Movable Type versus Wordpress
MovableType and Wordpress seem to have hit the Pepsi / Coke — Yahoo / Google wall. The two are equally strong in different areas. As of late, I’ve been real frustrated with movableType’s spam tools. Every monday I can count on logging into my control panel and deleting about 25 trackbacks and comments that were automated from some face-hole on the other side of the planet with nothing to live for. Sure, it only takes a couple of minutes to delete; add a few extra minutes for a slow server (crappy hosting), add even a couple more minutes for a slow connection; the time adds up over the course of the year. Overall I think I’ve wasted a full day of my online blogging experience just deleting spam. This is where, in fact, I think Wordpress is superior.
Don’t bother telling me about movableType’s new anti-spam tools; I’m already using all of them.
One thing I would like to duly note about movableType is that my favorite developer blog is also the author of SAMs Teach yourself Movable Type in 24 Hours by Molly Holzschlag, who in fact, is using Wordpress herself. Yea, I’m sure she’s got crap for it all, but it does say something about the product.
As some of you know, I purchased Movable Type near the end of last year (like the good samaritan I am), right before the big Wordpress update. Am I bummed? Sure. I fell victim to design. MT just had a better one. Wordpress on the other hand, didn’t. Thinking back on it, however, I was up late one night when I made the decision. One should never choose one software over the other based soley on the look of it. I basically got the impression that the classier the UI, the better the functionality must be. Surely a first class design means first class development tools. Wrong.
The Wordpress update
I’m talking about their new default theme. Yes I know I’m still talking about design, but look at the engineering here. As soon as you hit your shortcut key to disable styles, it was all over: Wordpress won my heart. I can just remember how much of a pain in the ass it was to manipulate the default Movable Type theme in a ZenGarden’esk’ fashion. There was nothing to hook that was helpful for a CSS redesign. The standards in Wordpress are just so much better.
Corporate Whordeom
It sucks when a solid piece of software gets bought out. In this case, Six Apart. Aside from that, you go to the SixApart website, and yes, I would consider myself a pretty-intelligent web-savvy up-to-date kinda-guy, and I have no idea what the hell they’re selling over there! Seriously, right now SixApart is advertising folks to get a Baby Blog. First thing that comes to mind:
PC Loadletter, what tha f**k does that mean?
Ok, so what does baby blog mean? It means TypePad. Oh, well then why didn’t you just say typePad.
Oh but there’s two more blog softwares. Let’s not forget about Live Journal. Yea, that cheap piece of crap software closing in on ten million accounts. Pshh. Yea. Right.
So LiveJournal, TypePad, and Movable Type. You go, you… guys.
Enough Bashing, so am I getting Wordpress?
Most likely, no. And as much as I am an advocate for developers who want to blog to just get a third party cms and not make their own… I will be attempting to make my own. I say this because it’s in every developers nature to go feature-crazy. In almost all cases a developer will never finish their own cms. This includes everything from revamping the data structure to minor UI adjustments. Plus, for what I want to do with the future of this website will be much different and unique than what any cms will have to offer. My guess is that by mid september I’ll have my own Dustin Diaz relaunch (version ten dot six). Until that time comes, I will continue on with my spam woes as if I were breathing in second hand smoke from my blog provider.
<!– edit –>
By the way, I just upgraded this blog to Wordpress for the time being because I realized how much of my life I really did just waste on deleting spam.
July 20th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
I know it’s just a template, but I like the readability of this one a little more than your old design (bigger font, wider content area).
Last night you wrote:
> Enough Bashing, so am I getting Wordpress?
> Most likely, no.
Less than 12 hours later, you are running WordPress. Hmmm, another late night decision Dustin?
All jokes aside, welcome to the WordPress club. I think you will find it much easier to “tweak” to your liking and you should find the availability (and simplicity to create) of plug-ins very refreshing.
In regards to your annoyance with Movable Type and their multitude of blogging products, I wouldn’t be so quick to hate them. They are a very successful blogging company, probably the biggest in the world (and also the first to make a real impact, that is, to bring blogging to the masses) on the personal website realm.
With Movable Type, you have to host it yourself. With TypePad, they host it for you. With LiveJournal, they host it for you and you’re part of a blogging community to form little blogrings and such. Sure, the BabyBlog thing is a total gimmick, but it just sounds like a slightly customized version of LiveJournal, where you become a member of a “baby bloggers” network.
If you had a baby, sharing stories with others who are also raising kids is a common thing. It only seems natural to extend this to the web, aka blogging your baby stories.
Six Apart is just trying to keep a hold on the market they helped create, can’t say I blame them. If I was going to be in California much longer I would certainly try getting a job with these innovative folks, since they’re hiring.
July 20th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Heh. Yea. I made a rash decision. You’re right, no more than even 3 hours had gone by before I updated. And despite this being a template, I am already enjoying it better than my old design. I do, however, have another design already photoshopped that, imo, is better than this one. I just didn’t have the time to develop it fully and I also didn’t like the default 1.5 theme that WP comes with.
Other than that, I’m already enjoying the fact that your comment got put in the moderation queue. Eventually I might make it a members only deal, but that goes against my ‘open-blog’ philosophy.
The whole Sixapart deal is still kind of jenky. If at the least, movable type has served its purpose to get my site off the ground without much work. It’s just the maintenence that bothered me so much.
July 21st, 2005 at 2:59 pm
I don’t know what just happened. But I saw my old website for about 1 hour. Turns out, some how my old index.php file was uploaded to the root which affected my entire site all over again. I was like, wtf? I even got a comment from the VP of Movable Type. Guess it’s a good thing he saw the site during it’s hacked period.
July 21st, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Looks like you’re covering a lot of ground here on your feedback about us at Six Apart, your experience with MT, and what you’re looking for in a blog tool in general.
If you’ve got some time, I’d love to tell you a bit about our side of the story, why having a company that’s 100% focused on blogs standing behind the tool you use is a good thing, and show you how Six Apart is the company that grew out of MT, not one that bought it out.
If you’re up for it, shoot me an email. And thanks for giving us feedback on your perspective, it does help us make sure we’re doing the best job we can. (And, not to pimp it too much, but try out the MT 3.2 beta, I think you’ll dig it.)
July 21st, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Arite. As you can see at this location:
http://www.dustindiaz.com/archives/2005/07/movable_type_versus_wordpress.php#commenters
Anil’s comment was posted first. What was even more awkward is that all my old archives were showing MT stuff.
It really is spooky what changing out one file can do. Aparently even all the old modRewrites were getting applied site-wide. I’m glad everything is going ok.
@ Anil:
I apologize that you didn’t even know that I had upgraded to WordPress before you even commented. I’m guessing my server did a rollback and the old MT file was showing. You wouldn’t happen to know any easy ways it would have been hacked being the vice prez ‘n all, would you?
Aside from all that, I guess now I’m responsible for checking out MT 3.2. It’s not everyday the VP rolls on by your blog and says wassup. I did, also, however, purchase movableType in the beginning. So that obligates myself even more to check it out.
Anil. Convince me.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:29 pm
I’ve never even considered using a package for this sort of thing. I code it all myself — I’m not sure why I punish myself like that, but it’s never really given me a problem.
Given, that’s not really an option for most people for various reasons, but it works for me.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Not to mention my comment is gone (not that I don’t mind seeing a comment from a Six Apart employee in place of mine). I hope Six Apart people saw the kind words I said about your company at least :(
What the heck Dustin?
July 21st, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Jordan,
I’d be interested to see how your self-written CMS operates Jordan, it’s quite hard to get the functionality that something like Movable Type or WordPress offers.
Coding by hand works with really small personal sites, beyond that they grow to wild to be maintainable by anyone but the original author. That’s been my experience anyway.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Wow. Leave it up to MT to screw with this thing.
I Finally figured out what the problems were. Aparently, leaving up the old archives built by MT (meaning, you could still access them via URL), any time someone left a common, it rebuilds the post as well as the main index.php file. Leave it to the rebuilding machine to hijack your WP upgrades :lol:
Justin, I restored your comments in a very clean and quick (copy & paste) manner. Your post, was in fact, the very first post, and that is now reflected on the current page.
Gosh, what a hassle upgrading is.
So Anil, are you going to respond?
July 21st, 2005 at 9:09 pm
I did try to post this earlier, but got a “Post ID not found” error. So here she is again, common problems when moving from MT to WP.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:48 pm
Yea. That guy rants a bit on WP 1.0. Subtract 15 months from any open source software and you have a much inferior product. I think with 1.5 they’ve done many, many things better.
I’m still waiting around to here about this MT 3.2 beta. If it sounds good, I still have all my MT files sitting on the folder…. since, aparently, all you need to do is replace one file and you’re switched back.
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:34 pm
About a year ago, I was sitting on the MT/Wordpress fence trying to figure out which side to jump to as well…but I based my decision on entirely different motives. I was looking for the blogging engine that I could most easily customize from a design perspective. When I looked around, the best looking design sites were running MT, and the best looking WP sites I found were…well, not all that pretty. Sorry again about the whole meme thing…and for deleting your comment. :) But it has been cool to find a few new blogs to add to my regular reads.
July 23rd, 2005 at 9:58 pm
Oh I’m just being a humbug. Everything’s cool bro.
Cool. Stick around :)
July 24th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Excellent article. I tried them both some time back and never got on with either. Gave Textpattern a try and never looked back. Good luck with whatever you decide upon.
July 24th, 2005 at 10:29 am
I don’t know alot about the both of them but I think WP is easier to use MT can be customized more.
:)
July 27th, 2005 at 9:44 am
I’ve swapped from MT to Wordpress and I have to sway that Wordpress is a lot easier to install and use.
July 29th, 2005 at 8:42 am
I switched from MT to WordPress about a year ago, and haven’t looked back since.
MT is a good product, but it’s up against the same wall as every bit of commercial software is. With WordPress, you have full control over every bit of the system. Want to change the admin interface? It’s a plugin away. Don’t like the way the system handles something? You have full rights to muck about in the source code. Now that WP has a very nicely done plugin architecture, you probably don’t even have to do that.
MT has a good interface and an excellent plugin architecture, but it’s lost a lot of cred with the developer community since the switch to a more proprietary license.
WordPress is extensible, it’s flexible, and it produces excellent markup. 1.5 is a huge improvement in functionality that puts it at the top of the class for blogging tools.
Which isn’t to say that MT is bad, 6A has done some great work, but it’s commercial and it doesn’t have the cred with developers it once did. My feeling is that MT isn’t being geared for the hobbyist market - it’s turning into a nice little CMS system for small enterprises with technical support. That doesn’t mean that MT is bad, it just means that MT has shifted markets.
If you need a product with commercial support for your blog, then you’re best off with MT. If you’re hobbyist, hacker, or looking for a free and easy hosted soluton, WordPress is it.
July 29th, 2005 at 9:00 am
Jay,
fewer words, better point. You should have written the article :p Props bro.
July 31st, 2005 at 6:28 am
I read this article yesterday and thought I´d try out wordpress. WOW it was easy.. I used MT a few years back and found it difficult to install (but maybe that was just me). Anyhow, Wordpress was a doddle to install. In fact it was so easy, I set up a weblog for my wife as well. Dont know if MT has improved since I used it, but I sure fell in love with wordpress. Thanks for the tip :-)
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Glad you stumbled upon this mark. I can see that now it’s time to update my theme to my own knowing that this one is spreading pretty quickly. It’s all ‘photoshopped’ and ready (I’ve been saying that for months), but it’s time to do the deed.
Btw, I just found out Molly.com has posted this article on her sidebar. No wonder there was a giant leep in traffic.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Well, I fully agree with your comment. :-)
BTW: I visited your blog earlier today and I just wanted to congratulate you on a well presented, and informative resource.
It’s not often that I come across a web site that offers a wealth of quality. ;-)
Martin (aka POS Software Man)
October 6th, 2005 at 11:47 am
Dustin, did you hear me shouting in enthusiastic agreement when I read this post? I’m sure you did.
While I still fight spam, WordPress has made it a lot easier to do so. And yeah, I might have written a book on MT, but I was so fed up with the product that the very week the book came out I switched to WordPress.
I agree that MT has some nice features. But I’m very happy I switched all told.
Are you still going to build your own system?
October 14th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Molly,
You’ve become my #1 story I tell folks on why they opt not go for MovableType. Coming from yourself, it’s obvious. What more of an argument do you want when the one who wrote the book on it switched herself.
On the deal with making my own system, that’s been pressing on my heart for quite some time. Working for Y! has taken its toll on me and I’m afraid I don’t have the time like I used to. Nonetheless, I’m still putting out content which is what really matters at the moment.
And hey, it’s good to see you in these parts of the woods. Come by more often eh?
October 20th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Dustin, glad to see that you are using WordPress. Molly’s post was the final nail in MT’s Coffin for me together with the horrendous amount of spam that I was battling my way through on my MT install. I’d spend most of my login time deleting spam and by the time I finished I* would be so fed up that I didn’t post to my blog.
With WordPress I’m lucky to get 10 spam posts a week (so far), with MT I was getting nearly 300 a day.
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:38 pm
Dustin,
After reading this blog, I think I’ll use WordPress. I really like the fact it’s free & open source. Spammers are indeed some of the lowest form of life. I also have to deal with reciprocal link spammers.
I successfully installed WP on my site a few months ago, but never got around to doing anything with it. I understand blogs achieve Google ranking and traffic rather quickly, which is what I’m after. My sister’s new blog site went from PR-0 to PR-5 within a few weeks!
Should I make my site’s homepage my main blog page, or should I be fine keeping it as a static page and running WP in it’s installation directory? Is it ok to name the directory /blog/ or does Google frown upon this? Am I always better off running a blog on my own site instead of on blogger.com? Do blogs work well in affiliate marketing?
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Fred. These are all great questions. I know that when you go with blogger, you don’t need to worry about google crawling your site… you’re already in the system once you sign up ;)
I’ve never heard of a search engine frowning upon a directory called blog. For me, the main purpose of my site ‘is’ the blog. If you were planning on doing other things, then maybe a /blog/ directory would be a good thing.
October 23rd, 2005 at 6:25 am
Dustin,
The goal of my site beyourowndetetective.com is purely commercial, so whatever I do with blogs should be working towards helping that goal. It’s really an affiliate site in disguise.
I could continue to use my blogger account at beyourowndetective.blogspot.com, but I may not be able to do both that and run a blog on my site, due to lack of fresh ideas for unique content. The last thing I want is duplicate content. I believe blogger.com is owned by Google.
I wonder if I should enable public posting by other people, similar to yours. As other people post their URL links, doesn’t that syphon away pagerank? Also what if it’s a spam site or bad neighborhood? I trust blogger has spam protection and a pre moderation feature, so I can screen out spammers.
Thanks,
Fred
October 23rd, 2005 at 1:12 pm
outbound links do not affect the giving site, they affect the site that receives the them.
If you have a page with PR5 with 300 outbound links, the amount of PR they give will not be as much as another site with the same PR but 5 outbound links. This is why you need to be careful on your link placement and chose wisely which links you will put rel=”nofollow”
Aside from the subject of SEO, this post was mainly about MovableType and Wordpress. As you can see, there came a clear winner.
October 25th, 2005 at 1:01 am
in MundoGeek, an spanish technology related site, they have a wiki with almost 300 plugins for Wordpress, and they don’t have nearly half of them ;-)
this is what i ‘d call feature-crazy
October 27th, 2005 at 1:00 am
Cool Dustin by all these comments about wordpress I think Ill try it out soon, You see every place I go to has a link to http://www.dustindiaz.com, I advocate standardization and much more Ive learned about the web from bottom up… I 90% code sites by hand including making graphics and occasionally using some third party scripts, I was into finding a good CMS that I read about wordpress, now most of ZEn gardenesque “real” site Ive found uses wordpress, now thats a thing to ponder since I was inspired with CSS because of the garden… Now I looked into and applied different things Ive learned, so I tried installing these CMS, now it seems and overkill to use MAMBO(now called JOOMLA!), that I looked for other alternatives, including making my own blog software… (the problem with it was that it doesnt generate automatic links, good for small page by page site though)… Now
Wordpress would be my next experiment…
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Well this settles everything for me. I’ve been looking at switching from Blogger for about a month and have been slowing accumulating knowledge on other options, namely Movable Type and WordPress. The more I read the more I leaned toward WordPress. I think I’ve also found another site I’ll be frequenting. Keep up the good work.
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Thanks Carson. I hope I can make this a comfy place for you.
I’m sure you’ll most definitely enjoy playing with WordPress. You should try it out on a test directory just to get things going. If you like it, move it to live site. It really did save me hours and hours of deleting unwanted content $pam.
Ever since I made the switch, I’ve rarely even had bad comments to moderate…. so I just turned it off.
November 7th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
as with most people who have been commenting, i’ve also been debating on switching to a blog software, away from blogger.
i’ve also been sitting on the fence deciding on either MT or WP, and have downloaded both to see how easy the installation would be for both. so far, besides learning how to create SQL databases and the such, i’m definitely leaning towards WP.
thanks for the insight and the final nudge :D
freydo
November 29th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
One thing I found annoying with WP is that the default index page is the blog. I was hoping that the Page option can be used as an index page. Theres actually a hack for this, but its too cumbersome, I hope they would make a plugin for this or make it available on the next update….
November 29th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
Chris, you can do whatever you wish with WordPress…and I’m not really sure how that’s annoying. What would you expect from a blog software? And surely, you cold install wordpress in its own directory. It doesn’t need to be set as your domain home.