Public Beta Version of the Movable Type Plugin Manager Released!

It's here. What you all have been waiting for: MT Plugin Manager.

The Plugin Manager requires the following Perl modules:

• XML::Simple
• Archive::Zip (for .zip files)
• Archive::Tar (for .tar.gz files)
• IO::Zlib (for .tar.gz files)
• Compress::Zlib (for .tar.gz files)
• Digest::MD5

To install, download one of the archives available on the MT Plugin Directory and unpack it. The files should be placed on your installation of Movable Type as follows:

• Manager.pm should be placed in the extlib/MT/Plugins/ directory.
• mt-pm.cgi should be placed in the base MT directory (where mt.cgi is located). Make sure it can be executed (e.g. chmod 755).
• License should be read. :)
• tmpl/*.tmpl should be placed in the tmpl/plugins/ directory. It will have to be created.
• tmpl/styles-pm.css needs to be placed in the same directory as styles.css (i.e. the static directory)
• tmpl/dot.gif needs to be placed in the images/ directory (within your static directory, along with all the other MT images)

There are a few caveats for this version:

• First of all, I cannot promise that this will work for every plugin out there. There are quite a few plugins out there, and we just could not test how well they all work with the Plugin Manager.
• Do not try to install or manage plugins that contain patched copies of core MT files. This will cause problems with your installation. Currentlly, I can only think of two plugins that fit this criteria (though it is easily possible that there are more out there): remote post and ComeBack. I will be releasing revised versions of these plugins in the near future, as well as use this situation to drive my work on adding plugin configuration functionality to the Plugin Manager.

Thanks again to Kristine for all her hard work on the MT Plugin Directory without which this project would never have been even remotely possible. And thanks to all of the beta testers for all of their valuable feedback so far.

If you find any problems/bugs with the Plugin Manager, please submit them to the MT Plugin Direcotry Bug Tracker.

Major Update: (2003-06-05 13:05)

• On my way out of the apartment to day, I realized there was a big bug left in the code released last night. I only just now got home and fixed it. Please download the Plugin Manager again. Versions released previously will not work, and may even cause errors. This bug is not the line 197 fix.