I am going to describe the basics of Movable Type in a short introduction. You do not have to know anything about Movable Type for understanding it. However, when following this three-part introduction, you will learn to know the most important components and gain a good overview.

• Movable Type Basics / 1
• Movable Type Basics / 2
• Movable Type Basics / 3

Architecture

Movable Type is an internet-based application. This means that almost all functions will be executed on the internet server. Any modern browser may be used for rendering the output.

The server side components were implemented with PHP and Perl. Because of this, you have to install a Perl runtime environment on the server. For example, you might use ActivePerl from ActiveState.

The data created by Movable Type can be stored in one of two ways.

• By default all data is stored as normal files in the filesystem. This method, which is called »Berkeley DB«, is possible without installing a real database.
• Optionally all data can be stored in a SQL database. Currently only MySQL is supported.

After having succeeded, installing Movable Type is not very difficult. However, only little information is given for installing Movable Type under Windows 2003. Maybe my own descriptions Installation under Windows 2003 and Migrating to MySQL might help.

Expandability

Not knowing Perl, I am not the best author for describing this subject. However, because of my background some remarks may be possible.

Movable Type has a marvelous support for integrating own functions into the process for creating HTML. Any such function has to be written in the programming language Perl.

The installation of new functions is trivial. Usually only a file has to be copied to some well-defined location and the new function is instantly available.

The new functions can be used in templates. Existing tags can be extended with new attributes. Also new tags can be created. Both types of extensions are integrated into the existing world. You will not be able to differentiate between built-in and plugged-in.

As Perl is an interpreted language, all extensions are distributed with source code. Therefore, you can look at them and might even modify them.

The resulting Perl programs are very short. It is amazing what these short programs are able to achieve. If you see this for the first time, you will wish you knew Perl.

To be Continued

This introduction consists of the following three parts

• Movable Type Basics / 1
• Movable Type Basics / 2
• Movable Type Basics / 3

You have just read part 3.

mgs | 03/06/2005

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Wonderful tutorial, Michael! Suddenly I feel much less intimidated by this whole movable type business.

Well, I think I have a better sense of what's going on back there, but I'm not sure I can function any better myself. Do you have any idea why MTs default templates are so lousy? It just doesn't make sense to me. This page is very basic, clean, readable without a lot of fancy-schmancy stuff, but it looks lovely. Why is there no collection of such designs for MT anywhere? I have heard they are out there, but I can't find them...

Really, nice page.

Thnaks for this tutoriels.
i'm not good at english si excuse me for mistakes.

I'm in charge to do a web log like http://www.brolive.org.
in movable type . ihave installed movble type 3.15 on server runing apache. but i don't know how to integrate mu own style and how to personalize my weblog in movable type.
Ineed just orientation.
Helpe me.
Thanks.

You have to modify the templates. Most of the templates define your weblogs structure. And there is a template that is responsible for styling the generated pages - you have to learn CSS for that.

Did you already read...

http://www.movable-type-weblog.com/archive/entry/faq-explaining-the-templates.html

http://www.movable-type-weblog.com/archive/entry/faq-styling-the-generated-pages.html