ITauthor

Let's see if I can upload an image, and insert it here: OK, that seemed to work!

The problems I expected to have getting MT working were with the server-side stuff, particularly the Perl modules. My ISP isn't helpful when it comes to installing Perl modules. They have the take-what-your-given-or-go-elsewhere approach to customer service. I should probably go elsewhere, but ISP's are like banks - you don't change unless you are seriously, seriously pissed off with them. I'm not quite there yet. However, the only real trouble of any sort I had with the MT install was not really the install at all. I downloaded and printed out the full installation and configuration documentation from the MT website and that guided me through nicely. I went for the standard install, using a Berkeley DB database. I'd rather have used MySQL - but my ISP ... No, the only problem was when everything appeared to be installed correctly. What then? The MT documentation falls short when it comes to actually telling you what you do to see your new weblog, or how you add entries to it. You have to work this one out for yourself. The answer to how you add an entry is that you have to point your browser to the mt.cgi script in the cgi-bin and click "New Entry" in the left column. Seems obvious once you know, but I'd thought you would add entries from one of the weblog pages, rather than by going directly to the Perl script. To see anything you need to rebuild the site by clicking "Rebuild Site". This is not obvious. If you've never built the site in the first place it's not intuitive to have to click "Rebuild Site". Maybe I missed a document somewhere, but I don't think so. It seems like the MT people guessed installing and configuring would be the hard bits, so they documented all that pretty thoroughly. They seem to have assumed that once you'd installed MT successfully, you can just bash on. What they need is a little "Getting started" document: the stuff you do after you've installed, before you start messing about getting the configuration just how you want it - e.g. view your site, post your first weblog entry.

I've finally got round to installing MovableType, after thinking about it for months. And lo and behold, after all that procrastination, it only took me a couple of hours (and only that long because I went very slowly and read the relevant bits of the manual three or four times before doing anything). But it appears to work, so I'm very pleased with my evening's labours. Of course, now I have to configure it and work on the templates until I've got it looking nice. But that can wait for another night. Time for bed!