Since I’ve already done all the comics/movies geekiness that anyone can stand, news now on MovableType 3.1, which will be the “general release” (non-“developers” edition).
Whoa. Looking nice. Some highlights that interest me:
- Dynamic PHP publishing, controllable on a per-template basis. In other words, pages of a given type can be generated dynamically (saving disk space) or statically (saving processing). Sweet. Definitely something I want to play with.
- Post scheduling. Create a post that doesn’t appear until the specified time and place. Keep the blog “alive” while away on vacation, or something like that, or make an announcement for a time when you won’t be able to be at the computer. Nice.
- Subcategories. Oh, yes. This has been available via plug-in, but I’d much rather have the “official” version. I anticipate much category reorg when this comes out.
Some nice plug-ins (MT-Blacklist, Markdown, Notifier) are also available, which adds in some of the functionality that folks have been showing off elsewhere, or through more elaborate hacks.
I have to say, I consider the features in 3.1 to be sufficiently compelling to (perhaps not immediately, but soon) commit to the upgrade (and, thus, the licensing costs).
41 view(s)
And now that the licensing is reasonable, indeed!
Yes.
Er.. the “official” subcategories is just David Rayne’s plugin integrated into MT. 🙂 David was contracted by SA to work with them on polishing it up for inclusion as an official feature much the same way that the “built-in” content search function is Jay Allen’s former-hack woven into the code. Previously the only search available was in the admin interface.
Near as I can tell if you were to install 3.01D and David’s plugin it’d be the same as what will be in 3.1. At this point, I’d be very surprised if it’s not just a plugin in the final release as you’re not likely to notice the difference unless you look in the plugins folder. That shows some of the power the new API holds, it makes plugins feel as though they’re a part of the core.
Under ExpressionEngine there’s two distinct types of add-ons of which plugins are one type and quite similar to plugins under 2.661 and older versions of MT in terms of largely being used to add new tags to the system. EE also has Modules which are more akin to the new plugin API in MT3.0, but the documentation on how to write those hasn’t been released yet. Soon though.
I figured the subcats were likely the plug-in you’d mentioned earlier. It’s probably irrational, but I do prefer having it show up as an “official” feature thang (even if it’s just the plug-in) than a plug-in. Especially since that means that that’s how the functionality will be carried on in the future.