Say Hello to Melody

I’m betting 99% of our readers know that I love a piece of software called Movable Type. It’s responsible for powering all of our web sites, has received much of my free time (Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type), and now consumes all of my work life (uiNNOVATIONS). It’s something I’m passionate about, just like many of my online friends.

We’ve been working to ensure that our passion remains strong, and that we’ll have a tool that will continue to meet our demands and our clients demands. Today, we’re announcing a new project called Melody.

Melody is a content management system, just like Movable Type. Melody can be used to run a web site, just like Movable Type. Melody will use existing plugins, addons, and themes for Movable Type. Those things won’t change.

So what’s Melody about, then? Community. Anybody can have a very direct impact and effect on the future of Melody by participating in planning, coding, documenting, and so many other aspects. As Mark Stosberg wrote, we can work to take better advantage of the efforts other people have already made through CGI::App and CPAN. As Mark Carey wrote, we can have a more dynamic process with more developer collaboration. As Serdar Yegulalp wrote, this is “a new way for the same framework to be improved.” And as I wrote over on Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type, “Melody is […] being infused with the kind of excitement and transparency that will help ensure the platform we’ve all come to love will continue to be a strong force and great option in the future.”

I know, none of that sounds like particularly exciting stuff, especially for the non-techy audience of danandsherree.com. Those aren’t new features that we can tout, nor is it a fixed bug that somebody may have run into. But it is exciting: it’s the feature we are touting on the home page: community! Given the direction Movable Type has been headed (the core was open-sourced a little over a year ago), I see this as natural progression, and a move that will ensure that the software (whatever you want to call it) will continue to thrive and expand it’s market share. In short, it’s the best thing for the software.

And lets be honest: whether you use Movable Type as an author, dive in as a hobbyist, or count on it for your livelihood, doing “the best thing for the software” is rewarding and comforting. That’s what Melody will bring.