Movable Type Beta Weblog - Best practices: Upgrade your config file

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Best practices: Upgrade your config file

by Jay Allen

This is an archived entry from the Movable Type 3.2 beta test.
Entries from the current beta release (v3.3) can be found here.

As this most recent bug has shown, many people (perhaps the vast majority?) who upgrade Movable Type simply use their old config file. This makes sense, since we've never explicitly told people that they should do anything but that. One time I helped a friend upgrade to MT 3.1 and found that they still had a config file from MT 1.x. It was only one page long and had no explanations of any directives! He had no idea how much control over the system he was lacking.

The config file (mt-config.cgi) has come a long way in the past three years and is upgraded and tweaked in nearly every release. New directives have been added, some removed and documentation inside the config file is specifically tailored to the latest version which you are now running.

While we will always continue (bugs notwithstanding) to support older configuration files, taking the time to transfer over what amounts to three or four config settings for most people will only benefit you in the long run.

And since we've deprecated the use of mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi in favor of the new mt-config.cgi, there's never been a better time to get acquainted with the new Movable Type configuration file.

Posted on July 22, 2005 9:41 AM in Tips and tricks

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By the way, as I was writing this, I was picturing a movie with a slow panorama of snapshots of the mt.cfg file. Of course, in the background, Kenny Rogers' "Through the Years" would be a must.

Posted by: Jay Allen | July 22, 2005 9:57 AM

Hate to rain on the parade and this isn't a bug, hence writing here, but the new templates in the edit window are a pain to follow now they are laid out the way they are.

Perhaps a resizable edit window could be developed so the lines don't rap round so much.

Other than that, can't wait for the full elease. :)

Posted by: Andy | July 22, 2005 10:13 AM

Hate to rain on the parade and this isn't a bug, hence writing here, but the new templates in the edit window are a pain to follow now they are laid out the way they are.

Perhaps a resizable edit window could be developed so the lines don't wrap round so much.

Other than that, can't wait for the full release. :)

Posted by: Andy | July 22, 2005 10:14 AM

What I find much easier is having the templates link to a directory file on the server (where it says 'Link this template to a file' when you're in one of the Edit Template screens within MT), and then I download and edit them using textpad, then upload them again to the server as required.

Posted by: demonsurfer | July 22, 2005 2:02 PM

Good point but the firm I work for don't allow FTP (damn... the secret is out... ) :)

I must admit I had totally forgotten about that since I have never used it before.

Anyway, I'm off to get the new structures into my head and start coding a new skin for my site...

Posted by: Andy | July 22, 2005 10:59 PM

Jay, could you explain a little what do you mean by using the new config file.. none of the installation instructions mentions how do we do that..

do delete the old mt.cfg and rename mt-config.cgi-originial and upload to server.. what else do we have to do?

Aditya

Posted by: so1o | July 23, 2005 2:04 PM

The new mt-config.cgi is designed to take the place of the old mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi files by combining them into one file. You need to transfer the info from each of the old files to the new mt-config.cgi file:

From mt-db-pass.cgi - your DB password, and from mt.cfg your details pretty much the same as what you filled out when you first set up MT - your CGIpath your DB details (if you're using MySql, then these would be ObjectDriver DBI::mysql, Database [databaseName], DBUser [databaseUsername], DBPassword [databasePassword from mt-db-pass.cgi]) your StaticWebPath and any others you may have chosen to use - most of it is very similar to the old mt.cfg. Upload the new file and remove the two old ones (make backups though in case you have problems).

Posted by: demonsurfer | July 23, 2005 2:59 PM

hmm tried that but i'm still stuck with the same problem listed here

Posted by: so1o | July 23, 2005 5:00 PM

Upload the new file and remove the two old ones (make backups though in case you have problems).

What demonsurfer said. It is essential that you rename or delete mt.cfg and mt-db-pass.cgi, because MT3.2 will look for those files first, not mt-config.cgi. Otherwise... you could be like me trying to figure out where the links to the comments went.

Posted by: dw | July 25, 2005 9:24 AM

Best practices: Upgrade your config file

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