WordPress may be winning the war, but Movable Type is getting back into the game
I've blogged a bit recently on how hard it is to install Movable Type and have it actually work on your own server. After getting and configuring Apache and MySQL (or PostgreSQL or SQlite), making sure you get the static files in the right place and the CGI/Perl files in the other right place, then making sure everything has the proper permissions ... I found it to be way beyond my capabilities.
And the instructions are rudimentary at best. I think the people at Six Apart pretty much want you to hire time to configure your Movable Type setup. In a way, I don't blame them, but they've also got to think about WordPress breathing down their necks.
To be fair, I haven't yet tried to install WordPress, but I recently found out something very interesting:
There are WordPress packages available in many of the major Linux and BSD distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu and even OpenBSD.
Luckily, the same thing is now happening for Movable Type.
So if you're using the Debian GNU/Linux distribution -- and I strongly suggest you do -- you can now install Movable Type as a Debian package.
Read about it at the Movable Type site, and find out more about the package at the Debian site.
And for those using -- or about to use -- Debian, since the Movable Type package is new, it's not in the Stable distribution, which is named Etch. Instead, you need to install or upgrade to the Testing distribution of Debian, named Lenny. I'm already using Lenny in one of my desktop installs, where it happens to work better than Etch, but my Debian server still runs with Etch, and I'm loathe to change that.
I'm not sure how either of these packages -- WordPress or Movable Type -- handles dependencies as far as Apache and MySQL are concerned (e.g. whether or not you have to install the Web server and database software before you install the blog software), but I plan to find out very soon.
After two unsuccessful attempts at rolling out my own MT installations, I'm cautiously guarded about these packages actually working without a lot of post-installation tweaking (and I hope the man pages provide considerable insight).
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Steve> "I'm not sure how either of these packages -- WordPress or Movable Type -- handles dependencies as far as Apache and MySQL are concerned"
As a typical Debian (or even Ubuntu) package, dependencies should be handled automagically. So you still may have to configure your servers, but at least everything should be there with a simple 'apt-get install'
best,
Wolfgang
(who just installed Kubuntu Hardy in Dutch for a customer; that's real fun!)
For a standard Movable Type install, you need to get Apache and your database (MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQlite) set up before rolling MT into the whole mess.
I imagine that Wordpress is similar, although I'm not sure.
When I looked at the MT package for Debian, it didn't list Apache and a database as dependencies, but perhaps I'm missing something. I need to check out the man page for MT in Debian. That will hopefully shed some light on these questions.