Movable Type 5 Released, Adds Versioning, Better Management

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Jan 7, 2010

We’re about a week into the New Year, but don’t cork up those bottles just yet. At long last, Six Apart (news, site) has released Movable Type 5. The new version is being called “a great milestone in the 8 years of Movable Type history” by its team, and MT users are more than happy to welcome some long-awaited features — features which we say take this project one step closer being a full-fledged Web CMS.

MT 5 reflects the shift in customer behavior through a switch in their approach to social publishing. By starting with a website and adding blogs, Six Apart falls in line with fellow Web CMS platforms like WordPress, and the overarching goal to buttress a user's integrated social presence on the Web.

Movable Type 5 Key Concepts

With aim to provide an all-encompassing and unified software package, Six Apart has taken steps not only to enhance the creative process, but simplify the administration and management of websites and blogs as well.

For example, seasoned users will notice first off that the look and feel has been changed. Here’s a quick peek at what’s being served:

MT 5 Dashboard

Movable Type 5 Screenshot from MovableTypeDemo.org

The new user dashboard features a tab for both the website and blogs in one location, aiming to ease navigation for authors, editors, designers and other publishers.

MT 5 Entry Editing

Enhanced content management features include five new object types for custom fields: website, blog, comment, template and asset.

Secondly, revision history — applied to entries, pages and templates — has come aboard. This feature alone is pretty big news in our little world of CMS, but it’s important to note that it lacks a couple of key abilities such as "red-lining" or any sort of a side-by-side comparison view. In other words, your history is there, but seeing how each version is different is not possible. Perhaps a plugin is on the way? We'd like to see that.

Additionally, a new theme mechanism has been tacked on to make it easier for users to apply themes across a website and blogs with one click.

MT 5: What Didn't Make It

There are a few significant items which did not make it into the v5 release. Of note are Action Streams, Movable Type Motion and SQLite and PostreSQL database support. A MT 5 compatible release of the Action Streams plugin — a means of aggregating your social web activity on your blog — will reportedly follow shortly via the MT Plugin Directory. Motion on the other hand apparently will not be available until a later release of the MT 5 product line.

The SQLite and PostreSQL database support was removed and will not be showing up again. MySQL dominates the LAMP and WAMP type environments, so this move was one way to lighten the developer load. For Oracle or Microsoft SQL database support or LDAP integration Movable Type Enterprise is where you'll need to head. But this version of the product has not yet been released.