Results tagged “MT4” from jsstudios.com

I've gone back and forth through the years using Movable Type, Blogger and Wordpress. They each have their pros and cons. When a new version comes out I try to get my hands on it and give it a shot. This afternoon my son wanted his blog upgraded so that he could use tags. He uses Wordpress. Using tags in posts has been around for MT for quite some time, but Wordpress is easier for him to use and he has grown accustomed to it. I don't force change where it isn't needed. Like the saying goes, "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Needless to say, I upgraded him to Wordpress 2.3.1. Seeing an opportunity to try out a new version of Wordpress, without hesitation I prepared my site for the change. So far, here's what I've found if you should happen to decide to move from MT to Wordpress:

• Using Wordpress' import for MT will cause all of the posts you've published under MT to lose their tags and categories. They don't lose any comments and the formatting seems to have worked out just fine. But be prepared to face the consequences of having to go back and re-tag everything you've ever published.
• The categories all get imported. But they don't get applied to the posts. Everything gets thrown into the "Uncategorized" category.
• Links to other posts you've published under the same blog will most likely be broken. So set aside some time to hunt those down and fix them.
• I have yet to find a theme that actually says it is for WP 2.3.1 and has the code for displaying tags rather than categories already in it. ( I had to go hunt it down so that my son could have it on his blog )

So now comes the fun of hunting down a theme and fixing all the broken stuff. I've only had this installed for an hour or two so I'm bound to find more things to complain about.

I imagine I could always re-install MT . . . and I may. Until then, I'll play with this.

Since I upgraded to Movable Type 4 on this site last week and had a few issues with modifying my templates to utilize the full benefits of MT4's new tags and approach to modularizing the templates further. I decided that it would probably be a very wise choice to have an implementation to play with here at home. Doing this serves several purposes:

• First: I can make changes to the site without getting egg all over my face.
• Second: I can see how my site will react to the changes I make and experiment with it until I am satisfied with the outcome.
• Third: I can modify the source code or develop plug-ins and test them in an environment that is self-contained

In order to install this "sandbox" there's a few things you will need:

1. A database: MT is compatible with quite a few database engines. I chose to use MySQL. I've used it for years and I've always been very satisfied with its performance.
2. PHP: If you decide to use "dynamic publishing" you will need this. But that is not absolutely required.
3. Perl: MT's engine is based on Perl so you can't get around this.
4. A web server: I use Apache. But you can use IIS if you absolutely have to.

There's numerous sources you can find that will provide great tutorials on installing each of the above, so I'm not going to go into that. However, I advise the following sequence especially if you are using Windows as your OS:

1. Install your database.
2. Install your web server
3. Install PHP using the windows installer. The installer will automatically configure your webserver to use PHP.
4. Install Perl
5. At this point you should probably make sure that Perl came with the necessary libraries to connect to your database. Mine didn't and I did not know this until I tried installing MT. However, the Perl Package Manager made it easy to get and install.
6. Now you're ready to install MT4.

Once you have the database, web server, PHP and Perl installed it's as simple as placing the contents of the respective MT4 files in your cgi folder and and the root of your webserver. ( Note that this is not the most complex setup. I'm not using any virtual hosts or anything like that. It's simply a sandbox that mirrors the general makeup of my actual website. ) One little gotcha that you might run into right as you're all ready to start installing MT4 ( on Windows ) . . . Even if you download the windows .zip containing the MT4 package: Each Perl script contains the following directive in order to tell Apache how to execute the script:

#! /usr/bin/perl

If you install on Windows this directive will not work on a Windows machine. What you will probably receive is the following in your Apache error logs: "The system cannot find the path specified. : couldn't spawn child process: C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi" So, what your need to do is go into each of MT's .cgi files and replace that directive with something like this:

#!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe

What you are doing is telling Apache that the appropriate executable that knows how to execute Perl script resides at this place - where this place is the path to your perl.exe. Once that is in place - and your other installations are in place - the MT installation is a snap. Good Luck.

So I upgraded to Movable Type 4 - somewhat painfully. A brief account of what I went through . . . My original theme/style/layout - whatever you like to call it - was working fine, but I wanted to be able to take advantage of the new tags that came with MT4. So I went to MT's documentation to see if I could find the default templates. If you are looking for them, you can find them here. However, funny things happened. One of the most annoying things is MT4's use of this

<__trans

tag. MT4 makes use of modules. For example, your index page may "include" several modules like the header and footer. For some reason, MT does it like this:

<$MTInclude module="<__trans phrase="Header">"$>

The most hilarious ( in a twisted, cruel kind of way ) thing is that even when you have a module ( let's call it "Header" ) and that module exists but is included like in my example above, MT doesn't seen to recognize the fact that it exists. It tells you this in two ways. One way is through the designer. It lists the modules that any particular, other module links to. Another way is when you attempt to re-build your site. It throws an error that tells you that the module cannot be found. You can alleviate this if you go through and take out the

<__trans phrase="

part of the MTInclude tag leaving this:

<$MTInclude module="Header">"$>

It also makes use of trans for the text output on buttons or headings. I have no idea what "__trans" actually does yet. I searched the documentation and I can't find any reference to it. It seems as if ( by virtue of the name ) that some kind of translation may occur. Perhaps for other languages? If you know - I'd really like to find out since it is used extensively throughout the templates. And for some odd reason, it wasn't working at all. Every time the "trans" tag was being used, the code was being output on the site. This made for some pretty ugly stuff.

Frustration set in and I decided to refresh the templates. Basically that means rolling all the templates back to their original or back-up state. And voila . . .everything mysteriously fell into place. Of course, re-styling to get the look and feel I want will be another matter entirely. I think my best bet is to install a version at home so I can mess with it at my leisure without screwing up things on this site. Additionally, I'd really like to be able to explore this new platform and exploit the new features as much as possible.

For anyone who happens to be interested, I'm planning on trying to include my findings, trials and tribulations as much as possible in the future not only as implemented here, but also as content for this blog. I haven't installed any additional plug-ins yet, but I plan to after I've modified the theme. I'm going to stick with the default template for now - at least until I've had a chance to muck around with this at home. So if you choose to slam me because I don't have an About page or a Contact page - feel free. Better yet, if you're really that curious you can read about me here.

The new template system in MT 4 is giving me some troubles. Not sure exactly what the problem is, but I'll track it down pretty soon. Besides some styling issues, things appear to be functionally ok. UPDATE I think things are fairly stabilized now. It still kind of looks like crap. The sidebar isn't doing what it's supposed to and that means I'm incredibly dissatisfied with the way the style thing works. So it looks like a re-design is in order. I was planning on this anyway. Either way - it's something to do and I've been looking at some stuff to use as far as re-styling this blog. Perhaps by later tonight I'll be able to unleash it.

It didn't take long for my web host to get MT upgraded to MT 4. They are great at responding to requests for support. However, because the current templates are styled ( theme in wordpress lingo ) for version 3.35 I'm going to have to refresh my templates to the default style in order for things to accurately reflect the changes in MT 4. I'm ok with this. I get bored with my style after a while anyway. I guess it's time for a change. Furthermore, one of the plug-ins I was using for "Related Entries" is not compatible with MT 4. When I tried to rebuild my site, I received an error about that plug-in. So for the time being I won't be able to include related entries until I either find another plug-in or develop my own. Hopefully things won't blow up when I refresh my templates. More to come later if everything works out.

I've used Movable Type for quite some time for this blog, as well as other common blog software packages. While each one of those software packages has their own ups and downs, I've come to appreciate MovableType. My host regularly upgrades the MovableType installation and I have asked that they upgrade my install to MovableType 4. I'm currently on 3.33. I just fired off the request a few minutes ago so we'll see how everything works out. I have high expectations as it boasts a large number of new features. If everything works out ok, perhaps I'll be able to find a way to work some of those new features into the the content of this blog. We'll see what happens. If you're curious about MovableType, by all means, check it out. Better yet, if you have questions I'd be more than happy to answer them either by email ( fortywhat AT gmail DOT com ) or by simply commenting here on my blog.