For most people, blogging is writing for a few minutes a day and going on to their other tasks. I like working on the blog system and tweaking templates and doing custom installs for clients as much as I enjoy the blogging process itself.
I’ve been blogging since 2002. I started on Movable Type and stayed on the platform when I moved over to Corante, the very first blog network. When I moved back to my own url, I decided to check out Wordpress. My blog, although it doesn’t look it, has a lot of plugins and customization, so I go for the self-installable version. At some point managing my blogs in Movable Type was becoming a problem, and I thought that perhaps WordPress would make it easier to admin my blogs.
Guess what, I was wrong. At the time, Wordpress had, and still has, just as many issues as Movable Type, which went in the direction of corporate dollars and is now swinging back around to offer an open source version after watching Wordpress run away with the free sector of the blog software market. My two main gripes were that both platforms (and their underlying blogging protocols) failed to play nicely with desktop blogging clients like Ecto and lacked a serious tag management system. Ultimate Tag Warrior is my weapon of choice; both amazingly powerfull, under-developed and undocumented, a frustrating mix. I remain hopeful that WordPress 2.3 will roll out built-in tagging tools.
Now Movable Type 4 is out, and I stand at a crossroads. Wordpress gets under my skin often: IMHO, open source != well written software, frequent feature updates or bug fixes. Which leads me to think out loud, will MT4 be any better than WP 2.2? I’ve set up some very cool blog systems using both platforms. Perhaps it’s time to check out Movable Type again. Reading the MT4 docs, it would appear so.
Especially interesting is the ability to run multiple blogs off of one installation, similar to WordPress MU. My problem with WPMU is that there have always been plugins that I want to use that are not supported.
I will hold off saying more until I’ve had a chance to kick MT4’s tires thoroughly. In the meantime, I just found out that an Alpha of Ecto3 is out in the wild. I can’t wait until it’s stable enough for day-to-day blogging. It makes you a better blogger, guaranteed.