I’ve been using Wordpress for years now and I’ll be the first to admit it’s by no means perfect, but when it comes to the blogging platforms–it’s second to none. Specifically, I’m going to outline a few reasons why it’s better than it’s newly open sourced corporate competitor, Movable Type. Now that’s not to say that Movable Type doesn’t have it’s place and totally suckz deez nutz, but unless you’re a corporate lacky and have no idea what you’re doing… then yea, Wordpress is going to be your propaganda pushing machine.
Wordpress is free (as in beer) for commercial and personal use
Movable Type costs money for commercial use. This was the first and most obvious reason for why Wordpress is better than Movable Type. I figured I’d just get it out of the way. This means that not only do you have to pay for some software that is open source, which wasn’t initially, but you have to pay for any sort of stable add-on that will be guaranteed to work. For example, the MT Community Commercial website license starts at $295 dollars, which also happens to be more than the value of my current motor vehicle.
Wordpress Plugins are quick and easy to install
Not only do you have to rebuild all of your Movable Type pages when you make design changes, but you have to modify the permissions every single time you add a plugin. (half the time I couldn’t even get the plugins to work) When using our Windows server we weren’t able to do any CHMOD commands on any of our files simply because there’s no such thing with Windows! What did that mean? None of our sweet plugins would ever work unless it was one of the slick ones we paid dearly for.
Movable Type uses ambiguous proprietary tags
When trying to do some basic spacing changes and layout changes on Movable Type sites, not only do I have to rebuild the site each time, but half the time they don’t even show up? I end up putting in all these silly custom tags within brackets and scavenging through the help docs rather than just doing some simple CSS to get everything to display properly.
Wordpress Plugins and Themes more widely available
I can get nearly any plugin and any feature I need for Wordpress downloaded and installed in minutes. There are literally thousands of themes out there so I never end up having to start from scratch, and did I mention I don’t have to fuck around with a slow bloated admin panel to install and configure the plugins/themes? All of it can be done in a few seconds and the changes are reflected immediately. Tweaking the spacing in the themes in Wordpress requires no special skills outside of basic HTML/CSS. I don’t have to know proprietary tags and read a manual, and I can clearly read and understand what is going on in my pages.
Specifically some plugins that I can’t live without are the spam plugins starting with Akismet, Bad Behavior, spam captchas, and the Wordpress Cache plugin (for in case I ever get a site dugg) All the plugins take just a few minutes to install and the keep out all the comment spammers and email spammers from getting through to me. I can’t say the same for Movable Type. Some of the other plugins I run here at TimmersTidbits/Timmyblog are FlickR Photo Album, Popularity Contest, Netflix Plugin to show my Queue, runPHP, Widgets, (now included in the newest update) Tagally Widget, Alex King’s Twitter Tools, Delicious Widget, Akismet, Bad Behavior, Ajax Comments, WP Enhanced Contact Form, Last.FM records, Lightbox 2.0, Automatic Upgrade, Wordpress Update Checker, Related Posts, Wordpress Cache, WPSEO, and Wordpress Database backup.
I’ve tested literally hundreds of other plugins, and these seem to be the ones that stick out as being a necessity from the get go.
Movable Type is probably better for beginners, large companies…
I’m not going to go out and act like Wordpress is the end all be all of blog platforms, and maybe I’m more partial to it because I have more experience with it–but I can tell you that there are downfalls to Wordpress (constant updates, keeping plugins up to date, sloppy code from third party plugins) but for the most part it is better overall.
For larger companies who want a stable platform that has a pretty clean and simple to understand front/backend interface then they may want to splooj and get the Movable Type platform because they can get paid support and the illusion of safety that comes with paid support/software.
A common complaint I have read is that the default Wordpress themes aren’t as clean as the Movable Type themes, and I suppose I can get behind that except for the fact that it is so easy to go find a better theme and have it running in no time. With the addition of widgets into Wordpress 2.3 to customize your sidebars it makes it even easier to integrate all of your web 2.0 profile accounts and online activity into one nice little area on the sidebar. Movable Type is bloated and too slow, and the control over design will never be as great as it is for Wordpress. If you’re someone who needs complete control over your blog and wants to be able to easily integrate your photo galleries and such into your blog’s theme then Wordpress is the solution for you.
One Comment
There is no doubt that the ease of installing updates will be won by Wordpress any day. There are some movements afoot to make it easier to install theme “packs” in MT, but I suspect even then, it will still never be as easily done as Wordpress, simply because MT is generally run as a static system, not a dynamic one.
Which is really the other major difference - and one you point out by your inclusion of the WP-Cache plugin. It’s interesting to see how many WP sites are Dugg (insert site of choice here) and how easily they go down, but a static site, such as MT - though it is by no means the only one - won’t, simply because it doesn’t have to worry about the db connection issues.
As to usage, I’d have to disagree. I think that Wordpress is actually a much easier system for a novice to use, and your illustration of plugins makes that point abundantly clear. Drop it in and gain functionality. In MT, you can add plugins, but most features added in Wordpress by way of a plugin are added in MT simply by changing template tags. Which you find easier just depends on your mindset.
In any case - an interesting analysis. Thanks.