As part of our efforts to call attention to Movable Type users who are doing interesting and exciting things with their weblogs and sites, we have just created Movable Type Spotlight.

Look for a new site to be featured about once a week -- perhaps even more frequently.

If you would like to submit your site for consideration, please email us at spotlight@movabletype.org.

These sites will also be considered for our larger "how-to" feature currently in development.

Jay Allen has released MT-Search, an add-on module that will enable users to perform end-user searches on MT-powered weblogs.

Some features:

• Easy install and setup
• Completely template driven
• Multiple template support
• Multiple blog search
• Configurable search
• Editing links if logged in

While MT-Search is not an "official" Movable Type release, we wholeheartedly support Jay's work and recommend this add-on to our users.

If you have any MT-Search related questions or comments, please direct them to Jay.

The Movable Type donor list has been updated (finally) and moved to its own page.

If you've donated and have been omitted from the list, please contact us. Additionally, if your weblog/site name or URL is incorrect, let us know.

Once again, thanks to all who have supported us -- we really appreciate it.

We're back from vacation and back to developing MT.

Look for version 1.3 in about two weeks. Features included in this next release:

• XML-RPC server code to support Blogger API
• Ability to convert line breaks in comments, but not in entries, and vice versa
• Search and replace
• Ability to specify the directory in which upload files are placed, rather than just dumping into the archive directory
• Ability to describe the output path for a particular archive type (eg. Monthly archives) using MT template tags. For example: <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m/%d/index.html"$>
  <$MTArchiveCategory dirify="1"$>/index.html
• "Remember me" javascript for comments in default templates
• Some security enhancements (configurable umask settings, for example)
• A variety of bug fixes

Additionally, we'll be adding a few new sections to this site.

In an attempt to make movabletype.org slightly more content-driven, we'll be posting articles and discussions related to interesting ways our users are using MT.

So, if you think you've got a tip or trick that other users may learn from and you're implementing it on a site, send us the URL and a description.

An example should be posted next week.

We're sorry about the Ikonboard error that is currently occurring in the forum. As you know, we're on vacation at the moment, however, we have sporadic internet access and will address the problem as soon as we have a chance.

Update: The board has been fixed -- right before our stop to Pike Place market. Now, don't say that we don't care about our users :)

We have released a new version of Movable Type, version 1.2. Existing users of either version 1.0 or version 1.1 should use the upgrade distribution to update their MT installation, and should follow the new upgrade instructions.

In addition to bug fixes and improvements to general stability, this release adds the following features:

• Ability to export entries from Movable Type for backup purposes, or for importing into another blog (more information)
  
• When uploading images meant for popup windows, Movable Type will now create an HTML file to surround the image in the popup window, which fixes browser offset problems (more information)
  
• Ability to link templates to external files, which allows templates to be edited through a standard text editor, then automatically synchronized with the Movable Type database (more information)
  
• Greymatter comments can now be imported, either along with your Greymatter entries, or--if you have already imported your GM entries--without them
  
• Implemented the movabletype.org Recently Updated List (more information)
  
• Movable Type will now run on perl 5.004_04 (previously it required 5.005_03)
  
• Added support for the weblogs.com XML-RPC ping (more information)
  

For a full list of changes, take a look at the changelog.