Right after having bought Movable Type there were problems. Fact is that the installation description does not contain specific information for the Windows platform. Because of this, it took some time until I finally managed to make it work.

Looking back after having completed the installation successfully, it is not difficult. Until Six Apart gives better installation instructions for Windows users, maybe my description will help.

Introduction

The installation consists of the following parts • Installing the Perl runtime environment • Copying the Movable Type components • Configuration of some Movable Type files • Configuration of MS IIS • Creating the Movable Type Database

All screenshots can be...

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Question

When running the script, I get an error message that says CGI Error The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers..

Answer

Windows 2003 Server doesn't set the current working directory to the same path as the CGI script. You can confirm this discrepancy by looking at the top of your mt-check.cgi results: # Current working directory: (path) # MT home directory: (different path)

To correct this behavior, you (or your host) should do the following: • Create a new "virtual directory" under...

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Question

When running the script, I get an error message that says CGI Error The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers..

Answer

Windows 2003 Server doesn't set the current working directory to the same path as the CGI script. You can confirm this discrepancy by looking at the top of your mt-check.cgi results: # Current working directory: (path) # MT home directory: (different path)

To correct this behavior, you (or your host) should do the following: • Create a new "virtual directory" under...

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If you use MT-Notifier on a Windows 2003 IIS server, you may need to make some changes to the plugin before it will work correctly.

Locate these two files, where MT_DIR is your main Movable Type directory:

MT_DIR/plugins/Notifier/mt-notifier.cgi MT_DIR/plugins/Notifier/lib/Notifier.pm

Start by opening mt-notifier.cgi in your favorite text editor. The last few lines of the file should look like this:

use strict; use lib 'lib'; use lib '../../lib'; use MT::Bootstrap App => 'Notifier';

You will need to change the two lines that begin with use lib so that they...

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Installing Movable Type on Windows

Problem

You want to run Movable Type on a Windows system.

Solution

Movable Type has been developed to run on a wide variety of operating systems including Windows, although this entails some additional considerations.

Discussion

One of Movable Type's strengths as a platform is that it runs in a wide variety of environments, letting you choose the operating system, web server, and database. As a Perl-based application though, Movable Type has historically been most at home on Unix-based operating systems like Linux, BSDs, or Mac OS X.

If you have chosen Windows as...

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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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Question

After I upgraded to 3.2, the comment author links no longer open in a new window. How can I get this behavior back?

Answer

Consider This First

In version 3.2, we took deliberate steps to move away from spawning new windows, because it's becoming increasingly frowned upon by Internet users who want to choose for themselves whether or not to launch a new browser window. Most modern browsers provide an easy way for a user to select a link and have it open in a new window instead of the current one; so take the time to consider whether...

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2.64 (2003.05.28)

• Replaced RSS 0.91 template in default templates with an RSS 2.0 template, from the RSS validator site. (Thanks to the RSS validator folks.) • Fixed some XSS bugs (comments, TrackBack, notification addresses, and search queries). (Reported by Dumky and others) • Fixed width of #content div in Clean stylesheet so that it doesn't require scrolling in Windows IE. • Fixed TrackBack auto-discovery and text filters--auto-discovery is now done against the filtered entry body rather than the unfiltered body. (Timothy Appnel) • Added <q>...

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Question

Do you offer any installation instructions which are specific to Windows environments?

Answer

See Installing Movable Type on Windows in the 3.2 User Manual.

For more detailed information on configuring your Windows server to support a Movable Type installation, please see Installing Movable Type on Windows on the Six Apart website.

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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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2.63 (2003.02.23)

• Fixed faultCodes returned from XML-RPC server to override the default SOAP::Lite value, which wasn't an int (it should be). (Adriaan Tijsseling) • Fixed Javascript error with MT It! caused by Windows security update. Thanks to Phil Ringnalda for the fix. • Creative Commons licenses can now be removed (but should be done so sparingly, as the licenses are designed to be irrevocable). Also, added more warning text before setting up a license. Thanks to Matt Haughey for the help. • Added a GenerateTrackBackRSS option to mt.cfg, which determines whether the individual RSS files for TrackBack items are created....

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Configuring A Windows Server To Run CGI Scripts

Problem

You need to configure Windows to recognize .cgi files as Perl scripts.

Solution

Add perl.exe to the Home Directory configuration of your IIS server and set it to handle files with a .cgi extension.

Discussion

While Movable Type can be configured to run with .pl extensions that the Windows IIS server will recognize as Perl scripts, it is recommended that MT scripts are run with .cgi like they are on Unix systems.

Setting up IIS to handle files with .cgi extension as Perl scripts requires adding a few configuration...

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Question

Movable Type doesn't have the permissions it needs on Windows to publish my files.

Answer

The user (iusr_server, where server is the unique name of your machine) is not assigned any permissions by default, so you'll need to add that user to the folder where you want Movable Type to publish your weblog files.

Give the user either full control, or (at a minimum) the following permissions: • modify • read & execute • list folder contents • read • write

Once you've added those permissions to the dialog box and before you click OK, go to Advanced on the...

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Question

How do I configure Windows to recognize .cgi files as Perl scripts?

Answer

• From the Start Menu, navigate to: Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services • In the IIS Administration console, use the left-side navigation to go to: Local Computer > Web Sites > Default Web Site. • Right-click on "Default Web Site" and choose "Properties". • Select the "Home Directory" tab, and then click "Configuration". • Click the "Add" button. • In the form, fill in...

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2.65 (2003.12.18)

• Added Atom syndication feed template (atom.xml) and auto-discovery for Atom feed to main index template. • Added <MTIfNonEmpty> and <$MTEntryModifiedDate$> tags, and added a exclude_port attribute to <$MTBlogHost$>. • Fixed security issue with XML-RPC server. • Added proper handling of offsets in ISO-8601 dates in XML-RPC requests. If timezone offset is omitted, timestamps are assumed to be in the weblog's timezone already; otherwise, the timezone offset is first applied, then the weblog's offset is applied on top...

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2.62 (2003.02.16)

• Fixed a security vulnerability.

Permalink

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Question

When I try to rebuild my site, the window pops up that says "Rebuilding", but it never does anything.

Answer

Make sure you aren't running a product like ZoneAlarm or Norton Security. Firewall software and anything designed to interfere with popups can also interfere with the Movable Type application.

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2.61 (2003.02.16)

• Fixed extra update ping problem--if TrackBack ping URLs were added to the URLs to ping, the update pings would be sent again. No longer. (Phil Ringnalda) • Fixed bug where turning on NoHTMLEntities 1 would cause entities to be lost in entries. • Added a <$MTEntryTrackbackID$> tag. Thanks to Christopher Laco for the patch. • Added a NoCDATA setting to mt.cfg to turn off the CDATA encoding, if you don't like it. • Fixed bug with PostgreSQL conversion, where after running mt-db2sql.cgi, sequences were not set to highest ID....

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• Once an entry or category has been set to receive TrackBack pings, disabling pings for it through the UI will not actually refuse pings to that item but will suppress display of those pings. • Rebuilds will fail silently after saving an entry if a problem exists in your templates (for example, mismatched tags or a missing include module). An error will be shown, however, upon manual rebuild using the "Rebuild Site" functionality. • The nofollow plugin will cause a spurious warning for users with older versions of Perl upon running mt-check.cgi, mt-testbg.cgi or any of the...

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01: Installation and Upgrade

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

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