Setting up Moveable Type

Movable Type is Six Apart's powerful, customizable publishing system which installs on web servers to enable individuals or organizations to manage and update weblogs, journals, and frequently-updated website content.

Dollarhost Demo: http://weblog.samplesite.biz

This tutorial will guide you through the Movable Type setup and installation process on our servers. It is assumed that your account has support for PHP and MySQL database and that you have already created your database.

Part A - Downloading the Script

The script can be downloaded from the Movable Type website at http://www.movabletype.org/download.shtml. (Please select the Full Version with Libraries)

The file that you will download is a compressed bundle containing the files of the Movable Type distribution. Unpack this archive in a temporary directory on your computer using a decompression software.

Part B - Movable Type (mt.cfg) Configuration

Before you begin Part B, please ensure that you have created your MySQL database on your web server via your Site Administration Panel. View the database creation tutorial.

If your MySQL database is already created, you are ready to begin the Movable Type configuration process.

First locate the mt.cfg in the Movable Type files that you have unpacked and open the file in a text editor.

Change line 14 from:

CGIPath http://WWW.YOUR-SITE.COM/PATH/TO/MT/

Change to:

CGIPath http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mt/

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

Put a "#" sign at the beginning of line 22.

# DataSource ./db

Insert the following lines after this line (#DataSource ./db):

ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database yourdomain_com_-_db
DBUser Admin ID
DBHost 127.0.0.1

(Replace yourdomain_com_-_db with your database name and replace Admin ID with your Dollarhost Admin ID.)

Change line 35 from:

# StaticWebPath /path/to/static-files/

Change to:

StaticWebPath http://www.yourdomain.com/mt/

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

Save and exit mt.cfg.

Part C - Setting your MySQL Database Password

Open the file mt-db-pass.cgi in a text editor and change the database password by replacing database_password with your MySQL database password.

Then save the mt-db-pass.cgi file, and exit the text editor.

Part D - Uploading Files to Server

Start your FTP software and after connecting to your web server, in your HTML root folder /var/www/html/, create the folder /mt. In the /var/www/html/mt/ folder, create the folder /archives.

Change directory to /var/www/html/mt and change the permissions of the weblog archives folder to 7-7-7 or:

• Owner: Allow Read, Write, and Execute
• Group: Allow Read, Write, and Execute
• Others: Allow Read, Write, and Execute

From your Moveable Type unpacked files, upload the /images folder using Binary transfer mode. Then upload the /docs folder and the styles.css file to the /var/www/html/mt/ folder using ASCII transfer mode.

Change directory to /var/www/cgi-bin (your cgi-bin folder) and create a folder called /mt. Upload all the other files to /var/www/cgi-bin/mt/ using ASCII mode excluding the /docs and /images folders and styles.css file.

Set the file permissions of all CGI scripts (files with .cgi extension) to 7-5-5 or:

• Owner: Allow Read, Write, and Execute
• Group: Allow Read and Execute
• Others: Allow Read and Execute

To change file permissions using CuteFTP, select the file by clicking on it once on the remote system side and then right-click on the file to bring up the option menu and select CHMOD.

Part E - Checking Perl Modules and Initializing the MT System

Using your web browser, access the mt-check.cgi file to initiate the script to check the Perl modules on your server. Enter the web address as http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-check.cgi.

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

The script should confirm that your web server has all of the required modules and that you are not required to install any additional modules.

Using your web browser, access the mt-load.cgi file to initiate the script to initiate your Movable Type system. Enter the web address as http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-load.cgi.

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

The script should confirm that initial data has been loaded and will display 'All went well. FAILURE TO DELETE mt-load.cgi...'

Using your FTP software, delete the mt-load.cgi file from your server. The file is located in the /var/www/cgi-bin/mt/ folder.

Part F - Configuring and Running Movable Type

To access the Movable Type administration interface, access the mt.cgi file using your browser. Enter the web address as http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi. Login using the default user name Melody and the default password Nelson.

The first thing to do is to change your user name and password. To do so, click EDIT YOUR PROFILE and assign a new user name and password.

To configure the correct paths for your Weblog, click the default Weblog called FIRST WEBLOG.

Click WEBLOG CONFIG in the Manage menu.

Change the Local Site Path to: /var/www/html/mt
       Change Site URL to: http://www.yourdomain.com/mt/

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

Change Local Archive Path to: /var/www/html/mt/archives
       Change Archive URL to: http://www.yourdomain.com/mt/archives/

(Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.)

Click Save and click REBUILD link to reflect the new changes.

Now you can being to configure your preferences for your Movable Type Weblog. The default First Weblog already exists in the system and will help to give you a head start in setting up your first weblog in Movable Type. The weblog comes with some pre-made templates; of course you can edit or delete these templates and to use them as a starting point to customize and create your own.

That's it! You're now ready to start posting entries to your new Weblog!