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.

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…

It’s the season of giving! No it’s not, but I’m feeling generous. No, I’m not, but Flickr just awarded me a couple of free Flickr Pro accounts to give away. Want one?

24 comments:

what are some of the perks of the pro account? I wouldnt mind one.
Allen – 08 May 2005 – 09:56

yes please i’d love one!
Kid A – 08 May 2005 – 09:56

I would love one. I’ll even drum a special song for you.
Stephen – 08 May 2005 – 09:56

Want one ? would kill for one is more accurate :)
Ozh (link) – 08 May 2005 – 09:57

It’s strange – all I hear about WordPress are complaints. It’s made me decide to steer well clear.

As for the linklog, well – flattery will get me everywhere, I know – but your linklog was one of only three that I actively browsed and clicked on the links. Maybe it was because the subject matter more often appealed to me . . . I don’t know. All I do know is that in general I loathe linklogs with a passion, but I liked yours. And I really like this super-cool minimal design too.

And honestly, all that flattering build-up was genuine, and not just a way of subtly moving into begging for a Flickr Pro account. Really, it wasn’t. I promise. :-)
Vaughan – 08 May 2005 – 09:57

If you ask on the support forums I’m sure you would find plenty of people willing to help you out. For example you can run a one-liner to clean up draft overloads caused by bad imports.
Matt (link) – 08 May 2005 – 09:58

a pro account would rock! and id have to say the same, all i ever hear about WordPress is complaints…why the move to that rather than just using/sticking to MT?
Kavi – 08 May 2005 – 09:58

textpattern
proph3t – 08 May 2005 – 09:58

Kavi, as explained in a previous post – my site has become too big for MT on the servers I am running it on. My other sites run fine on it, but for some reason, this blog never has. Perl is just too slow for it. PHP does a better job. But I don’t know enough about PHP, (=nothing!), to make WordPress work for me. I´m having problems getting plug ins to work for me, etc, just because I don´t know enough about PHP syntax, or maybe they don´t work anyway. Sorry Matt, potentially a great product, but at this point in time, it´s not what I need. I don´t even know what you mean when you say ‘run a one-liner`. This is exactly what I mean about WordPress. I´m sure it´s great for a developer, but I don´t happen to have that kind of skill set. I have been to the support forums, that´s the first place I go. Other people with the same problem never got a response from anyone.

proph3t… textpattern, what? Dropping one word in a comment box is really helpful. Not. Textpattern – I´ve played with it, but it´s not my thing.
Caroline – 08 May 2005 – 09:58

Not sure if you/ve looked at drupal recently but it might be something to consider. You have the choice of digging into the PHP all the way, or using the php template engine which you can edit instead. It’s really quite flexible, with a bunch of modules and themes ready made that you can tweak.
Herb – 08 May 2005 – 09:59

I’ve just started using Flickr for sharing classroom photos (I teach 4th grade) and really like it. A Pro account would be really cool if there are any to spare. :-)
Christopher (link) – 08 May 2005 – 09:59

Oh, and it is my birthday in 9 hours and 40 minutes…
Christopher – 08 May 2005 – 09:59

Use Expression Engine. It’s built on PHP and it’s incredibly easy to use and set up, no ‘one-liners’ or anything. The only hack I used was to change the way it does URLs, which you can copy’n’paste off the forums (which are excellent btw). I never got on with WordPress, it just seemed to be a load of effort to get set up and then a load of effort to get it going.

Sorry for sounding like an advert, I’m a bit of an evangelist about it these days…
Aegir – 08 May 2005 – 10:00

Thanks for all the advice on what other software to use, you damn zealots, you! Rest assured I am aware of them and have toyed with most of them before.

I should have investigated WordPress a bit more before implementing it, but Dreamhost offered a one click install that was too tempting to resist and I needed the change too much to wait.

All the Flickr Pro accounts are given out. Thanks for enquiring!
Caroline – 08 May 2005 – 10:00

http://www.technorati.com/tags/textpatte.. may be of interest…
Robert Brook – 08 May 2005 – 10:00

You could always go “old school” and do it all by hand. :-)
Rachel – 08 May 2005 – 10:00

Guys, guys, none of you has made the only correct comment on this post…

“Why don’t you just roll your own?”

Tom A. has kindly offered to help me fix some stuff in WordPress so I can continue using it until I get my Pivot templates written.
Caroline – 08 May 2005 – 10:01

Totally agree that WordPress requires some ‘under hood’ knowledge.

And I was gonna suggest your write your own but you had already said ” I´m sure it´s great for a developer, but I don´t happen to have that kind of skill set” so I kinda presumed you wouldn’t be able to.

I’ve never used MT, but coming from Blogger to WordPress was pretty good, but I totally understand your frustrations. I think if Tom gets you through the initial pain you MIGHT grow to like WP.

Anyway, I’ve got a Flickr Pro.. ohh never mind.. ;-)
Gordon – 08 May 2005 – 10:01

Yup, pretty much unskilled labourer here when it comes to programming. In a previous job I volunteered to learn ASP. I read chapter one of a big ASP book and thought ‘ok, I get that’. I read chapter two and thought ‘yeah, that’s easy.’. Then I read chapter three, found the language had changed to gobbledegook and I put the book down, never to pick it up again. I had the same experience in high school with maths.
Caroline – 08 May 2005 – 10:01

The power of WordPress lays in its framework, which is easily hackable and extenable is the form of plugins. However, it is also it weakness when it comes to those who know little or nothing about coding.

If you want to invest a little time and explore the WordPress Codex you may find the answers to many questions.

Good luck
Sean (link) – 08 May 2005 – 10:01

I know some things are still tough and I wouldn’t expect anyone to know all the ins and outs WordPress, but we have tons of people waiting in the wings on the forums to help you out with whatever ails you. Software is software, but what makes WordPress right for many people is the community around it. There are hundreds of plugins including ones expressly made for making it easy to do Asides (like on my site), link blogs, Flickr and Delicious integration, whatever. I’m a fan of your sites so I wouldn’t mind even helping, but going on what’s in your post I wouldn’t know what to suggest.
Matt – 08 May 2005 – 10:02

I explained some of my problems in more detail at plasticbag.org today and Tom A.’s comment there also defines quite well why WordPress isn’t the right tool for me. For someone who has gone from hand coding to Blogger to Greymatter to Movable Type over the last 5 to 10 years, the switch to WordPress feels like a step back in ease of use. I don’t care or want to care about what’s powering my site, I want to run the site the easiest way for me — at the moment, using WordPress is not the easiest way. It may be in future, who knows.

Is everyone else making a bigger deal out of this than I am myself, or what? Usually I’m just talking to myself on this page – suddenly it’s like grand central station.
Caroline – 08 May 2005 – 10:02

You are looking at the new prolific.org, now known as eachman.com (as in ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’.) It isn’t ideal yet (there’s a lot of stuff just plain wrong behind the scene), the design is a reworking of someone else’s template and WordPress is a little, well, let’s say ‘primitive’ compared to MT, but I’m going to go with it for now. Maybe I’ll switch back, maybe I won’t.

I suppose this is my birthday present to myself. Turning 42 is different from turning 41 or 43. I’ve been looking forward to it with some trepidation, for some time now. Having had some health scares, though none too seriously, in recent months, didn’t help. (And, do, I, like, the, comma, just, a, little, too, much?)

(Here’s where I thought I’d do a ‘read more’ thingy, but there seems to be no obvious way to do that in WordPress.)

My mum died when she was 42 (in 1975… 30 years ago) and so reaching this age is somewhat of a milestone. I’m not sure what to think. Maybe I want some answers, but I’m not sure what the questions are. All I know is, I’m not half as grown up as she was at the time. At least I think I’m not, but how I remember her is not necessarily the way she really was.

Enough gloom. Time for a nice cup of tea and a hearty: ‘happy birthday to me’.

Update 1: Trust Dreamhost to ‘plan’ downtime the day I move my site. (Had to move at least one of my sites away from Pair, since we’re bursting at the seams there.)
Update 2: My laptop arrived this morning, and yes, Dutch OS. Grr.
Update 3: So, has anyone ever moved their WordPress site to Pivot?

26 Responses to ‘The meaning of life and all that’ (imported from WordPress)

I know all about the switching domains bit.

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