Recently in Movable Type Category

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.

Moveable Type is great when it comes to being lightweight on your webserver, because it creates most of your blog's functions as static content. It also creates a really nice URL structure, which comes in very nice when you are an URL fetishist like me. But you certainly have been bugged by the fact that MovableType's installation URL kicks in when you need to use MovableType's search function. Today I'd like to show you, how to configure your Moveable Type installation and your Apache Webserver to display smart URLs everywhere (expect the administration interface).

My blog makes use of what follows. Although I don't offer Movable Type's internal search function, but Google webpage search, my blog does have a tags page, with all tags being linked to related posts. This feature typically uses MovableType's search engine.

Editing your templates

First you should edit three related widget templates: Search, Syndication and Tag Cloud. You will find those templates by visiting the web administration interface of your Moveable Type installation. Click Design > Templates, then in the right sidebar on Widgets.

Using the Tag Cloud template, I will show you exemplary, how to edit all three templates:

The important part to look for is <a href="<$MTBlogURL$>tag/<$MTTagName$>"><$mt:TagName$></a>. What I'm doing is to point the tags to an URL like: http://www.example.com/tag/SampleTag.

Telling Apache to understand the changes

Now we need our webserver to understand, what those new links mean. In your Apache configuration you need to activate mod_rewrite. Next we need to provide a rewrite rule, so the Apache knows where to redirect a call to the URL to.

In our particular case it would look like this:

Remember to replace both $$$ with your current IDs (just click a tag and see, which IDs are being used).

Where to repeat those changes

To also apply those changes to Search and Syndication, you need to modify the templates Search and Syndication accordingly.

In Apache you should add those two lines:

Again, remember to replace both $$$ with your current IDs (should be the same ones you have had to use for the tags rewrite rule).

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.

I write about tech stuff and include code snippets. I was hoping to highlight syntax in my posts. While looking for a solution for my Movable Type 4.1 blog, I came across a few alternatives, of which I'd like to give you a review.

The Moveable Type candidates

First I was checking out the official Movable Type Plugin Directory. Two solutions were listed: CodeBeautifier and MT Colorer.

CodeBeautifier was the first solution for Movable Type (supporting version 2.6 to 3.3), based on its own highlighting backed. MT Colorer supports version 3.2 and 3.3 of Movable Type and uses the colorer library. But both plugins do not support the current version 4 line of Movable Type. So both were a no go.

Using Google, I found another plugin called MT Highlight. It uses the highlight library by the author of MT Highlight. The highlight library seems to be quite outdated, so does the plugin, too. It also supports the version 3 line of Movable Type.

The JavaScript candidates

The next approach was to use a JavaScript based source code highlighter, which highlightes any code snippets on the fly while a browser is displaying a blog entry.

I found two solutions using Google: star-light and SyntaxHighlighter.

star-light seemed to be too unflexible to me, supporting just a few languages. SyntaxHighlighter on the other hand is even used for syntax highlighting at the Yahoo Developer Network.

Too cut a long story short, I chose SyntaxHighlighter. Now I'd like to show you, how to integrate the JavaScript library very easily.

How to install the syntax highlighter

First download SyntaxHighlighter. Upload all files to your mt-static folder on your server.

Next open your Movable Type web administration interface and open up the templates section. Choose the Template Modules filter. Editing the Header template, you should add the following lines right after <$mt:var name="html_head"$>:

After saving the template you should be editing the Footer template and add the following lines right before the <body> tag:

Regarding the <script language="javascript" src="/mt-static/Scripts/shBrushPhp.js"></script> section you need to decide, which languages you want SyntaxHighlighter to display.

To even optimize performance, I'd suggest to combine all of SyntaxHighlighter's JavaScript files via YUI Compressor, a JavaScript Minimizer.

How to use the syntax highlighter in your posts

To display a code snippet all you need to do while writing a post is to surround the snippet with:

For more options using SyntaxHighlighter, see the supported languages documentation and the configuration options documentation.