need help with computer stuff

[diva]

i have my domain name
a good web hosting company
lots of space

for now, i'm using the web hosting company's website creator for my site, but i've downloaded movable type and would like to upload it on my site and start doing stuff on my own

i can't figure out how to do it
there are instructions and everything, but even the tech support guy from the web hosting company couldn't help me

anyways, can someone recommend good books that will help me with the step by step process of building my site and organizing the pages the way i want them to be organized?

[Gusto]

haven't used movable type specifically before, but i'm pretty sure it uses perl. first step would be to find out if the web host has the right version of perl and the modules you need to use mt, but any decent non-windows hosting plan should be fine.

this link has more information, and a link to the full documentation: http://www.netfirms.com/support/how-...my-website.php . not sure if you've exhausted google's search results yet, but i saw lots of tutorials. also, charly on here has an mt site. maybe bug her, haha.

[diva]

^ i got my initial info from charly
=)

i just found out that the plan i had with my web hosting company didn't support the cgi executable script i was trying to run or something

i had to upgrade to a business plan, which, i'm not sure was the smart thing to do, but i just want to get this stuff sorted out so i don't have to worry about it and can focus on putting up actual content

although...i guess i might have trouble setting up the content if i can't even install the fucking software

i'm not used to sucking so much at something
=/

[ebbomega]

What kind of web server are you working on? Windows? *nix? What kind of access do you have to it? FTP? SSH?

Moveable type requires at least one database (SQL usually works nicely) and a bunch of different perl modules. I have an mt blog set up (albeit very elementary and it's currently harsh-spammed in the comments... I really need to clean that up) Here and it took a little bit of nudging Wildcard to get a few packages installed to have it run properly.

When I tried to get it going on an IIS server (NT 4) I had nothing but problems.

[diva]

unix
i got a package with 1and1.com for webhosting

[ebbomega]

There's usually a test script that you can run that tells you which packages you need to have in order to use mt.

If you're working out of windows, I highly recommend getting your hands on either WinSCP and putty and get used to using bash commandline stuff... I don't know what the information is but according to the website, your business plan involves SSH access.

edit: Just off break. Will post more later.

[diva]

^ hold your horses
rome wasn't built in a day

and i'm teaching myself all of this stuff on top of trying to finish up my term

right now i'm using the website creator that comes with my web hosting plan, but i still don't have time to get content up, and everything looks like crap

www.trappedmind.com

[ebbomega]

winscp is a happy little file transfer program that uses the SSL protocol (encrypted, according to the Business account on the hosting site you have access to it). It's good because it acts like Windows Explorer (ie. easy-to-use interface).

Putty is a remote command-line client that does the same stuff except is more versatile because you get to send direct commands to the computer. Especially helpful when doing stuff like setting permissions on the folders (which you'll need to do with moveable type)

WinSCP is the easier to use of the two. Putty is worth figuring out if you're doing any web administration, IMHO.