Tom Sherman Says Goodbye Movable Type – Hello WordPress

Tom Sherman of JOTSHEET has written “My Curt Goodbye to Movable Type”, an interesting non-rant of a lot of frustration which pushed him over the edge to move to a WordPress blog.

I’m not angry anymore. I’m just kind of sad. I mean, I wasted a lot of time on that Movable Type shit. I’m past the denial and the anger; I’ve quietly accepted the trial that was Running a Large Blog Using Movable Type™.

I’m not angry about the 10 minute rebuilds or the 90 second post times. I’m not angry about the 30 second page load times for the admin interface (well, Dreamhost might have been to blame for that, too). I’m not mad that MT’s plugins are less extensive, less flexible, less interesting, and harder to install than WordPress’. I can look past the fact that building a CMS on Perl is, uh, probably not a great idea. I’m okay with the fact that much of the MT enthusiasts from 2003 have moved on to greener pastures. I’m all right with Six Apart placing a commercial license on the creaking mass of Perl code known as Movable Type.

But I do have a couple of things I’d still like to get off my chest, before I put this puppy to bed for good.

I gave MT a serious look when moving my large site to a CMS a few years ago. Once I heard about the rebuilds, I ran for the hills. Still, reading through his post gave me an even better comparison of why I made the right decision to go with WordPress.

When choosing a blogging tool, most people choose what their friends are using, not thinking out the whole process. Then they get caught up in the fun and want “more”, whatever “more” is. That’s when they start learning about the limitations that come with not thinking out their decisions thoroughly. Trust me, moving blogs and websites is a serious painful process, and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It needs to be taken thoroughly.

Sherman’s post reminds us all that we need to look under the hood and read seriously written reviews by those who know what they are talking about before running full tilt into our blog decision.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network

Member of the 9Rules Blogging Network

2 Comments

joanna tidball

Posted September 27, 2006 at 10:53 am | Permalink

Hi Lorelle – I agree that it’s important to really think through your choice of blog tool. I have two blogs, both with WordPress, and am currently planning to set up a third blog. Although I’m very happy with how WordPress has been working for me, I’m taking the opportunity to check out some other options to see if they’d suit my needs any better.

bill perry

Posted November 6, 2006 at 2:18 pm | Permalink

Lorelle,
I started out with Blogger (yick), and struggled for about a month or so with it, mainly for the standpoint that I read Steve Pavlina’s blog regularly, and I said to myself “How does he do that ‘category’ thing?”

Then I heard about WordPress, and I tried it out for my then-new site/blog that I built. I never really thought about MT, simply because I heard that it was a paid service, and WordPress was free and you could install it YOURSELF on your own server.

I’m in love WordPress.

Bill P