I’ve been playing with Movable Type for a few weeks, trying to figure out how to associate uploaded files with individual posts, or even just an automatic way to place new files in a templated directory, and it doesn’t seem to be possible. The main problem appears to be that MT doesn’t really do files: the model is what I call accept and forget, which means it doesn’t care if you accidentally overwrite picture1.jpg uploaded two months ago with picture1.jpg taken today.
I suppose the reason I’m disappointed is partly because I’ve been thinking of MT as a content-management system, when all it is, really, is a weblogging tool–a very capable and flexible one, granted, but still just a tool. Given that Six Apart distribute it, uncrippled, for free, I hardly have a basis for complaining. It will be interesting to see if Movable Type Pro handles this any better, although based on Six Apart’s press about TypePad (features of which will be backported to MT Pro) I suspect it won’t.
Maybe I’ll need to take Tim Bray‘s advice after all: If you’re a programmer and you have a blog… buckle down and write the code yourself.
So apparently great minds think alike. I’m in the opening stages of the same investigation. I think you might have just spilled a little bit of the wind from my sails.