Got fed up with Movable Type (most notably the lack of new themes/styles and its slowness on my host), so it’s time to get fed up with WordPress again. The problem I have with WordPress is that I don’t know it well enough to be able to change much, but then I no longer know MT well enough either. Same difference.

I’m using a barely altered theme by Derek Punsalan, which I’ll hopefully find time to personalise a bit more.

#1 Publishes fine, it shows the 3-column layout the way I want it, with sidebars. #2 Won’t show its sidebars, whatever I do. Not on the front page, not on the archive listing and not on the entry pages. I can’t figure it out and don’t see any difference in the templates. Anniwun kan halp?

I’ve also not been able to get dynamic publishing working on more than one blog. MT won’t let me publish both #1 and #2 dynamically at the same time. So now one is published static, the other dynamic.

Fixed. The problem occurred because I was publishing one blog’s archives outside the root. Hmm. I’d call that a bug.

(The first one to tell me ‘why don’t you use wordpress’ or ‘why don’t you just code your own’ gets a punch in the nose.)

I upgraded to Movable Type 4. Initially confusing, I think I’ll come to appreciate the new features. It took some time figuring out where what was, as templates have been ripped apart in modules and I’ve never quite been able to figure out the logic in MT’s stylesheets.

There’s one thing I’ve been unable to do and that is to create a new navigation bar above the header, just a black bar exactly as wide as the header… it should be simple and somehow it isn’t. If anyone is familiar with MT’s new stylesheets and thinks they can help me out here, let me know, please.

 I still have to move over the second half of the archives from my old installation (and I do recommend a fresh MT4 installation instead of an upgrade) and redo some of the old includes and widgets.

Another thing that’s changed is the site’s title. We’re back to the old prolific.org domain. You know what they say: once a prol always a prol.

Some stuff I’ve run into while moving to MT4:

• The Feeds.app plugin no longer works.
• I don’t like wysiwyg editors at all

Sorry for the mess around here, but I’m never going to finish it if I don’t just go live and fix it as we go along. So, comments are unstyled, individual page are incomplete and archives may or may not be working, etc, etc.

But: I’m so happy to be back on Movable Type after my WordPress and Pivot adventures. You have to work with the tools that suit you best and I’ve found out the hard way that MT is that tool for me. Unfortunately, most developers seem to have switched to WordPress and I don’t think MT is marketed at personal publishers anymore which makes it harder for me to find solutions or plugins. But even without that online support I know my way around MT best.

The reason I switched from MT was that it didn’t seem to handle my extremely large archive very well and rebuilding had become a real chore. This newer version of MT however does a better job, I think the server Pair has me on now is a little faster too. I’ve also lightened the load by dividing 7 years (!) of archives over four different weblogs.

So anyway, birthday, I’m not up to much, I think I need a hairdo…

I’ve been toying with WordPress on another account and am impressed. Very easy installation (duh, one click install, a Dreamhost feature) and painless import. And that ‘no rebuilding’ thing is a cracker. I don’t think I’d run a site like U2log.com on it, but for a personal blog it should do.

Switch? Quite possibly. Maybe even on a new domain. After 5 years I am finally weary of being prolific.

!!!

I’ve been using WordPress for a while, and I have to say that, especially since version 1.5 came out, I really love it. There are a few things that MT does that WP doesn’t and v.v., but I found WP much easier to install and get working well. smile just my little bias.
ebby (link) – 16 April 2005 – 14:43

Good software costs money. Well, a lot of the time, anyway. Deal with it. That said…

Do they EVER need a full time PR person! ‘Mena’s Corner’ did very little to improve communication. The announcement was very abrupt and confusing. They could save themselves so much trouble if they got it together in that department.

So, beta testing had ended? How come we didn’t know? Hey, I had signed up for beta testing. Never did get in, despite being told everyone would be phased in.

The naming is confusing too. Developer? Huh? It took me a few hours reading comments and threads to find out there will be another version later on for non ‘developers’.

Equally, all the talk about ‘commitment to developers’ and other corporate quack meant zilch to me. Dumb user here, what’s in it for meeeeeeee? (What I got from it all was the impression I should be using TypePad, not MT. But I don’t wanna!)

How many announcements do you need? A blog entry here, a statement with quotes there. Yet nothing on the Six Apart homepage itself?

I am quite willing to pay. When Six Apart quizzed users on this, I said I’d pay $100 dollars for a version that had comment registration.

The site I ‘needed’ MT 3.0 for (and put on design hold for many months to wait for this release) can just about fit into the 6-author license. Just about. There’s not much leeway. Still, we could ask users to donate to get the next license up. or I could kick some editors out. Heh.

Since you can only install the free version on one computer, all the other sites I use MT on will have to stick with the 2.6xx version as I simply cannot afford paying for multiple installs. And that’s ok. (God knows, I can live without comments.) But I do think the schemes for personal usage at least need to be re-evaluated.

By the way… Blogger? That redesign/launch was some impressive timing.

Update: Here’s some other people who say a lot of sensible stuff about MT 3.0 ‘developer”s pricing scheme.