Six Apart Update: August 2005

August was another busy month here at Six Apart – with three straight weeks in a row of product releases. We began the month with our first ever Scratch-a-thon, finished up with the launch of Movable Type 3.2, and in between released a number of feature enhancements to both LiveJournal and TypePad. So, in case you missed some of the details in the flurry of activity – here is the complete round-up.

LiveJournal – 8 million and counting!

LiveJournal hit a landmark this month - 8 million subscribers - and celebrated with a commemorative Frank mosaic poster incorporating over 2400 user pics. Congrats to the LJ team and a special thanks to Andy for the great artwork! The team has also launched a new "LJ spotlight" community highlighting the interesting way people are using LiveJournal. There were also additional enhancements to the service, including an easy new way to invite a friend to join LJ, and the availability of up to 100 userpics for paid accounts.

Movable Type 3.2 is here

On August 25th we released Movable Type 3.2 to a great initial response, and interest has been building ever since. This latest version improves on what you have come to expect from the professional blogging platform: flexibility, customization, support and spam and comment control. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Mena’s collected some great early responses on Mena’s Corner. The upgrade is painless and free for all licensed owners of Movable Type and we are offering $30 off for our Personal Edition, which now includes unlimited blogs. We’d also like to take this opportunity to say thanks to our incredible Beta testers for their enthusiasm and passion.

TypePad Updates

On the international front, our Japanese team held a TypePad mascot contest and introduced the character -- a little guy called Toph -- complete with back story and a dedicated weblog.

This month also brought a number of new enhancements, including full Podcasting support, and easier ways to add new content to sidebars – such as xml feeds and individual photo albums. On the design front, we launched custom CSS so all the TypePad pros can now take advantage of all our features without having to migrate to advanced templates. If you are a TypePad fan and are have been wondering who the team is that makes it all happen – we posted a series of interviews with the engineers over on Everything TypePad and asked them to introduce some of the features they developed and why.

Hurricane Katrina

Finally, our hearts go out to everyone impacted by Katrina. The LJ community has done an amazing job of harnessing support for fellow Journalers who have been affected by the hurricane. It is truly impressive. Big thanks to all of the LJ subscribers for opening your hearts and even your homes to those in need. We are also proud to report that many TypePad and Movable Type blogs are encouraging donations and listing resources – too many to even mention. For those of you who wish to add a Hurricane Relief badge to your weblogs, we created a badge to help you in your donation efforts.

And we at Six Apart hope to help the efforts by donating 25% of the revenue of all store items sold over at the LiveJournal Gift Shop and Six Shop during the month of September.

Of course, there are many ways for you to donate directly as well.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.