reflections

SixApart have finally released a new beta of their blogging and content management system Movable Type. MT 4.0 is the first major release of the software since 2004 - and comes with the interesting news that SixApart will be moving the application to a GPL open-source licence before the end of this year.

Ironically enough, up until the release of MT 3.0 many users treated the software as open-source - despite the fact that it wasn’t official. When SixApart decided to enforce the licence with the release of MT 3.0 it caused widespread outrage, and this may have been one of the things that took WordPress from obscurity to popularity.

The new version of Movable Type is radically different from previous versions though, with more than 50 new features - including an installation and upgrade wizard, more powerful templating, new bundled themes, and a redesigned user interface. It also integrates social media by offering simple ways to get photos, videos and audio into posts - and there’s a new ratings framework too. Scalability concerns have also been squashed with database caching - increasing the chances of surviving the Digg effect unscathed.

My Personal Experience

I download the new beta yesterday - but gave up after two hours of failing to get my new blog to display! I had to manually change CGI permissions in the root directory, set up the required MySQL database, and figure out where Sendmail was located on my server - before I could even get into the Control Panel!

The admin stuff does looks great though - with an excellent Dashboard and drop-down menu navigation. Given how much has obviously been ‘borrowed’ from WordPress though, it’s a shame it doesn’t even come close in terms of intuitiveness! It took me ages to figure out how to do anything - which might not be a problem if you’re totally green to blogging!

I’m not stupid when it comes to the Internet; I develop in PHP myself, and I’ve been using pre-written scripts and database applications for at least 8 years. I also followed the Getting Started Guide to the letter - so it’s not like I’d done something wrong! Perhaps WordPress has just made me lazy, with it all being so simple…

Special technical note: please DO NOT install MT on to the same domain as your WP blog (even if it’s in a sub-directory). It puts an index.html file into the root of the domain, which typically takes precedence over the default index.php required for WordPress. What you end up with is the MT blog coming up instead of the WP one, if you view it from the root of your domain (i.e. http://paulenderson.com). Feel free to comment if you need more on this, or if you’ve screwed up your blog like I did!

Conclusion?

Moveable Type 4.0 is definitely a step in the right direction - and it’s heart-warming to see SixApart taking the GPL route. But they’re not going to suceed in drawing people away from WordPress until they’ve seriously improved their backend. Perhaps I’ll give it another go once it’s out of beta though…

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