Ewan's Corner

Archive for the ‘weblog’ Category

I’ve moved from MovableType to WordPress, and so far the experience has (with one notable exception) been great. I feel dirty without Perl running the show (reliance on all this PHP code seems so… messy :-)

I’ve been a happy MovableType user since January 2005 (Blogger/Pyra before that, and hand-rolled HTML before then) but methinks it’s time for a change.

Favourite WP features:

1. Great admin console (especially when Google Gears integration is enabled – even better in Chrome – for blazing speed). Last time I looked at WP the admin console was terrible, but huge improvements have obviously been made and it is now generally faster/easier to navigate than MovableType’s equivalent.
2. Plugins galore. This highlights the power of a large and active community for the platform – you can quickly and easily find a plugin for almost every need (and installation is trivial, no need for FTP etc). The fact that MovableType still doesn’t include (or have a _free_ plugin) to allow commenters to subscribe to replies via email blows my mind.
3. Complete integration with Windows Live Writer, my favourite post writing tool for Windows (on a Linux box the admin console is perfectly acceptable). Live Writer could be used for MovableType, but support wasn’t complete (you couldn’t edit tags, upload images without configuring FTP, and a few other niggles)
4. WordPress for BlackBerry. Happiness.
5. Tons of themes. I’m don’t care too much about visuals, but they are important – and MT themes (at least free ones) are scarce.

My gripes:

1. The release of WordPress 2.9 (my first impression) seems to have been rushed for Christmas, and includes 3 potentially nasty bugs (main one for me was curl transport being broken which breaks WP cron, future posting, pings, plugins like LifeStream etc). Easily fixed (again, thumbs up to an active and proactive community), but caused me some frustration tracking down why my LifeStream wouldn’t update automatically for example.
2. Consistency is a pain at times – plugin writers can add menus in a variety of places, plugin quality varies, and even the admin console has some usability issues in places. I suppose I’ve been spoilt by MT’s attention to detail and consistency.
3. I don’t like condescending installers :-)

WordPress was also slightly easier to install locally for experimentation via XAMPP.

I’ll wait for the (twice postponed) release of MovableType 5 on Jan 5th and compare them then.

A survey for SA bloggers – SPEAK UP! 

First I discover the sad, sad site that is Conservapedia (sad but still funny in many ways thanks in part to its founder Andrew Schlafly, see my previous post) and then I find their articles on homosexuality. Not funny any more – an advertisement of the worst kind for Christianity, not to mention an example of homophobia, bad science, bias and intolerance. Jon Swift says it better than I ever could.

Then I come across a blog entry by one Zsuzsanna in Tempe, Arizona which blows me away – another example of ignorance, malice, religious intolerance and another terrible advertisement for Christianity.

Zsuzsanna attacks local blogger Tertia of So Close fame for using IVF, calling her a monster, inappropriate, vulgar, and a psycho. WTF? In the same breath she extrapolates from this MSNBC (AP quoted) article, thoroughly demonstrating her ignorance of Africa, African people, statistics and Christianity in general.

Tertia’s response (Apparently I am a monster, inappropriate, vulgar and a psycho) is great and happily her blog is showered with mostly sane responses from hundreds of readers, Christians and not. If Zsuzsanna wasn’t already exposed as a grade A nutter, her blogged response makes it very clear.

*sigh*

MT4 is here – time for an upgrade :-) Simply the best publishing platform there is – absolutely free (for personal use), full support for paid versions, excellent documentation, totally extensible (great plugin community), easy to use and setup, OpenID support, I’ll stop now.

Update:

Upgrade complete – it was a piece of cake (the only thing which took any time was the templates – I recreated them from scratch using the MT4 defaults since my templates were a mix and match of stuff from years ago, modified with each new MT release).

The only gotcha for me was permalink filenames – the MT4 default replaces spaces in titles with dashes (so the published archive filename for this entry was “movable-type-4-has-landed.php” despite the basename in the db being “movable_type_4_has…”). A simple change to the Entry archive mapping fixed that.

New functionality rocks – far better admin interface (the listing screens in particular are brilliant), a file/asset manager (finally), WYSIWYG editor (I still prefer Windows Live Writer, but hey) with Textile, Live Preview built in instead of being a separate plugin (others too), standalone page support, OpenID support (plus user registration), email notifications for thread updates and better feed support for admin / management.

Links:

• Presenting Movable Type 4.0 (also Anil’s post Behold, Movable Type 4.0)
• What’s new in MT4
• Documentation (don’t forget the MT Community Forum)

David Bullard says I’m an gun-toting scrofulous nerd – the sort of wacko who guns down his fellow students at university, who pumps meaningless drivel into cyberspace at all hours of the day and night simply because I can’t find a girl to sleep with me.
You have been warned – unsubscribe from my feeds, and never come back.
As an aside, I actually enjoy most of what David writes – at least in his column. So if *I* get shot, it may be by an irate South African blogger :-)
Links:
Vincent Maher – David Bullard owes South African bloggers an apology
Neverness – David Bullard causes a ‘blog site’ storm
Blog aggregators tracking the story – Amatomu and Afrigator