Category Archives: Six Apart

iTunes Movable Type podcast tip

I like to output as much data as possible for feed aggregators, especially when one feed aggregator accounts for over 50% of my podcast listeners. I was frustrated that my podcast did not have a published duration until I realized there was a pretty simple solution: MTEntryKeywords. I almost never use the keywords field, yet it is already built-in as a storage option for every post. Perfect! No plugins necessary. Here’s how you do it. Add your podcast’s duration (mm:ss) as your entry keywords. Add a line to your RSS 2.0 feed:<itunes:duration><$MTEntryKeywords$></itunes:duration> The time column will now be populated in…

Exclusive: TypePad outage update and details

Popular blog hosting provider TypePad.com was unavailable to its members for 18 hours today as a result of a failed storage upgrade during scheduled maintenance late last night. I visited Six Apart’s headquarters in San Francisco earlier this evening to talk with Six Apart employees about the events that transpired and the current state of TypePad’s blogging platform. I sat down for an interview with Anil Dash, Six Apart’s Vice President of Professional Products, about an hour after TypePad’s servers came back online. We discussed TypePad’s reliability issues over the past two months, what went wrong today, and how…

TypePad outage open post

Popular blog host TypePad just came back online after being down most of the past day. This outage affected hundreds of thousands of bloggers including mainstream media outlets such as MSNBC and The Washington Post. Given the high-profile status of TypePad and its members, this story is certain to be well-covered in the coming day and week. Today’s outage, coupled with the performance issues of the past month, has shaken the confidence of even the most dedicated users, and many members are seriously considering taking their business elsewhere. I spoke with one TypePad member who has used the service since…

Six Apart partners with Yahoo!

Yahoo! and Six Apart just announced a deal to make Yahoo! hosting the preferred small business host for Movable Type. Yahoo! currently hosts about 30 million individual websites including hundreds of thousands of small business sites. Yahoo! is using FastCGI, making Movable Type run a bit faster than a typical hosting install. Movable Type is available on all hosting plans including the starter $11.95 package. Users of other blogging software may have to pay $8 more for Perl, PHP, and MySQL support for their accounts. Customers can visit a special page on Six Apart’s website to purchase a Yahoo! Small…

Google Base blog import instructions

Google Base launched last Tuesday as a new repository of information for distribution across Google’s network of sites including Google search, Froogle, and Google Local. You can add your existing content to the Google Base for broad distribution with only a few easy steps. I’ll show you how. You need a Google account associated with Google Base to submit items. Sign-in to Google Base to get started. Complete your extended profile. Market yourself with your full name or the name of your site, a description up to 400 characters in length, your URL, location and contact information. Create a…

Movable Type developers event tonight

Six Apart is hosting the San Francisco Perl Users Group tonight at 8 p.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at Movable Type. Byrne Reese will discuss the underpinning of Movable Type’s architecture and design decisions. The meeting is free and open to all attendees. Topics Template tags Text fliters Callbacks Alternate templates MT::Plugin MT::Object MT:App Tags: movabletype, perl…

OPML listing of my weblog entries

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble would like more blog outputs as OPML. I just put together a Movable Type template to output all of my entries in OPML format complete with top-level categories. I output the resulting file as my index.opml. Check out my OPML template if you would like to create a OPML output of your Movable Type install. I have not validated the OPML is perfect and valid (but I did e-mail Dave Winer), and I really should have full subcategory traversal. It’s a start. Update: Dave Winer verified the output is correct and works with his browser….

More TypePad 2.0 details

Six Apart just unveiled “Project Comet” a codename for a new approach to weblogs throughout Six Apart blogging tools as an online activity hub incorporating multiple media types, multiple authors, multiple readerships, and a lower technical and psychological barrier to entry. The new technologies will be available in early 2006 as a free upgrade. Mena describes the new approach as a result of observing the variety of users across Six Apart properties and thinking of ways to increase the user base across all tools. We’ve taken the stuff we’ve learned from the community features of LiveJournal and mixed them with…

TypePad 2.0 and new pricing announced

Six Apart demonstrated TypePad 2.0 at the DEMOfall conference yesterday and announced new discounted pricing. Mena Trott’s mom won the coveted DEMOgod award for showing that TypePad 2.0 is so easy even your mother can do it. TypePad 2.0 is a “significant re-engineering” of TypePad. You can now apply multiple group privacy settings to a single blog to allow various visitors to see only the posts intended for their group. TypePad is also supposed to have increased media abilities, but I have not seen the product or any detailed reviews. TypePad also lowered its yearly subscription prices across all three…