Movable Type Gains Native Forums on the Cheap

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Feb 28, 2008

Movable Type, on it's trek towards full fledged CMS'ness, just got a little closer. Today saw Mark Carey's announcement of MT Forum — a MT add-on module which delivers fully functional forums that are loosely based on the behavior of the popular phpBB system.

Does this addition bump the MT Community Solution — the other way to build forums with MT — off the table? Let's have a look.

Forum Features

Features of the forum plugin include:

Integrated forums into existing blogs/site or create a site as a standalone forum
Topic posts and replies can be made using MT commenter accounts, OpenID, LiveJournal, AOL, TypeKey and other authentication methods
Create sub-forums within forums to organization discussions
Unauthenticated users can post topics and replies if configured by the Administrator
Topic and Reply forms are protected against spambots
Recent discussion topics are listed at the top of forum postings and new topics can be tagged by posters.
Integration with other MT plugins using template customization is supported

Other notables:

Two out of the box template themes (red or blue)
A set of templates that control the display of the home page, listing pages, topic listing pages and new topic submission page — installed by a single click of the mouse.

Installation Requirements:

MT 4.1+
Template Installer 1.2 plugin (included)
IfAvailable plugin (included)
Entry Post 2.6 plugin

Entry Post 2.6 Plugin

In order to provide submissions to the forum via forms, you also need to have Mark's Entry Post Plugin.

The good news is that you purchase both MT Forums and MT Entry Post together and save a little money. Combined Pricing ranges from US$ 66 for a Non-Commercial License to US$ 346 for a Blog Network License. That's pennies compared to Six Apart's Community Solution add-on.

As Compared to MT Community Solution

We were curious to understand how this new Forum capability is different from the forums one can build with the MT Community Solution (coverage | product site), so we pestered Mark a bit. Here's what he had to say about the differences, in regards to the forum functionality:

Forum UI and Presentation is More Standard

“MT Forum uses a familiar conventional forum layout, whereas the MTCS forum presents a novel layout. In my view, since people are familiar with the conventional forum layout, it will generate more participation. There has been confusion about the forums at http://forums.movabletype.org/, but to be honest, I have not checked it out lately to see what may have changed.”

Current Topics are More User Friendly

“With MT Forum, the topic listed first is the one with the most recent post: either comment or new topic. So when some replies to a really old topic, it floats to the top of the list. This is consistent with conventional forum behavior. MTCS sorts content much like a blog, based topic creation date — so it is difficult to see what conversations are active. (Also note that the 'last reply' column on forums.movabletype.org is simply wrong, which must be a bug.)”