Gak!

If you’re using Movable Type and held at version 2.661 because of that whole licensing thing, but you’ve been thinking about just biting the bullet and going for 3.x, my advice is: Don’t.

Well, if you’re starting from scratch, I’m sure it’s fine. But if you’re a hand-coder and made all your various templates just the way you like, beware. There’s a wholly ridiculous set of changes you’ll have to make to several individual templates (on each blog) because of the new commenting system. And so far, even after making those changes, I can’t get the new-and-improved setup to work at all.

All I wanted was basic comment moderation. Instead, I got broken templates and their TypeKey authentication crap (that I don’t even want)… and I’ll probably end up relying on the still-in-beta Blacklist plug-in, anyway.

More and more it’s clear, WordPress is the way to go. But since I just shelled out actual money to upgrade Movable Type, I’m resigned to make it work.

Not tonight, though, that’s for damn sure.

4 Responses

  1. Beth says:

    I heart WordPress, yes I do. I heart WordPress, how about you??!

  2. Dreama says:

    As soon as I can get my site away from MT, the happier I will be, but WordPress doesn’t seem a solution for me due to the one blog per install thing. I long for something just like MT… but better. Not limited. Not with crap templates. And not dumb. Oh, how I wish I had the knowhow to roll my own.

  3. Ryan says:

    WordPress is light and efficient, and I deploy it most often these days for new sites, but I did get lulled into complacency by MT’s interface and features.

    Believe it or not, I have a license to Expression Engine, I just haven’t had a chance to play with it.

    Meanwhile, more “Grrr!” I added the new MT-Blacklist to this MT 3.x install, but the old MT-Blackist for 2.661 is still in here somewhere… so every comment generates two separate notifications!

  4. authgeek says:

    It’s really not *incredibly* hard to use TypeKey comments on a custom blog. The key is understanding that the default templates have to account for all possibilities – requiring typekey with no regular comments, regular comments with no typekey or both. Once you figure out which configuration is good for you, the amount of code that you need to focus on is reduced by more than half.

    If you end up deciding to go with 3.x and you’re still stuck, feel free to send me an email and I’ll happily help you out.

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