WordPress v. Movable Type
I’m growing increasing frustrated with WordPress.
Lately, it’s because there is some incompatibility between WordPress and Technorati when it comes to Technorati recognizing their own tags at the end of posts.
This morning I was looking into Movable Type again.
When I left TypePad, I moved to WordPress because it was free and Movable Type wasn’t. MT also had a reputation for being slow, which was also true of TypePad which is built on the Movable Type engine.
When I factor in all the time I spend tweaking the WordPress code, looking for support on the bulletin board to fix problems, the huge reduction in my traffic volume since I moved to WordPress and the consequent loss of AdSense pennies, WordPress may in fact be one of the most expensive pieces of software I’ve ever used.
I noticed that Movable Type has a free personal version and the next level up, which includes tech support is only $69, less than they were asking before. You can have an unlimited number of blogs under that package. Tech support was always one of TypePad’s strong points. At that price, it’s a bargain.
They also now have both static and dynamic pages, an improvement over the previous sytem, so that you don’t have to rebuild the entire site each time you update a post. That should speed up the system.
They also have a way to import other blog content, including WordPress content.
I also noted that Technorati uses Movable Type on their official blog.
Span was always a big problem on TypePad and WordPress has been excellent at handling spam. I’ve haven’t had one single piece of spam left on my site since I moved to WordPress. From their online documentation, it looks like Movable Type has addressed this problem as well by forcing all comments through moderation as WordPress does.
This is something I will have to consider because the fact is that since I left TypePad my traffic has died off to almost nothing. I don’t get hit by search engines like I used to and they were 95% of my traffic at TypePad.
It looks like the competition from WordPress has forced Movable Type to make some important improvements. It might be time to rejoin the Six Apart universe.
With the free version that they have available, I can download it and set up a test version before I make the commitment to move my entire blog to a new system…again.
Tags: wordpress, movable type, typepad
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December 9th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
We’ll be glad to have you back, and with some big improvements we’re making in the next week, it should be easier than ever to get up and running with MT. Feel free to get in touch if you need any help.
December 10th, 2005 at 11:02 pm
What changes are you making?
It sounds like I should wait for them.
I’ve already tried the install and the documentation is not correct. For example, you told to edit mt.cfg but no such file exists. I’m quite sure I found the correct file and renamed it, but a user should not encounter such errors in the installation documentation.
I’ve given up on install for the time being because I keep getting a “Bad ObjectDriver config” error upon trying to start the program. The documentation said you only had to set that if you were using an SQL database. I guess that’s not true.
December 12th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
I had to make the change back to MT from WP myself.
The most aggravating thing is trying to get my old posts out of WP and back into MT.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
According to their site, MT is supposed to be able to import WordPress content.
It’s not good news that you’re having trouble with it.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Plus, the plugins for Movable Type are getting significantly more advanced as the plugin capabilities become even more advanced. Try the lastest MTAmazon, Media Manager, Feed Burner, or Tags plugins.
[Editor's note: It appears from visiting his URL that these plugins are written by the person who posted the comment. Just so you know.]