Insight

The folks over at SixApart have recently announced what might be some of the biggest changes in Movable Type‘s history. It certainly is making noise throughout the blogosphere. This release marks a significant change to SixApart’s license agreement as well. This is another attempt to persuade WordPress users to make the switch, but the features are so good that even I am considering installing a new blog on Movable Type. The gap between the CMSs in terms of functionality and usage is quickly closing up.

Features

SixApart is talking a good game here:

Today is one of the most exciting days in the history of Movable Type. Our community’s hard work has yielded one of the most significant and important releases in Movable Type’s history: Movable Type 4.2. This new release is the fastest and most secure release of Movable Type ever.

The new primary features included in Movable Type 4.2 are pretty significant:

• Threaded comments
• An out-of-the-box solution for comment spam
• Live template previews
• Paginated search results and entry pagination for dynamically published blogs
• Redesigned template and widget management areas
• Simple, simple, simple templates for quick and easy site customization

Developers get to have some fun as well:

• Pluggable Search Backend – we have worked hard to make Movable Type’s search infrastructure faster, but we realize that some may want to swap it out with a home grown or more powerful search engine. MT 4.2 makes that possible.
• Extensible Search – by default Movable Type searches page and entries, but some users may want assets, comments, TrackBacks, users, or their own custom data types to appear in search results. MT 4.2 makes that possible through very simple, YAML-based plugins.
• OpenID 2.0 Support – Movable Type now fully supports OpenID 2.0, being among the only to support it right out of the box.
• Bundled OAuth Libraries – we recognize that open standards like OpenID and OAuth will become the underpinnings of technologies to comes, which is why we have bundled OAuth libraries into the core of Movable Type to make building plugins and applications that rely upon these technologies easier.
• Fully documented core template tags – a little overdue, we will be the first to admit, but all of the core template tags have been fully documented.
• Performance optimization tools – our performance logging framework can be used by developers to hone in on parts of their code that can be optimized.

Another announcement from SixApart is that they are releasing a Pro version of Movable Type called Movable Type Pro. It gives users full access to the platform: unlimited blogs, unlimited authors, unlimited community members, and “unlimited everything.”

The great thing about this is that the licenses are available for free to anyone who is “not running an official business.” I don’t really know how that truly translates to legal terms, but the blog has said that if you are attempting to make money with a blog, it is fine to use. Kudos to SixApart for making that clear.

Reactions

Within 24 hours of the Movable Type 4.2 release, The Movable Type team announced that the feedback has been “wonderful!”

Now, I know many of you will be thinking: “Hmm, hasn’t WordPress already had many of these features for awhile now?” Yes—in most cases—you would be correct. However, the point is that as Movable Type closes the gap, the competition heats up. This, in turn, causes more improvements to be made as developers try to out due the competition. In the end, the people who use these products benefit.

Anyways, it is nice to see Movable Type and SixApart bringing the competition to WordPress. I’m a strong believer that competition is good—there are many ways in which WordPress could be challenged to improve itself further. I am also glad to see Movable Type improving as well.

I am hoping that the install is a little bit easier this time around. (Movable Type does not like my VPS server for some reason that I can’t figure out.)

I might give Movable Type 4.2 an in-depth review in the near future—keep a look out for it.

For now, you can check it out Movable Type 4.2—for free—at Movable Type.org.

If you are using the Movable Type CMS, share your thoughts about the new release!

Lorelle Van Fossen over at the BlogHerald asks, “What Fuels Your Blog“?

There are a few things which keep me blogging. The first is, having my say. I use my blog as a soapbox as well as a conversation starter. Blogs give everyone a unique voice and despite the noise that is generated on an hourly basis in the blogosphere, it’s great to have a place to openly share thoughts and ideas.

The second thing that fuels me are the comments. I love receiving comments which add on to something I started. I love getting involved in conversations centered around a particular post because I never know where I’ll end up when the conversation ends. It’s like a continuation of education.

The third thing that fuels me is community. I am big into community and I love the community atmosphere. I have this drive within me to either create a passionate community or be a leader within an existing community. Communities are places where I can get along with most other people, agree to disagree, and call a home away from home. Communities are special places which are painstakingly hard to create which is why I place so much value into them in the first place.

So, those are three things which fuel my blog/blogging. Why not share with us what fuels your blogging?

Matt Mullenweg has just announced two new interersting additional features to WordPress.com

Just launched some pretty major features at WordPress.com: private blogs, store, and custom CSS.

I am more interested in the insight into their monetization strategy though.

So the idea is you buy credits at $1 each. For the new Custom CSS (and only so far) product it will cost you 15 credits, so that is $15 a year for the privelage of tweaking your theme. If only a percentage of users take this up that is plenty of cash into the coffers and I expect this to be the first of many small, cheap upgrades that together will probably add up to a pretty sum.

My first reaction was this seems a pretty lame first product if you ask me, I can think of others I would have preferred. After thinking on it a while I think this is a good move. This nicely introduces the WordPress.com user base to the idea that it’s not all free without holding a gun to the users head saying “pay up or lose out”. Anyone using WordPress.com just because it is free will probably not miss this functionality, those who are interested in a more unique look will not be overly put off by the price tag.

What I would have thought though, if this is the route they are going as a business strategy, would have been the option to use your own domain. Perhaps that will be next? WordPress.com users would probably pay extra to get Javascript ability, allowing for third party advertising and Performancing Metrics.

This will be interesting to observe. Good move Matt and co, I hope it is well received.

First of all, let’s establish that writing for a living is not some sinful activity. Agreed? Okay, so why are so many bloggers seemingly against blogging for a living? True, not everyone can write – but having spent significant parts of my life encouraging new writers with that necessary spark to continue writing, I see that writing is a skill, to be developed like any other. Some bloggers will get better, others will give up. However, blogging requires more than just writing ability, as I’ve consciously come to realize just this morning (still Xmas over here).

Now I’m not going to tell you things you probably already know as a Performancing reader. But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, both as a published writer/author, a former search engine webmaster and a general tech-nerd, and now as an aspiring pro blogger: have a plan for your blogging career, just like you would any other. And stay on that plan, or revise it as necessary. But always keep researching.

If you don’t have a plan, develop one. Do your research. Find your niche. Would you jump into a new career without knowing its potential and what it entails? Of course not. So why jump into blogging about a topic without knowing its potential? I’m extremely guilty of this, too. In my desire to be just like successful but very hard-working Darren Rowse (who took about 3 yrs to get where he is), I’ve been focusing on the wrong blogs in my “network”. When Google Analytics finally increased the number of website profiles on my account last night, I saw the truth of this in the numbers.

Now I’ve read the blogs of numerous other aspiring bloggers. What I’ve noticed is that the more technically-minded the blogger, the more likely that they dislike seeing advertising on a blog. This is especially true of younger bloggers, who are used to all the freebies on the Internet. That’s fine, have your opinion. The truth is, there are two key categories of blog: monetary and non-monetary. I call the non-monetary blogs “hobby blogs”, which is not to say that their quality is bad.

If you want to write a blog and not earn any money for it, then I’m hazarding a guess that Performancing is the wrong website for you to read. Write your hobby (non-monetary) blog, and godspeed to you. Maybe success will come from other quarters. But if you plan to earn a living as a blogger – even just part-time – there are only so many ways you can do so:

• Sign up with ad networks, such as Google, YPN, Chitika, Adgenta.
• Sign up on affiliate programs to sell someone else’s products or services.
• Advertise blog-specific merchandise, such as t-shirts with your blog’s logo.
• Advertise your own products, ebooks, or services (including blogger-for-hire).
• Build your own private ad network by contacting potential advertisers directly. (Or try the Azoogle.com network, who only accept publishers with a very high daily pageviews level, compared to Google, YPN, Microsoft, and others.)

To earn blog-based revenue, you need to choose any or all of these options, depending on your own comfort level. If you don’t like any of these, then you really need to consider another career. Or consider blogging for a network that pays you either by the post or as a percentage of their monthly revenues. Patience is a strong part of this career. After 5 months, I’ve just started acquiring clients that want me to show them how to blog. And I only managed this because of building business relationships with other people who then told their acquaintances about blogging to promote their business. (In other words, I didn’t even have to start calling business owners to tell them how great blogging is.)

I may have missed something, but the above list covers most of the ways to make money on a blog. Some of it is not very palatable for some people. In fact, a lot of people are against Google or other contextual advertising. However, my own research of other bloggers show that contextual advertising is ideal for new bloggers because of the simplicity of setting up a revenue stream.

If you don’t have the blog traffic, it’s unlikely you can get your own advertising. That time should be spent writing, promoting, analyzing, and generally blogmastering. Believe me, sell advertising is not easy work. I used to publish a free monthly “fringe culture” print magazine in the early- to mid-90s. I had to compete with another magazine I used to write for who lied about their circulation. (Although that problem is not an issue for publishing on the Internet.)

Even though I had a lot of contributors, I did all the infrastructure work, including publishing (that is, promoting, selling ads, collecting ad payments), general editing, and page layout. Does this sound anything like blogging? It should, because this is what a to-be-successful blogger has to do: be a publisher, act like a publisher, research like a publisher, and be an editor-in-chief finding topics that can be monetized. And that’s on top of being a writer, photographer, statistician, marketing expert and blogmaster. I repeat: this all means picking subject matter that CAN be monetized, no matter how much you want to write about something that has no market value.

Technorati Tags: blogging, problogging, blogrevenue

Technorati Tags: blogging, problogging, blogrevenue