My shared server is sick, or my blogging software is messed up. It's hard to tell, because my "country road" DSL connection is so spotty. In any case, what this means for you, loyal reader, is that comments may seem like they aren't going through. Most of the time, however, they are. If you want to make sure your comment went through even though it's seemed to have timed out, go ahead and hit the back button on your browser and try posting it again. I'll clean up any double-posted comments for you afterwards. Sorry for this inefficient way of doing things, but it won't last forever.

So this is the theme I have chosen after trying out 30+. I am, unfortunately, too lazy to write my own all over again. If you are having trouble loading this page or the design looks funny, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard while pressing F5.

Note: After the upgrade, I noticed that the search function of this blog times out quite a bit. I'll iron out the bugs eventually. In the meantime, if your search for "naked fat men" times out, hit the back button on your browser and try again.

Having tackled core software issues, it's time to work on our design. I'm having a great time screwing around with different themes, and I hope Adam does, too (sorry dude, I hosed your previous theme when I overwrote the MT directory).

It might be, um... colorful around here for awhile, until we decide on our designs.

After spending a whole day trying to figure out the right combination of fcgi wrappers, Movable Type core file extensions, and .htaccess voodoo, I think I got it figured out. All of my problems were due to 2 main reasons:

1. There is no version 3.34-specific documentation easily available, including on the sixapart website


2. As always, I made mountains out of molehills. In my defense, I can't help it - shell access and the command line get me excited...

Therefore, I offer the following advice for the installation/upgrading of MT to version 3.34 on a Dreamhost shared server:

1. Change your domain settings to run PHP 5.2.1 and enable FastCGI support via the DreamHost Web Panel (under Domains > Manage Domains > Edit button under heading "Web Hosting")
2. Ignore all of the instructions on the web for enabling fastcgi for MT 3.33 (specifically, don't change file extensions from .cgi to .fcgi or .fpl)
3. Perform a standard MT install/upgrade (choose your own adventure: easier method that takes longer / 1337 h4xx0r)
4. Create/modify .htaccess file in your MT core directory with the following 2 lines:

#AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
AddHandler fastcgi-script .cgi

(.htaccess tip taken from here)

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Now, this seems to have worked for me, but obviously I cannot guarantee it will work for you. Also, I'm by no means an expert, I just wanted to share my experience with getting this particular version of MT running on DreamHost (who, by the way, will not help you with any 3rd party software problems that are not "One-click installs" via the Web Panel, including MT - which I totally understand but feels a bit cold when it's 3:30 AM and you're just sure the problem is server-related and has nothing to do with the fact that you don't know what the hell you're doing.)

I'm having some issues with an MT upgrade and don't have the time to work them out today. Comments are hosed on all of our sites until I can get it sorted. Hell, I don't even know if this will post or not...

Dishonesty sucks

So, children, the moral of the story is, "if you ever get caught with stolen merchandise, just tell the cops you didn't know it was stolen."

Internets is teh kewl!!!