Movable Type is a large application with a lot of files. In a CGI context that application is loaded into memory every single time, and there is no ability to leverage a cache across a session or multiple requests.
When using FastCGI, the application is loaded into memory so that it doesn't have to be reparsed and interpreted every single request. This dramatically increases performance.
Unfortuantly some scripts of Movable Type are not compatible with FastCGI. A few of those scripts are i.e. mt-check.cgi or mt-xmlrpc.cgi (which is needed for XmlRPC transactions with your blog).
How to get the FastCGI-incompatible files up and running
In the end the solution is quite easy. You just need to tell Apache to not run some of Movable Type's scripts through FastCGI, but through classic CGI.
In your Apache configuration you need to activate add the following lines to the directives handling the Movable Type direcory:
That's all you need to do - Movable Type will run flawlessly.
What if you don't have direct access to your Apache configuration?
To ease up things you can also just create a template for a .htaccess file. It may also be much easier to use and maintainable this way. Just make sure you don't rebuild it each time you rebuild your site.
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