Running Movable Type With mod_perl

Problem

You want to improve the performance of Movable Type by eliminating the overhead of CGI.

Solution

Run Movable Type under mod_perl 1.x.

Discussion

mod_perl embeds a Perl interpreter into the Apache server, so that dynamic content produced by Perl scripts can be served in response to incoming requests, without the significant overhead of re-launching the Perl interpreter for each request.

Movable Type can run under mod_perl 1.x in either Registry mode or as a set of full-fledged handlers. Note that in order to run under mod_perl, you must...

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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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With broad platform integration of all the leading open standards, Movable Type has the potential to do much more, given additional expertise and knowledge on the user's part.

This chapters covers some of the more advanced features in addition to providing a starting point for more advanced topics not covered in this publication.

Architectural Overview

Movable Type is written in a highly modular Perl object-oriented style with an open code base (it's not open source -- an important distinction) that makes the browser-based tool quite flexible and easily modifiable, allowing it to adapt to any number of...

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2.5 (2002.10.08)

• Localization: the MT interface can be available in multiple languages, on a per-author setting. • Integrated Jay Allen's mt-search (Thanks, Jay!). We've made the following changes from version 1.31b: • Rewrote ``new comments search'' to make it more scalable (using recently_commented_on functionality) • Added a search log through the Activity Log. • Added search request throttling, to help against denial of service attacks. • Merged mt-search.cfg directives into mt.cfg....

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This section of the appendix details all configuration directives that can be defined in mt-config.cgi. Through use of these directives, you can control numerous aspects of the system.

Except for those which define things specific to your system (e.g. CGIPath and your database settings), all of them have defaults set by Movable Type. This means that not every directive will appear in mt-config.cgi. If you wish to override the default for a setting which does not appear in the file, simply add it and the desired value to your mt-config.cgi.

...

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3.2 (2005.08.25)

Major Features

• New dead-simple AJAX-powered installation/upgrade process (see screencast demo) which replaces mt-load.cgi and all mt-upgrade* scripts. Also eliminated the upgrade distribution since only the config file would be different. • Combined mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi into mt-config.cgi. Shipping as mt-config.cgi-original so as to prevent overwriting when upgrading. • Introduced the new System Overview section which allows administrators to configure and manage aspects of the system across all weblogs • Introduced a plugin-based feedback rating framework which scores comments and TrackBacks upon submission on a scale from -10 (least desirable) to 10 (most desirable)...

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•

01: Installation and Upgrade

• Introduction • Choosing the Right Weblog Platform • Finding Perl on your Server...

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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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2.1 (2002.05.02)

• Added webMaster, language, lastBuildDate, and pubDate to both RSS templates. • Added encode_html="1" to all RSS fields that didn't have it already. • Added Norwegian dates. • Added test for mt-check.cgi to determine whether we are running under cgiwrap or suexec. • Added a new global tag attribute encode_url (thanks to Scott Andrew LePera and others for the idea). • Changed the behavior of the publish flag in blogger.newPost; previously, if set to false the new entry would be saved as a draft. This was a bad idea, for...

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01.21.2002

MT 2.0

Development on MT version 2.0 is going smoothly and we're looking at a early March release. Can you believe it's almost February?

A list of definite 2.0 features: • Multiple category support: The ability to assign multiple categories per entry • Multiple archive template per archive type • Interface modifications, application navigation and icon improvements based on findings from professional usability testing • Power edit screen: Apply title, category or author changes to multiple entries -- using one screen and all at once • More sorting options for the MTEntries tag: alphabetical by title, most recently commented-on, ascending and...

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Question

In Internet Explorer, I see odd errors at the top of the login screen regarding Pragma no-cache, and after signing in, I keep getting returned to the login screen. In Firefox, I'm unable to log in at all, because I see the HTML for the login screen.

Answer

The appearance of these messages on the screens usually means the CGI handler on the server is not set up to deal properly with Pragma no-cache headers. So you'll need to check with your host to see if their CGI handler is configured properly for these headers.

For those running under...

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Question

When running any of the Movable Type CGI scripts, I receive an error that says Can't locate Some/File.pm in @INC (where Some/File.pm is the name of a particular file).

Answer

• Run mt-check.cgi to ensure that all of the Perl modules required for Movable Type usage are installed on your webserver. If they are not, follow the instructions in the Installation Documentation. • Check to make sure that in the directory containing your CGI files (for example, mt.cgi), there is a directory called lib; inside that the file in the error message (for...

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• Initial beta release

Back to top | Permalink | Comments (0)

0.02 (2001.09.25)

• Added FTP URLs to installation instructions. (Daniel Talsky) • Fix some warnings. (Caroline van Oosten de Boer)...

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2.6 (2003.02.13)

• Added Text Formatting options. Instead of a simple Convert Line Breaks checkbox, you can now set a different formatting option for each entry. Plugins can add new options to the Text Formatting menu, which allows for greater integration with the formatting within the system (for example, Text Formatting will be applied on the preview screen). • Added PostgreSQL and SQLite database drivers. • Incorporated Brad Choate's Sanitize plugin, adding an mt.cfg setting for a global default and a per-blog setting to override it. Sanitize is turned on...

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I've finally finished up with MT-Notifier version 2 (technically, 2.0.1). There aren't a whole lot of changes on the surface, but it should be faster and it has been upgraded to work with the Movable Type 3.0D interface. I've greatly enhanced the management functions for both administrators and users. I've also pulled the email notification out into a template, for those of you who want to muck with it but don't like changing the code.

This release includes an upgrade facility from v1.4.0 subscriptions, and also includes the Scripty Goddess conversion piece. I'm working on a conversion for EZ Subscribe to Comments, but I haven't had a chance to finish it up yet. It should be done...

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SearchScript

By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic weblog view script is called mt-view.cgi. In some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code...

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ViewScript

By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic weblog view script is called mt-view.cgi. In some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code...

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XMLRPCScript

By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic weblog view script is called mt-view.cgi. In some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code...

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AdminScript

By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic weblog view script is called mt-view.cgi. In some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code...

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AtomScript

By default, the script that Movable Type uses for comments is called mt-comments.cgi, the TrackBack script is called mt-tb.cgi, the search engine script is called mt-search.cgi, the XML-RPC server script is called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, and the dynamic weblog view script is called mt-view.cgi. In some situations--for example, if you are running MT under mod_perl, or if your server requires that your Perl scripts have the extension .pl--you may need different names for these scripts. You can set the names that will be used throughout the default templates and Movable Type code...

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