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We're the right people for movable type consultancy services including: installations, upgrades, themes, templates, consultancy, troubleshooting as well as hosting.

The complete range of movable type services you might be looking for!

This is a personal website and doesn't have anything to do with Six Apart nevertheless Chris Alden, the former Six Apart CEO, appreciated my idea when he saw it available online.

Dear Friends,

Six Apart identified a security issue on movable type v4.2x and v4.3x installations.

The problem is that through the "mt-upgrade.cgi" script OS command injection or SQL injection could be performed and these actions might open a vulnerability.

This vulnerability affects all versions, namely: open source, professional and enterprise.

You could address this issue by implementing the patch from:

Or by either deleting the "mt-upgrade.cgi" script or by setting its file permission to 000.

I would strongly recommend you to implement this patch or follow the other 2 actions I've mentioned above ASAP.

If you need help on implementing this patch or on upgrading movable type to v5.2.2 I'm available.

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru
Dear Community,

Today Six Apart made available movable type v5.2.2. This new release follows the new numbering policy (hence the "5.2.2" version number).

This new release contains an important number of new features and bug fixes.


You could test movable type v5.2.2 absolutely free from:

1) Professional

2) Open Source


Let me list here for you some of the latest improvements:

New Features


1) Boilerplate

The Boilerplate Text function is now available. Boilerplate Text lets users register often repeated text, such as for event announcements, which can then be recalled and inserted in blog entries.
More details about "Boilerplate" are available here:

2) New Theme: "Rainier"

The "Rainier" blog theme has been added. "Rainier" is a multi-device compatible theme based on Media Queries (CSS). "Rainier" offers header banner and navigation customization options.
More details about the "Rainier" new theme are available here:

3) Movable Type Advanced

Movable Type Advanced 5.2, the latest version of MTA, offers full support for Windows Azure.
Dynamic publishing is now possible even when operating with UTF-8 on the MS SQL Server. 

4) Other Features

[82725] When using run-periodic-tasks to execute specified date publishing, the processing date is logged
[104672] The dynamic publishing template tag modifiers can pass over 3 arguments.
[108564] MT Tags can be used in in the config.yaml file.of riich text editor expansion plug-in


Bug Fixes


The list of bugs that have been addressed in this release is very and I'm proud to be among the ones that reported such bugs. One of the bugs I've reported has been fixed in this release.

Here we go with a summary of the bugs:
  • [104094] After changing the destination folder for published web page data, an old web page data still remains in the the old folder.
  • [104665] The "maximum open cursors" occurs when using Oracle.
  • [106224] An error will occur if the MT generated .htaccess file includes "SymLinksIfOwnerMatch", as multi-server hosting is not supported.
  • [106534] Creation and deletion of the category archive page is not executed in appropriate timing.
  • [107118] If Japanese is used with LDAPAuthURL, a user search will not work
  • [108797], [108797] An error occurs on the user profile screen when building a community blog on Oracle or MS SQL Server.
  • [107961] In Oracle and SQL Server, an error occurs when trying to destroy old session information.
  • [107963], [107994] Request to enable use of custom field tags with archive mapping.
  • [108513] If a thumbnail already exists for an image and MTAssetThumbnailURL is set to square="1", the image appearance is not updated, even after rebuilding.
  • [108570] Request for the addition of an e-mail validation process when resetting a password.
  • [108631], [108862] When user edit comments data from the search/replace screen, the keyword search option disappears from the input field.
  • [108654] When there is a sub-domain input error, the error is displayed as originating from a different location.
  • [108661] app.saveHTML() returns information currently displayed in the rich text editor.
  • [108667] Please add the ecape=html value to the mt:CommentParentID tag, available for use in professional website and professional blog templates.
  • [108718] The dynamic publishing MTWidgetSet tag ignores the blog_id setting.
  • [108728] After upgrading from MT 3.38 to MT 5.2, users with the "send notification" option enabled will not be able to create new blog entries.
  • [108730] When restoring MT from a back up file, multiple copies of the profile image will be restored as well.
  • [108733] When operating in an environment running memcached, the template module cache will not be cleared at the specified time.
  • [108734] The template cache will not be cleared after a new category is created.
  • [108748] Incorrect HTML is generated from unlabeled item custom fields.
  • [108799] When executing bulk user updates with CSV, even though the same user name is specified in the new user name input field, an error occurs.
  • [108802] When Config Directive "SingleCommunity" is set to 0, the member's list in the Movable Type authenticated users folder will be displayed incorrectly
  • [108803] When Config Directive "SingleCommunity" is set to 0, users with third party authentications, such as OpenID, will not be able to be removed from a blog.
  • [108804] Although website administrative privileges are granted to a user group, users do not have access to blogs linked to those websites.
  • [108805] When restoring from back up data, group member data is not restored.
  • [108815] Code generated from custom fields with multiple lines of text will not be converted correctly
  • [108824] When specifying a publishing path with BaseSitePath through Windows, an error will occur if case sensitivity is not specified.
  • [108841] When using dynamic publishing, upper and lower case characters used in tag attributes are treated as completely different characters.
  • [108845] If IncludeBlogs is set to "all", an error will occur in the blog search.
  • [108846] An error will occur if IncludeBlogs or blog_id is not specified in the search form template.
  • [108856] The error message for the Facebook commenter's plug-in should be revised
  • [108858] StyleCatcher display breaks in the Apache+Starman environment.
  • [108866] When using dynamic publishing, an error occurs when half-width alphanumeric characters are used to write folder or category names.
  • [108872] MTArchiveTitle is output differently depending on whether dynamic or static publishing is used.
  • [108876] Category and folder selection cannot be saved on FireFox16.
  • [108877] An automated message should be displayed when a commenter's identity cannot be authenticated.
  • [108891] Blog entries marked as "NO ENTRY" cannot be imported.
  • [108901] Templates using the alt-tmpl directory, included with theme files, do not function correctly
  • [108909] When ignoring the revision history, the latest blog entry author is displayed as the user who is currently logged in.
  • [108920] MT doesn't hold Compose Settings when change the field basename
  • [108924] Individual archive pages are not displayed when using dynamic publishing.
  • [108946] Comment pagination does not work when running MT through PSGI.
  • [108947] When using dynamic publishing, an error will occur if someone tries to view a website that does not have a blog.
  • [108948] When using dynamic publishing with PHP5.4, the "Sign In" characters will not be displayed.
  • [108953] When TAB data is inserted in the comment data, comment pagination will not work correctly.
  • [108958] System privileges cannot be changed
  • [108959] A template error will occur if "(" is set in a category modifier with MTEntries tags.
  • [108967] The {{theme_static}} setting cannot be used in the StyleCatcher repository.
  • [108982] After re-applying a theme, the theme thumbnail will not update.
  • [108989] The MTMultiBlog tag does not work correctly in the blog entry list archive.
  • [108999] Assets may not be correctly retrieved when importing data from WordPress.
  • [109003] If a blog entry with an index template that is using the MTEntryCustomFields tag is saved and rebuilt, the value for all custom fields will be reset to the default value.
  • [109004] Blog restoration can not be completed if a website does not exist.
  • [109009] When specifying the BaseSitePath, case sensitivity is automatically turned on in Website Path field.
  • [109022] When importing an exported blog entry that includes a blank custom field, a half-width character space is arbitrarily inserted as the value for the empty custom field.
  • [109023] The user date archive (by year, month, week or day) is not displayed when using dynamic publishing.
  • [109024] search_apis cannot be added through plugins.
  • [109026] When using the external environment SMTP server, if an e-mail is sent to multiple recipients, the e-mail header will look strange.
  • [109032] If a folder with sub-folders is deleted, the user will not be able to save changes.
  • [109036] When executing bulk user updates with CSV, multi-byte e-mail addresses can be saved without error.
  • [109038] When executing bulk user updates with CSV, a user name with over 85 full width characters can be saved without error.
  • [109039] When executing bulk user updates with CSV, a user name with over 255 half width characters can be saved without error.
  • [109055] When executing bulk user updates with CSV, even if a blog theme has not been saved, an error will not occur.
  • [109097] Files that already exist cannot be renamed when using a Windows operating environment.
  • [109105] When importing WordPress data, neither categories nor tags can be imported.
  • [109112] The mteval modifier will work even if a value other than 1 is used.
  • [109133] The numify modifier will cause output discrepancies between static and dynamic publishing.
  • [109134] When the sanitize modifier is set to 0, an error will occur if dynamic publishing is used.
  • [109149] When the environmental variable UserSessionCookieDomain is not set, the value for the domain of the cookie will not be generated correctly.
  • [109156] An error will occur if an embedded custom field value is saved.

If you want to read the entire release note, check out:

Happy testing!

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru

Dear Community,

I'm very excited to see that Six Apart launched today Movable Type v5.2.

This release is a huge step forward from what you knew so far about movable type.

Apart from the many bug fixes introduced since v5.14, this release comes with a number of very useful new features.

The most important feature for me, my customers and the whole community is the fact that at my request Six Apart implemented an awesome feature on their new Rich Text Editor which automatically erases the garbage HTML formatting that was added so far to movable type when copy-and-pasting content from Ms Word.

Another feature that other folks, including me, insisted for is the ability to create tables, which is available as a stand along plugin for the new Rich Text Editor.

 This plugin could be found at:
https://github.com/movabletype/mt-plugin-table-feature-for-tinymce

Let me now list for you the another features that Six Apart mentioned on this new version announcement.

  1. Corresponding nginx+PSGI

    Movable Type 5.2 can now be used under the nginx+PSGI environment. This allows us to provide support over a variety of server environments, such as cloud computing virtual servers, CMS servers and content servers.

  2. New Rich Text Editor

    The new rich text editor is implemented based on TinyMCE; easy to use, easy to edit.

  3. Sitepath restriction

    Sitepath restriction is now available. This feature is most effective for medium to large websites.

  4. SMTP Authentication

    In Movable Type 5.2, email notifications can now be sent using authenticated SMTP.

  5. Improved performance of custom fields; faster rebuilding times

    The performance of custom fields have been improved, and as a result, blog entries which have custom field's data can be rebuilt much faster than before.Along with these changes, general rebuilding rate for blog entries are now faster by 120%.

I'm glad to have contributed with feedback, perseverance and bug reports to the following features:

  1. the automatic cleanup of MS Word HTML garbage after copying and pasting content from Ms Word;
  2. the sitepath restriction;
  3. custom fields improvements.

As always, you could evaluate movable type v5.2 on the very first day it was released by going to:
http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/pro/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi
http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/os/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

Login with:
- username: demo
- password: testthis

You could find out a lot more information on Movable Type 5.2 checking out the links below.

Checking out the above resources you could discover also a bunch of new configuration directives.

Happy testing,
Mihai Bocsaru

Dear Friends,

Six Apart launched today Movable Type v5.2 RC2.

This new version introduces a few more bug fixes.

The issues fixed on this release are:

  • 108759 mt:SearchResults tag does not store localized blog_id in context stash
  • 108754 Unable to sign in for commenting again once signing out
  • 108758 Renaming basename of blog-level custom field can cause corruption of custom fields metadata
    108756 Saving new custom field can result in corruption of existing custom field metadata

Stay tuned for Movable Type v5.2!


This new RC2 version remains available at:

Login with:
- username: demo
- password: testthis


The movable type v5.2 rc 2 release notes are available here:

Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru
Dear Friends,

Are you ready for movable type v5.2?

Yesterday Six Apart announced the Release Candidate 1 and what is nice about it is that it contains all the new features announced so far for v5.2, as well as fixes for almost all the bugs reported so far.


The latest fixed issues are:
  • 108701 Unable to sign out properly on the published page if blog domain is ip address
  • 108651 Comment replies do not show up in author's profile page on mt-cp.cgi

The current known issue is:
  • 108242 Sometimes unable to send a test email in wizard via SMTP Auth with SSL on Windows

New config directives

In addition to the directives announced in beta 1, several new config directives have been added, as follows:
  • Editor
  • WYSIWYGEditor
  • SourceEditor
  • BulkLoadMetaObjectsLimit
  • DisableMetaObjectCache
  • BaseSitePath
  • HideBaseSitePath

Modified config directives:

The following config directives have been appended or modified:

  • ThemesDirectory
  • AltTemplatePath
  • SearchTemplatePath
  • ThemeStaticFileExtensions

I'm proud to have been contributed to this new release with a bug fix.

There are many other things I've proposed either as new features, or as optimizations to current features and soon you will see most of them implemented on movable type.


This new RC1 version remains available at:

Login with:
- username: demo
- password: testthis


The movable type v5.2 rc 1 release notes are available here:

Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru
There are two reasons why I feel saying "WOW!" today.

One of these reasons is that Six Apart has issued the 5th and last beta of movable type v5.2 and is shortly going into the release candidate phase.

The other reason is that I've just tested the "Table Feature for TinyMCE" which is available as a plugin at: https://github.com/movabletype/mt-plugin-table-feature-for-tinymce

Why did I like it?

Well, installing it was a breeze. I had to simply unpack the plugin and upload its 'plugins' and 'mt-static' folders over the folders with the same name from my movable type installation.

Then, when I've logged in to the movable type admin and I went to the editing entry/page screen, I've seen the table options available automatically as a 3rd row of options on the TinyMCE editor.

But what made me be really very excited was to see how easy it is to create a table and how many parameters it allows you to customize (WOW! again).

Let me mention a few for you:

General Options

  • Columns
  • Rows
  • Cell Padding
  • Cell Spacing
  • Alignment
  • Border
  • Width
  • Height
  • Class
  • Table Caption

Advanced Options

  • ID
  • Summary
  • Style
  • Language Code
  • Background Image
  • Frame
  • Rules
  • Language Direction
  • Border Color
  • Background Color

You won't believe it, but you could have a lot more control over your table.

The above would create the table for you, but if you want you could still perform the following tasks:

  1. Define Table Row Properties
  2. Define Table Cell Properties
  3. Insert Row Before, Insert Row After or Delete Row;
  4. Insert Column Before, Insert Column After or Delete Column;
  5. Merge Table Cells;
  6. Split Merged Table Cells;
  7. Show/Hide Guildelines/Invisible Elements.

The "Define Table Row Properties" and the "Define Table Cell Properties" have lots of controls each, divided into "General Options" and "Advanced Options" and they allow you to control all the elements, some elements, odd or even elements.

I would conclude saying that I'm very happy with the outcome so far on movable type v5.2.

Do you want to test the latest beta, as well as the "Table Feature for TinyMCE"?

Go ahead and test them at:

Login with:
- username: demo
- password: testthis

The movable type v5.2 beta 5 release notes are available here:

Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru

Dear Community,

 

It's a pleasure for me to announce that today Six Apart made available the 4th beta of movable type v5.2. This version contains a bunch of bug fixes.


Among them I would mention:

  • Can not resize correctly when the format is "None" with IE
  • Can not preserve editor height when the format is none
  • Wrong order of the field on Edit Entry / Page Screen
  • cms_pre_save.asset callback won't be called when items are uploaded
  • Site path is set to blog path during upgrade from MT4.37 to MT5.2b2
  • encode_xml doesn't handle some numeric character references correctly
  • An error occurs when importing the data via WXRImporter
  • Preferred archive type setting is broken when removing a template map which is marked as preferred archive type
  • On listing screen, user can save filters in spite of it has wrong condtion
  • Commnters disappear when an administrator unban banned them
  • Config directive "SerchExcerptWords" doesn't work correctly
  • An error occurs when there are unsupported image files on item dialogue
  • With IE8, pubutton images on rich text editor will not back to oridnary status
  • User filter will not be recovered correctly when blog's backup data is restored
  • Daily archive will be rebuilt when webpages are saved
  • cms_pre_save.asset will not be called when item files are uploaded
  • With IE8, after pushing item isert button and cancel it, user cannot enter characters on rich text editor's screen
  • Sytem information will not be displayd under the FastCGI environment
  • Cannot clone blogs from system dashboard

 

Details on how to expand the Movable Type new Rich Text Editor are available here:

https://github.com/movabletype/Documentation/wiki/The-expansion-of-Movable-Type%E2%80%99s-Rich-Text-Editor

 

The table feature that I've been advocating for and that some other community members requested is now available and shipped as a plugin from:

https://github.com/movabletype/mt-plugin-table-feature-for-tinymce

 

Are you curious to give this beta a ride? Go ahead and test it from:

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/pro/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

ttp://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/os/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

 

Login with:


 - username: demo

 - password: testthis

 

More details are available here:

http://www.movabletype.org/2012/08/movable_type_52_beta_4.html

 

Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru

Dear Community,

Today Six Apart announced movable type v5.2 beta 3 as a release that contains a number of bugs fixed, as well as a series of improvements for the new rich text editor.

Worth mentioning is the table feature for TinyMCE, which is shipped as a plugin. While it is an experimental function, it seems to do an excellent job.

Before inviting you to go ahead and test this version, I'm proud to say that among the bugs that have been fixed, there are 2 bugs that I've reported myself.

Go ahead and test it from:




Login with:

- username: demo

- password: testthis


More details are available here:


Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru
Dear Community,

Today Six Apart announced movable type v5.2 beta 2 as a release that contains new features and a number of bugs fixed.

Go ahead and test it from:




Login with:

- username: demo

- password: testthis


You may like to know that the new features are related to the new RTE editor, to the language files and to a variable for "theme.yaml".

More details are available here:


Many thanks,
Mihai Bocsaru

Dear Community,

 

I'm pleased to announce and make available for you the launch of movable type v5.2 beta 1.

This version is a huge step ahead comparing to v5.14, or the other earlier versions.

I would say that it is the best version launched until now.

Why would I make such statements?

 

There are a bunch of reasons such as:

 

1) new RTE editor

Now only that this version includes a new Rich Text Editor, which is based on the popular tinyMCE editor, but this version introduces a major feature which is that it strips off the garbage that Ms Word adds to text editors when pasting text from it.

Forget about ugly stuff and garbage coding imported from Ms Word.

Forget about having to first copy from Ms Word and paste to Notepad in order to loose the formatting, then to copy from Notepad and paste to Movable Type and finally to add back the formatting from inside the movable type admin.

From now on you could safely copy and paste from Ms Word with your formatting applied to the text and what you would get on your site is a clean and beautiful HTML formatting.

I've advocated for this feature for my customers and the entire community and thanks to Six Apart this feature is now implemented.

Curious to see it with your own eyes?

Compare:

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/sites/my-first-website/community_blog/2012/07/pasting-from-ms-word.html

and:

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/sites/my-first-website-os/classic_blog/2012/07/pasting-from-ms-word.html

with this badly formatted text:

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/sites/demo_classic_website_pro/community_blog/2012/07/pasting-from-ms-word.html

 

2) site path restriction

This is another item that I've reported and advocated for and that Six Apart implemented.

I've seen it on my skin that people that create websites and blogs would need to have a base server path imposed so that they won't overwrite the root of the domain name where the movable type installation is available.

You don't want to know how many times I had to go inside the demo installations and change websites/blogs paths to point to a folder called "sites", because various users overwrote the movabletypedemo.org domain root.

If this happened to my soul project, I wanted to prevent it from happening to my customers or just to any other movable type users.

This feature was implemented on v4x and it is now implemented back from v5.2 beta1.

 

3) improved performance of custom fields

I've raised a good number of bug reports and of feature requests related to the custom fields feature.

Six Apart started to implement them for us. When all of them would be implemented, you would be very surprised of how many things you would be able to build up.

 

4) smtp authentication

You could now set movable type to send email notifications using SMTP over SSL.

 

5) nginx+PSGI support

Let me limit to quote what Six Apart mentioned about this:

"Nginx is a light web server which has recently come into the spotlight for its fast performance. PSGI (Perl Web Server Gateway Interface) is an interface that connects web applications and web servers. When used in combination with nginx, Movable Type can become lighter and run faster. "

 

Would you like to take a look at v5.2 beta 1?


Go ahead and do it from:

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/pro/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

http://www.movabletypedemo.org/v5x/beta/os/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi


Login with:

- username: demo

- password: testthis

 

Many thanks,

Mihai Bocsaru

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