This post is a reminder/bookmark for myself and anyone else on how to customize a StyleCatcher theme in Movable Type without losing the ability to use the original theme in the future.
Background: Movable Type has an great plugin called Stylecatcher that makes it easy to install new CSS-based themes on your blog. StyleCatcher installs these themes in a directory in mt-static:
mt-static/support/themes/<theme-name\>/
I started this blog on Byrne Reese’s excellent port of Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme. And I originally started editing these files (particularly the cutline.css file) as part of my customization process. After having some problems with the code, I decided to setup another test blog and apply the original Cutline theme for comparison.
When I went to do so, I realized that I only had the one local copy of the theme. So after some fiddling around, i realized that there’s an easy way to have your cake and eat it too.
Long story long
- Copy the
<theme-name\>directory and give it a new name (mine is nowmonkinetic-x) - Rename the CSS file inside to match.
- Edit the meta data in the comments at the top of the CSS file:
/*
A theme adapted by Steve Ivy from the theme adapted by Byrne Reese from the original Cutline theme by Chris Pearson
name: Monkinetic X
designer: Steve Ivy, based on Cutline by Chris Pearson
layouts: layout-wt, layout-tw
*/
Now the theme will appear in the “Saved Themes” section of the StyleCatcher, and you can use the original theme as a backup in case you (like me) break something. Good luck!
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