For information on the printing term, see Printing press.

Movable Type, or MT, is a Web publishing system made by Six Apart. It is written in Perl, and relies on either MySQL, Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite to store its data. Movable Type is often used to manage frequently updated web content, especially Weblogs. Movable Type was originally named Serge after musician Serge Gainsbourg.

Contrary to popular belief, Movable Type is not open source software. It is, however, free for personal use. Some limitations apply - see the release announcement for more information. Versions prior to 3.0 were available for commercial use for a one time $150 fee, although this price structure has been re-vamped into a scalable pricing structure. The personal, non-commercial use license for Movable Type says, although you may modify or create derivative copies of the Movable Type Software for your own use, you may not distribute modified or derivative copies of the Software.

The software supports several advanced features, such as multiple weblogs, TrackBack pings, and site templates.

Movable Type has become the most commonly used blogging software outside of hosted blog services. This popularity has a particularly marked tendency to feed upon itself since: (1) the TrackBack and ping features of the Movable Type software results in a web of blogs with high interconnectivity, which in turn leads to high search engine rankings, (2) the active user community provides excellent support and thorough documentation and (3) the creation of a wide variety of plugins for doing just about everything that one might expect from a more complex content management system.

Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist, the most popular MT plugin as of Spring 2004, is also an indicator of how the popularity of Movable Type has made it a target for attack and exploitation. MT-Blacklist is one, fairly effective, method to stop inappropriate comment spam and TrackBack spam. Movable Type 3.0 also addressed this problem directly (though some would say incompletely) by introducing TypeKey comment registration, which attempts to reduce comment spam through centralized registration and profiles.

The current version is 3.15. Since the release of version 3.0, there have been marked changes in the licensing (see the release announcement) of Movable Type, sparking loud criticism by some users of the software (see "TrackBacks" at previous link). This led to fairly immediate changes in the licensing structure by the software's authors.

TypePad , a hosted weblog service operated by Six Apart, is powered by Movable Type. LiveJournal, which was acquired in January 2005 by Six Apart, is not.

History

October 8, 2001 

Version 1.0 released.

October 22, 2001 

Version 1.1 released.

November 5, 2001 

Version 1.2 released. Supports pings.

December 13, 2001 

45 donations received. Donations of $20 and above receive a recently updated key. Donations of $45 and above receive personal support.

December 12, 2001 

Version 1.3 released. Supports Blogger API.

January 7, 2002 

Version 1.4 released.

January 11, 2002 

Paid installation available for personal sites at a cost of $20 for the first hour and $5 for each additional hour.

March 20, 2002 

Version 2.0 released. Supports IP banning for comments. Commercial license of $150 introduced.

May 2, 2002 

Version 2.1 released. Supports MetaWeblog API.

June 26, 2002 

Version 2.2 released. Supports MySQL databases and TrackBack. Plugin architecture introduced.

September 6, 2002 

Version 2.5 released. Open pinging interface and integrated search.

February 13, 2003 

Version 2.6 released. Support for Creative Commons licenses, RSD, and PostreSQL and SQLite databases.

December 22, 2003 

Version 2.65 released. Atom sydication template introduced as a default template.

May 13, 2004 

Version 3.0 released. Supports TypeKey, a centralized authentication system for commenting.

August 31, 2004 

Version 3.1 released. Supports dynamic PHP publishing.

External links

• Movable Type product website
• Movable Type Support Forum
• MT-Blacklist Plugin
• MT Wiki (now non-searchable and locked)
• Planet Movable Type