I went back and re-read this entry and duh you already said it doesn't work with 4.3. Ok, so I downgraded to 4.2 (which was my previous install--I didn't have any real entries in my database, so I just deleted it and made a new one to avoid any weirdness with downgrading). Same thing with 4.23 (I had a copy on my computer). So, with both 4.2 and 4.23 it's not creating the custom fields. I've been looking for a download of 4.24, 4.25 or 4.26, but haven't been able to find one. Any suggestions?
I decided to go back to my 4.3 installation and look up exactly what custom fields were installed, take screen shots, then go back to my 4.23 install and manually enter the fields. That seemed to go fine (except I wasn't sure what System Object to put for Bio, there is none listed. I decided to guess Page), however when I tried to publish I still got this error:
An error occurred publishing date-based archive 'Monthly20090801000000': Publish error in template 'Monthly Entry Listing': Error in tag: error in module Banner Header: Publish error in template 'Banner Header': Error in tag: Couldn't get Monthly archive listI'd love to try out this plugin with MT 4.24, 4.25 or 4.26 if anyone knows where I can download a copy.
FYI, this theme doesn't pick up the automatic localization of template names by MT: e.g. if you create the blog in French, the name of the "HTML Head" template becomes "En-tête HTML", and the build will fail.
(P.S. and no, I haven't forgotten about the French translations of your plugins, just haven't got the time ;-).
I get a " at line 31 is unrecognized." on the dynamic error template.
sorry, the tag was eaten, it's: mt:cnwidgetset
Thanks François, v0.5.1 has been released!
Hi,
Thanks for such a great theme However, there is a slight problem when I try to use search with theme. It takes me to the page 'invalid login account'
This problem can also be seen in the demo site that you have set up. I guess it requires the user to be logged in to be able to use the search. Also, if one is logged in and then tries to search, its hows the search template but without any content.
I would really appreciate if you suggest a fix to this problem.
Thanks and Regards, Loveleen
I have installed Movable Type Pro version 4.3-en. I installed the four plugins that are required for Hybrid News.
* Config Assistant 1.01. * Custom CSS * Order 1.0 * Image Cropper 1.0
When I go to "System Overview" in the admin section, I can see the there and they are enabled. I am not sure if there is something else that I need to do here. If I do have this installed correctly, How do I activate the Hybrid News Plugin?
I only see one addition on the NavBar under Preferences that says "Thumbnail Prototypes".
I get one error but I was getting this even before I installed the plugins. "Image::Magick is either not present on your server or incorrectly configured. Due to that, you will not be able to use Movable Type's userpics feature. If you wish to use that feature, please install Image::Magick or use an alternative image driver."
Not sure if this have some effects on this or not.
Can you help please? Thank, Brian
I'm having a similar issue as the guy above. I've installed Hybrid News and all associated plugins. Under System Overview I see all the plugins installed and enabled. Now, how do I apply the theme? Please be as specific/detailed as possible.
1) Apply to existing blog: Design -> Templates Refresh Blog Templates -> Apply a new template Set (remember to backup your existing templates)
or
2) Create new blog: System overview -> Blogs Create new blog Choose Hybrid theme (Template set)
These issues were mentioned by other subscribers above, however, I have not seen a resolution to the following:
An error occurred publishing date-based archive 'Monthly20090801000000': Publish error in template 'Monthly Photo Listing': Error in <mtwidgetset> tag: Error in <mtinclude> tag: error in widget Albums: Publish error in template 'Albums': Error in <mtIfArchiveTypeEnabled> tag: Unknown tag found: Order
What is the fix for this?
Lastly, and I didn't see this one mentioned yet, where is that video pic of the day coming from, lol? Because I didn't put that there!
Okay, everything was working perfectly. I figured out all of the above, and then a few hours later I got a message that there was a necessary update for Hybrid News. The update had to be run, there was no option not to run it. Now all of the sudden my site has disappeared. When I click on any of the Hybrid News templates under Design > Templates, there is nothing there. What has happened here, and what's the fix?
Just instaled Hybrid news with all prereq & also create new "blog" by setting "New Hybrid News" But this doesn't work for me? When I'll try to add new Entry get error: "Publish error: Publish error in template 'Entry': Error in <mtif> tag: Invalid tag EntryHTMLTitle specified. "
So look for template "ENTRY" i see this error: " * at line 3 is unrecognized. * at line 45 is unrecognized."
What can I do to fix that?
(sorry, the tag was eaten...) It's says: -MTEntryHTMLTitle- at line 3 is unrecognized -mt:AuthorBio- at line 45 is unrecognized
OK. I made it! :) Transfer file's again from backup and instal again and it works now. But have another question. How you make that image is in SLIDER. May be it's very simple but I don't know how to do it... Btw.I'm beginner on Movable.
Byrne, nice work. MT needs more sophisticated theme options. WordPress kills us in this regard.
A few observations installing in MT 4.25 Pro:
1) The Theme Options are not being stored in the data base. I manually modified the templates to hard code those absolutely necessary to get this to work. For grins, I also installed HybridNews in MT 4.3 Pro and observed the same problem.
2) Entering and storing a Bio in my author record throws an error (I didn't capture it). I deleted the bio custom field and re-created it and the error went away. ????
3) This test in EntrySummary template mt:ifnonempty tag="EntryFeaturedImage always fails and no slider is displayed. I mt:Ignored the test and it works fine.
4) This code
throws this error when publishing the front door template:
I changed to one word categories and it worked fine. An MT bug for sure.
5) The template Global Variables is included in the package but has nothing to do with HybridNews (it appears to be for Chicago Now). Confusing.
6) Since the CustomCSS plugin is required, I was expecting some of your custom CSS code with the package. Is there supposed to be some? I added my own. Nice feature.
7) For those wondering where the top header navigation is ... create an about page (or any other page) with the tag=@topnav and the nav magically appears.
8) For those wondering why their entries don't show up in the Blog ... add the tag @blog to the entry.
9) To get an entry to appear in the slider with or without a featured image, add the tag @slideshow to the entry.
The result of this implementation can be seen here: http://bigmtblogs.info/.
Finally, I see MT 4.31 was released. Any chance your bug reports were addressed so we can use 4.3x?
Thanks again for the work. Congrats on joining endevver!!
I found the culprit in 2. above: If I navigate from Edit Custom CSS on the UI to System Overview I get this message:
The path to System Overview from Edit Custom CSS is
http://bigmtblogs.info/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi?blogid=0&mode=customcssedit&blogid=1
This part: &_mode=customcssedit&blogid=1 is undefined in System Overview.
I was getting the same error when trying to update Bio on my author record before I deleted the custom field and added a new one.
I also discovered that adding Custom CSS is not effective since it appears to be evaluated before the statements in the many child css files being included. Adding !Important to every custom style works but is a royal pain. I suppose a solution would be to find all the @import statements and be sure they are included first in the MT stylesheet template before the
On a final note, clicking sign out on a comment form throws a 404 File Not Found Error.
I hope these discoveries are helpful. Regards
Did a clean install of MT 4.5 Pro and many of the issues are now resolved.
1) Still does not work. Waiting for guidance from Byrne. 2) Not sure the new install fixes this since I recreated the Custom Field for Bio 3) I actually like it this way ... no need to have a Featured Image for a Featured Entry to show up in the slider. 4) There is a fix for this at Movable Type 5) Just ignore it or delete the Global Variables template 6) See discussion of CSS below 7), 8) &9) Just info for anyone needing further guidance.
The error in my last reply is awaiting a fix from Byrne. Just don't navigate to System Overview from Edit Custom CSS.
Sign out is OK since the clean install.
CSS for Hybrid News Lite Finally, I modified the CSS to take the "heaviness" out of the Theme. I call it Hybrid News Lite. See it here: The Providence Gazzette. It also has a new Follow the Gazzette Widget with RSS, RSS Comments, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter icons with links. If anyone would like the Custom CSS which includes the widget code, you can download it as a text file from the home page of the Gazzette. Just copy and paste it into your Edit Custom CSS screen and save. Obviously, if you want the widget, copy it out of the file, create a widget with a name of ypur choosing and use the Widget Manager to place it where you want it in the sidebar.
Enjoy!!
Byrne, 0.5.2 has the wrong files assembled and does not include SUB. Merv
OOPS. Wrong conclusion. Theme files are fine! Too much mojo juice.
I did find the update to ConfigAssistant (1.3.3). Now the Theme Options work!!
Thanks. Again, a great theme. I'm still working on the CSS. Very willing to give back if you would like my fixes and modifications.
Merv
I want to install the Hybrid theme but since I have had problems with other plugins I'd thought I'd check in here first. My host is pair.com. They install and maintain MT Commercial 4.25 with Professional Pack 1.3. That means the $MTHome is I don't know where it is. $MTstatic is available. If I don't have access to $MT_Home which your instructions call for, how do I proceed with installation? (I have tried installing Addthis, which their tech support says simply FTP to plugins folder but MT is not finding it. (Addthis are apparently still scratching their heads over this problem)
I also have two blogs, one I guess I would call it the root is where I initially want to use the Hybrid, but there is also a second blog that works off the first and I had to get Pair.com to put some special "symbolic link" so MT could find the second blog. Eventually if the hybrid works on the first blog, I want to use the hybrid on that one as well. thanks Robin
An update. With Pair's help desk I found out that the equivalent of MT_Home is in cgi-bin is managed-mt. Does the Hybrid theme work with Manged-Mt? Assuming it does, I have installed the files as instructed (as far as I can tell). The Mt-static is found under what I call my root blog, Taoofnews. It is the same path level as cgibin. so I have cgi-bin/managed-mt and taoofnews/mt-static Are the Mt-Static files supposed to be there? or do I create a new Mt-atatic for this under manged-nt? The trouble seems to be an assumption that everyone is highly experienced with MT and while I like the Hybrid theme much better than those available from MT, this possible assumption means I don't really know what I am looking for. (For example is Hybrid supposed to be available in the Styles menu or is it coded through the templates) thanks
Byrne, just a quick question. I'm running MT Pro 5 RC1 (will upgrade to 2 later today). I have the same issue as one of the commenters noted earlier about not being able to save the configuration and I also hard-coded what I needed in the templates but there is one thing that has stumped me so far.
I've added a couple of ads, one in the banner header and one in a sidebar widget and I can't for the life of me get them to actually show up. They are registering hits which is nice but obviously the advertisers are going to want their stuff to show up. I use Sixapart's Adify so it's all javascript. Is there something in one of the other templates I need to change in order to get the stuff to show up correctly? If I add it in prior to the includes such as at the top or bottom of the page they do show up.
I've just set up MT 5.1 and the Hybrid News theme is installing beautifully (although with would be interested in checking out the Hybrid News Theme as a Website Theme, but not just a blog theme under the new hierarchy. I tried to add a 'class: both' to the config.yaml, but that didn't make any difference. As the official new themes have a theme.yaml file, I was wondering if that was needed to be able to use the Hybrid News theme on a Website.
Do you think there is any possibility of implementing that?
It is absolutely possible. However, while I hope to upgrade all of my plugins and themes to MT5, I do not currently have time scheduled to do so.
If you take on the project to do so - it would be great if you could submit the changes back to me!
I just installed the latest Hybrid News in my MT5 site. I was able to publish the site without an entry. However, when I wrote an entry and tried to publish it, I got the following message:
I've upgraded a movable type v3.33 installation to v4.33, then loaded your Hybrid News template and integrated some items from the client old interface to the new theme.
Your did an excellent job with this theme, thank you!
Something weird I've noticed is that the monthly archive pages generated by the 'Monthly Entry Listing' doesn't include any entry...
Anybody else noticing this issue?
I can't seem to get the "Remember Me" to work on our installation. It's on MT 4.34 and we've got everything else going fine, just one last stumbling block. Any ideas?