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I love having a local install of Movable Type on my Windows XP computer. It's just so handy for developing and testing blog designs and set-ups well away from live blogs on the server. And a local install means I don't have to be online to use Movable Type, either, so when the connection drops I've got something o do ;)
I've used a number of methods to install Movable Type on my Windows XP computer, but thanks to a new laptop, I got the opportunity to install it yet again with a new windows server program - XAMPP. If you'd like your own local Movable Type install (or just local server install for playing around on), complete and relatively easy instruction on how-to follow ...
Step 1 - Download and install XAMPP
Download the XAMPP Windows Installer Version from here and install as you would any Windows program, accepting the default install location.
When asked to install as a service, select "No" (you can always change this later) and when asked to start the Control Panel select "Yes".
If you're only looking for a local testing server install, you're done. Enjoy! If you want to run Movable Type on it, read on.
Download the XAMPP Perl Add-on from here and install.
Step 2 - Downloading and Configuring Movable Type
Download the latest version of Movable Type (3.2 at time of writing). Be sure to grab the Full Version (not the upgrade).
Unzip Movable Type and open up the resulting folder. We'll need to set the correct path to Perl in all the .cgi files in Movable Type. Open up each one (EXCEPT mt-config.cgi-original) in a text-editor (not Notepad but Wordpad is fine) and change the path to Perl (the very first line in the file) from #!/usr/bin/perl -w to #!C:/Program%20Files/xampp/perl/bin/perl -w (assuming you your drive letter is C - change if otherwise). Save and close each cgi file after making this change.
Open up mt-config.cgi-original. Make the following changes to this file:
CGIPath http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/mt/
We'll be using mysql so uncomment (remove #) lines in that section and delete the password line altogether. It should look like this when done ...
### MySQL Configuration - Add the name of your database, username
# password and, optionally database host given to you by your web
# hosting provider.
#
ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database test
DBUser root
DBHost localhost
#
#
(*Note: Database "test" was created automatically with the XAMPP install so you don't need to create it. If you would like to use another database option, you will
need to create it and adjust the above accordingly).
Scroll down to Static Web Path option. Remove the # at the start of the line and change to
StaticWebPath http://127.0.0.1/mt/mt-static
We are done editing so we need to save it. Chose 'Save File As' and save it as mt-config.cgi (no -original at the end). Close mt-original.
Step 3 - Putting Files in the Right Place
Open up Windows Explorer window (Right click Start button, chose Explore)
Find Program Files/XAMPP/cgi-bin and make anew folder in the cgi-bin folder called "mt" (no quotes)
Find your unzipped Movable Type folder and move all the files EXCEPT the mt-static folder into the newly created cgi-bin/mt folder.
Make new folder in xampp called "mt" and put the mt-static folder in there.
Step 4 - Fire it Up
Start up the local server through XAMPP Control Panel. Start Apache and mysql.
In your browser, enter http://localhost/xampp/index.php in the address bar. If you've done everything correctly to this point, you should see a nice xampp welcome page and verify the local server is installed and running.
Then enter http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/mt-check.cgi in the address bar to see the MT system check file. You should find that you have all the required modules for a mysql install of MT.
Go to http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi to initialize your new Movable Type install. Hopefully all goes well and you are presented with the Movable Type login page.
Step 5 - Login and Enjoy
Login to Movable Type with the default username 'Melody' and the default password "Nelson'. Enjoy.
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