Recently in Melody Category

Dan from eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com has released a new theme for Movable Type and Melody called 'Patrick'.  It sports an impressive 13 settings screens that let you change everything, from colours, columns, labels, headers and footers, but also if (and how) to display Facebook comments, Twitter integration, highlighted entries, and much, much more.
Using the standard 'Display options' link in the create/edit entry or page screens in Movable Type 4 or Melody you can reorder and toggle the display of the various custom fields that you may or may not have added to entries or pages on your blog or installation.  But once you save the ordering and visibility you like, it is only valid for the user account you are currently logged in with.  Changing the default order and visibility for all users on a blog used to involve either logging in as all of them one by one and changing the settings manually, or some pretty hairy database manipulation.  But now there is a better way.
Last week Endevver released a new plugin (Click Tagging) for Melody/Movable Type 4 that modifies the tag section of the edit entry/page screen, allowing you to click a list of your blog's existing tags to tag an entry or page, instead of typing them.  Of course you can still add new tags by typing them by hand (but this function can be reserved for blog administrators only if needed).  This seems like a great plugin for sites that use a limited set of tags: clicking saves a lot of typing and avoids different spellings of the same tag.  

Melody 1.0.2 Released

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It is not announced on the Open Melody blog yet, but Open Melody 1.0.2 is out.  This is a critical maintenance update containing the security fixes recently applied to Movable Type.  Release notes are here, download is here.
During the interview, Byrne touches on the reasons why Melody got started, its relationship with Movable Type and Six Apart, the wider MT/Melody community and finally there is a peek at the future of Melody.  Worth a read!
I just added the feed of Endevver's knowledge base to the Movable Type and Melody Community Feed Aggregator.  The aggregator is now tracking 50 feeds for Movable Type and Melody related news, and over the past weeks there hasn't been a single day without at least several updates appearing.  Know of any other sources I should include?  Let me know!
Interesting new Melody plugin from Mike: Melody Database Backup. It sets up an automated taks that automatically saves a database backup to a specified folder on your server every day.  The plugin only works on Melody, unfortunately, but maybe someone can make a Movable Type compatible version?
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, there used to be a Movable Type Community News Aggregator on the official Movable Type site.  It was basically a webpage aggregating the latest Movable Type related entries and articles from various blogs and websites.  But somewhere in 2008 it stopped updating.  I want to bring it back, but I need your help...
The Open Melody Software Group has announced the official release of Melody 1.0.  Melody is a community-driven fork of the open source version of Movable Type 4.x, and can be used to completely replace it.  At the time of writing it is not up yet, but I expect there will be a demo version on-line here soon if you want to test it without installing: http://www.openmelodydemo.org/
Movable Type comes with a handy click-and-drag system to order sidebar or other widgets any way you would like them.  The interface for this system also has a list of all the available widgets that are currently not in use in the particular set of widgets you are sorting, allowing you to simply drag a new widget into the list.  Unfortunately the list of available widgets is not ordered in any particular way, which makes it a bit unpractical if you have many widgets.