Comments on: Five Things MovableType Learned from Bilbo Baggins

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:44:53 +0000

I’ve used both WP and MT extensively, for both my own site and a company site. I have spent hours, days and months tweaking templates and stylesheets to make them do what I need. When my job stuck me with a pseudo-webhost that wouldn’t support outside CGI scripts, I was forced to use WP, and it became a giant headache.

Try using WP to run a site with multiple blogs covering different topics, and you cannot do it. When I did it under MT, it was a breeze. Need to create a new blog in MT? A few clicks and it’s done. With WP, not happening. Yes I tried using WP categories, and they’re horrible, practically useless except for the most basic of uses. Yeah I tried all kinds of WP plugins and PHP tricks for categories. It’s still third rate.

People may love WordPress starting out. True, it’s simple to set up, and there are many themes and plugins. But try to grow your site bigger with it, and eventually you might feel painted into a corner.

By: Aaron Brazell

Aaron Brazell — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:56:29 +0000

MT going GPL is most definitely a good thing. Not arguing that. It’s good for consumers. It may be too little too late for SA and thats all I am saying.

By: Joris

Joris — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:44:39 +0000

MT going GPL is a very good thing. The competition is open, and users can only benefit. If MT4 is going to be better, more feature-rich, or whatever, I’ll gladly switch (back) to MT. We should support companies that adopt the GPL.

By: billg

billg — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:28:15 +0000

I don’t use MT or WP these days, but it seems to me that the appropriate measure for the success of any SixApart decision about MT is contained within SixApart’s revenue stream. Presumably, as a business, their decisions are intended to increase revenue and profit. If MT4 allows them to do that, why should they care how many people use WP? It’s not like anyone has a chance of selling anything to people who have amply demonstrated that they have no intention of actually buying blogging software.

Anil is right. IT media like to frame stories as fight-to-the-death battles between competitors, when that’s usually far from the truth. For example, we still see stories about Apple trying to conquer Microsoft. That’s not going to happen, and Apple — a $100 billion company — seems to be doing just fine. Likewise, if MT is a successful product from SixApart’s point of view, that’s all that counts.

Bloggers ought be clever enough to avoid being sucked up in the rest of the media’s distortion field.

By: Huguenot

Huguenot — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:07:21 +0000

wow, 6apart exec talks about freedom of speech… LOL

Anil, talking about freedom in LJ… why you don’t tell to public how your company treats 2nd largest community in Livejournal, I mean us, Russians? why you didn’t pull out your dirty story of selling RUssians back to Russian SUP-Fabrik company http://www.wired.com/print/politics/onlinerights/news/2006/11/72060 ? Even after huge standout and protests, you were chilling out and later starting to do dirty staff again and again, with recent political censorship of russian NBP party (yes, they _are_ dick heads, but that is not an excuse for censorship) which was hidden under 500+ accounts being deleted under excuse of fight with pedophilia? oh, you probably never heard about that from your vice-president chair, you “know” only positive crap for PR… should I tell you where is news.google.com ? LOL

Anil, please, please, talk whatever you like – licenses, community penetration, massive blog coverage and any other business BS… but NOT a freedom – freedom is only limited option at LJ, and you must prove opposite in a face of facts

By: Jonas

Jonas — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:32:06 +0000

Finally a competent blogging system in Perl is what I say. I don’t accept Wordpress unless on a dedicated server. It’s like publishing your root password on your blog. I know it’s technically not PHP’s fault, but that language is like a clone of what Perl was ten years ago. Things has developed since.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:16:56 +0000

Aaron, we all agree that competition is good for end users. Let MoveableType be “there and back again.” As good as WordPress is, it leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully WordPress developers will be more open-minded and work even harder.

By: Arpit Jacob

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:27:28 +0000

By the way great post Love it and I guess in a way its true :D

By: Arpit Jacob

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:26:04 +0000

How about a Alexa or Google trends ….. Anil ??? They show that Wordpress is far ahead of MT , LJ, TP or Vox …. even if you combined the 4 …. Why is it soo hard to admit that you guys made the big mistake with MT. MT is going no were at least for the next 2-3 years. You guys screwed your own users a long time back and your users ditched you. I bet if people are using MT etc its because they don’t know abt Wordpress.

By: Aaron Brazell

Aaron Brazell — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:41:32 +0000

Silly me to assume that market share is a quality metric. I apologize for such assumptions that generally play out in any other business in the world.

There’s no ill will here, Anil. In fact, I’m surprised you’ve assumed this was personal. Considering I’ve yet to meet you. One day, we’ll have a beer. It’s not personal.