Recently in Releases Category

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.

Last night we released version 3.34 of the Movable Type Publishing Platform. Movable Type 3.34:

• Fixes important potential XSS vulnerabilities
• Is a free and recommended update for all Movable Type users
• Enables simple use of FastCGI which yields a 15x performance increase

We encourage all of our users and customers to upgrade to this latest release of Movable Type because it addresses a hand full of important XSS security vulnerabilities. In addition to security enhancements, this release introduces a feature enhancement that has increased application performance for a number of users by over an order of magnitude.

Sign in to your Movable Type account. to download this free update.

We have been educating users for some time about the benefits of hosting Movable Type under FastCGI, a free and light weight persistent hosting environment for web applications. However, prior to Movable Type 3.34, FastCGI support could only be achieved by applying a number of patches to the MT source code. In 3.34, however, those patches are no longer necessary; FastCGI support has been fully integrated into the core application. Now Movable Type is capable of detecting when it is running under FastCGI automatically and take advantage of its unique performance benefits without the user or the system administrator needing to do a thing.

Because of the profound performance benefits of FastCGI and the security fixes made in Movable Type 3.34 we encourage all users to upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type as soon as possible.

Keep reading to learn more about the specific benefits of Fast CGI and to find resources that will help you install and setup FastCGI on your system.

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the original announcement of Movable Type 1.0.Within the first few hours of that post, hundreds of people had downloaded the software and started blogging. Today, tens of millions of people have posted with Movable Type, commented on MT-powered blogs, or read sites powered by Movable Type. In the past five years, we’ve released dozens of upgrades and introduced hundreds of new features, all while being supported and inspired by one of the most widely read, influential, and passionate communities on the web. We usually try to focus on the ways people use blogs, but today we wanted to take a moment to look back.

Today we are releasing required updates for both Movable Type and Movable Type Enterprise to fix a number of vulnerabilities affecting all previous versions of the platform. The current status of our security update process:

• This is a mandatory update due to the severity of the combined vulnerabilities.
• These vulnerabilities were discovered by our own team during a routine security evaluation.
• There are currently no known malicious exploits targeting Movable Type for these issues.
• We will be disclosing full details of the vulnerabilities on our Professional Network blog in a couple of days allowing you to update in the meantime without incurring unnecessary risk.

Getting The Updated Code

The product security updates are available for free to all users immediately in the following forms:

• A full downloadable version of Movable Type 3.33 and Movable Type Enterprise 1.03, accessible from your Movable Type account.
• For advanced/experienced users: Patch distributions for v3.2 and v3.32 including only the changed files are provided in the post on our Professional Network blog.

If you are running a version of Movable Type older than 3.2, it is especially imperative that you to migrate immediately to version 3.33 due to the importance of fixes for the current issues as well as several significant security enhancements which have been made since your version was released.

Just as a reminder -- Movable Type is now free for personal use, and if you have questions about a paid support license or a commercial use license, please feel free to get in touch. (In short: Don't let a license question keep you from securing your server.)

Thank You

While we strive to make sure the Movable Type platform is as secure and reliable as possible, software development always means having to make updates and improvements. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of having to update your blogging platform, and as a result have tried to make this process as straightforward as possible.

There’s just two days left to get Movable Type at up to 30% off the regular price. For businesses, pricing starts at a 5-user license for $149.95, and for personal users, a supported license is $49.95.

We’ve also just updated to version 3.32, a minor update that fixes some nitpicky bugs. It’s a recommended fix if you need any of the fixes listed in the release notes, but it’s not a required update.

In addition to those small improvements, you get all the power of Movable Type 3.3. There are dozens of new features that can really help you get the most out of your blog while reducing the time you have to spend on management. You’ll want to check out widgets, tags, custom feeds that let you manage your blog right from your feed reader, and smart templating tags that make it easier than ever to customize your blog.

With the release of Movable Type 3.3, we’re excited to note one of the best new parts about Movable Type, and it’s got nothing to do with the dozens of new features.

Movable Type 3.3 is free for your personal blog.

For as many authors as you want, as many blogs as you want, you can just go get it. As always, you can have affiliate links or AdSense or a tip jar on your personal blog. And there’s dozens of new capabilities in Movable Type 3.3 that make it well worth the upgrade, including support for tags, widgets, huge improvements to the templating language, and activity feeds that let you manage all of your blog’s activity right from a single feed.

Of course, one of the best parts of the Movable Type platform is that we offer professional support for it. So you can buy support for your personal blog directly from us, and right now, it’s just $49.95/year. Cheap!

Honestly, we’ve put a lot of work into making Movable Type a professional tool, and that’s the reason it’s the most popular blogging platform for businesses, organizations, and professionals. But we know that personal bloggers are an important part of our community, and our success with businesses (and now with enterprises) helps us make Movable Type free for the individuals that want a professional-grade tool for their personal blogs.

So give the new version a try. If you want support, get a license and talk to our help team — you’ll find out why people rave about our support. And don’t forget to mention us to your boss or your coworkers when they start asking, “Hey, should our company get a blog?”

When we started offering professional support and paid licenses for Movable Type over two years ago, the idea of business blogging wasn't obvious nor was the need for a reliable blogging vendor that a company could trust as a partner.

Since then, the power of business blogging has become obvious. So we've increased our commitment to Movable Type, the world's preferred platform for business blogging. The most visible result of which is the release of a new update, Movable Type version 3.3, along with an entirely new product, Movable Type Enterprise.

The press release contains a wealth of information that will give you a high-level overview of what this means for Movable Type users and businesses looking to get into blogging.

For both products, we've got dozens of compelling and unique new features, focused on improving productivity, and making it possible not just to succeed with your blogs, but to manage that success after your blog takes off. If you're a current user of Movable Type, you will soon wonder how you ever blogged without them.

Discount prices for businesses, and free for personal users

Part of being a reliable platform for business blogging is making sure we have a solid business model to back our world-class support team and the new investment we've made in development. One of the nice side effects of being successful with our business customers is that we can share the benefits with our entire community.

Movable Type commercial licenses are now available with deep discounts through the summer and Movable Type Enterprise is being launched with a promotion offering 45% off the regular price.

We also continue to make our personal license for Movable Type even more open: The personal version of Movable Type is now completely free, and supports as many blogs and authors as you want. Of course, we continue to offer paid support as an option for personal blogs, along with services such as professional installation.

Experience with enterprise blogging

Of course, we're not content to just repackage a personal blogging tool with a different price tag and call it an enterprise application. IT and IS departments have a tightly defined set of expectations and requirements that we've come to understand from the thousands of customers already using Movable Type.

For that reason, we've made Movable Type Enterprise available with exclusive features for integrating with the platforms enterprises depend on. We've also expanded our support offerings with priority support for enterprise customers, backed by the best support team in blogging, offering years of experience in supporting business blogs.

Whether you are an independent consultant, a small firm or a multinational corporation, we've got the blogging software you're looking for. The Movable Type family of products will not only suit your needs now, but will grow with you as your blogs become a success.

Related links

• Existing users: Log into your account to download the update
• Movable Type Enterprise features
• Movable Type Enterprise documentation
• Movable Type 3.3 features
• Movable Type 3.3 documentation
• Movable Type 3.3 changelog

Note: The update to Movable Type is being initially released as version 3.31 to sync version numbers with an earlier release in our Japanese market, MT 3.3-ja.

Good news! The latest version of Movable Type is now available as a completely free beta for you to try out. There's two big things to keep in mind:

• It's a beta! In the old-fashioned sense. (That means don't run it on production data.)

• We're doing a structured beta test, with a schedule for releases. So we'll tell you when there's enough new stuff to install a new version.

The defined schedule for the beta test is kind of an experiment, so that you can update any time you want with regular new builds available for you to try out. But we'll also define checkpoints where you can know exactly what's been fixed and how close we are to a final release.

The goal, as always, is to have the highest quality release possible. Since Movable Type 3.2 came out in August of last year, we haven't had to do a version .01 bug fix release at all, because you've told us you hate the bother of getting a little point upgrade every couple weeks. So start hammering away on the new build, and start filing those bugs!

What's New? Should I check this out?

If you're a plugin developer, manage a number of blogs, work as a professional blog consultant, or are responsible for a business deployment of blogs, get the beta now. If you're just into blogging technology in general, the new version is worth a look and is solid enough to test out. If you just want to wait to try out all the tasty new stuff without worrying about rough edges, don't jump yet -- we'll have a version for you soon.

And as for features, we've started outlining some highlights on the Professional Network blog already. We've got better management of blogs through a unique new Activity Feed -- keep track of everything on your blog in one place. Tags! Cool new Transformer plugins make it easy to modify any part of Movable Type's interface, so you can remix MT to personalize it just the way you like. Better spam protection. Tons of features for free for plugin developers. It's easier than ever to create posts and edit them. Smarter Security. And all of this with fifty fewer settings to keep track of -- all the power, none of the hassle.

Go get it

Some of the best surprises in Movable Type 3.3 are yet to come, but if you're curious, try it out. We'll be talking more about the new version on the spanking-new Movable Type 3.3 Beta Blog, and we can't wait to hear what you think. Here are some important posts that you should check out:

• The Movable Type 3.3 beta begins...
• Important known issues with Beta-1
• Movable Type 3.3b1 release notes

We know the entire Movable Type community is hungry for more information from us, and we hear you loud and clear that you want to know about our commitment and investment to the platform. As we start this new beta, here's the bottom line: Movable Type 3.3 is the first step to showing you just how much we appreciate your contributions to making Movable Type the success that it is. And we'll be opening up even more about how we'll be building on that success over the weeks to come.

We're thrilled to announce the newest, and easiest, way to get started with Movable Type: Yahoo! Small Business web hosting now includes Movable Type. All of us on the Movable Type team have worked with the folks at Yahoo to make this the best experience possible for professionals who want to get started with blogging.

If you sign up for Yahoo! web hosting, you get a reliable, robust web hosting account with hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth and plenty of storage space. But you also get a name you know and trust offering a blogging platform that's the most popular choice for businesses.

Many companies, especially small businesses, are unfamiliar with blogging and might even be a bit apprehensive about getting started. With Yahoo's reliability and Movable Type's reputation, there's now a safe choice for getting started with business blogging.

Everyone loves having a great looking site, but for most people who aren't well versed in the technical details of HTML and CSS, tweaking your blog's look isn't easy. Being able to easily pick a style from a rich library of choices is essential.

So, we made the move in Movable Type 3.2 to a new set of Six Apart standard styles that are shared with both our TypePad and LiveJournal services. There's an immediate benefit of being able to use any one of a number of existing styles. But in the future, with over ten million blogs sharing the same single set of styles and markup, there's going to be a new and rapidly expanding base of additional styles available that we think is really going to blossom.

And while we're very proud of the work that goes in to making an attractive style, we realize it can still take work to apply a design to your blog. So we've reduced the work of switching styles by making StyleCatcher, a new plugin that lets you change designs with just a few clicks, any time you want.

StyleCatcher is a plugin made exclusively for Movable Type 3.2 which enables you to easily download and install styles on your blog with just a simple URL. Even better, it maintains a library of all of your downloaded styles allowing you to switch between them — completely transforming the look and feel of your site — with only a few clicks. Plus, StyleCatcher can even retrieve styles from repositories other than our own Six Apart Style Library, so if you'd like to use themes that are shared elsewhere, you can do that just as easily.