Installing Movable Type 4

I’m going to use this post to keep track of my MT4 installation. 

The good folks at Hosting Matters (who are probably sick and tired of my site sucking system resources on Brizo) were good enough to make a copy of my database for me, so I could test installation.  Seki also recommended that, given my “highly-upgraded” installation (since v2.something), I do a clean install.  Good advice (though it would cause a few complications later). 

The initial goal again, here, is to update the test directory just to assure myself that it will work.  🙂  I have to be careful in rebuilding so that I don’t overwrite the actual production directories.  Once I am sure it’s cool, I’ll load everything into a new directory, make it production, and eventually delete both the test directory and (after I’m sure everything is out of there I need) the old MT directory.

Installation:

1. I’m downloading MT4 Personal Edition (per these decisions).  Currently at v4.01.  Unzip to my blog directory.  Nets about 14Mb. Using the installation instructions and (mostly) the upgrade instructions from MT. 
2. Loading the files up to a directory I’ll call MT4test.  This took about half an hour.
3. Making my own backup of my production MT MySQL db.
4. Fired up the mt.cgi.  It confirmed the Perl modules were there, then asked about database configuration (huzzah).  Specified MySQL, the user and password.  Hrm.  Ah, needed to add the user to the SQL database (which had no users specified).  Duh.  Worked like a champ.
5. Asked about mail config.  Set it to sendmail, and the sample e-mail came through just fine.
6. It then determined it was time to upgrade the database to the new schema.  When I said yes (crossing my fingers), it went on its merry way.  And … huzzah!

Fire it up and configure:

1. Got into the control panel — er, dashboard — and changed where the cloned version of DDtB should be posted. 
2. Time to install plug-ins.
3. Installed AutoBan plug-in.  No problem.
4. Installed FastSearch (upgraded to 2.1 for MT4).  The download doesn’t create a clean FastSearch directory, and the install instruction imply (incorrectly) that a db schema update doesn’t happen automatically.  Aside from that, though, it’s golden.
5. Test rebuild. 
6. (Parenthetical comment — the new dashboard looks very keen, but the layout is … unfamiliar.  And it feels like things are multiple clicks/screens/menus further away than they used to be.  And lots of stuff hidden in different locations, different menus along the side, across the top, in the footer, in the header .. Confusing.)
7. Rebuild failed, because of plug-ins not yet plugged-in.  Well, we can deal with that.
8. Upgrade and install MT-Notifier (4.0.2) — which triggers an upgrade sequence once installed.
9. Reinstalled TinyTuring (same version, no sweat).
10. Reinstalled the mt-pingedentry.pl into the plugins dir.
11. Let’s try that rebuild again!  And … success!

So, how do things look?

1. Index page looks great.
2. Test an individual archive page — dynamic — which then then blows up with a Smarty error (around the TinyTuring module — “Smarty error: [in evaluated template line 106]: syntax error: unrecognized tag ‘mttinyturing’ (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 580)”). 
3. I wonder if I still need the SmartyPants.pl stuff I had before.  Nope, that didn’t work.
4. Contacted the TinyTuring plug-in writer.  Immediate response and suggestions about how some new plug-in structure for dynamic publishing may be causing the problem.  Try them, but they don’t work.
5. So I can wait to hear back from the plug-in (TinyTuring) writer; or I can remove TinyTuring from my blog and crank up other anti-comment-spam functionality while it gets fixed (which means, at the least, doing a bunch of editing of the blog entries).
6. Holding …
7. A few days later — it seems the PHP files for the TinyTuring module need to be in all lower case for MT4 (props to writer for figuring it out).  Change it and … all is right with the world.  (Well, there looks to be a FastSearch problem, similar to with TinyTuring, but that’s not a showstopper — I’ll fix it in production).

Okay … so that’s that!  Now wait for an opportune opportunity, like Saturday, to do this all for real  …

1. Backup the main MT database (just in case).
2. I’d made a copy of the install files in the MT4 directory, too, so no need to reload.
3. Change the CGI files to 755.
4. Fire up mt.cgi … answer the responses (as above) to tie to and convert the database.
5. The database upgrade got hung up on the Entries.  I reloaded and … it finished up fairly quickly, throwing no errors, and the erro count looks correct.  Woot!

Install the plugins (see above for links)!

1. Go to each site for the directions.
2. AutoBan
3. FastSearch   (This plug-in requires a database upgrade, which is automatic whenever you invoke anything in mt.cgi) (The install instructions for this are unforgivably vague.  You want to not only pull the FastSearch.pl over to the plugins directory, but also create a FastSearch directory under Plugins and pull the php and tmpl folders over into that)
4. MT-Notifier (also triggered an automatic upgrade)
5. TinyTuring (with case adjustments)
6. mt-pingedentry.pl

And time for the testing in production:

1. Rename the comment and trackback scripts (mutter-mutter-spammers-mutter) … Interestingly, the mt-config.cgi file now only contains “non-standard” fields.
2. Test out on each of my blogs.  For each of the below, do a full rebuild; add a post (“now upgraded”); add a comment (“and comments work”); make sure the pages look correct.
3. Doing Write (start small)
4. Boulder Dude (ooooh … live (CSSed) previews!) (Let BD know about it.  (Possibly prematurely, but I think I fixed the problems that cropped up before he actually went in and started using it.))
5. Dave Does the Blog (dynamic publishing is my friend).  Errors — aha!  My templates are so old and crufty, they are ridden with individual calls to /blog/mt/ stuff, rather than using the tags to insert the blog address.  Do some template searches and corrections to change to /blog/mt4/.  The rememberme java header function calls /blog/mt/mt.js.  But that file doesn’t seem to exist any more in MT4.  Hrm.  Comment it out?  Seems to still work. But the entry archives still are not working — dig around — hey, the most useful piece of MT upgrade advice evah!  So, for each of these (including the ones above?) need to (a) rename mtview.php in the blog root, then (b) re-save the publishing preferences.  It’s whacky!  But it now works.
6. Margie’s Kitchen
7. Blog of Heroes
8. WIST (remarkably clean for being such a kludge.  The Java to select categories is slower than the old drop-downs, and rebuilds seem slower, but workable).
9. All the other dribs-and-drabs.
10. Put a fork in it, Edgar, it’s done.

Now, it’s altogether possible there are still a few glitches out there — I’d be surprised if there weren’t — but main functionality all seems to be there.

Next up — on some other day, believe me — I’m going to play with the new default templates. Maybe start on a peripheral blog that’s fairly new “clean,” and then tackle DDtB, which desperately needs its templates replaced with something that doesn’t have bits of code from MT1.x in it.

Many thanks to Margie who let me get away with spending the day (and chunks of Christmas vacation) doing this.

We now return you to your regular blogging.