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Over the past two months I've written articles outlining each of the major blog platforms:
I'm going to end this series with Movable Type. Movable Type is the self-hosted blog platform offered by SixApart (also owner of Typepad). Ostensibly, Movable Type is the equivalent of WordPress.org. Put simply: Both are non-hosted blogging platforms that allow you to tweak your own code.
Movable Type, at one point several years ago, was set to be a "potential successor to the kingdom of Blog, Blog Away". What happened, though, was WordPress came along and was truly open source. Users had been treating Movable Type as if it was open source, but Movable Type decided to enforce licensing--essentially making users pay for the privilege of using MT. These days Movable Type is once again free and offers an open source version.
The Princess at Flooded Lizard Kingdom is a user and lover of Movable Type and was kind enough to e-mail with me about why she likes the MT platform:
I moved my personal blog, Flooded Lizard Kingdom from Blogger to Movable Type in October of 2003 because I wanted more control over my blog. Movable Type is just as powerful and customizable as WordPress, and easily supports multiple blogs, which is one reason that I love it. All my blogs are in one dashboard when I log in.
In addition, she cites the following as reasons to use Movable Type instead of another platform:
- Movable Type's template code separates content, function, and appearance more strictly than WordPress.
- It's fairly easy to customize the available styles with your own banner. (I think it's important to note here that Movable Type has significantly fewer themes available than WordPress. This may be a consideration if you are considering this platform.)
The Princess has written a thorough and thoughtful post called Six Apart Doesn't Want Me to Use or Recommend Movable Type (But I Do It Anyway). In it she discusses the pros and cons of using Movable Type as your blogging platform.
The Smartalyx guys have tried all the major online publishing systems (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Movable Type). Their recommendation? Why use Movable Type when the installation for the others is so easy and the communities are so open and accessible? Movable Type was not as easy to install as it seemed to be when reading the instructions:
Installation seemed straight forward. Reading the directions anyways. The install itself was painful and overly complicated. Nothing worked quite the way it should and the instructions did not help much. Where Wordpress has what they call “famous 5 minute guide”, I could not find a similar overview for Movable Type. I am familiar with creating sub-domains, databases and all that so those concepts are not foreign. . .Needless to say after multiple attempts it never worked.
You can read more about their Twitter experience with @SixApart (who own Movable Type and Typepad) in Movable Type vs. WordPress.
However, The Princess e-mailed me the following links that should help you with any problems you encounter when installing MT:
Tutorials
It is true that Movable Type doesn't have quite the expansive community of WordPress or number of tutorials to help new users. However, there are some excellent sites out there that can get you up and running.
BlogHer's own Elise Bauer is a Movable Type guru and hosts a site (Learning Movable Type) that can walk you through setting up your new blog at Movable Type or importing an existing blog. From the web site:
Learning Movable Type (LMT) is a growing set of tutorials, presented in blog format, aimed at helping users of the Movable Type (MT) web publishing platform. These tutorials are geared for those with a good understanding of HTML, a fair understanding of CSS, but who are not necessarily programmers or web designers.
Eat, Drink, Sleep Movable Type also offers discussions, tutorials, Plug-ins, and advice about using Movable Type to its fullest extent.
Melanie Nelson writes tips and instructions for beginning and intermediate bloggers at Blogging Basics 101. Special thanks to The Princess at Flooded Lizard Kingdom for taking the time to e-mail with me for this article.
