Plugin Contest Deadline Extended, Questions Answered

The Movable Type developer contest has been underway for a couple of weeks now, so we wanted to clarify a couple of points that we've been getting questions about. We've assembled a mini-FAQ below.

• We're extending the deadline for submissions to the plugin contest to July 6, 2004 to make sure that we've given developers adequate time to develop plugins, particularly considering the licensing discussions that have taken place over the past couple of weeks.
• If you've already submitted a contest entry, you can resubmit it; just let us know in the Description box on the form that this is an updated version of your submission.
• We've put up some information on the judges for the contest. We have a lot of respect for all of the judges involved, and we're grateful to them for taking the time to judge the contest. We think they'll do a great job of finding the coolest plugins in the bunch.
• We've received some questions that could use clarification, so we've assembled a mini-FAQ below.

Will new platform features be added before the end of the plugin contest? Should I hold out for those features?

To be fair to people who have already worked on and submitted their plugins, we won't be adding any new platform features to Movable Type before the end of the contest.

New platform features are, however, heavy under development, so if you're interested in contributing your ideas on what you'd like as a developer, join the discussion on the mt-dev mailing list.

What is considered a "plugin"?

Extensions to Movable Type, whether they be hooks into web services, new template tags, text filters, or entire applications built on top of the system, have always been called plugins, and we think it probably makes sense to keep it that way.

That said, though, the definition of what a plugin can do has changed dramatically in the Movable Type 3, and that's part of the reason for the plugin contest: for developers to explore the new functionality and see what they can build with it.

It's safe to say that a "plugin"--as defined in the contest, or just as defined with regards to Movable Type in general--is not limited to what we used to consider a plugin in Movable Type 2.2, when plugins first made their debut. With Movable Type 3, Movable Type is now a platform upon which you can build extensions and applications. In other words, developers can use the core application and publishing functionality in MT to build complex applications; this is far beyond what plugins used to be able to do (extend the template language), and as such, it's inevitable that developers will need to push the limits of what is offered with the core system. In fact, building upon all of the new functionality in Movable Type 3's plugin architecture will be one of the major criteria to be used in judging the contest entries.