Following Ben and Mena's demonstration on Friday at the BlogOn conference, we're glad to give everyone a small peek at what's coming in Movable Type 3.1. Though Movable Type 3.0 was a Developer Edition, this release will be available for general users, and we'll be making it available as a free update for licensed users of 3.0. First, here's a quick summary of what's new, followed by a longer explanation of what it all means. Key new features in Movable Type 3.1: * Dynamic PHP publishing, controllable on a per-template basis: You can control whether you publish a dynamic or static page on a per-template basis, letting you balance the publishing and traffic for your weblog. For example, high-demand documents like XML syndication files can be static, for maximum speed and lower server load, and individual post archives can be dynamic, eliminating the need to rebuild pages when making a global template change. * Post scheduling: Allows authors to set a time and date for posts to appear, permitting automatic updates to your weblog. Keep your weblog community up to date even if you’re not at your computer to create new posts. * Subcategories: A new category management interface gives you fine-grained control over the organization and display of your posts. You can even easily move a subcategory from one parent category to another. * Application-level callbacks: Plugin developers get even more control, allowing plugins the ability to hook events like rebuilding and extend them with custom functionality.

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 export.
• QuickPost on the right-click menu no longer complains.
• Adding TypeKey comments is easier, with MTRemoteSignIn and MTRemoteSignOut (see below).
• Numerous other bug fixes.

To take advantage of some of these fixes with an existing blog, you'll have to update your templates.

In your comment preview template, change <MTCommentFields> to <MTCommentFields preview="1">. This way the comment fields will know to include your preview text.

TypeKey sign-in is now easier to integrate with your custom templates. Just use <$MTRemoteSignInLink$> as the target of the "sign in" link, and use <$MTRemoteSignOutLink$> as the target of the "sign out" link. If you're doing this on a static template page (like the individual archive), you probably want to add the static="1" argument, so that commenters will land on the same page after they've signed in.

Once you've done that, add this line to your mt.cfg:

TypeKeyVersion 1.1

This adds additional security, but it won't work unless you're using MTRemoteSignInLink.

As always, let us know if you have any problems! Enjoy.

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.

Good luck to all our developers!