Six Apart announces Movable Type Pro, releases Movable Type 2.6

The first professional-grade personal publishing system

San Francisco, CA - February 13, 2003: Six Apart announced today the upcoming release of Movable Type Pro, a professional-grade web-based personal publishing system. In the year and a half since its initial October 2001 release, thousands of users around the world have installed and used the Movable Type personal publishing system. Building on this success, Movable Type Pro will add improvements to authoring, archiving, and managing content and media to enable more flexible and powerful personal and nano-publishing on the Internet or intranets.

The best nano-publishing platform

"Nano-publishing" is the term being applied to writers and editors creating small, highly-targeted online publications and weblogs, and proving that successful business ventures can be built by publishing content on the web.

Nick Denton, creator of Gawker (http://www.gawker.com/) and Gizmodo (http://www.gizmodo.com/), is recognized as an innovator in nano-publishing. "Don't believe what you hear. This is the golden age for online publishing. In no small part because of Movable Type. We use MT on Gawker, Gizmodo and all our niche titles. It's easier to use than the horrendous software which bankrupted the first wave of online media companies; and MT is a fraction of the price."

User-requested features

Along with its improved customization and author management, Movable Type Pro will offer enhanced weblog publishing tools. Email notifications to weblog readers or mailing lists will be vastly improved, along with the addition of custom entry fields, workflow, and an integrated spell-checker.

Other features have been added in direct response to user feedback, including photo album integration, a weblog-aware traffic and statistics system, and an option to require user and visitor registration.

Feature list

A partial list of new features that are anticipated to be in Movable Type Pro upon its release: (Additional features are expected to be announced closer to launch.)

Improved author management
Remote publishing
Custom entry fields
Integrated spellchecker
Registration for comments and posting
Category hierarchy
Workflow
Improved weblog administration tools
Improved notifications
Photo album integration
Integrated traffic and statistics system
Mobile communication interfaces

Movable Type

Mena G. Trott, co-founder of Six Apart, reiterated the company's commitment to Movable Type. "It's important for us to provide a free tool for personal users, because they are shaping and advancing the weblogging medium. Movable Type continues to offer users the power to take publishing into their own hands."

Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (http://www.craphound.com/down), co-editor of boingboing.net and Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, used Movable Type to promote his first novel:

"Movable Type put an idiot-proof, flexible content-management system at my disposal, and so I was able to produce the kind of polished, effective promotional vehicle that publishers are accustomed to paying tens of thousands of dollars for. My book was downloaded more than 75,000 times in its first month online, and the hardcopy sales have been fantastic, and I have MT to thank for providing the technical back-end to make this effort a success."

As part of Six Apart's commitment to Movable Type, the company announced the immediate availability of Movable Type 2.6, which features improved text formatting, support for Creative Commons licenses (http://www.creativecommons.org/), and usability improvements, along with over a dozen other new features.

More details to come

Six Apart plans to release more details about Movable Type Pro as the release date nears. Visit the Six Apart company weblog, Six Log (http://www.sixapart.com/) for official announcements related to Six Apart products, and stay updated on new Movable Type releases at http://www.movabletype.org/.

Pricing and Availability

Movable Type Pro is expected to be available in summer 2003. Pricing and system requirements will be announced closer to the release date.

About Six Apart

Six Apart, is the creator of the Movable Type personal publishing system. Founded by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart's software has enabled thousands of individuals, organizations, and corporations to participate in the web's full potential by publishing their thoughts on the Internet with simple, yet powerful tools.

Founded in 2002, Six Apart is based in San Francisco, CA.

Version 2.6 Released

02.13.2003

Version 2.6 of Movable Type is now released. This release adds the following major features:

• Text Formatting options.
• Support for Creative Commons Licenses.
• Adding a new category directly from the New/Edit entry screen.
• Sanitize, for cleaning up visitor-submitted data (thanks to Brad Choate).
• An <MTLink> tag.
• Enhanced options for comments: Closed, Open and None.
• Support for the metaWeblog.newMediaObject XML-RPC method.
• Support for RSD.
• PostgreSQL and SQLite database drivers.
• Improved usability of the comments form in the default templates (thanks to Jeremy Hedley).

See the Guide to Movable Type 2.6 for explanations of the above features, and for instructions on adding these features to your existing weblog if you are upgrading.

See the changelog for a full list of changes.

If you're upgrading from any previous Movable Type release, use the upgrade instructions. If you're installing this release for the first time, use the installation instructions.

Posted by Ben at 05:07 PM | Permalink

Copyright 2003