Archive for the ‘Movable Type News’ Category
by David Peralty on April 22nd, 2008
Yesterday, the web was buzzing due to Six Apart’s mention of a new advertising service and blog management service they are building. The advertising part of their business will be managed by Adify, the same service that so many companies are using to roll their own advertising network out these days, including Forbes, and others.
The blog service will include management of the back end, SEO, and blog design as well as consulting. This could mean huge issues for other companies that have built up services supporting Six Apart’s user base.
Darren Rowse has all sorts of details pertaining to the deal and what kind of things we can expect.
Read More
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on January 23rd, 2008
Movable Type is trying to take a bite out of one of their competitors markets by becoming a little more CMS-like with their new Universal Template set.
First off, before I dive deeper into what the Universal Template is, I want to say that when I saw the front end of the new Universal Template, I was very impressed. It is very stylish and could easily be the new platform that many blogs use when creating their brand.
From the Movable Type Blog:
For the last several weeks, Jim Ramsey has been developing a new web site design using Movable Type 4.1’s new template set and theming infrastructure. His goals were simple:
- make it easy for users to create not just a blog, but an entire web site
- create a web site that guides the user through customization right out of the box
- architect a set of templates that is more intuitive to customize
The result of his work is pretty incredible – so much so that we decided to include the new template set, called the “Universal Template Set,” with the new Professional Pack. Users will be able to get a sneak preview of the feature next week when we release Movable Type 4.1 Release Candidate 2 announced yesterday.
It is definitely worth checking out the screencast they have set up to demonstrate the new template set.
To be honest, I am really surprised that Movable Type didn’t get more coverage for this new release as these are the types of developments that are going to help Movable Type compete in the current blogging related market.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on December 13th, 2007
In case you have been living under a rock the last few days, Movable Type has started releasing nightly beta versions of their GPL’d open source version of Movable Type.
âMTOS has every feature in Movable Type 4.0 along with several new minor improvements and bug fixes.
âAll plugins, themes, templates, designs, and APIs that work with MT4 work with MTOS. MTOS also works with other Six Apart open source technologies such as memcached.
âMTOS is one of the only open source blogging tools with built-in support for an unlimited number of blogs, an unlimited number of authors, and sign-in with OpenID, with no plugins needed.
âWeâll be adding additional paid benefits for people whoâve paid for commercial licenses for Movable Type, with benefits like improved technical support and custom add-ons such as plugins or themes.
âYou can find out how to contribute to the MTOS project and the MT community at movabletype.org.
âMovable Type Open Source is being released under the standard GPL license.
âWe welcome and encourage the distribution and reuse of all or part of MTOS in other open source projects.
I haven’t had a chance to set up and play with the new open source version yet, and the fact that they don’t yet have a stable version for me to try puts me off a bit, but I am very excited to see what this will mean over the coming months and years. I love competition in the marketplace and hopefully Six Apart can provide it once again with their open source version of Movable Type.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on August 27th, 2007
I have to admit, I haven’t bitten the bullet and tried out the new Movable Type, but reading reviews online, it seems like people are very divided on which software comes out on top. Aaron Brazell, someone I trust, has created not only a review, but some suggestions that SixApart might want to take and use to improve their publishing platform.
Here is a snippet from his post, and something I still hear the most complaints about:
Setup Fixes
I’m still disgruntled about Movable Type setup routine. It’s easier than it used to be but it is far from easy and frustrated me as a technologically competent guy. For instance, why can’t the setup wizard trim whitespace from around database login info. I don’t know how it is done in Perl, but in PHP it’s as simple as trim($string);.
Check out the full post on Technosailor.com.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on August 27th, 2007
I have to admit, I haven’t bitten the bullet and tried out the new Movable Type, but reading reviews online, it seems like people are very divided on which software comes out on top. Aaron Brazell, someone I trust, has created not only a review, but some suggestions that SixApart might want to take and use to improve their publishing platform.
Here is a snippet from his post, and something I still hear the most complaints about:
Setup Fixes
Iâm still disgruntled about Movable Type setup routine. Itâs easier than it used to be but it is far from easy and frustrated me as a technologically competent guy. For instance, why canât the setup wizard trim whitespace from around database login info. I donât know how it is done in Perl, but in PHP itâs as simple as trim($string);.
Check out the full post on Technosailor.com.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on August 16th, 2007
There aren’t as many Movable Type users as their once were, but with their latest release, the tides could shift in their favor once again. The new Movable Type 4.0 has some great new additions, and some people are saying that it slightly one-ups WordPress, especially when you look at how great Movable Type handles multiple blogs, and its new administration panel looks slick.
Darren was able to talk with Anil Dash about the new version, here is a snippet from that:
What will MT users upgrading to 4.0 notice the most about the new version?
Right off the top, the new user interface puts things like statistics on your comment and posting activity front and center. So you’ve got the ability to judge your blog’s success immediately, and then you can filter those views or get an XML feed of what’s going on with your block with just a click. Of course, things like editing and revising entries are a lot easier, too, with an all-new rich text editor and asset management and niceties like automatic saving of drafts and automatic conversion of curly quotes from MS Word.
Competition will help the blogging software market, so I look forward to Movable Type’s renewed presence in that arena, especially their open source version coming later this year.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on June 7th, 2007
If nothing else, SixApart has to be happy at the amount of attention their latest news is getting. They recently released a very beta version of Movable Type 4, and also let the world know they are going to be releasing a GPL version of Movable Type, which will be an open source project.
Everyone is ranting and raving over the beta of Movable Type 4. I am really excited to see them updating the administration panel design and functions, despite the problems some people are having with it currently.
From TechCrunch:
There’s a lot of history between MT users and SixApart. Although Movable Type was never an open source platform, prior to the release of MT 3.0 many treated MT as if it was open source. The decision to enforce licensing with the release of MT 3.0 caused widespread outrage in 2004 (including rather vocally from myself) and in many ways was a tipping point that delivered WordPress from relative obscurity to being the popular blogging CMS it is today.
Dash said that commercially SixApart had no choice other than to enforce licensing at the time. However SixApart in 2007 is a thriving company with a broad suite of popular products, including TypePad, Vox and LiveJournal, and today can afford to give back to the blogging community.
From Carthik’s Wordlog where the title is MovableType: 3 Years Too Late?:
I still clearly remember the day Mena announced the new pricing structure for MovableType. A day later, I wrote up a post on how to move from Movable Type to WordPress. Then, the exodus began – with famous users, like Mark Pilgrim, Molly, and so many others shifting to WordPress. Those were busy days on the #wordpress IRC channel. The number of opinion-leading bloggers who used MT started declining, and most of the new bloggers who came after chose WordPress. While there is no reliable count of the number of WordPress Vs. Movable Type users, I dare say more folks use WordPress than MT.
I think the whole argument about time is a great one. So many people are going to be “once bitten, twice shy”, in that they won’t be moving back to Movable Type. There won’t be a mass return that compensates in any large way for the mass exodus of 2004.
Jonathan Snook also chimes in on the new beta of Movable Type 4:
Unfortunately, I didn’t really feel like much get added besides a new interface and better registration. Many of the more interesting features, like being able to clone a blog, are being handled by plugins, many of which were already available for MT3.
Spam protection seems unchanged. I fear how much spam wouldn’t be caught by it in comparison to what I have now.
It’s also still Perl at its core. This is one area that I think turns off developers. Not that PHP is a dream to program in but more people know PHP than Perl.
And if you want another great review roundup, check out Lisa’s blog, which I found from Matt Mullenweg’s blog.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on October 18th, 2006
Six Apart has released a new version of its Enterprise package of Movable Type. Version 1.5 continues to try to set itself up as “the most advanced business blogging platform” through addition of LDAP authentication, support and administration for thousands of users, multiple databases, and plug-in architecture.
The company even goes as far as to says that among Fortune 500 companies with blogs, between 75% and 80% use a SixApart product like Movable Type or Typepad.
Over on Read/Write Web, there is some interesting details between Anil Dash, the VP of SixApart , Chris Alden, EVP and GM of Movable Type, and Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web.
I noted to Chris and Anil that the brand of Movable Type appears to be changing. It seems like Movable Type (the system) is being positioned as more of a business blogging platform these days. Chris replied that MT is “good for advanced blogging needs, it doesn’t necessarily mean for businesses.” He cited the usage of MT by power bloggers.
Anil likened MT to the Nikon D80 camera, which is a pro level tool. He said most people who use that are probably not professional photographers, but they aspire to that level of quality, expressiveness, etc. So he said MT is “a professional level tool, whether you’re a fortune 500 company that has 10,000 bloggers on the intranet using MT Enterprise, or somebody like you or me – we’re serious individual or small publishers, our blog is a big part of our professional lives and MT is the right tool for the job.”
This is where I have to admit that I am a WordPress fanboy, not only because it was the first software I used for blogging, but also because I have had nothing but problems with Movable Types among all the installs I log into.
While I also don’t see WordPress being a big in the corporate world just yeat, I see that the shift could someday happen, and so Six Apart should not be too cocky.
I have to admit though, creating an Enterprise edition of their software was a smart way to go for Six Apart. It is a growing segment, highly profitable, and easy to market as the corporate world goes a little blog crazy. Now if only they could take some time to come back to the normal users and fix some more things that are still really buggy in Movable Type for us non-corporate types.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on October 9th, 2006
Niall Kennedy has a post on his blog, which I found via the Blog Herald, that mentions Movable Type has made it to its fifth birthday.
Five years ago today Benjamin Trott and Mena Grabowski Trott released Movable Type 1.0. About 100 copies of the blogging software was downloaded within the first hour of availability, and over 500 people had requested notification of each release.
Six Apart is no doubt very happy, and hopefully we will see some great updates coming from them soon.
Categories: Movable Type News
by David Peralty on September 15th, 2006
While we did not convert Jonathan Snook to WordPress, he did decide to drop Movable Type.
I’ve finally given up on Movable Type. It’s done well for me over the years but I was starting to see its limitations with page builds starting to give errors and taking longer and longer to build a new page.
With that, i’ve moved to a custom-built CakePHP backend. It’s nothing fancy at the moment, as I really just wanted to duplicate what I had before but now that its in place, it should give me much more flexibility to do what I want with this site.
His site looks much the same as it did before the transition. Great work Jonathan. I wonder if he will release an open source copy of what he has made at some point?
Categories: Movable Type News
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