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A Beginner's Guide to Blogging with MovableType
PART II: THE 6 STEPS TO SETUP YOUR BLOG ON MOVABLE TYPE 1. FIND A HOST The first thing you need ia an account on a webserver (host) that meets MT's requirements.
Make sure you confirm the hosting service supports MT's requirements prior to signing up. (e.g. Tripod and Geocities do NOT). MT suggests that you have at least 25 megabytes of disk space available on your server to accommodate future files and posts. There are many hosting services. Search online, ask your friends, or
see support forums. A good option is easyCGI.
Once signed up, your host will send you the Name Server and, in some
cases, the IP address of your site. The Name Server is a series of letters
separated with periods (e.g. ns1.abcdef.net). The IP address is a series
of numbers separated with periods (e.g. 12.234.67.890), which is the
address of the server where your site is stored. In general, you will
not have a unique IP address (unless you pay for it). I recommend you have a basic understanding of Domain Name Server (DNS). H2hosting offers this overview.
2. REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME If you do not already have a domain name (url), you will need to choose
and register one. There are many domain registers. Search online, ask
your friends, or see support forums. I use GoDaddy.com.
Once you have a host and domain name you will then need to point your Domain Name to your host Name Server. This means that when someone enters your url (www.yoursite.com) they will be directed to your site on your host's server. To do this login to your domain register and look for the My Account/Account Manager link then domain manager or manage domain link. Your will need to have the Name Server from your host. Some companies offer hosting and domain registration in one package (but, make sure their hosting meets MT's requirements). Then be patient, the propagation period can take 3 to 4 days. This means that once you point your Domain Name to your host NameServer it may take some time to propagate through the world's ISPs. 3. GET FTP MT requires you have an FTP (file transfer process) program to upload the necessary files to your webserver (host). If you do not already have it, you will need to download and install one. There are a number options. I use CuteFTP (for Windows), others use Fetch (for Mac). Instructions for using CuteFTP After downloading the program, install and run it. Then, add your site: 1. Open CuteFTP (I told you you would need your hosts info again!) For more information see CuteFTP's installation instructions or see the instructions for the FTP program you are using.
After MT is installed you should see the following:
Your blog templates will be stored in the blog folder:
Make sure you have an index.html page in each folder.
When someone enters your url, the web server will look for the "index.html"
or "index.htm" file as the default file. To upload files from your hard drive onto your server, simply click and drag files from your hard drive (from the left) to your server (to the right). Likewise you can download files from your server to your hard drive by clicking and dragging from right to left. You may redirect the homepage index (www.yoursite.com) to the blog index (www.yoursite.com/blog) if you would like visitors to be automatically directed to your blog from the main address of your site. Usually this can be done from the control panel of your hosting provider under "Manage Redirects".
4. INSTALL MOVABLE TYPE To install MT, follow MT's installation instructions. Unless you are comfortable installing and configuring a Perl script
on a web server, I recommend you try Movable Type's TypePad.
Once installed, login to MT and in the Main Menu select CREATE NEW BLOG. Configure the required settings in the blog creation screen:
Make your selections and click SAVE. You have now created a blog on MT which will be listed in the Main Menu. Remember with MT it is possible to have more than one blog on the platform.
Movable Type supports many options for configuring the way your blog looks and works. When you create a new blog, these values will be set to reasonable defaults.
To modify these defaults, select your blog from the Main Menu. You will then be in the Editing Menu. Then select:
There are four sections to the configuration section: Core Setup Preferences
Archiving IP Banning Make your selections and click SAVE.
By default your blog will be created with a complete set of working templates. Generally these templates will be made up of HTML interspersed with MT template tags and variables. You may customize these by selecting:
After making any changes to templates you must rebuild your site by selecting the REBUILD button.
I recommend you have a good knowledge of HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) before attempting to change the templates. See Webmonkey for tutorials or search the web for others. If you make a mistake on your templates, you can copy the MT default template and paste it into the box of the Template body. Click SAVE and REBUILD and you are back at the beginning. Index Templates Archive Templates Comment Listing Template Templates Stylesheet
Once you have selected the style you wish to use, copy the contents of the text box, and paste those contents into the box of the Templates / Stylesheet / Template body. Click SAVE and REBUILD. You may also purchase an MT style template at blogstyles for $10.
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Once
connected, select the "www" folder on the right side panel
to view the files on your site. The interface is similar to Windows
Explorer with folders with files within them. Webpages are files with
an .html or .htm extention. Images are files with .jpg or .gif extentions.
