So, what's new in this release?

• Movable Type Pro lets you turn any site into a full social publishing platform, combining all of Movable Type's abilities as a blogging and CMS with social networking features like profiles, ratings, user registration, forums, following, and more.
• The platform upgrade to Movable Type 4.2 fulfills the top three requests made by our community -- it's up to 100 times faster for common tasks, features much simpler templates for customizing your site, and includes 100% free and open source TypePad AntiSpam for keeping junk comments off your site.
• Movable Type Pro includes all of the features in the Movable Type Community Solution and more, giving you all the power of this enormously successful social networking platform. And if you're a personal blogger or have a current MT license, Movable Type Pro is a free update.
• Movable Type remains the most secure publishing platform of its kind. As part of developing these new versions, we completed the most intensive proactive search for security issues in the history of the platform.

First, we set publishing free. Next up, social networks.

These announcements are a milestone for the entire Movable Type community, but they represent a vision that we've been building for years. Almost seven years ago, when Movable Type was first being created, the power of publishing on the web was still largely in the hands of a few giant media companies. In the years since, thanks in no small part to the community of bloggers who got started with Movable Type, that power has been unleashed, making it possible for anyone to publish with all the professionalism and presence of a giant media corporation by using easy-to-use, open tools.

Today, we're bringing the same idea to social networking. Providing social features to your community doesn't mean you have to give up control of your community to a giant media entity. Managing a community online is something you can do yourself, using easy-to-use, open tools.

Enough theory -- here's the features in MT Pro:

• Everyone's invited. You can easily add full-featured forums, community blogs and group blogs to your site, and since Movable Type has always managed an unlimited number of blogs in one interface, you can keep track of all those conversations using a single set of tools.
• Membership. It's easy to allow anyone on the web to register on your site, or to sign in with MT's industry-leading OpenID support. Once they're in, your site's members get full-fledged customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and can follow their friends or other site members they're interested in.
• Call it "UGC", if you must. Any member of your community can, with appropriate permissions, submit content for publishing on your site. Administrators have full ability to review submissions, and submitted posts show up on user profiles right next to their comments and other activity. Whether you call it "user-generated content" or just "a good idea", it's built right in.
• Ratings and Recommendations. Any registered user on your site can vote for content they like, making it easy to create "most popular" or "most recommended" lists on your site. You can even create your own voting communities within your site -- think "Digg in a box".

And all of those features are on top of the amazing new powers of MT 4.2:

• It's fast. MT's smart caching only publishes the parts of the page that change, and the core engine's been radically revamped to make it more efficient. The result? Using your current templates, publishing can be two to three times faster, right out of the box. Some testers have seen results with publishing up to ten times as fast or more.
• Templates are super simple. MT has always been designed so you don't need a ton of plugins to do fancy things with your site's design. But with all that power, our community told us that we also needed to make sure templates were still easy to understand. So in MT 4.2, templates are vastly simplified, and easier than ever to customize. And live template previews even let you see design changes before they're published on your site.
• 100% Free AntiSpam. TypePad AntiSpam is the best comment spam prevention service on the web. And it's 100% free no matter how many comments you get, plus it's open source and Akismet API compatible so it's easy to hook up to your site. With MT 4.2, it's also built right in to Movable Type.
• Even better APIs. OpenID suppport, OAuth libraries, and the ability to add in plugins to connect with the iPhone, Action Streams and more are all built right in. And all of your MT4 plugins should keep working just fine with this update, or have been updated to work even better in 4.2.
• Plus all the power of MT4. A powerful built-in asset management system. Integrated widget management. The smartest template editor around. The ability, as always, to manage an unlimited number of blogs and authors all in one place. Industry-leading support for new technologies and features. And an absolutely unparalleled community of passionate developers, designers, bloggers, and experts.

Get Started

So, with the release of version 4.2, it's time to get started with Movable Type Pro. The web sites you're running today can blossom into a full-fledged communities, connected and communicating with the rest of the web. Your existing blogs can zip many times faster than they do today. And your community can help shape the next evolution of social publishing on the web.

Over the past few years, we've often heard the term "disruptive" used to describe the impact of blogging. More so than any other medium in the last century, blogging has enabled people to quickly and easily distribute information to a wide audience, often with dramatic results.

Nowhere is the term "disruptive" more apt than when describing Brownstoner, a blog that chronicles the real estate market in Brooklyn. When Jonathan Butler launched Brownstoner in the fall of 2004, he turned a keen eye to his new neighborhood and the changes and trends that were occurring on his doorstep.

As it turned out, his timing was impeccable: Brooklyn was poised on the edge of a sea change, as new buyers rushed in to grab bargains, and massive renovation and upheaval ensued. Jonathan's chronicles from "New Brooklyn" struck a nerve with longstanding residents, prospective buyers and speculators alike.

Jonathan chose Movable Type based on recommendations from established bloggers. "MT was the unanimous choice," he recalls. He engaged the design firm Apperceptive, now part of Six Apart, to create several customizations that would help the site stand out. One of the most useful additions was the integration of the Google Maps plugin, which allowed Jonathan to create a map-based archive of thousands of locationspecific posts.

Despite its sophistication, the site feels like a neighborhood get-together. A recent profile piece on the site in New York Magazine notes: "Brownstoner covers the whole borough...but it covers the whole borough as though it were one big block, where everyone has gathered to gossip on their stoops."

Today, Brownstoner is far more than simply a "real estate blog" - it is also home to an opinionated and vocal community made up of thousands of people with vastly differing opinions. The site receives several hundred comments per day, and the dialogue is a lively one.

The comment sections at the end of each post are an important aspect of the conversation, but Jonathan has done one better by creating a Forums area, where people can post topics and receive feedback from the community. From sharing the names of trusted contractors to selling items from marble sinks to wooden doors, the forums reinforce a sense of cooperation and shared interest amongst neighbors. As to his role in fostering such a dynamic community, Jonathan says: "I try to be as transparent and straightforward as possible. Readers can smell B.S. a mile away." Jonathan views his role more as editor than expert, and calls himself "a starter of conversations."

His authentic approach appears to have struck a chord; today, Brownstoner receives about 1.3 million views per month. Just last month, the Historic Districts Council awarded the site their Friend of the Media award for 2007.

As the New York Magazine Article noted: "Butler's become not only a fairly wellknown blogger... but also a kind of virtual developer, someone who doesn't literally rebuild neighborhoods but who has the power to shape the way those neighborhoods are perceived."

Here at Six Apart, we aren't surprised whatsoever that a blog can accomplish so much - but we certainly are proud.

Here at Six Apart, we've always had one foot in the world of design and the other in technology, so it seems logical to us that a robust content management system like Movable Type can be used to create something beautiful - something that looks, well, nothing like a blog.

For those in an industry that prides itself on aesthetics and has long withstood digital innovation, that can be hard to imagine. Of the few industries that have resisted taking part in new media, none is more glamorous than Art. Long the province of whitewalled galleries and mysterious pricing schemes, art has historically been accessible only to a privileged few.

In January 2007, when gallery owner and entrepreneur Jen Bekman had her middle-of-the night revelation that the Internet was a perfect vehicle for making art available to everyone, she was instrumental in ushering the art market into the digital age. Jen named the venture 20x200, and devised the following formula: each week, she would offer two limited-edition prints - an edition of 200 for $20, an edition of 20 for $200, and an edition of 2 for $2,000. The entire business would be conducted online.

To build out the 20x200 site, Jen enlisted the help of photographer and web consultant Raul Gutierrez. Both Jen and Raul had extensive backgrounds in technology; Jen's career included leadership roles and Netscape and Disney, while Raul, himself an accomplished photographer, had built and produced a number of successful websites.

When they decided to use Movable Type to build out the site, they agreed on one thing: it couldn't look like a blog. The entire 20x200 site was built in Movable Type, using multiple custom plug-ins and integrating Google Checkout to make buying simple. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, Jen sends a newsletter to the 20x200 mailing list, in which she announces that day's edition and discusses its context and relevancy within the art world. The newsletter acts not only as a sales tool, but also as a rich source of information for new and seasoned collectors alike.

The newsletter contains links that lead to the page on the 20x200 site where the edition is displayed. Next to each edition sits a real-time inventory number, indicating how many pieces remain.

Movable Type demonstrates its abilities as a flexible, powerful CMS, allowing 20x200 to easily manage their growing catalogue of artwork. The site uses many custom fields to enable administrators to enter data for each edition quickly and simply; fields such as artist name, artist statement and website URL are consistent across each entry, so that visitors to the site can browse artists and find facts with ease.

Less than a year after 20x200 launched, the site has been an unqualified success: over 14,000 prints have been sold to date, to a customer list that includes artists, celebrities and respected collectors from around the world. The site has become an important corollary to Jen's New York gallery, and a vital part of her ongoing mission to champion emerging artists.

When we talk about Movable Type, we often say: "you imagine it, we enable it" and 20x200 demonstrates that maxim - dare we say - artfully.