Overview
What is Movable Type?
Movable Type is a Perl-based content management system from Six Apart, featuring the capability to host multiple weblogs and standalone content pages, manage files and user roles, templates, tags, categories, and trackback links.
The best-rated CMS for magazines, blogs, and editorial content
My type is Movable Type
Movable Type great for small sites on shared environments.
Moveable Type @ The Daily Collegian
Movable Type - Good platform that wants to be free
Flexible & Multi-Purposed Website Platform
Easier to use and to customize products available for your users
GTD: Gets Things Done
First Experiences With Movable Type
Movable Type Review and Evaluation
Pricing
What is Movable Type?
Movable Type is a Perl-based content management system from Six Apart, featuring the capability to host multiple weblogs and standalone content pages, manage files and user roles, templates, tags, categories, and trackback links.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Wix?
Wix is a free, hosted website builder, designed to be user-friendly and customizable without requiring coding from the user. It is well-known for its eCommerce solution, which allows users to build an online store.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Some Squarespace website and shop templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.
Product Demos
Movable Type 3.3 installatie
Movable Type Memo Plugin With Techmeme RSS
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is Movable Type?
Movable Type touts a template markup system near in complexity to HTML. It is designed to support unlimited users and expanding without degrading site experience or increasing page load times. Custom fields, themes, plugins and the data API support great configurability. Its decoupled architecture supports flexible deployment for multichannel delivery. It is proprietary software.
Movable Type Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(16)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Movable Type is a versatile tool that has found multiple use cases across different industries and organizations. Web designers rely on Movable Type to build content management systems for their clients, enabling easy modification and addition of content to websites. According to reviewers, Movable Type serves as a lightweight CMS and blogging platform, making it ideal for setting up small to medium-sized websites for various clients.
One notable advantage of Movable Type over Wordpress, as reported by users, is its reliability and enhanced security features. By creating static pages, Movable Type minimizes the risk of compromising the site's security. Fashion publications leverage Movable Type as a blogging tool for editors and writers, streamlining content creation processes and boosting their SEO strategies. In addition, companies utilize Movable Type as an intranet system, providing employees with access to internal resources and reducing the need for frequent departmental calls.
The Creative Media Department of organizations manages multiple websites using Movable Type, benefiting from its ability to make design and content adjustments from a single installation. Educational institutions have also embraced Movable Type as a means of facilitating communication about class projects in a blog-style format. Furthermore, newspapers find value in using Movable Type to quickly reproduce print stories online, simplifying the publishing process and enabling efficient article tagging. Lastly, Oberlin College & Conservatory's Office of Communications Division utilizes Movable Type to manage student blogs effectively and maintain a strong presence on social media platforms.
Overall, Movable Type proves itself as a reliable solution with diverse applications in web design, publishing, education, and internal communication within organizations.
Intuitive and Easy-to-Use Custom Fields: Several users have found the custom fields in Movable Type to be intuitive and easy to work with, even when compared to other popular blogging platforms. They appreciate that custom fields can be defined for different entity types and are easy to find and use in the new content form.
Rich Templating Language: Many reviewers have praised the rich templating language in Movable Type, mentioning that it comes with numerous built-in features. They note that there is less need to extend for further templating functionality, and some users even mention adding their own PHP code to enhance the features.
User-Friendly Interface: Users consistently highlight that Movable Type is easy to use straight out of the box, thanks to its user-friendly interface. Navigation is effortless, making it a breeze for both beginners and experienced users alike.
Cons:
- Complicated Backend Customization: Some users have found the customization of the backend in Movable Type to be more complicated compared to other CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal, making it difficult to rebrand the interface without hacking core files.
- Confusing Licensing: Several reviewers have mentioned that the licensing of Movable Type can be confusing and has undergone changes over time, with an open-source version of MT6.x no longer available.
- Limited Plugins and Media-Friendliness: Users have noted that Movable Type has a limited number of plugins compared to popular CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal, and also found it less media-friendly with difficulties in embedding video and images, constantly needing resizing for proper display.
Note: The cons listed above are based on user feedback and opinions about Movable Type.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)- Easy to use straight out of the box, very user friendly with an intuitive interface.
- Great for team use where there are multiple editors and writers fixing and editing each other's works. It's easy to track who last made the latest edits.
- Stellar support team and system. I've found that Moveable Type's support system is generally more responsive and helpful than WordPress.
- Very difficult to tamper with back-end coding, which is why we had a separate CMS for our bigger articles and interactive content.
- Limited number of plug-ins compared to other popular CMS like WordPress or Drupal.
- Not as media friendly as I would like. Movable Type was VERY finicky with embedding video and images. Constantly had to resize images and mess with video size to make sure it would display at the right size on the website.
- WYSIWYG editor
- 90%9.0
- Code quality / cleanliness
- 60%6.0
- Admin section
- 80%8.0
- Page templates
- 50%5.0
- Library of website themes
- 30%3.0
- Mobile optimization / responsive design
- 80%8.0
- Publishing workflow
- 90%9.0
- Form generator
- 30%3.0
- Content taxonomy
- 90%9.0
- SEO support
- 60%6.0
- Bulk management
- 30%3.0
- Availability / breadth of extensions
- 30%3.0
- Community / comment management
- 70%7.0
- API
- 60%6.0
- Internationalization / multi-language
- N/AN/A
- Role-based user permissions
- 50%5.0
- Because of its simple UI it is THE platform for any quick blog posts that need to be made by end of day.
- Similarly, editors and freelance reporters who might not be web-savvy can be trained in the CMS in 5-10 minutess, and they can build the simpler posts which means the workflow really sped up for the web production team.
- Because it's easier to spot problematic comments, and set up certain types of comments to be flagged for the admin, it was easy to keep the site clean(er) of trolls and spammy discussions.
- WordPress,Vanguardistas,TeamSite,Ektron Web Content Management System
Flexible & Multi-Purposed Website Platform
- Movable type seamlessly integrates multiple websites in one installation which allows easy access to the content and design.
- Template tags and coding is well documented by Movable Type to provide developers like me the tools required to make completely custom designs.
- The more recent versions of Movable Type have really upped the ante on how broadly the platform can be used (such as for blogs, forums, e-commerce, etc.)
- Especially on the older versions, the limited number of well-developed third-party plugins is problematic for efficiently developing a well-functioning website.
- Versions of movable type which didn't allow pages to be constructed were difficult to create continuity in design and easily editable pages for our editors.
- The installation process could be simplified to make it easier for those new to a CMS to install.
- Movable Type definitely increased employee efficiency. Having everyone on the same platform to edit multiple websites from system is crucial.
- Expanding our website presence was a super simple process with Movable Type. All we needed to do was add another site, destination folder, and we're ready to go.
- Having all of our web designers on the same platform helped immensely with communicating information and structuring education for new employees.
- WordPress,ExpressionEngine
GTD: Gets Things Done
- It provided easy management of blog postings. I was able to set up content early and schedule my posts for a later date.
- The interface was user friendly so you don't need to spend a lot of time in training. I was able to figure out a lot of the product on my own.
- You could assign different administrative privileges to certain people. This means that certain people could only post to certain modules.
- While it's beneficial to be able to assign administrative rights to a user so they can only post to certain places of a website, I can recall that Movable Type did not inform general users of the types of privileges they had. So, for example, when I knew I needed to make a posting to a certain area, and was unable to do so, I was not informed that I did not have access to make that posting. It would have been helpful for Movable Type to post a message on the screen, saying that I needed more permissions. This was very frustrating, especially when I was on deadline for a newspaper story.
- Unfortunately, (or fortunately), I do not recall other negative experiences. I thought it was a pretty clean, friendly interface.
- A product like this doesn't require a lot of time looking for IT support. It's easy and fast to use and you can learn it on the fly.
- Employees worked efficiently and quickly, often by writing their stories directly into Movable Type. There was never any down time and product updates were always within the scope of the overall interface, so we could always pick up right where we left off and intuitively navigated an improved interface that provided for an enhanced experience.
I currently don't use Movable Type and have not used it in three years so the question referencing the renewal decision does not apply to me.
Movable Type Review and Evaluation
The man issue I had was implementing the dynamic page load portion of it. I couldn't get it to work so many of my pages were loaded statically. The issue with this is some of my site's typical side bar content (ex. Recently posted....) content was not updating. I also used the system on a site that grew to about 800+ pages. This resulted in build errors and system errors.
- Very easy to theme.
- The control panel is simple enough for the basic user to figure out
- Very easy to add plugins and more complex code.
- The actual plugin website seems out of date and not well maintained.
- The system seemed to crash for much larger sites (800+ entries).
- Most of my Movable Type sites were smaller scaled or did not really have marketing goals so this isn't applicable to my case.