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Recoding Movable Type Projects Based On The Movable Type 4 Templating System

I'm going to call this a day, but I won't like to go and get a good nap before sharing with you a few notes based on a project I've worked on today

Lynne Kiesling from http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/ contacted me saying that she needs help with her Movable Type weblog.

Basically, nevertheless she was used to Movable Type and upgraded it herself over the years, she recently encountered problems after upgrading to Movable Type v4.01 that were "beyond my coding capabilities" as she kindly mentioned.

She wanted me to recode her project templates based on the MT4 framework, to install a new Web site theme from the ones available online and to also add some other features

I've already coded a couple of projects since Movable Type v4.x entered the scene, but I should say that it was indeed a pleasure to recode her project.

Recoding a movable type Web site based on the v3.x framework into the new framework, with all the new principles introduced by v4.x apart from the excitement it brings could have also a weak point and that is called heavy "publishing times"

Six Apart tried to make this product as simple and intuitive as possible for any blog owner to be able to edit the template, go though all the included modules, create or manage widgets from the side column(s) and more.

Taking as an example only the "Widget Sets" facility which, nevertheless allows you to easily update your Movable Type Web site side bar(s) by dragging and dropping widgets, regenerating all those widgets could be a problem if we are talking about large blogs

My today's client was contained 2271 posts! Imagine Movable Type trying to always generate the side bar for each individual article page, then for the categories, monthly archives and indexes!... The whole rebuilding process took above 4 hours on the v4.x templating architecture, while based on the v3.x architecture it took only 12 minutes

I couldn't let this customer wait so much for a simple rebuild, so I've worked a bit on optimizing the publishing time which is a consultancy service we're long offering at PRO IT Service

Without sacrificing any of the very nice features included on the MT 4 templating architecture I've been able to reduce the publishing time from 4 hours and 18 minutes to almost 16 minutes which is indeed a performance

As a professional solutions provider my goal is to try to make the publishing time even better than how it was when the site templates were based on the v3.x architecture, so within 12 minutes. Because it already got quite late, I will focus on this item first thing in the morning. Stay tuned :)

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on February 22, 2008
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Movable Type Design Assistant: Styles Live Customization is Here

Six Apart just revealed an excellent new tool they are working on and which allows you to easily pick up a new look and feel for your Web site from a Styles Library.

Style Catcher Next Generation

Those of you that have heard or used Style Catcher, the new product is like a Style Catcher next generation and allows you not only to choose and adopt a new look and feel, but to also modify the layout characteristics as you like.

Movable Type Design Assistant comes also with an easier and more intuitive interface which guides you throughout the whole new design adopting process.

Each Design Comes In Six Layout Formats

Another excellent feature is that each and every style from the library is available in not less than six possible layout formats covering actually the most popular layout structures currently available online.

These six layout formats are:

Layout-wtt (3 columns: Wide, Thin, Thin)

Layout-twt (3 columns: Thin, Wide, Thin)

Layout-wt (2 columns: Wide, Thin)

Layout-tw (2 columns: Thin, Wide)

Layout-wm (2 columns: Wide, Medium)

Layout-mw (2 columns: Medium, Wide)

Personalization

As I've been mentioning above, Movable Type Design Assistant allows you to customize your new look and feel anyway you like. Basically you can apply and preview modifications to a design using CSS, all in real time, completely live!

This way you can manage basically anything you could imagine: columns dimensions, background, fonts, colors etc.

Once you are satisfied with your new layout preview, if you want to apply it to your blog, all you have to do is to copy it from the Movable Type Design Assistant and paste it on your blog.

Support

Nevertheless Movable Type Design Assistant interface is very intuitive, there is also a very handy "Learn More" area for you to find additional Movable Type design resources and Six Apart's recommended reading list for learning and mastering stylesheets.

Licensing and Download

Movable Type Design Assistant is available under a GPL license and could be downloaded in beta version from Six Apart code repository.

Developers are encouraged to take it, check it and make edits and improvements as they see fit.

See it in action here:
http://www.movabletype.org/design/assistant/

Plans

While the entire movable type community considers this new tool an excellent facility for rapidly creating and adopting a new look and feel for a movable type blog, Six Apart announced their development plans before releasing this product final version.

On their to do list, Six Apart mentioned:

more styles to start with;
more layouts to choose from;
easier ways to apply styles to your blog;
and some great social sharing features to help you learn from, and benefit from, the incredibly generous and talented community of designers who use Movable Type.

The concept doesn't stop here. Apart from the items on the above to do list, in the future Six Apart will also work to:

improve compatibility with Internet Explorer 6 and 7;
include additional base styles to choose from;
package it as a plugin so that the process of applying custom styles can be completely automated;
include support for additional template sets so that users can more easily customize the style of sets like the Universal Template Set

As a movable type passionate supporter working with this product since early 2003, I advise you all to give a look to the "Movable Type Design Assistant" as an excellent solution for identifying, further customizing and adopting a new Web site look and feel.

Movable Type Design Assistant is another reason to choose Movable Type for those not yet decided what blogging platform to use for their projects.

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on February 08, 2008
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Upgrading to Movable Type Open Source v4.1

It's quite some time since I didn't publish anything new in here

Well, I've had a very busy time with my work and I've also been in London for about 2 weeks with business meeting a few already established customers and also meeting a few new prospects

The time I had in London was great. I was leaving near London Bridge and London Tower, two very nice places in Zone 1 not far from the Westminster and Buckingham Palaces.

During my stay in London the Movable Type Crew at Six Apart launched Movable Type v4.1 in two versions, one Commercial and the other Open Source. Nevertheless I've made these two versions available online for free testing at movabletype4.org I didn't have the time to try to actually upgrade one of my customers' version.

However, today I've had the opportunity to do my first upgrade from movable type v3.35 to movable type v4.1 open source. The transition was very nice, nevertheless I had to do a few tweaks to make sure all he had before works also on this new version.

If I will be to upgrade all our customers I will go beyond 200 movable type instances :)

However, if you need to upgrade your movable type driven web site from any version to any other version just get in touch using the contact form and I or my technicians would be more than glad to do this job for you in a professional manner.

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on February 02, 2008
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Movable Type Security Update: Engineers Available

Movable Type just issued a security update that should be applied to any movable type version since Movable Type v3.2

Basically, in affected versions of Movable Type, there are certain circumstances in which a blog template may be rendered dynamically via CGI in an otherwise static publishing context. If you use Movable Type to publish PHP files (or JSP or ASP pages) and have embedded within your Movable Type templates sensitive information (such as database connection information), then that sensitive information could potentially be exposed and viewed publicly.

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on January 17, 2008
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Happy New Year 2008!

I would like to thank you all for the great success that PRO IT Service, the company that I'm personally ruling registered this year

Nevertheless we had a very busy time, the results we've achieved were extraordinary

The New Year holiday inspired us with an even more ambitious developing plan that we would like to put in practice during 2008. Stay tuned ;-)

Within the following month I'm going to list for you some of the projects we've been involved during 2007 and we feel like mentioning on our Web site

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on January 08, 2008
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PRO IT Service is now partner of Six Apart Europe

Today was the second and last day of the "Le Web 3" forth edition conference here in Paris, France

I must say the conference was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. Cannot wait for the video registration to become available online so that I could link to it from here for whoever is interested

The main reason I’ve attended Le Web 3 this year is actually an invitation I’ve got from Six Apart to meet the whole team in person, get to know each other a bit and make official the partnership we’ve signed just a few days ago

Basically, for a couple of days my company is an official partner of Six Apart for Europe.

PRO IT Service - Six Apart Europe Partner
(here above there is a photo with the Six Apart team at Le Web 3, including Chris Alden which is the CEO and Chairman of Six Apart’s Board of Directors. I'm the third from right to left)

Here at PRO IT Service S.R.L. we are very happy that Six Apart appreciated the work we did over the last couple of years using Movable Type and the effort we’ve made to evangelize this excellent publishing platform

If you got to know me or my team you already know that we are not going to stop here! Among our plans there is a partnership with Six Apart North America since most of our customers come from the US market, and a few other wonderful initiatives related to making this product even more popular

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on December 12, 2007
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Finance Web Site And Blog Development: The MoneyOutlet.co.uk

As a passionate Movable Type Consultant (some folks like my design skills and call me Movable Type Designer) I'm impatient unless I code a good number of Movable Type projects every week.

They are all very nice projects and I would love to find some time to write about each and every one of them, but as you know we are living in a speedy era and time is tight.

However, I cannot resist the temptation and will share with you a project I've delivered recently which focuses on finance called The MoneyOutlet.co.uk. Basically it's a Web site built entirely in Movable Type which covers the following finance areas: Loans, Mortgages, Credit Cards, Insurance, Banking, General Finance News & Articles.

I was again so fortunate to be building this Web site from the very roots. Everything started from the layout that the customer designed in PhotoShop. We've then had a few sessions over skype and agreed to make some changes that would improve the search engine optimization. Once the reference design in PhotoShop was ready, I've started to slice the images and code it in xhtml/css tableless Web page format.

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on November 29, 2007
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London, Paris and The Forth Edition of Le Web 3

It’s quite some time since I didn’t publish anything here and I feel like sharing with you what I’ve been doing during the last month

Apart from building up new movable type projects, optimizing some other movable type heavy web sites or coding web site interfaces, I’ve been traveling to London where I’ve spent three wonderful weeks

I’ve been to London partly with business and partly for fun. I’ve been working on the U.K. way back in 2004 on the North West for quite some time, but I really wanted to also spend some time in London

It’s useless to tell you that I’ve found London a wonderful place and nevertheless I’ve lived in Rome for a few years and traveled around the Europe quite a lot, I would relocate to London anytime now

The Future of The Internet

What makes this time of the year even more intriguing is the fourth edition of LeWeb3 which will take place in Paris on December the 11th and the 12th. I’ve received an invitation to this event and I would gladly participate.

LeWeb3 is widely regarded as Europe's largest web conference and is one of the most important dates in the tech calendar.

This year's program, featuring high-caliber speakers such as Robert Scoble (PodTech), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Tariq Krim (Netvibes), is expected to draw up to 2000 participants from around the world to discuss the future of the Internet. For more information on the event, you may like to see www.leweb3.com.

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on November 27, 2007
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Another Food Blog Is Up: The Japanese Food Report

Some time ago I was talking about a customer coming in asking me to work on his "Japanese Food Report" Web site saying that I've been referred by a few important people on this industry and that I'm very popular on the US :)

Based on the same idea as Chocolate & Zucchini or Harvest Wizard, this Web site will be focused on healthy food and recipes, especially from the Japanese kitchen.

The time is up and his Web site is now launched online!

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on October 11, 2007
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Political Blog Development: NewsAndPolicy.com

The 2008 US Elections are getting closer and while preparing the road for another Political Blog, in fact entire publishing system, I just felt like mentioning a nice project I've built up and launched recently.

NewsAndPolicy.com is an Influential Breaking Story Portal and Weblog focusing on Breaking News, Video News, Opinion and Analysis, Terror Watch, Politics, Media, Business and more.

Developed for Zimakor Communications Company LLC, a publishing company from California, USA, the Web site is made of a blog, news section and tv newsroom

Posted by Mihai Bocsaru on October 10, 2007
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