Answer

If you have tried to get sendmail working, or if you know that your webserver doesn't have sendmail (for example, if you're on a Windows server), Movable Type allows you to send email messages through SMTP. To do this, you will need to install the Mail::Sendmail Perl module; if you are on a Windows server, you can do this using Activestate's ppm tool. Launch ppm, then at the prompt, type

install Mail::Sendmail

and ppm will do all of the work to install the module. If you are on a non-Windows server machine, and you need (or prefer) to use SMTP, you can download the distribution from Six Apart.

Unpack the archive using an extraction program, then connect via FTP to your webserver. Open the directory where you installed Movable Type, then open the extlib directory; then create a new directory called Mail. Then open the Mail directory, and upload the file Sendmail.pm from the archive to that directory.

After you have installed Mail::Sendmail, you will need to configure Movable Type to send mail using SMTP. To do so, edit your mt-config.cgi¹ file, and add this line:

MailTransfer smtp

By default, Movable Type will try to use the SMTP server on the webserver (i.e., on localhost); if you need to change this, add another line:

SMTPServer address.of.smtp.server

Save (and re-upload in ASCII, if necessary) your mt-config.cgi file, and you're done. Movable Type should now send email through the SMTP server.

Please note that these instructions are provided for informational purposes only; our support staff is unable to directly assist with the installation of Perl modules on your server.

¹ In versions prior to 3.2, the configuration file is named mt.cfg.