Movable Type incorporates many of the blogging features offered by other software or web services. These include:

• a web interface
• one button posting and publishing
• permalinks (permanent links to each individual post)
• comments system
• flexible archiving options

See a full list of features here. Movable Type also offers these unique or rare features:

• TrackBack system for peer-to-peer communication
• image uploading and thumbnail creation
• e-mail notification system
• RSS feeds

The authors of We Blog, a fine book about blogging written by the co-creators of Blogger, say this about Movable Type:

"With its ability to add comments to every post and track the Internet protocol (IP) address of every poster ... Movable Type provides the means for you to produce a dynamic weblog where your readers can participate in the conversation." (p. 129)

The comments system, say those authors, is "the simplest and most obvious way to connect with your audience." Incorporating a comments system, they say, means you'll be "starting a community around your site." (p. 180 and 182)

The TrackBack system, a fairly new feature, has added a new dimension to linking between blogs. When a TrackBack-enabled blog includes a link to another TrackBack-enabled blog, both blogs recognize this linkage. A single post on a blog can be linked numerous times, and the original blog can provide a listing/linking to all the other blogs that referenced that original post. This is a powerful knitting together of the blog community.

Similarly, the functionality of automatically coding a blog post for an RSS feed ( an XML markup designed to be read by newsreader software) allows Movable Type users to offer their blogs for syndication. This is an important development. Using a newsreader, an individual can subscribe to the RSS feeds of multiple blogs and read all of these feeds in one screen, without having to visit the blog. Watch for this to be a viral trend to personal knowledge publishing.

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