So last night, I posed the question of whether or not to switch away from the breast milk that I have used to feed my child since birth, i.e. Movable Type, to formula or something “better”, i.e. Wordpress or another equally good blogging software. While many of you agree that a move to Wordpress is undeniably the way to go, I wish to provide you with a few more pieces of anecdotal evidence, as to help you understand, and perhaps, to gain compassion for my steady hold on good ole MT.
First of all, I know MT. We are old friends. In fact, I switched to it from b2evolution because of how easy it was to use (remember, I said use, not install). When I was with b2evolution, the main reason I left, was because I didn’t feel like I had any control of templates or anything, and most of all, I really hated the MySQL database feel; which incidentally, was one of the main reasons I opted not to use it for my MT database. I felt like I had no control over MySQL, and while I feel I may not know enough about it, I know enough to know that my server has MySQL database use restrictions, and I have seen what those can do… it ain’t pretty. An ugly “you abused your MySQL privileges bitch” message instead of your blog. Not nice. So there’s that; my aversion to MySQL (which WP totally cannot work without). (btw… I use Perl, so Amber or whomever, I don’t know if that means anything to you)
Second of all, I really like my template, and spent a lot of time working on it. I worked out all of the CSS myself, and I feel pretty good about it. If I move to WP, I would have to go through and rework everything, or worse, I may even have to scrap it and start over. It may be easier (it is easier to build CSS driven templates in MT now, thanks to the new version and its features), but I don’t know. I am always one to stick a pinky toe in, before jumping into large bodies of water.
Lastly, and I guess most importantly, I have a potential solution, so let’s see what you think about this. Since the rebuilding seems to be a time out error, which I believe is more server related than MT related (thanks to Barry’s suggestion about the config file); I think that I could just remove all of the old entries, and import them into a new blog called… wait for it…. archives. Clever huh? Then it wouldn’t have to rebuild so much!! What does everyone think about that? Pour some comments on me!!!
UPDATE: I archived July 04-October 05, which, I know may cause some broken links or whatever, but for now, it is a fix. Here’s hoping that it is a good solution. Those months are still under the drop down archives menu. It is actually a whole “archives blog”!! Fun, right?!?! Well, whatever. It works for now. =o) If you experience any problems, let me know, and I will see what I can do!!
Tuesday Tunes:
Blur - Birthday
Fleetwood Mac - Big Love
Alanis Morrisette - Crazy
I don’t think recreating this layout in WP would be too difficult. My last layout (from like 3 days ago) was the same I used back in my Blogger days. I was able to convert it pretty easily.
I don’t really know anything about MT, but it sounds like the problem is with pinging or trackbacks timing out. This was supposedly an issue in previous versions of WP, but is fixed now. I haven’t had any problems so far.
In my not so humble opinion, the way MT handles things is much kuldgier. I just don’t see how it’s posisble to have a maintainable blog system without a database. Seems like a recipe for disaster.
Their admin interface feels really clunky, too (this is based on my experience with Bloglanta). I can’t find any damn thing; the whole thing is organized unintuitively. Also, their templates don’t use the best code in the world.