Late last week we released Movable Type 3.35 and Movable Type Enterprise 1.53. The impetus for this release was a XSS vulnerability that was found in our comment preview code. The vulnerability affects only a small number of people, but we felt it important to address the issue as soon as we could. And since we were turning on the release machines we went ahead and tackled a couple of other bug fixes and introduced a new feature as well.

The new feature is a dramatically improved installation process. Now, when new users install Movable Type and access it for the first time, the Movable Type Setup Wizard will help them configure the platform on their web server. It asks them a few questions and then takes care of the rest. It makes installing Movable Type downright tolerable!

Coincidentally, we recently made big changes to how you download Movable Type as well. Now users seeking the personal and free edition of Movable Type no longer have to hunt for the link, or create an account in TypeKey to download the software. Just click the big button that says "Download Movable Type."

These two recent changes are relatively minor from a technical stand point, but we think they will have a huge impact for new users and people seeking an upgrade - because when combined they have made Movable Type easier to download and install then ever before.

There are lots of discussions about how newspapers need to evolve, and many of them focus on the lessons traditional news outlets can learn from blogs — how to update more frequently, accept submissions and comments from readers, or how to make archived content easier to discover and share.

Well, the Buckinghamshire Advertiser in southeast England has taken those lessons to heart in relaunching its web presence: The newspaper’s site is now published entirely with Movable Type. And that makes the Buckinghamshire Advertiser today’s Movable Type Featured Blog.

There are often debates about this sort of thing — if you’re using a tool like Movable Type, which is platform designed for blogging, but it’s being used as a general content management system, is the output still a blog? Our answer: Who cares? The important thing is that the Advertiser’s staff has an easy way to share news and updates with their community, and the Buckinghamshire community has a simpler way to keep up to day. The Press Gazette offers an astute analysis:

Trinity Mirror has clearly realised that properly customised blogging tools can do everything that a much more expensive content management system would be able to. The web developers and software houses that produce complex, expensive CMSs should take note.

Just as sites like thePlatform and Seed Magazine show us, content that’s created with blogging tools doesn’t have to look like a traditional blog. All that matters is that a site connects with its audience in way that’s meaningful and useful. The Trinity Mirror team that’s relaunched the Advertiser has achieved exactly that — and the new Buckinghamshire Advertiser is ample evidence.