Configuring Search for One or More Weblogs

Problem

You want to enable your system to provide users with search capabilities across one or more weblogs.

Solution

Add configuration directives to mt-config.cgi that are related to the search engine.

Discussion

The MT search engine features a number of configurable options which are maintained in the mt-config.cgi file rather than in a web interface. The search functionality is not tied to a specific weblog, and its configuration is applied system wide.

Because these functions are not tied to a specific weblog and due to...

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Question

When trying to view a page I have chosen to publish dynamically, I get a Smarty error.

Answer

Error message: plugin function smarty_function_MTSomeTag() not found in /path/to/mt/php/lib/function.MTSomeTag.php, where SomeTag is the name of a standard Movable Type Template Tag

Make sure the file (i.e., function.MTSomeTag.php) was uploaded to your server in ASCII mode, and that it is located in the php/lib/ folder in your Movable Type installation directory.

Error message: unrecognized tag MTSomeTag, where SomeTag is the name of a Plugin...

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Installing Movable Type with FTP

Problem

You want to install the Movable Type software using FTP.

Solution

Download an FTP application, uncompress the software onto your desktop and take care of any necessary configuration before uploading.

Discussion

• An FTP (file transfer protocol) program is used to send the files from your computer to your server. If you don't yet have an FTP program, there are many available for free. SmartFTP is a good FTP program for Windows, and offers a free trial version. Transmit is a good FTP program for Mac users on OS X, and it has a free...

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2.0b1 (2002.02.18)

• Lots of changes to the UI: leftnav, topnav, edit-entry screen, new-entry screen, etc. • Blog Editing Menu has now changed greatly to provide space for a welcome message (editable in blog config), blog stats, and links to 5 most recent posts and comments. • Added the ability to do NFS-safe database locking using .lock files and link(). This is not something most people should worry about; if it affects you, it's likely that you will know it. :) Thanks to Kelsey Cummings for ideas and code. • Hold and Release are now Draft and Publish...

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Question

When trying to install Movable Type on GoDaddy, I get a 500 error.

Answer

The 'sbox' software which GoDaddy uses on their servers rewrites the current working directory for all CGI scripts to its own directory. Because of this, Movable Type can't find its own library modules.

To get around this, you will need to edit the first line of all of the *.cgi scripts to look like this: #!/usr/bin/perl -w -I/path/to/mt_dir/lib

where /path/to/mt_dir/lib is the full path to the lib folder in your Movable Type installation directory....

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Handling Submission Errors

Problems

You are using comments and want to handle comment submission errors.

Solutions

Create a Comment Error template with the MTErrorMessage and MTComment tags.

Discussion

Since the comment preview page is dynamically generated (even when using the traditional static publishing model), a special template is needed in the event that an error occurs. For example, if you have disallowed anonymous comments, and the user does not supply a name or email address, you can customize the error page that the user receives using the Comment Error Template....

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While entries make up the content of a weblog and templates control how these entries are displayed, it is the process of publishing that makes a weblog go. Movable Type refers to the process of publishing as rebuilding -- a reference to its static page generation roots. When a rebuild is performed, templates and your content are merged to publish a page that visitors can view in their browsers.

Choosing Between a Static or Dynamic Publishing Model

Movable Type provides the flexibility to choose between either static page generation or dynamic pages to optimize weblog performance on a per-template...

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Question

My activity log reports these errors when trying to send pings, for example: Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: HTTP error: 500 Can't connect to rpc.weblogs.com:80 (connect: timeout).

Answer

If you find that, despite these errors, your ping has been successfully sent to the other site, this most likely means Movable Type simply did not receive back a non-error reply from the recipient server in enough time to conclude the ping was successful.

Try adjusting the PingTimeout directive in mt-config.cgi1.

This setting defaults to 15,...

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Question

Can I pay Six Apart to install Movable Type for me, or upgrade my existing installation to the latest version?

Answer

Yes, we offer these services to those who have purchased a supported version of Movable Type.

Requirements Before We Begin

Please make sure to confirm that your host/server meets the requirements before requesting an installation, as the fee is non-refundable once we begin.

You can view the system requirements and get helpful information on choosing a web host in the Introduction to Installation and Upgrade in the Users Manual....

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A specialized version of MTEntries that is aware of subcategories.

Attributes: • category - The value of this attribute is a category label. This will include any entries to that category and any of its subcategories.

Since it is possible for two categories to have the same label, you can specify one particular category by including its ancestors, separated by slashes. For instance if you have a category "Flies" and within it a subcategory labeled "Fruit", you can ask for that category with category="Flies/Fruit". This would distinguish it from a category labeled "Fruit" within another called "Food...

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After having played with Movable Type and saving all data in the filesystem for a couple of days, it was time to migrate to an SQL database. As a developer for MS SQL Server or Oracle I do know SQL. However, I have never had any experience with MySQL. Although I am not the best man for this job, the installation succeeded.

Installing MySQL

MySQL is a true SQL Server. It is under an Open Source Development and has won rising acceptance in the previous years. It is offered in the so-called "Dual Licensing Model". Suppose you develop an application but you do not want to publish the source code. If you then want to distribute MySQL as part of your own application, you have to...

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Question

I upgraded to 3.2 and updated my Individual Entry Archive template to use the latest default; but I'm getting Javascript errors when viewing those pages and/or there is no comment posting form or sign-in link for TypeKey commenters.

Answer

If you're seeing Javascript errors which say individualArchivesOnLoad is not defined and/or writeTypeKeyGreeting is not defined, then this means Movable Type cannot find the mt-site.js file. This is a new file introduced in version 3.2 which contains all of the Javascript used for commenting, and is...

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Question

I'm getting messages about syntax errors in one or more files.

Answer

Syntax errors are an indication that there was a problem uploading the specified file to your server: either it was not uploaded in ASCII mode, or the file was truncated during transfer.

Upload the file(s) again, making sure to specifically choose an ASCII or plain text transfer mode; and verify that the file size on the server after the upload matches the original file size.

...

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2.51 (2002.10.29)

• Added Windows right-click bookmarklet functionality, where you can use a Post to MT Blog right click option to open the bookmarklet. Thanks to Anil Dash for the code. • Added a generic <MTElse> tag, which can be used to supply an ``else'' condition to any conditional. Thanks to Brad Choate for the code. • Added an <$MTEntryPermalink$> tag, which does the right thing when displaying the link for an entry: if an individual archive, it is not followed by an anchor; otherwise, it is. • When rebuilding files, only rewrite the...

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Question

When I try to create a thumbnail for an uploaded image, I get a 500 error.

Answer

Generally, the reason for an Internal Server Error when thumbnailing is a problem with the Image::Magick Perl module or the ImageMagick binaries themselves.

Movable Type, when thumbnailing, requires the use of not only the ImageMagick libraries, but the Perl module used to interact with those libraries: Image::Magick, also known as PerlMagick.

If there is a problem, generally it is because one of these is missing or incorrectly/incompletely installed....

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Question

When performing various functions in Movable Type, I get errors that include SCALAR reference and/or refer to problems with Serialize.pm.

Answer

These errors are almost certainly an indication of database corruption.

Corruption occurs most often with the Berkeley database. Berkeley is far more susceptible to this, and unfortunately, there are few options for recovery. You will most likely need to reinstall with a fresh database, recreate your weblogs, and import your entries.

When reinstalling, we strongly advise you to choose MySQL as...

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Question

After making some changes to my template, I rebuilt my site, and Movable Type gave me an error saying I used a tag out of context. What does that mean?

Answer

Most Movable Type tags are context-dependent, meaning that they should only be used in the appropriate context. Context is generally determined by either the surrounding template or the surrounding container tags.

For example, since <MTEntryTitle> depends on reading a particular entry in order to return results, it must be placed inside either an MTEntries container, or used...

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Question

My database has been corrupted. Is there any way to avoid losing my data?

Answer

This answer depends a great deal on the level of corruption, the type of backups you have, and how much information is still accessible from within your existing installation (as opposed to being in external files such as the static pages Movable Type has generated from the data).

Does your host maintain backups for your account?

If so, do they have any which would include copies of your database files prior to the time corruption appears to have occurred?...

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3.16 (2005.04.13)

Security

• Made several important improvements with regards to application authentication and security.

Notifications

• Fixed ``Send Notifications'' feature for multiple recipients. • Fixed a bug where comment notifications weren't being sent for some moderated comments.

Error checking

• Improved validation of user input in many places. Leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed from author names, category names, and blog names. None of these can be left blank except for a known issue with editing the...

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Question

If an author is not assigned to any weblogs, or deletes their only weblog, they see this error when trying to access the Weblogs menu: Can't use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 714.

Answer

Applies to Version(s): 3.2

Download this new CMS.pm file, and install it at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm (overwriting the original file).

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