May 22, 2009
Quick Fixes for Common Itches
Posted in News.
Every once in a while, if you use Movable Type long enough, you can run into little glitches or things that are confusing. We thought we’d round up a couple of random ones that have seemed common lately, with the hopes that it makes things a little more fun and a little less frustrating. Filtering entries by category name gets weird if my category name has spaces! This one cropped up in Movable Type 4.25 (the release where Motion was introduced). If you have a category name like “Diamonds & Pearls” and you set <mt:entries category=”Diamonds & Pearls”>, you get an error instead of your entries! No good. So, we made a quick little patch (link outdated) to fix it. Just follow the outlined steps there and you should be set. Sometimes I can’t click into the text editor when writing an entry or page! Oooh, tricky. What’s probably happened here is your mt-config.cgi file lists the full path for your site’s MT install, something like StaticWebPath http://www.example.com/mt/mt-static/ but you’ve visited your MT install at http://example.com/mt/, without the “www” part. Because of the web browser security works, MT can’t load the editor part of the Create Entry screen, and that makes…
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October 15, 2008
The Little Things: Comment Replies
Posted in News.
A lot of times, some of the most satisfying things about using Movable Type are the little touches that make managing a site easier or more convenient. One of those great, unheralded features that’s been around since MT4’s release is a simple ability to reply to any comment directly from the Movable Type application.The feature is documented as part of our larger guide on Managing a Community with Movable Type, but since it’s a handy shortcut, it’s worth calling out on its own. Simply point at any published comment in a comment listing page in Movable Type, and you’ll see a “Reply” link appear. (If you’ve set your display options for that listing page to “Expanded”, you’ll always see a Reply link next to the Edit link.)Click the Reply link, and a simple window will pop up with the full text of the comment you were replying to, along with a big space for you to type your reply.As soon as you click on “Submit”, your comment will be published on the relevant entry or page. If you’re using threaded comments on your site, Movable Type will automatically display your comment as a child comment of the one that inspired…
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March 4, 2008
MT @ SXSW
Posted in News.
If you’re headed to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival this week, join us on Saturday, March 8th, as Six Apart hosts KICK! the unofficial kickoff event of the SXSW Interactive Festival. KICK! is a fun, free playground-style kickball game that is a great way for you to meet and mix with attendees of the Interactive festival and other bloggers who use Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. Here’s what you need to know:When: Saturday, March 8th at 10:30amWhere: Palm Park, behind the Austin Convention CenterWho: Everyone’s invited! It helps if you’re a geek or a bloggerWhat: Kickball. A simple game, tons of fun, and nobody gets picked lastHow: Just show up with some shoes you can run in, and we’ll handle the restSix years ago, KICK! was started as a way to welcome the community of early bloggers that had just begun to adopt SXSWi as an informal annual homecoming. Join the tradition by coming out to play some ball or just drink some Progress coffee and eat some breakfast tacos.If you plan on joining us, please leave a comment to this post and be sure to RSVP on KICK!’s Upcoming page. And be sure to check out the MT-powered…
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February 8, 2008
Where Movable Type is Going in 2008
Posted in News.
In case you missed it, you’ll want to check out Six Apart CEO Chris Alden’s post MT in 2008: Open, Powerful and Easy. It’s a great look at the vision for the MT platform going forward, and offers a compelling look at the philosophy behind the huge investment in MT over the past year:So, back in 2006, we made some decisions. First and foremost, we were going to compete. MT has brought more to blogging than any platform in history — it was the first professional grade blogging platform (when it launched) and the first enterprise grade blogging platform (with MT Enterprise) — but in 2006 it was time to double down or take the chips off the table.We decided to bet on the future.Central to this effort is Movable Type 4, a completely re-thought version of the software designed to address the way the web and social media have changed in the past half-decade. We wanted to improve the ease of use, the user interface, the installation process, and the content & community management capabilities. We also greatly enhanced our advanced capabilities, launching an Enterprise Solution, making MT unrivaled in its power for large customers who need to run large…
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December 13, 2007
Movable Type 4.1 Beta, and a new Reseller Program
Posted in News.
This week’s launch of the Movable Type Open Source project was huge news for our community. But as part of that announcement, we promised even more news to come. So today, we’re introducing some of the next steps that will outline how we’re going to fueling that community in the coming weeks and months. We’re beginning the beta of Movable Type 4.1 today, with tons of new features. We’re announcing the Professional Pack, the first of the extended benefits that paid users of MT will be receiving. We’re launching the Movable Type reseller program designed to offer resellers a 30% discount that you can pass on to your customers or keep for yourself. Each of these announcements on its own would be big news, but one of the things we wanted to demonstrate was how much we value our paying customers who’ve supported MT’s development (the Professional Pack and MT 4.1 will be a free upgrade for all paying customers of MT 4.0), as well as how having an open platform will help benefit everyone who uses Movable Type. Enough talk — let’s show you what’s coming! What’s new in Movable Type 4.1? Here’s what you can look forward to…
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December 12, 2007
Movable Type Open Source
Posted in News.
As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose. Just want the details and downloads? Skip to the bottom. But you might like the story of how we got here. Like many of us on the team, some of you have been waiting for this moment for years. For a business, an open source license affects boring things like how a product is created, updated, and distributed. But the open source movement has always been about something more important: Freedom. With a name like “Movable Type”, we’ve always been keenly aware of the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and the creation of independent media that an individual can control. Our goal has always been to create the best blogging platform in the world and to put that power in the hands of as many people as possible. And we want to honor a tradition of openness that Movable Type has embodied for over six years: From TrackBack to Atom to OpenID, we’ve always invented and popularized key technologies that were delivered with open…
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December 4, 2007
Jim Ramsey on Designing for Flow
Posted in News.
Jim Ramsey, our lead designer on Movable Type (and the guy responsible for the gorgeous design of Movable Type.com), has just published Designing for Flow over at A List Apart. Jim eloquently describes the idea of “flow” in his essay:Flow, as a mental state, was first proposed by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is characterized by a distorted sense of time, a lack of self-consciousness, and complete engagement in the task at hand. Software engineers might feel it when they’re writing code, gamers might feel it when playing Guitar Hero III, Christopher Cross felt it when he went sailing. For designers, it’s exactly the feeling we hope to promote in the people who use our sites.We’ve been proud of the huge number of talented designers that have been members of the MT community from day one, and hope that talking through a little of our design process can inspire even more creative work from all of you….
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December 3, 2007
Appnel on Code
Posted in News.
Even though he got a shout-out in our last post, it’s worth giving some link love to Tim Appnel’s “On Code” blog again. He’s doing one of the best jobs of blogging regularly about the nuts and bolts of Movable Type, a topic he knows well as one of the longest-standing members of the most technical parts of the MT community. Over the past six (!) years, Tim’s done a great job of not just understanding and explaining functional details of Movable Type, but of building award-winning plugins and of holding our feet to the fire at Six Apart when he thinks it’s in the best interest of MT. It’s a thrill to see him posting frequently about MT with his uniquely informed perspective, and it’s well worth adding his site to your list of regular reads if you want to keep up with a strong independent voice in the MT community.And of course, if you value Tim’s insights into creating content and community with Movable Type, it’s worth finding out more about Appnel Solutions to help with consulting….
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November 20, 2007
Community Conversations
Posted in News.
We talk a lot about community here on movabletype.org, so it’s only appropriate that we hear back from all of you, especially after the recent release of the Movable Type Community Solution. There’s been a terrific response, so let’s cover some highlights:Our new Community Solution-powered Movable Type Forums are starting to show off what an MT-powered forum can do. The forums themselves are still in beta as we test out exactly how they’ll work, but they’re already worth a look.Jesse Gardner’s been building out an MTCS-powered site, and he’s offered some enticing first impressions of the new offering.Tim Appnel weighs in with his own thoughts, picking up on a key point: “The Community Solution does indeed provided the ability to host forums using the MT engine, but it does a lot more too.”And finally, Learning Movable Type has been absolutely rocking lately. Check out just some of the recent tutorials:Using Favicons and Gravatar in MT4Making Flickr’s Blog This work with MT4Installing Movable Type under IIS on WindowsWell, we could go on listing these forever, you might as well just subscribe to the site. And if you’ve got some expertise of your own to share, the site’s accepting new contributors so…
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September 5, 2007
A Plethora of Plugins
Posted in News.
Movable Type 4.0’s only been out three weeks, and we’ve seen dozens of poweful new plugins for the platform, with new ones popping up every day. As someone who first installed Movable Type as a beta six years ago (!), I’ve never seen a time where more compelling or just plain fun plugins have been launched in such a short period of time.Because a lot of us have been busy uploading the new “Works With MT4” plugins to our blogs, it’s probably worth taking a look to see what all the plugin developers in our community have been up to. And of course, the vast majority of older plugins still work with MT4 as well — these are just some of the ones that show of MT4’s features the best. Check ‘em out:Never Get Dash-BoredGoogle AdSense Widget: David Raynes lets you keep an eye on the bottom line from your MT4 dashboard, showing your recent earnings information from Google’s AdSense service.Google Analytics Widget: One of the breakout additions for MT4, this popular plugin lets you see your daily traffic right on MT4’s dashboard, with David Raynes making smart use of the built-in charting functions in the platform.FeedBurner Widget: Just like…
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August 30, 2007
More Docs Than A Hospital
Posted in News.
There’s a whole pile of new and updated documentation for MT4 that we’ve been working on updating, based specifically on the requests we’ve gotten from the community and from developers. Some highlights:An all-new introduction to the MT4 Developer’s Guide. All of the developer documentation available has been better organized, so it’s easier to find.Transformer Callbacks documentation, for plugins that change the way MT4’s screens look.Object Callbacks documentation, to create plugins that hook into the core object actions that make MT4 go.Information on how to package your plugins.And one of the coolest new features in MT4, how to build MT Dashboard Widgets.You can even go all the way and create entirely new screens within the application. Do you lean more towards the design side of things than the developer side? No problem. You’ll want to check out:MT4’s Comment Templates for Users of MT3 or Earlier, A.K.A. “MT4 templates for mere mortals”. If you’ve been confused or intimidated by all the includes and variables in the new MT4 templates, this is a great place to start.An introductory Designer’s Guide to MT4 Templates, which is a great place to get started.A practical example of how to create comment feeds.And one of the most…
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August 14, 2007
Why we made Movable Type 4.0
Posted in News.
When our co-founders Ben & Mena Trott first launched Movable Type almost six years ago, their words were pretty modest: “We’ve never claimed to be the best. We’ve never presented Movable Type as the program that will revolutionize weblogging. We’re just developing a system with a lot of the features that we’ve heard users are looking for. Luckily, we’ve received a lot of good word of mouth.” But while the first description of the tool was fairly modest, what’s been astounding is the things people have done with the tool. And perhaps the biggest surprise to all of us who’ve worked on Movable Type over the years isn’t that people have done amazing things with MT — we always knew that potential was there. What we never could have guessed, what we didn’t even know to hope for, was the impact that the blogs created by the Movable Type community would have on the world. So today, almost six years later, we have that history in mind as we launch Movable Type 4. We’ll naturally be talking about new features and the cool things you can do with the platform. (The movabletype.com site is a great place for getting the…
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August 8, 2007
Today’s Events
Posted in News.
As we’ve mentioned, we’re hosting two event today to help the Movable Type community get ready for the release of MT4. Both events are free and open to anyone who wants to participate online — here’s the information you’ll need to know to get connected.Upgrade-A-Thon: 10am Pacific Time (1pm Eastern/5pm GMT) If you’re thinking of making the jump to MT4, we’ll have the most experienced experts in the world by your side when you do it. You can join via screencast (view the live video in your browser) or IRC (a free text chat system) and we’ll have a call-in phone conference and AIM chat room as well.MT4 Training on Consulting and Strategy: 12pm Pacific Time (3pm Eastern/7pm GMT) Our sales and product teams will teach you about what MT4 can do, and how you can benefit from it as a web developer, designer, consultant, or administrator. You can join via screencast (view the live video in your browser) or IRC (a free text chat system) and we’ll have a call-in phone conference and AIM chat room as well.To get ready, you might wish to visit the Adobe Connect screencast conference sites (linked above) as it can take a few…
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July 17, 2007
Tags, Variables, and Templates, Oh My!
Posted in News.
As we’ve had an influx of new people looking into Movable Type 4.0 during the beta, either for the first time, or for the first time in years, one thing that keeps coming up is “the template tags look cool — but what can I do with them?” Things have been quiet around here as the team is super busy fixing bugs and getting closer to release candidates for MT 4.0, so it seemed like a good time to recap a little bit of the history of MT’s template tags and then cover what’s new and upcoming for template hackers. First, the basics. MT’s template tags were designed to be simple enough for anybody who knows HTML and CSS to be able to make a great looking blog or site, without knowing how to program. To enable that, all the basic template tags (which you can see on a site like MTTags.com) work like a simple mail merge program: You make your HTML (or XML, or whatever) page, and then substitute in MT’s template tags so the program can insert your blog data automatically. This works for any entry, archive, or page in the system, and is pretty easy to…
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July 11, 2007
Psst — iPhone Nerds…
Posted in News.
Got a shiny new iPhone? Got shiny new MT4 Beta? Well, every listing screen in MT4 has built-in feeds for things like managing your entries and comments, all you’ve got to do is look for the feed icon on the side of a listing page. You can even customize the display (“Only show me comments that are pending approval.”) and get a feed showing exactly the info you want.Then, subscribe to that feed in Apple’s .Mac Reader. Voila, you’re up to date on your blog, right from your iPhone. The best part — MT’s admin feeds aren’t just for comments. You can subscribe to all kinds of custom views:Subscribe to MT’s System Activity Log to see stuff like which of your users are logging into the systemFilter the Activity Log to show you just new user registrations, so you can see who signs up to comment on your blog every daySubscribe to a list of entries with “Draft” status in all of your blogs, to see what content you haven’t published yetGet a feed of every term your readers are searching for on your blog, to give you suggestions about topics for new postsMake a feed for every Page that’s…
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July 7, 2007
Take A Look Around!
Posted in News.
Now that we’ve got the new site mostly up and running, it’s time to point out a few highlights you might want to check out if you’re new to exploring MT4.The good stuff: The free download of MT4 Beta 5, screenshots of the new version and an index of our screencasts, in case you like movies.Find out What’s New, what stuff we’re still working on, and what changes we’ve just made. We’ve got the requisite FAQ, too.Too lazy busy to install MT4 all by yourself, but the screencasts aren’t enough? Check out Time To Give It A Try for info on free demo installs and an Amazon EC2 image, all created by our community.If you’re the RTFM type, we’ve got documentation and the all-important Getting Started guide. If you’re upgrading from an older version of MT, you’ll want to check out Works with MT4 to make sure your stuff… works with MT4.And last but not least, send us your feedback! We can’t wait to hear what you have to say.While you’re thinking about it, you might want to subscribe to our feed. As we gear up for the official launch, there’s going to be more and more information popping up…
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June 25, 2007
I am not an Enterprise.
Posted in News.
One of the biggest concerns a lot of folks in the MT community have is, “Is Movable Type for me?” It’s been easy to be confused — MT has been available in versions for developers, individual bloggers, businesses, educational users, and enterprises. With MT4, we wanted to make things a little bit more sane, so that all of those audiences could be benefiting from each others’ efforts and ideas, instead of feeling like the grass was greener on the other side.From a technological standpoint, this was pretty straightfoward; MT4 is built on a single core platform for every kind of user, with “packs” of feature functionality layered on top to make the different versions have distinct features. This makes it really easy to have shared features make their way out to everyone at the same time.For example, MT Enterprise got the built-in ability to clone blogs in your system last year, but we hadn’t done a major feature release of non-enterprise MT since then, so the feature hadn’t found its way out to regular users yet. We hated the idea that something that cool was limited to only one of our audiences, and not for any technical reasons, but just…
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June 14, 2007
A community demo of MT4
Posted in News.
Mihai Bocsaru, a long-time ProNet member and all around MT enthusiast has been doing a great job of running a public demo of MT4, which he’s updated for the release of Beta 2. You can check out his demo site or log right in to MT4 Beta 2 with username “demo” and password “demo”. Now, please note: This isn’t an official demo site, this is just something Mihai’s done to support the community. So be nice to the demo! But if you haven’t had a chance to install the new version yourself yet and just want to see the shiny new goodies, you’re all set. Thanks, Mihai!…
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June 7, 2007
“This is a real-ass beta!”
Posted in News.
The quote above was from someone in the community I had the chance to talk to in the days since we launched the MT4 beta. Let me tell you what it means, and why that blogger was exactly right.Mike at Mule Design, who’s helped a lot with the new look and user experience of MT4, put it a little more politely, calling it “The Return of Real Betas”, but that sounded a little bit too much like “We’re bringing Beta back”, and that’s very Summer of 2006, not very appropriate for a brand-new app.Here’s what a real beta means:You will find Actual Bugs. You may even hose your blog! Trust us, seriously. Bugs.You will actually have a chance to contribute ideas, suggestions, and fixes. We’re not pulling a “here, we’re almost done, but we wanted to start promoting it now”-style beta.Someday (soon!) the beta testing period will end. We love our friends at Google, but their worst innovation is plastering “Beta” on stuff for a few years until they get around to actually shipping. Don’t fret, after the beta, guess what — we’ll start working on the next version!We will honestly be listening to feedback. The beta isn’t limited to…
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