| Original author(s) | Ben Trott |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Six Apart |
| Initial release | October 8, 2001 |
| Stable release | 5.12 / June 22, 2011 |
| Development status | Active |
| Platform | Perl, PHP (for dynamic publishing) |
| Available in | Dutch English French German Japanese Russian Spanish |
| Type | Blog publishing system |
| License | GNU General Public License and various other licenses[1] |
| Website | movabletype.org |
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001;[2] version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001.[3] On 12 December 2007, Movable Type was relicensed as free software under the GNU General Public License.[4] The current version is 5.12.[5]
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Movable Type has several notable features, such as the ability to host multiple weblogs and standalone content pages, manage files, user roles, templates, tags, categories, and trackback links.[6]
The application supports static page generation (in which files for each page are updated whenever the content of the site is changed), dynamic page generation (in which pages are composited from the underlying data as the browser requests them), or a combination of the two techniques. Movable Type optionally supports LDAP for user and group management and automatic blog provisioning.
Movable Type is written in Perl, and supports storage of the weblog's content and associated data within MySQL natively. PostgreSQL and SQLite support was available prior to version 5, and can still be used via plug-ins.[7]
Movable Type is free software under the GPLv2 license. In addition to the free version, users can purchase support or buy commercial, education, or nonprofit licenses, which come with support contracts, author limits, and unlimited blogs.[8] Movable Type Enterprise also supports the Oracle database and Microsoft SQL Server.
Movable Type was originally named "Serge" after musician Serge Gainsbourg. The TrackBack feature was introduced in version 2.2, and has since been adopted by a number of other blog systems.
With the release of version 3.0 in 2004, there were marked changes in Movable Type's licensing, most notably placing greater restrictions on its use without paying a licensing fee.[9][10] This sparked criticism from some users of the software, with some moving to the then-new open-source blogging tool WordPress. With the release of Movable Type 3.2, the ability to create an unlimited number of weblogs at all licensing levels was restored. In Movable Type 3.3, the product once again became completely free for personal users.[11]
Six Apart released a beta version of Movable Type 4 on June 5, 2007 and re-launched movabletype.org as a community site, for purposes of developing an open-source version that was released under the GNU Public License on December 12, 2007.[12][13] Movable Type 4's Enterprise version provides advanced features such as LDAP management, and enterprise database integration such as Oracle, MySQL, user roles, blog cloning, and automated blog provisioning. It is also available as part of Intel's SuiteTwo professional software offering of Web 2.0 tools.
Movable Type 5 was released in Open Source and Pro versions in January 2010,[14] with several bug-fix and security updates appearing later in the year. Movable Type Enterprise remains based on Movable Type 4.
Melody, a fork of the open-source Movable Type distribution, was announced in June 2009.[15] Its development is being guided by a non-profit group consisting of current and former Six Apart employees, as well as other consultants and volunteers.[16]
At various times, Six Apart also maintained three other weblog publishing systems—TypePad, Vox, and LiveJournal. While Movable Type is a system which needs to be installed on a user's own web server, TypePad, Vox, and LiveJournal were all hosted weblog services.[17][18] LiveJournal, purchased in 2005, was sold in 2007. Shortly before being acquired by web advertising firm VideoEgg to form SAY Media in September 2010, Six Apart announced that it would be shutting down the Vox service at the end of that month, leaving TypePad and Movable Type as the company's only blogging platforms.[19] In January 2011, SAY Media announced that Infocom, a Japanese IT company, had acquired Six Apart Japan and that as part of the transaction, Infocom would assume responsibility for Movable Type.[20]
ChicagoNow used Moveable Type from 2009 to 2011; in June 2011, after nearly 100,000 posts and a half million readers comments, they switched to WordPress, introducing integration with Facebook and saying WordPress was "much more mobile friendly", with "vastly improved" categorization and better features for searching for related posts as well as general queries.[21]