a few words about...WordPress

The entire blogosphere is letting out a collective whine about SixApart's pricing scheme for Moveable Type 3.0, and I feel I should say something before things get out of hand. Put simply, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. This release is primarily aimed at developers to test the software and port their plugins, as Jay Allen has so succinctly put it in his blog for MT-Blacklist, probably the most popular plugin for MT users to date. Because of the new demands of SixApart - in case everyone's even forgotten, they are developers - dyed-in-the-wool MT users are even threatening to move to alternative content management systems in droves because of this perceived snubbing of their user base.

Personally, I don't really care about these new features - and if the majority of the whiners would settle down and take a look at their current weblogging practices, they might even notice that they aren't even using most of the features of MT 2.6. Calling MT 3.0 a massive upgrade would be some sort of mass delusion. But I'm going off on an MT tangent here, I want to say a few things about what I have found to be the closest thing to it: WordPress.

Filled with the same righteous indignation of those that pride themselves on using Open Source software (also known as most of the blogging community - the cheap bastards), I decided to check it out on my personal webserver. It seems to be running without problems; it took all of ten minutes to set everything up and import across some old MT entries. If you're fluent in the language of MySQL and PHP you will have no problems at all.

One of the things I found most annoying about MT is the fact that everything hinges on CGI scripts that are written in Perl. I know as much about Perl as I do about The Ancient Art of War; that is to say, mostly head-scratching and keyboard bashing. The fact that WordPress relies solely on a collection of freely editable PHP scripts is a dream come true for me, and the code is even readable. The biggest complaint of course is that WordPress only allows for one weblog, but this can be worked around by creating multiple install directories still using the same database (you'd set up separate tables in MySQL for each weblog). The MT categories were carried across perfectly, and I actually found WordPress' implementation of these a lot more usable. Users are also handled differently with Levels, giving as much or as little control as you like, not having to worry about who is an actual author or owner of a weblog. The interface is not as pretty as MT's, but then this wasn't developed by web designers.

The biggest difference of course is that WordPress displays your weblog's content dynamically, as opposed to MT rebuilding static pages every time something is updated. This is good design; however, not really much use for search engines. I think most people would be happy with WordPress, but you really have to ask yourself: "Why am I switching?" Is it out of spite for cute little Ben and Mena? Or is it because you want a flexible piece of software, something that isn't restricted by a licensing scheme as ambiguous as the genders in a Final Fantasy game? I've read numerous stories of avid bloggers that have switched to WordPress, or even Textpattern and then came crawling back for want of some obscure feature of MT's that had not yet been implemented in either. A free version of MT 3.0 has been issued as long as you've registered with TypeKey, limiting the use to one author and three weblogs. What's wrong with this option, assuming that the engine is more stable and all the new features will be used? Furthermore, what's wrong with keeping an existing 2.661 install? Absolutely nothing; it's just bitterness aimed at a fledgling company trying to capitalize on their success.

there's no promise of safety