SUMMARY

This plugin facilitates the movement of custom templatesets in Movable Type 4 between instances with the benefit of easy insertion into a code repository system.

The export script exports the instance's full set of templates, including the Global Templates, into a directory of text files, organized per blog per template type, with an info.txt file providing as the index. The export script does not modify an MT instance's templates at all; it only reads from the database.

The import script only modifies live content with the --apply_changes flag. Without that flag, the script prints status messages and any potential errors with the intended import. The import script does not preserve template_id's between environments; it keys off of blog name, template name, and output file.

This plugin only provides command-line tools; it does not extend any user-facing or editorial functionality of Movable Type.

USAGE

Terminology

  STAGING: The MT instance that has the templates you're going to export
  LIVE: The MT instance where you'll import STAGING's templates

Process

1. Deploy the TemplatesToGithub plugin and the github_export_templates.pl and github_import_templates.pl tools to both ALPHA and BETA.

2. Run the export script on the LIVE instance as a backup.

     perl tools/github_export_templates --output_dir=/full/path/to/output/dir
   

3. Check the resulting LIVE files (in that /full/path/to/output/dir path) into your favorite code repository in its own branch.

4. Run the export script on the STAGING instance. Same command as Step #2 but in the Staging environment.

5. Check the resulting STAGING files into your favorite code repository in a different branch than Step #3.

6. If you want to do some diff'ing, use your favorite file-diffing or repo-diffing tools.

7. When you're ready to make those staging template live, you can do any amount of branch merging or tagging; whatever suits your process.

8. TEST OUT an import of templates into the LIVE environment with the following command:

     perl tools/github_import_templates.pl --input_dir=/full/path/to/staging/templates 
   

9. Resolve any errors that happen in Step 8; repeat Step 8 until the script finishes successfully. Errors will be displayed if a template archive existed on STAGING but not LIVE, if a blog existed on STAGING but not LIVE; if a template cannot be found, etc.

10. Execute the template import into the LIVE environment:

     perl tools/github_import_templates.pl --input_dir=/full/path/to/staging/templates --apply_changes
    

11. Revert to the LIVE templates (exported in Step 2) in case of emergency.