I’m pleased as punch to also say Movable Type 3.2 is now available. Whew. Where to start?
The upgrade process is brand new. MT now has an extremely straight-forward upgrade process. If you’ve ever been bitten by the “I ran the mt-upgradeY.cgi script before the mt-upgradeX.cgi script!” problem, have no fear. MT 3.2 knows where you’re upgrading from and does it with style. Installing and upgrading MT has never been easier.
The new entry basename field lets you name your permalink the way you want it. I’ve been wanting this since MT 1.0 and finally, the field is on the compose screen. (If you’re using MT 3.2 and you don’t see this field, you may need to customize your entry edit screen preferences to enable it.)
SpamLookup is right there in the package. I’m very happy to say that MT now ships with spam protection enabled out of the box. Along with the new scoring framework and the wonderful “Junk” folder, MT now provides a home for all that garbage looking to be published on your weblog. Since the settings for SpamLookup are so user-configurable, I’m hoping that it provides a sufficiently difficult target for spammers to hit. With enough of us blocking this stuff, weblog spamming may prove to be more trouble than it’s worth.
The new templates. Much simpler. Better structure. In fact, the same HTML markup structure is used on TypePad. And you can choose the same markup structure for LiveJournal. The result? All three products can use the same set of stylesheets. That means that all those styles available to TypePad users can now be used with Movable Type. And here they are. I plan to reboot my site in short order to make use of all of that. And MT 3.2 includes a little plugin to let you switch to the new default templates, making a backup of your existing templates in the process.
Access keys. I love using the keyboard instead of a mouse whenever I can. So we sprinkled access key shortcuts throughout the buttons in Movable Type to make those common buttons easier to press.
API improvements. Making it easier for plugins to load and find their templates; providing a way to configure plugins from within MT itself; letting plugins register actions to execute against lists of things.
Oh— the UI enhancements. Access keys were one thing, but the listings in 3.2 are sweet. Selecting a range of rows using “click” and “shift click”. Row selection by clicking any part of the row (other than a hyperlink of course). Inverse selecting the table by shift-clicking the top-most “select all” checkbox. The multiple category selection panel that allows you to assign multiple categories, even for new entries. Color mini icons. Context-search control. Sensible list filtering interface. The tabbed interface for the entry edit screen.
System overview! Being able to view all of your entries, comments, weblogs, etc. This was sort of introduced with SpamLookup, but now it’s for everything.
Plugins! The plugin listing screen rocks. You can even see those good ol’ plugins I wrote in 2002 now. You can see what tags are provided by them. You can see which are broken. You can disable them one by one. You can enable them one by one. You can turn them all off. You can turn them all on. You’re in control. Well, if you’re the system administrator that is.
Built for 3.2. A number of old plugins and new plugins are coming out for the 3.2 party. Media Manager, StatWatch, MT-Upcoming, MT-Notifier, Builderoo and a number of plugins that are underway from Arvind at Movalog. MT development is really hopping with this release and I’m very happy to see that.
The 3.2 Beta. The beta for this release was open to the public and this release really benefitted from that. We had excellent bug reports from those that participated and had a good time throughout it all. We couldn’t have done it without you. And you can be sure we will be repeating that in the future.
The new manual. The new user manual is online and is open for comments. Much like the ones found at mysql.com and php.net, the best documentation comes with supplements from the users that use the product.
Unlimited blogs for everyone. MT 3.2 now offers unlimited weblogs for all licenses, including the personal free edition.
It’s been a long but rewarding day seeing the positive responses to this release. Thanks for all of those. You know who you are.
What are you waiting for? MT 3.2 NOW!
See Also:
Anyway, I made a list of some of the plugins that are obsoleted by MT 4 or previous versions since joining Six Apart. Each of the following plugins have most if not all of their functionality built into Movable Type itself:
