Number Five is Alive (Generally)
After quite some time, MT-Notifier version five is close to seeing the light of day. Or, at the very least, crawling out from under the rock from which he has been hiding.
I am sure that there are those who will argue that this release is probably not worth of a full-fledged bump in the version numbers, and there are bound to be reasons why you are right. But there are also surely prior releases that were worth more than a minor bump as well. It all works out in the end.
As to what is coming.
The big news is that I have finally had time to adapt some code (generously provided by Byrne) which allows the storage of templates in the database. This will affect the plugin in a couple of ways.
Most importantly this means that the templates will now be associated with context - that means you will be able to use your standard Movable Type template tags within the templates (generally speaking). Typically a blog will be in context, so you can use tags such as <$mt:BlogURL$>. At other times, you will have a comment in context - say during a comment notification - and so you can use something like <$mt:CommentBody$>. Just as with Movable Type, you'll have to make sure you use tags with some eye towards which context is in use at that time, and not use a comment tag when no comment is in context!
For those of you who choose to become a licensed user, the templates are also able to be stored in the database. This means you can edit the templates without having to edit the file on disk, and more importantly, it's going to enable you to have blog-level templates (which override the global templates). Juicy goodness for those of you with large networks of blogs running on a single install. This feature alone is a bit of a biggie, and probably why I decided to move to increment the major version number. However, it will require an upgrade to templates, and it will also require you to license the software again - even those who have already done so. But I will announce upgrade terms when I figure them out. I'm working on those details now.
For those of you who want to use the open source code, you are welcome to do so. The template tag news is still present in the disk version of the templates - you just don't get the database goodness, and you don't get the blog-level templates either. You'll have to keep doing it the way you always have. Sorry, that's one of the benefits of licensing (along with the management interface and integrated search).
As with other upgrades, I have also tweaked a bit of code and fixed a couple small problems here and there, but that's the big news. More details to come. Probably Friday (it is the 5th after all).
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