Migration

M

Completely changed all the settings required. This should ensure that comments etc work as required.

Hehe…what’s funny about this posting is that although it was written _after_ the one above, due to my change in timezones I managed to move back into the previous day. Hilarious!

At any rate – today MT 3.0 was released. It’s a release I’ve been anticipating with some interest, if only for the possibilty that I could integrate more than blogs (a photo gallery, writings etc) into it with relative ease. What’s the problem then?

Hmm… How can I put this? Ok, no fooling around – licensing. Although I could get away with the free version, it is _extremely_ limiting and I’d have to agree with many MT users description of it as ‘crippleware’. The first paid for license is in the 70 dollar range and some extend to 600 dollars. I don’t think this is the right licensing scheme to use. A license of around 30 dollars for a 3 author, multiple user installation would have been ideal. I would have been more than willing to pay that to support software that I believe is one of the best in its class. As it is, I believe the licensing scheme is … broken and Six Apart’s going to have to take a much closer look at it.

The truth is, users have (and this is the impression I’ve received) been the core of MTs constituency. They provide much of the word of mouth, goodwill, informal support and cool plugins that make the MT community so vibrant. Pricing yourself in such a way to alienate a good section of your most outspoken userbase is … questionable. I suppose that they know they’ll be able to make good deals with corporations.

WordPress is the alternative that is most often suggested when it comes to MT replacements. I’ve got to say that although WordPress is impressive it (as of now) lacks a number of important qualifications when it comes to blogging.

  1. Comprehensive documentation
  2. Coherent and cohesive 3rd party developer community
  3. Excellent and innovative selection of web site templates
  4. A more cohesive, organized and scalable admin interface

I think if the developers concentrated on this, they’d start to make a lot more converts. As it is, although the software is impressive, it could do with a lot of work before it’ll make serious inroads. However, all I’m doing is pontificating and standing on my soapbox – so I’m one to talk. I only hope that within 6 – 10 months, many of the problems I think exist in wordpress will be addressed…

1 comment

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  • Good to see that you’re back up :)… yeah, I once tried to get an image gallery going on my Blog (without having to upload through engage or nexusmail) but to get thumbnails, (something I wanted to have automatically generate) you needed a component in PHP that UW didn’t install :P.

    Anywho, glad to hear things are good. As the comic con gets closer I’m gonna remind you guys to go for at least one day ;)