Managing a Community in Movable Type

Whether it’s one of your blog readers commenting on an entry which you posted or another blogger doing so on their own site through TrackBack, community feedback is one of the most compelling and interesting facets of weblogging because it breaks down the wall between publisher and reader. Movable Type provides functionality for two types of feedback, comments and TrackBacks.

About Comments

Comments are replies by your blog’s readers to the entries that you create. Each entry can be individually configured to accept comments through a comment form typically located on each entry’s individual archive page. The comments themselves are also typically displayed on this page.

About TrackBacks

TrackBack is a protocol used primarily to provide remote commenting and notification functionality for blogs. For example, TrackBack allows a blogger to comment on an entry on their own blog and have an excerpt of the reply and link back to it sent to the original blog through a TrackBack ping.

Commenter authentication and user registration

Authentication of commenters ties each comment to a verifiable private account (i.e. a pseudonymous identity) meaning that these commenters can effectively be managed. With authentication in place, you can designate certain commenters as trusted and others as banned. Giving a commenter trusted status allows the system to handle them differently, publishing their comments immediately, while other commenters are queued for moderation. Besides the goodwill this designation generates, it can save you the time and effort of moderating and publishing queued comments.

Movable Type 4 supports a variety of different authentication methodologies, including local user registration and authentication with Movable Type itself (new in Movable Type 4), the OpenID standard (new in Movable Type 4), and Six Apart’s free TypeKey service.

Learn more

• Authentication and registration in Movable Type. Configuring your blog for local user registraiton and authentication, for OpenID authentication and for TypeKey authentication.

• Comment and TrackBack settings. Configuring system-wide comment and TrackBack settings, configuring blog comment and TrackBack settings and configuring comments and TrackBacks on an individual entry or page.

• Managing comments. Managing comments across the entire system, and managing comments on a single blog.

  • Acting on comments. Publishing and unpublishing comments, deleting comments, marking comments as spam.
  • Editing comments
  • Replying to comments

• Managing TrackBacks. Managing TrackBacks across the entire system, and managing TrackBacks on a single blog.

  • Acting on TrackBacks. Publishing and unpublishing TrackBacks, deleting TrackBacks, marking comments as spam.
  • Editing TrackBacks

• Managing your blog’s commenters. Viewing a list of your autenticated commenters; trusting or banning an individual commenter.