“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.
“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:
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!
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.
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.
I’m upgrading everybody! Call today!
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.
So this blog entry counts as one of those rare instances where meta isn’t murder…
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!
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.