Recently in Announcements Category

It was 5 am, and I was headed off to bed after pulling an all-nighter on a client's project; and who of all people writes me, but Arvind sending over the news that MT 4 beta has just gone public. I couldn't let this one go without saying something. While it's by no means the perfect content management system, I personally think it's one of the most powerful out-of-the-box blogging packages out there.

So, I came up with a list of ten ways the new Movable Type will rock your blog:

Just got back from NYC, where Six Apart hosted a Hackathon with MT developers and an Executive Summit. I finally got to meet LMT collaborators Jesse Gardner and Chad Everett (yay!) Also in attendance were Jay Allen, Anil Dash, Byrne Reese, Kevin Shay, David Jacobs, Finn Smith, Dave Aiello, Amit Snyderman, Nicola Monat-Jacobs, Maarten Schenk, Su, Tim Appnel, and Dan Wolfgang. Dan, bless his heart, brought thin mints for everyone.

Here are some more photos from the Hackathon. If you have some posted, please let us know in the comments.

Maarten posted videos from the sessions at the Executive Summit here: http://maartenschenk.be/video/newyork.

Here are Byrne's Hackathon notes and Jesse's thoughts about the Hackathon.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the new Learning Movable Type.

We recently had a total design makeover, and oh my, what a difference. LMT contributing editor Jesse Gardner of PlasticMind Design led the design effort. Arvind of Movalog built a fancy multi-author back-end. I (Elise) picked the colors, and then got out of the way to let the wunderkinds do their thing.

For those of us with short memories, here's a snapshot of the old look:

(Click to view)

One way to reduce blog spam is to reduce the opportunity by closing comments on old entries. There have been several plugins in the past that accomplished this, but they either don't work with the newer versions of MT, or aren't supported anymore. To address this need, plugin developer Mark Carey has recently released BlogJanitor, a plugin that will automatically close comments and trackbacks on old entries, as well as deleting duplicate comments and trackbacks. Thanks Mark!

The latest version of Movable Type - MT3.3 has arrived. Get your version upgrade here.

New features include - full support for tags, better junk and spam management, resizable text areas, better password and permissions management, and hundreds of other improvements. Six Apart has announced a new pricing policy for Movable Type. The product is now absolutely free for personal use - unlimited blogs, unlimited authors.

Congratulations to Jay and all of the folks who have been working so hard these last several months!

Hear ye, hear ye, all those who take advantage of David Raynes' powerful MultiBlog plugin, David is raising money for its ongoing development. What David is asking for doesn't even come close to compensating him for the time he has put into developing plugins for MT. So be generous, be good. Make your contribution now.

Attention Movable Type, Typepad and LJ designers, prepare your mice! After months of planning and coding, The Style Contest is live.

Arvind, Jesse, I and a whole crew from Six Apart have been hard at work to turn what started last year as a simple idea - "Let's have design contest!" - into a real contest, with real prizes, esteemed judges, and some pretty cool coding. (Thank goodness for Arvind who knows how to code, and for Jesse who lives and breathes style, or we'd still be at the "good idea" stage.)

Are you a web designer? This contest is for you. $17,000 worth of prizes. Your work showcased for the world to see.

Are you like me, not a web designer but often wishes she was? Tell your web designer friends about this contest. Think of it this way, the better the designs are that are available for our blogs, the better our blogs will look. (What Buddhists call "enlightened self-interest".) Spread the word.

A few of us decided a while back that Six Apart, and specifically Movable Type, needed a bit more in the way of default styles. Especially now that with MT3.2 the templates had changed. So we thought we would do something about that, and have been hard at work. Get ready. There will be prizes. Big prizes.

Coming Soon (towards the end of March, 2006).

Many weblogs have book lists that are tied to an Amazon associate program wherein the blog author gets a small referral fee when you purchase a book from a click on their weblog. So this holiday season, give your favorite blogger a gift, with no cost to you, by clicking on book or CD link listed on your favorite blog to get to Amazon.com when you make your holiday purchases.

LMT is blessed to have several authors sharing their expertise on a volunteer basis on this site. If you have benefited from using one of their tutorials, please consider sharing the love this season by clicking on one of the following author names to enter Amazon.com. A small commission on any purchase you make through these links will go to the author.

Elise, Arvind, Chad Everett, Mike Everett-Lane, Chris Vannoy, Sarah Hughes

LMT welcomes Dummied.net's Chris Vannoy as a guest author. In his Bare Essentials Templates tutorial, Chris has gone to the effort to strip out any non-essential code from the new MT3.2 default templates to create a useful starting point for those who plan to customize their CSS. Thanks Chris, and welcome to LMT!