When we first started the development process for Movable Type 4 we
identified each of the primary users of Movable Type and profiled each
of them to better understand how these authors, publishers, designers
and developers all use Movable Type during the course of their day. We
then started analyzing how the application could be more tailored to
their individual needs.
One of the users we took special notice of was the administrator. Whether that person is a dedicated IT professional with little interest in blogging, or whether the author, publisher, designer, developer and administrator are all the same person, we wanted to make the process of managing, monitoring and maintaining the application easier then ever before.
So, in our on-going series of looking at all the new features we are pouring into Movable Type we look at the sometimes unglamorous list of administrative features new to MT4.
- A dramatically improved installation experience
- Cross-blog management of entries, authors, comments, and community
- Customizable, filterable RSS feeds for every management and listing screen in the application
- Built-in diagnostic tools for system configuration information and troubleshooting
- Blog cloning -- with one click, you can create a new blog that inherits the styles, settings, templates, and configuration of any blog in your system
- Full Backup and Restore -- securely archives all your entries, comments, images, files, settings, and templates for safekeeping
- Better import and export, with support for importing content all previous versions of Movable Type as well as other popular blogging platforms
Paul William Tenny on June 27, 2007, 7:48 a.m. Reply
As an administrator for a university weblog system, we have a lot of users and a lot of weblogs. One thing I’ve noticed with the older versions of MT is that it’s difficult to easily see who is responsible for each weblog. For instance, if I’m managing authors, I can see what weblogs they have permissions for. But there is no way, while viewing a specific weblog, to view all of the authors who have access to it (and then change permissions). I’m really hoping that “Cross-blog management of entries, authors, comments, and community” means it’ll be easier to manage what authors have access based on each weblog.
clarknova on June 27, 2007, 8:25 a.m. Reply
” Cross-blog management of entries, authors, comments, and community”
This sounds very exciting, is the ability of posting entries to multiple blogs in this category?
Thanks./C
Su on June 27, 2007, 9:13 a.m. Reply
Clarknova: Authors have always been able to access multiple blogs. Or do you mean for a single entry to be posted to multiple blogs(without actually duplicating it)?
clarknova on June 27, 2007, 9:16 a.m. Reply
Su, exactly, I want to be able to post a single entry to all or some of the blogs I’m author of, is this possible?
Su on June 27, 2007, 9:57 a.m. Reply
Oof. That sounds like it would produce some interesting(in the Chinese curse way) programming and management questions. I’m going to semi-confidently guess not, but Byrne will have final say, obviously.
Would you mind taking this over to the forum for discussion? I’m curious about why you want to do it, but there’s no reason to derail here.
Sara on June 28, 2007, 4:17 p.m. Reply
I wonder if that crosspost plugin Arvind was working on earlier this year could be done post one entry to many.
Sara on June 29, 2007, 8:41 a.m. Reply
About # 36: Better import and export.
Is there any way to actually export/import pages and files other than doing a full backup or direct dump of the db?
Right now it is so durn easy to get content into MT, but not at all easy to get it back out again specially not if you just want a simple import/export format like we know it from versions prior to version 4.
Often I do a lot of content production offline and I love the simple export, because it doesn’t contain any of the entryid this and assetid that, which doesn’t allow me start over fresh with numbering and counts.
Byrne Reese on June 29, 2007, 12:24 p.m. Reply
@Sara - not currently. The import/export format is likely to stay as-is for this release. If you need to create a more full fidelity backup of the system, the Backup feature is your best bet.
A little hidden and little known fact - an early prototype of the Backup Tool allowed for an admin to select what they wanted to backup. I am certain that the code to support that still exists - meaning if an intrepid developer wanted to, they could unlock that functionality by surfacing the UI to control that again. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Sara on June 29, 2007, 12:41 p.m. Reply
@Byrne - Ohh now why did that not make it into the beta? Yeah I know time and all that stuff.
Depending on what is and isn’t in the final version I have a minor list of plug-in suggestions for those who can do that kind of stuff. Guess I need to write up some of that stuff instead of wishing I could do it myself.
Byrne Reese on June 29, 2007, 1:11 p.m. Reply
It partially had to do with time, but is also had a lot to do with complexity. We wanted to make the first version as simple as possible. When we worked through some of the UI complexity of a more advanced backup feature we would fold it back in.
JordanTT on November 15, 2012, 11:00 p.m. Reply
It seems that nothing new is happening with Moveable Type or the empty page after the link “Whats new” says so.
Jolie on November 26, 2012, 4:28 a.m. Reply
Hi I have a question about back ups you made. My question is how often do you do such back ups? Is it weekly or monthly?
Colleen Hover on November 28, 2012, 9:00 p.m. Reply
I think that in the part of administration there is no better CMS or self hosted blog platform which is better than Movable Type. It is easy to use with plenty of options to work with.