Movable Type 3.2 has only been out a few weeks and we have already seen a number of innovative uses built on the platform. Here’s a look at two of them that launched this past week.

Wal-Mart is a company that elicits strong opinions - exactly the type of company that can greatly benefit from having a voice in the blogosphere. Wal-Mart’s Stories blog focuses on narratives from the frontline of Hurricane Katrina by providing behind the scenes stories of the impact of the hurricane on their business, employees and customers' lives. Many of these stories are quite compelling. and we were gratified to see that Wal-Mart is also reaching out to their readership to collect...

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Movable Type 3.12 has just been released in the US. This version fixes up and ties down tons of little issues that were affecting some users in 3.11. See below for an overview of the most significant changes. If you already purchased Movable Type, you'll find the new release when you log into your Movable Type account. If you haven't yet tried this ground-breaking publishing platform, now is a good time to Get Movable Type.

I hope this release improves your publishing experience! • Fixed a bug that caused spurious errors when running under mod_perl ("The uploaded file was too large.") • Fixed various compatibility issues with old perl versions (before 5.6.0) • Scheduled posting would only post one of many new entries on an archive page...

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We've just released Movable Type 3.01D. You can download the new version by logging into your Movable Type Account and using the "download" link for the appropriate license. If you're upgrading from 3.0D, there's no need to run any upgrade script for this release: just upload the files to your server and you should be ready to go!

This release fixes a number of bugs that were present in 3.0D. The lot of it boils down to this: • Comment preview is no longer dropped (see below for instructions) • Default templates now have valid HTML in a few places where they didn't before. • Lots of bugs fixed with export and import, and the primary category of an entry is included with an...

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We'll be starting the Movable Type 3.0 public beta test next week, the week of April 19. It's taken longer to get to this public beta because we made the decision to extend the alpha process to catch as many bugs as possible before introducing MT3b to the general public.

The alpha testing started about one month ago on March 17, 2004. As anticipated, the alpha uncovered a number of issues that are now fixed, and we thank our alpha testers for their hard work in testing out the software.

If you had applied to be part of the alpha and we missed you, we apologize. As a result of the kinks we encountered during the alpha tester selection process, we've made improvements to the...

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Many users are experiencing intermittent 500 errors when using Movable Type, apparently as a result of certain Perl modules being upgraded by CPanel. (CPanel is an application which automates the management of shared hosting accounts.)

The modules are currently identified as DBI and DBD::mysql. Preliminary reports suggest that reverting these two modules to versions 1.47 and 2.9006 respectively will eliminate the 500 errors.

Some limited testing in a non-CPanel environment with the latest versions of these modules (1.48 and 3.0000 respectively) has not produced any similar performance issues to date; thus, it is not yet clear whether the newer modules alone are responsible for these...

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MOVABLE TYPE is written in Perl, so you will need Perl installed on your system in order to run MOVABLE TYPE. Perl is installed by default on most servers, so it is very likely that your system will already have it. In addition, you will need 6 Perl modules, 5 of which are installed along with Perl--so if you have Perl, you will have these 5 modules. The last required module (HTML::Template) is installed on many hosting providers, and can be downloaded and installed easily otherwise.

The MOVABLE TYPE system runs as a CGI script, so you will need the ability to run CGI scripts on your account.

MOVABLE TYPE uses a flexible, transparent backend for data storage; currently, the...

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Since the launch of Movable Type 3.2, the team has moved nearly all of their efforts to processing help tickets and answering customers' questions as well as working on editing the the Movable Type User Manual. We're thrilled to have so much feedback, as the response indicates just what an overwhelming number of downloads we've had of the new version.

As many of you may know, the new manual is a complete rewrite of our documentation and because of that, we're still working to bring it up to the high standard that both you and we expect. We've been incorporating many users' suggestions left in the comments on each article but there is a lot more to do. In particular the...

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As many of you who maintain public weblogs with Movable Type know, there's an increasing problem with comment spam on many weblogs, and we've discussed some of the ideas for how we'll be dealing with the problem in the future on our company weblog. While we're working on integrating these spam protection techniques into Movable Type and our recently-launched TypePad service, you can protect your site in the mean time by trying out Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin, which is a clever solution to most common kinds of comment spamming, as well as being a great demonstration of the creative ways people are extending Movable Type through plugins.

Also, if you're interested in joining...

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After talking to Brad about the new version of MT, I felt it deserves a whole blog post about it just to talk about how amazing it is and get rid of all this excitement building up in me

First of, David's Subcats being built into the application. Well I knew it ! In #mt-plugins, David told me and a few others that he would not be entering his plugin into the contest - on further questioning he said that there was another party involved. Well once he said that it wasn't too hard to guess the right answer and we were helped by the fact that when he guessed it he either changed the topic or kept quiet ! Never-the-less I am very excited about this because Sub Categories are vital for many...

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A reminder to those of you working away, the Plug In to Movable Type 3.0 developer's contest deadline for submissions is just days away, with entries due by 11:59 PM Pacific time on Tuesday July 6. There's $20,000 in prizes that will soon be in the hands of some lucky developers, and an esteemed panel of judges is awaiting your submission.

If you're still coding away at the last minute, you'll want to review our developer resources as well as the explanation which clarifies what's considered a plugin. In short, any application or feature built on top of Movable Type counts, and you can use whatever tools you'd like, with an eye towards the judging criteria which will be used....

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Technorati, a leading blog search engine and index, has made it very easy for blog authors to get their "tagged" blog entries into Technorati's tag index. What is a tag? A tag is a type of category, and the process of tagging a simplified categorization method for your entries. The concept of tags has become popular with services such as del.icio.us and Flickr. By creating tag classifications for your weblog entries, you make it easy for Technorati to index your blog entries by tags that you specify. With Technorati tagging, you get to choose how you want your weblog entries to be classified, in contrast to algorithm-driven search engines like Google that make their own...

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Now that version 2.6 is released, we're pleased to announce that Movable Type Pro is in development for a summer 2003 release. Since our first release of Movable Type in October 2001, we've planned for a more deluxe version of the software -- a version with the features that power users require.

A small sampling of some of the features that will be in Movable Type Pro: • Improved author management • Remote publishing • Custom entry fields • Integrated spellchecker • Registration for comments and posting

For a list of additional features and more information, please read the press release about Movable Type Pro.

Movable Type Pro will be a for-pay version, but as we always stated,...

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Updated October 16, 2004

The results of the LMT Web Host Survey are in! Thanks to all who participated.

The first step in installing Movable Type is making sure that your web host meets MT requirements. In addition to the basic requirements there are many other factors to consider, in particular the quality of support, the reliability of the service, and the degree to which the host's staff is familiar with Movable Type. Which web host you choose can make a big difference in terms of the ease with which you install and maintain your MT weblog.

What to Look for in a Host Provider

Absolutely Necessary: 1. Ability to run custom CGI scripts 2. Perl installed on server, version...

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Six Apart's European team is proud to announce the release of our international versions of Movable Type. Starting today, our popular Movable Type Publishing Platform will be available in French, Dutch, Spanish and German in addition to Japanese which has been available for some time. The translations cover the application setup, product documentation as well as a localized user interface and default weblog templates.

All paid licenses include dedicated support through our help ticket system in your local language and can be paid for in Euros! Check out the post on Professional Network for more details.

Enjoy!

Previous Entry:...

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This tutorial is written by LMT guest author Lance McCord of lancemccord.com and Perpwalk

Including audio content on a blog is easiest when you can phone it in. Authors who use Blogger to manage their sites have free access to Audioblogger, a service that lets users dial a phone number and leave their audioblog content like a voicemail message. This content shows up on the user's blog as an image linked to an mp3 hosted on audioblogger.com.

Similar services (like audblog) are available for a fee, but with a little effort (and a very little bit of PHP) you can have the free benefit of this Blogger service on your Movable Type sidebar. For this to work, you must publish your Movable...

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As many of you know, there are hundreds of plugins in the Movable Type plugin directory through which you can completely customize and modify the way that the application works. This has always been a great strength of the Movable Type platform and we put great effort in every release to give plugins even more ways to enhance the system.

What you may not know is that since the launch of Movable Type 3.2, dozens of plugins built specifically for v3.2 have been created. Some of the new capabilities of these plugins include plugin actions for acting on checked items in a listing screen, UI enhancements thanks to BigPAPI, feedback scoring and Junk processing.

We're happy to announce...

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Welcome to the new home of Movable Type! I want to tell you all a little bit about what we've done and point out all of the regular features that you're used to - they're all still here. But first, let me address the reasons why we did it.

First and foremost, we are a blogging company. Our three solutions -- Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal all offer something unique and valuable to three distinct audiences. By pulling all of our products and services under the Six Apart umbrella, we make sure that each person can find the perfect solution to fit their needs as well as learn about the company behind them.

Second, since all three sites have grown organically,...

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Looking for a way to hang out with other Movable Type users in real life? To talk about the writing on your sites, weblogs in general, or just a chance to meet interesting new people who have something to say? Well now there's a way. The folks at Meetup have added a Movable Type Meetup where you can sign up and pick a venue for the Meetup to be located.

The first Movable Type Meetup is scheduled for Monday, August 11 at 7 pm, and future Meetups are planned for the second Monday of every month after that.

Previous Entry: Developer/Service Provider Network

Next Entry: Site Updates...

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For those who aren't using the dynamic publishing feature of Movable Type (see below), experiencing slow rebuild times is not an infrequent complaint especially as the size or complexity of the blog and its templates grows. While there are very good reasons to rebuild, there are no good reasons for it to be painfully slow.

In this essay, we will detail a number of reasons why your rebuild times might be slow and steps you can take to drastically reduce or completely eliminate the time you spend waiting for Movable Type to finish its work.

Upgrade to Movable Type 3

Has anything significant happened to you in the 16 months? Probably so. Well, the same can be said for Movable...

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Starting next Wednesday, Ben and I will be visiting Tokyo, Japan.

On Friday, January 17th, our host, Joi Ito and Neoteny will be hosting a Movable Type users meet-up in Tokyo. The venue will be determined once they have a good idea of how many people will be attending. Tentatively, the gathering is set to start between 6:00-6:30 and will be located near their Akasaka office. More details to come.

So, if you're in Tokyo, we'd love to meet you.

Update: Those who responded should expect an email with more information about venue and times. Thanks!

Previous Entry: Request for Content...

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