Movable type

:This article is about the weblog software. For information on the printing term, see Printing press.

Related Topics:
Weblog - Printing press

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Movable Type is a proprietary weblog publishing system developed by California-based Six Apart. It is very widely used, and supports most popular weblogging features, including user accounts, comments, TrackBacks, categories, and themes, and is extensible through a large library of third-party plug-ins. (The TrackBack feature was actually originated by Six Apart, and version 2.2 of Movable Type was the first weblog publishing software to include support for it.) Movable Type is free for use by a single author (unlimited blogs), and paid licenses are available for personal, commercial, educational, and non-profit users http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/pricing which allow more authors and weblogs to be used with an installation of Movable Type. The current version is 3.2.

Related Topics:
Weblog - California - Six Apart - TrackBack

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Movable Type is written in Perl, and supports storage of the weblog's content and associated data within MySQL, Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. 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 technologies.

Related Topics:
Perl - MySQL - Berkeley DB - PostgreSQL - SQLite

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With the release of version 3.0, there were marked changes in Movable Type's licensing http://www.sixapart.com/corner/archives/2004/05/its_about_time.shtml, most notably placing greater restrictions on its use without paying a licensing fee. This sparked substantial criticism from some users of the software, particularly those whose use of the earlier free versions exceeded the author or weblog allowances permitted by the new free license. These allowances required users exceeding them to either upgrade and pay for the new license, upgrade and reduce their usage to comply with the free license, continue using the earlier version, or convert their weblog to another package. With the release of version 3.2, the ability to create unlimited weblogs at all licensing levels was restored.

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Six Apart also maintains two other weblog publishing systems, TypePad, and LiveJournal. While Movable Type is a system which needs to be installed on a user's own webserver, TypePad is a hosted weblog service. LiveJournal is an entirely separate blogging system which was developed independently until being acquired by Six Apart in January 2005.

Related Topics:
TypePad - LiveJournal - January 2005

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