The Activity Log

The Movable Type Activity Log is perhaps one of the most under rating and under utilized features of Movable Type. Virtually every action of interest inside the application is recorded there providing a pretty reliable audit trail for the application, you content and you users.

The Activity Log can also provide a useful source of debugging information. The following section will provide you with the information you need to leverage this resource to help debug and develop your plugin.

Tip: Using the activity log to detect plugin load failure

Commonly a developer will introduce a syntax error into a plugin they are developing without knowing it. When they go to test their plugin their realize that MT is behaving as if their plugin wasn’t even installed.

When Movable Type fails to load a plugin, due to an invalidly formated config.yaml, or to a Perl error in their Plugin.pm file, Movable Type will ignore the plugin and continue operating normally. It will also record in the Activity Log the failure and the reason for the failure.

This often provides developers with the exact information they need to fix their plugin and continue on in their development.