Problem

You want to improve the performance of Movable Type by eliminating the overhead of CGI.

Solution

Run Movable Type under mod_perl 1.x.

Discussion

mod_perl embeds a Perl interpreter into the Apache server, so that dynamic content produced by Perl scripts can be served in response to incoming requests, without the significant overhead of re-launching the Perl interpreter for each request.

Movable Type can run under mod_perl 1.x in either Registry mode or as a set of full-fledged handlers. Note that in order to run under mod_perl, you must have Apache::Request and Apache::Cookie installed; these modules comprise the libapreq distribution, which can be downloaded from CPAN.

Setting up MT under Registry is just like setting up any other CGI script under Registry; add the following to your httpd.conf:

    PerlModule Apache::Registry
    <Location /path/to/mt>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler Apache::Registry
    Options +ExecCGI
    </Location>

You will need to host your mt-static files in another directory outside of /path/to/mt, just as if you had placed MT into the cgi-bin.

If you want even more speed, consider running Movable Type to run as a mod_perl handler. You will need to set up a handler for the main application and one for each of your public scripts.

• 1. Set up your mt-static directory in a web-accessible path not under /mt/.
• 2. Add the following to your httpd.conf:

      <Perl>
      use lib '/path/to/mt/lib';
      use lib '/path/to/mt/extlib';
      </Perl>
  
      PerlModule MT::App::CMS
      <Location /mt/app>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler MT::App::CMS
      PerlSetVar MTConfig /path/to/mt-config.cgi
      </Location>
  
      PerlModule MT::App::Comments
      <Location /mt/comments>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler MT::App::Comments
      PerlSetVar MTConfig /path/to/mt-config.cgi
      </Location>
  
      PerlModule MT::App::Trackback
      <Location /mt/trackback>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler MT::App::Trackback
      PerlSetVar MTConfig /path/to/mt-config.cgi
      </Location>
  
      PerlModule MT::App::Search
      <Location /mt/search>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler MT::App::Search
      PerlSetVar MTConfig /path/to/mt-config.cgi
      </Location>
  
      PerlModule Apache::XMLRPC::Lite
      PerlModule MT::XMLRPCServer
      <Location /mt/xmlrpc>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlHandler Apache::XMLRPC::Lite
      PerlSetVar dispatch_to "blogger, metaWeblog, mt"
      PerlSetVar MTConfig /path/to/mt-config.cgi
      </Location>

  Note that, as an alternative to the use lib statement above, you could also use

      PerlSetEnv PERL5LIB /path/to/mt/lib

• 3. In your mt-config.cgi file, you will need to use the following settings:

      CGIPath http://my.server.com/mt/
      StaticWebPath /mt-static/
      AdminScript app
      CommentScript comments
      TrackbackScript trackback
      SearchScript search
      XMLRPCScript xmlrpc

  StaticWebPath should correspond to the URI you set when setting up your mt-static directory in Step 1.

  If you are using BerkeleyDB, you also need to add the following in addition to the lines above:

      DataSource /path/to/db