Retrofit Your MT3.x Templates With New MT4 Comments

I know this is kind of weird to post this here on Vox, but I didn't see this posted anywhere else and it wasn't exactly obvious for me to figure out. So, I hope this helps someone else.

Ok, so you just upgraded your Movable Type blog to MT4. You were using pretty much default MT3.x templates (especially the comments code). You're happy with how you blog looks and aren't really interested in overhauling your templates, but you would really like to make use of the new MT4 commenting features. Here's how I did it:

Create a New Blog for parts*

• put it somewhere like yoursite.com/test/ -- do not build it over your old blog
• really, you don't even need to publish it and you can delete it later
• below when I tell you to "Create template X" you will go to this blog to copy that template

• Add the following line (modified with your info):
• CaptchaSourceImageBase [absolute path to]/mt-static/images/captcha-source
• Example:   CaptchaSourceImageBase /home/melody/www/www/mt-static/images/captcha-source

• Your (old) Blog > Blog Settings > Comments > CAPTCHA Provider > Movable Type default > Save Changes
• Your (old) Blog > Blog Settings > Registration > [check boxes & save]

• JavaScript

• Comment Detail
• Comment Form
• Comments

Remove from Head

• <script type="text/javascript" src="<$MTBlogURL$>mt-site.js"></script>

• <script type="text/javascript" src="<$MTLink template="javascript"$>"></script>

• [all commenting code from <MTIfCommentsActive> to </MTIfCommentsActive>]

• <$MTInclude module="Comments"$>

Save & Publish

*I know you can "Refresh Templates" but I think it much cleaner to harvest parts, especially if you only want to update the comments.