Al-Muhajabah's Movable Type Tips

By using the MTCgi plugin, you can get mt-search.cgi to remember the search parameters that were last passed to it.

MTCgi not only inserts the search parameters back into the search form for the next search, it also makes them available through the <MTCgiParamValue> tag for use in your template. With a little help from the Compare plugin, you can tailor your search template to reflect what the person was looking for. For instance, if the person began their search from your blog index page, the blog's ID number will be passed as a parameter (IncludeBlogs) and the next search will also be in that blog. You can use the <MTIfEqual> tags to display a message only if the value of the IncludeBlogs parameter matches the ID of a certain blog. Or you might want to display a message for searches of all blogs but one; use <MTIfNotEqual>.

There's also the Limit Search to a Particular Category hack. Combining this with MTCgi and Compare allows a high degree of customization of a single search template.

You can view my default search template by going to my templates page and scrolling to the bottom. You can see it in action by accessing my MT search from various of my blogs and blog pages. Depending on where you came from, it will display different messages and allow you different options.