Related Entries in Movable Type

If you have been a frequent reader of this blog, you might notice that I am now listing top 4 entries that could possibly be related to that particular entry. At this point a strategically placed small font header which reads "Possibly Related" would likely help my readers. When I made changes to my individual entry archive template, I neglected to add this useful header. Will get to this sometime this week. *Sigh* I digress.

Anyway, I am not using any special plug-in aside from the Brad Choate's venerable mtsql plug-in, which simply creates a means to extract or parse data from a mySQL relational database. Sorry postgres folks, I've not seen plug-in for anything but mySQL. Though, I imagine it would be possible to do the same.

Basically, you must setup a full text index within your movabletype relational database. Chad Everett also wrote a very helpful blog entry on this topic. In fact my index query was similar to this one..

ALTER TABLE mt_entry ADD FULLTEXT ( entry_title, entry_text, entry_text_more );

The MT mark-up language allows you to essentially data mine your previous entries and display them under the body of all new blog entry. That is provided that you modify the appropriate movabletype design templates. Apparently, I'll need to modify additional main index template in addition to the individual entry archive.

Because I have been blogging for nearly 7yrs, I have amassed quite a bit of content.
It is not easy to search for entries of interest. So, why not aid the reader in this process?
When I rebuilt my blog early last year, I removed several of the helpful stuff from the my main index template (ie netcast/podcast RSS Feeds, Flickr URL, and much of the other social network links) and in retrospect it probably was a mistake. So, this too will be restored quite soon.

Unfortunately, as I peruse my archives I see that the results are all over the map. Not sure why the quality of these so-called related entries are not consistently relevant.
My relational database full-context query consisted of keywords, entry title, extended entry text, entry text. I will eventually discover a way to add the tags which I have been using for quite sometime. I'll need to peruse my MT database fields to determine how movable type references this "tags" field. I'm clear that this information should also be in my full text index too.