Recently in Error Messages Category

When creating a site with Movable Type, you might have seen the error above, or a variation.  The full text usually reads something like: "An error occurred publishing date-based archive 'Monthly20100301000000': Publish error in template 'Monthly Entry Listing': Error in <mtLink> tag: Can't find template 'archive_index'".  (or 'styles', or 'javascript', or 'feed_recent'...) So what to do when you get this message?

I already explained earlier what to make of cryptic "Can't call method ... on an undefined value" errors.  Today, we are going to take a look at a different kind of errors that are often just as mysterious and frustrating: the dreaded "Error 500" when accessing any of Movable Type's .cgi scripts.  The error logs of the webserver only tell you about "Premature end of script headers" in some script.  Real informative...

Anybody who has used Movable Type for some time has seen it.  The dreaded error message: Can't call method "..." on an undefined value at (some file) line (some number).  So what does it mean when you get this error, and more importantly, how can you fix it?  First, let's have a look at the cause of the error.  In order to understand what is going on you first need to know a bit about how Movable Type works.