MT migration questions

  • Hi there,
    I currently run an MT-based blog at https://www.bladam.com/ and while I’ve been pleased with MT overall, I’m about ready to throw in the towel and try another blogging tool because I’m sick of comment-posting taking ~20 seconds. And, yeah, rebuilds are a bummer in general, too.
    Wordpress looks pretty neat, but I would love to learn a bit more about how it stacks up against MT in terms of stability and functionality.
    In particular, there are a few features that I’m worried about doing without, and I’d be appreciative to know if these features are possible to achieve with WordPress (natively or via hacks):
    – Blog pagination, including “next entries” and “previous entries”
    – Listing of number of posts in particular categories (see my blog for an example)
    – Ability to show [x] words from a particular post or comment, or from a set of posts or comments, either on a blog page or elsewhere on my site (this is useful for including a partial title of an individual entry in a masthead, for example, or a segment of an entry on a non-blog topical page…)
    Also — and I hope this isn’t un-kosher to bring up here — I’d be most grateful to hear some respectfully-stated comparisons between MT and WordPress. For instance, from what I already know:
    MT ADVANTAGES:
    – Larger userbase (more mods, templates available, etc.)
    – Stood the test of time
    – Can run multiple blogs with one installation
    – Built in mail-entry-to-friend, notify-when-entry, etc.
    – Much nicer support forum software! I can’t even preview what I’m posting here? Ack! ?? (get thee phpBB or InvisionBoard, please!)
    WORDPRESS ADVANTAGES:
    – Free, even for commercial use
    – Look ma, no perl! ??
    – No rebuilds
    – More elegant text engine
    – Optional comment moderation
    … anything else?
    Thanks so much in advance for your insight! ??

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • A couple more advantages of WordPress:
    – Ease of installation. I know I found the prospect of installing MT very daunting, but with WordPress you just need to upload everything, chmod one file (optional) and run the install script.
    – Fewer templates to configure. You have index.php and your comments page, and that’s basically it. Most of the minor aspects of your blog’s appearance (like how archives are displayed) are controlled through parameters in your template tags.
    – Ability to password-protect individual posts. I don’t use this myself, but I know people who’ve installed an MT hack to do the same thing.
    That said, I’d expand on your first two stated advantages of MT: basically it’s been around for longer so the knowledge base is larger. WP documentation is still very rough around the edges compared to MT, though we have a dedicated team of users at work on it.
    And, in response to your specific queries: WordPress has tags for previous and next entries, though I don’t know whether your current numbered page setup would be achievable. According to the wiki, post counts per category can be displayed in the sidebar. Showing an extract from the post ought be possible, since there’s an ‘extract’ field which can be configured to default to the first [x] words in a post, but I’m still trying to figure out how to call it. You’d probably need a hack to do the same thing for comments.
    Hope that helps ??

    Thread Starter thatadamguy

    (@thatadamguy)

    Thanks so much for the prompt reply! I’m especially pleased to learn that WordPress has fewer template files to edit than MT; that, at least, would make my switchover a bit less daunting. ??
    I do have to admit that I’m a bit surprised that neither WordPress nor, for that matter, any other CMS ‘sides pMachine seems to offer what I consider to be intuitive navigation right out of the box.
    I offer a more detailed rant here, but basically I’m dumbfounded that there’s no simple way for someone who reads through a blog’s homepage to click on a link at the bottom to “read more [chronologically next] entries.” Instead, they must find the archives link, determine what month or week they left off at (which then sometimes necessitates scrolling BACK to the bottom of the page), clicking on the relevant link, then scrolling past the entries they’ve already read, and so on.
    Am I the only person who finds this to be shockingly lame?
    And mind you, I’m not (just) slamming WordPress here — I’m questioning a basic UI flaw of (to my knowledge) nearly all blogging software ??
    I know, I know, pretty presumptious for me in my 2nd post here. But oh well ??

    Look into the post_paged option.

    Thread Starter thatadamguy

    (@thatadamguy)

    Ah! Well, I haven’t downloaded WordPress yet (still in the ‘looking’ stage), and perhaps I should have done that before I spoke above.
    From what you’re suggesting, allusion, and from what I happened to catch on Alex King’s site, it appears that it *IS* possible to have a “next page” setup.
    If this is indeed offered without significant hackage, I stand both corrected and humbled, and I appreciate the info.
    I still look forward to reading more MT/Wordpress comparisons so I can make an informed decision about whether to make the switch or start my new blog up in WordPress.
    Indeed, after at least a bit of looking, it seems that these are the two primary candidates I should be considering. pMachine did look promising, but I was bummed that it’s not yet possible to add an entry to more than one category.
    Anyway, thanks again for the replies here! Hopefully I’ll have a chance to try out WordPress 1.0 soon (I’ve already played with the interface of the older version on opencms).

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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