Phil Gyford

I spent the afternoon upgrading my devlopment server to use Movable Type 3.1.0D, in preparation for using it on all my websites. The basic upgrade isn’t too tricky if you’re comfortable (and careful!) with FTPing and checking file permissions, etc. So it’s possible to get your site using MT3, without any new features, without too much trouble. The MT screens do feel a lot more responsive and less clunky now.

Unfortunately some of the new default templates require a lot of changes if you want users to log in with TypeKeybefore posting comments. There are a lot more tags and different forms for TypeKey and non-TypeKey posting.

Having spent a while manually merging the new code with my existing customised templates for my development copy of Pepys’ Diary, I hit a problem with previewing comments: the comment text and URL for a TypeKey-logged-in user disappeared (to be honest, I’m not sure why TypeKey users need to add a URL in the comment form either). This appears to be a problem with the new <MTCommentFields> tag which isn’t even mentioned in MT’s help files.

Someone appears to have a workaround for this, but time is precious… I don’t want to spend time hacking this in to shape only for Six Apart to (hopefully) release an updated version of MT in the near future.

So, no live upgrading for me just now. As they say, it is a devloper release and these days I’m getting much more cautious and prefer waiting for stable software. I think I can still see the cutting edge in the distance, but it’s quite a walk…