One of Movable Type's biggest strengths is the platform's support for an unlimited number of weblogs. Once you've got a thriving community of bloggers creating entries and publishing their thoughts, though, it quickly becomes necessary to manage the weblogs on your system.

To meet this need, we've introduced an entire new area of functionality in Movable Type 3.2: The System Overview. We've chosen the System Overview as the first feature to highlight in this new release because it represents a single home for administrators. It's one place to go to oversee everything that's happening across your installation, whether that's a single blog for your site, dozens of blogs managing...

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For a lot of bloggers, participating in a community online is what motivates us and keeps us blogging. Good feedback from commenters and people sending TrackBacks can keep a weblog alive and vibrant, but negative comments or, worst of all, the plague of spam, can take all the satisfaction out of maintaining a blog.

Because nothing's more frustrating than spammers or trolls ruining your community, we've tried to make sure you have strong anti-spam tools out of the box in this new version of Movable Type. But eliminating the annoyance of spam is where the new community management features start, not where they end. So, we've made a powerful new Feedback Rating System in Movable Type 3.2....

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Except when you're writing or editing entries, much of the time spent in Movable Type is in managing the listings of entries, comments, TrackBacks, authors, or other items in the system. In past versions, listings could be inconsistent, with listings offering varying degrees of control, and the arrangement of information on some pages being frustrating. Worse, when the same type of information was listed in two different places, it wasn't always the same. For example, the comment listings page and the display of comments on an individual entry worked in completely different ways.

Every listing page improved

With Movable Type 3.2, we've made some massive improvements to the way that...

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Over the past two weeks, we've been telling the world a lot about Movable Type 3.2 and now it's time to show it.

Today, we are releasing the first beta version of Movable Type 3.2 and we encourage everyone to download it and see for themselves.

You can find the details over on the Beta Blog. We hope to see you over there!

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Everyone loves having a great looking site, but for most people who aren't well versed in the technical details of HTML and CSS, tweaking your blog's look isn't easy. Being able to easily pick a style from a rich library of choices is essential.

So, we made the move in Movable Type 3.2 to a new set of Six Apart standard styles that are shared with both our TypePad and LiveJournal services. There's an immediate benefit of being able to use any one of a number of existing styles. But in the future, with over ten million blogs sharing the same single set of styles and markup, there's going to be a new and rapidly expanding base of additional styles available that we think is...

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Now that I've played with the Movable Type 3.2 Beta for a bit, I have a thought. That thought is that it seems to me as if Six Apart is going for the ease-of-use crowd (in other words, people who haven't used it and for who it needs to be easy). This, in and of itself, isn't really a Bad Thing™.

But it does bug me when that line is crossed and the older users (uh, that's me), who have already taken that curve, get thrown for another one simply to make it easier for new users. So the existing crowd has to learn over and over, to make it easier for new people? I don't like that.

Two examples.

First, View Site. This friendly link has been lurking in the top navigation bar of the...

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This plugin is for blocking feedback[ct(=comment) and tb(=trackback)] spams by adding an additional CCode(hidden ct input field) or adding TCode to original tb ID in tb URL, and then obfuscating that Code for the purpose of not easily guessing it.

MT 3.2's enforced anti-spam system is performed mainly after getting feedbacks. So if many spams are arrived, then it also uses system/MT user resourses when filtering, junking, unpublishing, and deleting spams although it becomes comparatively easy than pre 3.2.

CCode and TCode works in before saving spam feedbacks to MT system. CCode/TCode make it very difficult for spam-bots to guess tb URL and required ct input...

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Movable Type 3.2 features a new take on an old friend: the Junk folder. In your email program, some messages are likely to be spam, and most email applications these days offer a folder that can be set to delete junk after a set period of time.

We've brought the same convenience and power to Movable Type. Using the new feedback scoring system described earlier, comments or TrackBacks that fall below your spam threshold score can be set to be automatically deleted after a configurable period of time. (The default is 14 days.) The best part about the new junk folder? You don't have to touch it. If you just want to accept the default settings and not mess with junk comments or TrackBacks...

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We've worked hard to make sure all the configuration settings for your weblogs are more intuitively organized and simplified, while still retaining all the power and control that Movable Type affords.

New in Movable Type 3.2 is a reorganization of weblog configuration into a few weblog settings screens. One of the most notable is the Feedback settings, which govern comments and TrackBacks. At the simplest level, there's a blog-level on/off switch for both comments and TrackBacks, and the options for each have been reduced to cover all the common scenarios for enabling feedback on a blog. You can easily require authentication, make it optional, or not require it at all, and it's...

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Given the scope of changes, fixes, and improvements in Movable Type 3.2, it was clear that simply updating our existing documentation for the new version wouldn’t be enough. So Movable Type 3.2 features a completely rewritten set of documentation for the platform that's more task-oriented than ever.

The twelve-chapter (plus appendices) tome is a recipe book for doing nearly anything in Movable Type and makes it easy to not only understand but to utilize the full potential of the software.

What's more, as a blogging company, there's nothing more that we value than our community's feedback and expertise so we'll be enabling community feedback on every single page to make sure the...

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Be proud of your CMS! Here's some larger badges to accompany the standard badges that 6A is offering:

And one for my dark-sited friends (no white antialiasing around the edges) FIXED, thanks Dan:

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UPDATE The beta blog is live. Read all the entries and download 3.2, there's plenty to play with!

Jay's just posted an announcement to ProNet with some juicy details. Movable Type 3.2 will be going into a beta sometime tomorrow in the afternoon. Here comes the best part of the announcement, its a public beta, what this means is that the beta blog will be an open environment and anyone will be able to download a copy and use it.

I've managed to get my hands on some early test builds and the new release is just staggering. So much has changed that 32 posts simply don't do it justice. Almost every single hack I've ever posted onto Movalog has found its way into this release in one way or...

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We're running Movable Type 3.2 beta 4. Rather than upgrading, I did a fresh installation. It went smoothly, and the upgrade is well worth it. I think I have everything working correctly ( danandsherree.com Search, danandsherree.com Notifications, and other stuff I had customized). I haven't updated the alternate templates yet, though.

Given all the new features, I'm a little surprised that this release is being called 3.2 - it could be 3.5 or maybe even 4.0! I haven't gotten to see the new Junk tools in action yet to say how well they work. Basename control is cool, and works, as this entry shows. I suppose I could mention all the cool new features, but...

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I'm sure it's no surprise, but this site is now powered by Movable Type version 3.2. I could go on and on about the great new features… but I won't. A few links to those who have, though: • Announcing Movable Type 3.2 • Movable Type 3.2! • Movable Type 3.2: Our 32 Favorite Features - unfortunately, they're only up to number 26! • Movable Type 3.2 goes LIVE! Huzzah!

To summarize, it's an excellent upgrade (worthy of the v4.0 badge, as I wrote before) and I don't hesitate to support Six Apart or recommend it to others. In fact, you can take advantage of the 3.2 Release sale- -$30-off a personal license!

(By the way, the above...

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We waited a while for it, but it's finally here. *much rejoicing*

The beta testing went on for a while, but really it was worth the wait. I'm rarely opposed to waiting for a program to get better; and I wasn't disappointed. The end product is a versatile program that adds both strength and flexibility to it's already powerful core.

And functionality! Some of my personal favorites: • Plugin Central: Plugins add a great deal of functionality to Movable Type's already powerful core. But installing plugins to previous versions would sometimes go forgotten because once the files were copied over, you'd never have any indication that they were there (like Scripturizer or...

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We know that many of you are getting as excited as we are about the upcoming release of Movable Type 3.2 and we wouldn't want to keep you waiting any longer than necessary to experience what the new version has to offer.

So, without further ado, today we are announcing the availability of Movable Type 3.2 Beta. The beta test is a completely open beta test available to anyone who wishes to try out the latest.

Over on the Beta Blog, you'll find everything related to the beta test including, obviously, the code, but also an entire community of other people testing out the software at the same time.

It's going to be an MT party, so make sure you drop by. No need to RSVP. Everyone is...

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The long-awaited Movable Type upgrade to version 3.2 is now available.

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Upgrading or installing Movable Type can be rather intimidating. There are few things I have screwed up so badly attempting, even when they say it is super easy, idiot-proof. I always seem to be the idiot who still can't make it work. I have now upgraded two separate MT installs to MT 3.2 and thought I would share my notes with you. Please note that Jay Allen (Product Manager of Movable Type), Chad Everett (of Don't Back Down and Everitz Consulting), and Arvind Satyanarayan ( Movalog) have all helped me at various stages in upgrading, and if I didn't have friends who knew what they were doing, honestly I just wouldn't attempt this on my own. But that's me, and I have over 20 blogs...

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Movable Type puts the BLING in BLoggING! ;-)

Movable Type 3.2 finally made its official debut today. Six undeclared favorite things notwithstanding ;-), MT's newest release was definitely worth the wait. The beta process was thorough (and thoroughly fun!) and the public aspect of the beta testing presumably yielded a wide variety of installation and publishing configurations, resulting in more bugs exposed and eliminated. In addition to a generous list of cool new features, MT's licensing is expanding to UNLIMITED weblogs for ALL licenses, including the personal free version. If that isn't enough, SixApart is discounting (through September) the Personal Basic and Personal Unlimited...

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We are pleased to announce that the release of Movable Type 3.2 is nearly upon us. Feature development for this version was driven almost entirely by requests from our community of users and, therefore, the changes are tightly focused around the way you use the software. Overall, Movable Type 3.2 makes all the common tasks we perform with Movable Type much more satisfying.

Between now and the time it is released, we will be covering "Our 32 Favorite features in Movable Type 3.2" on the Professional Network weblog. Though we'll only be covering highlights of the new version, this release features over 100 new features and improvements. We're sure all users will find this to...

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