Coding Horror: Movable Type Since 2004

“It Just Works.”

This point is a little undercut by the fact that you got help from freakin’ ANIL DASH to do the setup for you.

I used MT for approximately two or three years… using 3.xx to 4.xx. But after 4.xx, the updates in plugins that I already had installed which were doing a lot of work were unfortunately not coming fast enough for my fancy. I could’ve reverted back, but the new features in MT were too appealing… so deciding to temporarily (maybe permanently) take a break from MT, I changed to WP since MT was all I ever knew. I love MT, but I got tired of the maintenance and simply wanted to write actual content worth reading instead of too often tampering with the code base. Truth be told, WP has a plethora of plugins for your every desire. I even made an MT sub-plugin (based on a plugin), but in WP – I didn’t have to. I’ve found that WP is easier to maintain and easier to simply, well, write. Albeit, at the moment, my site is down for other unrelated reasons, but maybe one of which is because I’m a crappy blogger and I just don’t care at the moment… maybe I’ll write more come autumn. I’m not a WP expert, but for performance I’ve noticed an improvement over MT… and correct me if I’m wrong, but WP also gives the option of writing to static HTML.

Cheers

A few counterpoints, for those who burnt their fingers and probably pockets (read: shallow pockets burnt deeply), are the following:

  1. Blogging with new interesting content needs wide reading, lot of time and a good deal of intellectual effort.
  2. You’re not the guy whose blog will eventually change the way the world works. It will be a post by Jeff, Joel, Anil, Scott, Robert, Michael, or someone in that group.
  3. That group of bloggers already knows the solution, the problem, the newer problems that the first attempt at that solution will create, the second generation problems, second generation solutions, third generation problems,… you get the pictiue…
  4. What they write is taken seriously and often works. what you write is scoffed at and laughed at till you break down and stop blogging. Then someone among this group picks up the blog post and quotes and adds to it in a pragmatic way, and THAT makes people work on that problem.
  5. All this while they could have posted about that issue on their own. And while you were sleeping, they probably already wrote code for it too.
  6. Your blog is useful only if it gets you something beneficial, tangible or otherwise. If you think blogging will change your life, it could often be in the bad sense.
  7. If you’re a programmer, stick to code - what you need is friends, a set of decent humans, understanding peers or coworkers. Definitely NOT blog posts.
  8. If you cant get friends in the big league, that’s quite OK, get friends in your own league. In the rare case that you get something really useful to write about, the comment section is right here. Leave all the contact information you want to publicise right here.
    But don’t overdo it, your comment can get modded out totally.
  9. At one point an intelligent man realises that this whole ideas and blogs thing is just hot air. Then the wisdom of the power of working code strikes you. That then is the best job for a programmer. To write code. Of course, I always come here for inspiration and guidance.

Rolling your own is a great way to learn, but using an existing CMS saves you a lot of work. Wordpress might be more heavy-duty than you need but it’ll save you from re-inventing the wheel.

IvyMike, and what does that have to do with the fact that Moveable Type works? Nothing! :slight_smile:

Todd, I guess he means the upgrade path doesn’t “just work”, but rather requires intimate knowledge of the product.

Maybe Anil Dash helps everybody upgrade. That would indeed “just work”. Not very scalable, but I guess every system has tradeoffs.

So what’s new? How is this better then the old version?

Just for the record, static HTML updated by php is the strategy that 4chan uses. It also works really well.

A pity that you don’t appear in their showcase: http://www.movabletype.com/showcase/

Throughout my start-up process, I cannot remember how many blogs I have started, mostly for SEO purposes. I’ve gotten so used to Wordpress now since the process of getting it primed for SEO is so methodical I cannot get away from it.

@jeff,

thanks

I’m upgrading everybody! Call today! :slight_smile:

Actually, I do try to help as many people as I can, but our support team is fantastic so fortunately it doesn’t usually end up in my amateurish hands.

More importantly: Jeff, thank you. I’ve said this to you personally, but it’s worth repeating publicly: Sites like yours are why we make this stuff. I literally can’t think of anybody on the MT team (or any of our developers at Six Apart) that hasn’t me a Coding Horror link at one point or another, and being able to send SO threads to each other instead of Expert Sex Change links is like a permanent upgrade to our entire lifestyle.

I think you get to the heart of why we love what we do – there are lots of great tools out there (WordPress among them), but Movable Type has always been really designed for people that have ideas that are big enough that you can build a reputation, or even a career, on them. Nobody’s done that in our little techie world better than you, so thanks for making us look good. And yep, I’ll make sure we’re pimping you on our Showcase page shortly. :wink:

That should be used by some websites: http://www.asesoftware.com/

So this blog entry counts as one of those rare instances where meta isn’t murder… :wink:

Having used both WP and blogger.com, for me as a low traffic blogger, blogger.com is the best, simply because it is free. Why I would pay for hosting (which is overkill for my amount of visitors) when I’m not making any money is beyond me! :slight_smile:

Your discussion of static vs dynamic publishing is interesting.

But it’s important to note that there is a viable alternative. You can publish static files into rich templating or presentation system. This way you have nearly the best of both worlds – you get great scalability and the option to do fancy dynamic things during page render.

It also means you can use MT as a back end and just push the static data files into a presentation tier built with your favorite technology.

This is what we’ve done over at CMSWire.com and it’s worked out very well. Other CMS vendors like CrownPeak take this approach as well. It can be a great fit in certain scenarios.

“Wait… Is this blogging about bloggin?”, Joseph Alcorn

No, it’s an advert.

Hi Jeff,

Long time reader (and link sharer), I think this is the first time commenting here.

I’ve been using Movable Type for personal blogging since 2002. For me it was always just a good fit for the job.

Great post that perfectly reflects why I continue to think so.

Actually the scalability of generating pure html does not only apply to blogging. This technique can (and should) be applied to many other systems as well.