Blog software platforms
by Brian Turner
There are a number of different options of blog platform to use when looking to set up a blog – not least MovableType and Wordpress, as well as Typepad and Blogger.
However, with blog software hosted with a third party, as with Typepad and Blogger, you have far less control of how to present your content, and your readers will be more restricted on how they respond to your posts.
MovableType (MT) and WordPress (WP) both offer a solution for webmasters to host and control a lot more of their blogging experience – but both offer significant differences for the user.
Index:
MovableType
Installation
Installation of MovableType is a pretty horrific experience if you don’t have experience of managing Perl scripts. Not only is there no simple auto-install option, but the manual install process is unduly complicated.
MovableType installation instructions are also very poor – I actually had to do a search on Google for proper intructions. Even then, when followed properly, installing MovableType software can feel like performing brain surgery.
Customisation
Customisation of MovableType is simple and easy, with a large array of HTML template files you can use and edit without too much trouble. Changing post titles to active links for keyword anchors is easily achieved, and there’s little challenging on the editing front.
Although the main, category, and individual page templates are probably all most people will need to edit (outside of the CSS file), it does also allow for the customisation of RSS feed formats which is definitely a plus.
Additionally, you can determine what file type you want your files to be associated with, such as .html or .php.
However, it is worth noting that if you using a static page extension, you will then have to apply a .htaccess edit to allow the parsing of include statement you may wish to use in your templates.
Overall, customisation is good, especially for those who want to create a really involved customisation experience.
Posting
The posting interface for MovableType is very clean and simple to follow – the screen is very much skewed to the left side of the screend within 800 pixels, and the admin navigation follows a left-hand column. This means that you are always focussed into the same small area of your computer screen, which makes looking for different functions very easy and simple.
However, actually using the functions can be overly complicated – for example, to assign a post to multiple categories, you first have to write and save the post, then once reloaded you have to then click a link for multiple categories, then assign individual categories, before saving the multiple category list and then re-saving the individual entry again. It’s a silly process that begs to be simplified, and is made additionally unfriendly by the fact that the category list refuses to acknowledge any category heirarchy you may have developed – so main categories are all jumbled up with sub-categories, making the process user-unfriendly.
Editing
Another big drawback with MovableType is editing – the software is built on a Perl platform that requires you to “rebuild” the site when you make small changes to template files, for example. This means that the database and your blog pages will not update simply because you’ve changed them, but instead you have to manually update the entire site to implement these changes. While this process may only involve one click, with blogs of even a modest size, it can take quite some time for all of the pages to update, because MovableType has to update each post according to each category of template individually. So the software will first begin to update main pages, then category pages, and then individual post pages, and the whole process itself is slow and clumsy and not what you would expect this side of the 21st century internet.
Spam
Spam control on MovableType is absolutely dire, and there is no spam control option in the default MovableType installs to 3.15. Instead, the company behind MovableType, SixApart, has left it to third-parties to develop anti-spam measures, which in my opinion shows an appalling lack of accountability, responsibility, and concern for actual spam issues. This is all the more galling when these third-party tools are not properly compliant will many server set-ups, and so cannot be installed by many users.
This is all the ore important because MovableType blogs are routinely targeted en masse by automated scripts, looking to add links especially, to porn, gambling, or pharmaceutical sites, to MovableType blogs.
While MovableType relatively recently allowed for comments to be moderated, and comment links to be redirected (apparently just to help their server loads), trackbacks remain unmoderated.
This means that if you plan to allow trackbacks on your blog, then you face a daily clean-up of trackback spam from your blog, which again, because of the Perl platform, can be a slow and labourious process.
The bottom line is, if you wish to allow comments and trackbacks to operate on your MovableType blog, you should probably have to employ and manage anti-spam tools from third-parties.
RSS
MovableType offers multiple RSS formats, such as Atom, RSS 0.92, and RSS 2. However, these only apply to the latest overall blog entries, and there is no default option to allow RSS of individual categories.
Price
There are various pricing options for MovableType. There is a free option, so long as you leave the footer backlink to the main MovableType site untouched, with various pricing options according to whether you wish to remove the footer link or use the blog for multiple users, or for a commercial environment.
Support
Ticketing support comes with paid packages and is very good – responses are prompt and helpful and should see most issues addressed pretty quickly.
There is also a community forum where you can try and get involved on answers. However, it seems to be populated by just a small core of enthusiasts, and MovableType staff appear surprisingly silent, especially on feedback issues.
Conclusion
MovableType seems somewhat outdated by todays PHP/SQL standards, and comes across as a generally clumsy application to administrate.
While it remains one of the more advanced applications for administrating multiple blogs, the fact that it allows little or no spam protection means that its usefullness as a large-scale blog application remains limited at best.
Individual users may find it a good solution for small blogs and content solutions, but there remain better options available.
WordPress
Installation
Installation of WordPress is relatively simple, with a simple auto-install script once you have a database ready for use, which is easily enough done in most website administration panels such as CPanel, Ensim, and Plesk.
Although those unused to installing scripts may feel a little nervous at first, there should be no undue complications. Anyone who has installed software to a website before should find it a breeze.
Customisation
WordPress is very simple to customise, with only a handful of HTML files to be edited. If you want to keep things simple, you can even customise WordPress to run everything from a single template file, which makes customisation very easy indeed.
Setting up page titles to keyword anchors is easily achieved, and there should be no headaches with general editing of the HTML templates.
Additionally, WordPress has a couple of extremely good additional customisation features that are well worth mentioning.
The first is that it has a very flexible mod_rewrite option for choosing you URL structure for use on Apache servers, which is extremely useful for search engine optimisation purposes.
The second is that WordPress benefits from a superb templating system that allows the easy import of ready-made template files, which can then be selected, used and edited at will from the admin control panel.
Additionally, WordPress also allows you to create static pages within the blog, which is a great way to create static reference and FAQ pages.
Overall, together these make WordPress extremely flexible – and even fun – to customise.
Posting
The posting interface in WordPress is spread across a stretched page, which spreads the interface across the entire screen under a top navigation bar. The posting area is offset left, the categories are offset right, and more advanced options such as date/time editing are widely spread-out underneath.
While not difficult to use, it does mean that unlike MovableType, you may find yourself having to turn your head and scroll to select and edit posting options, rather than just moving your eyes. This can make posting seem like more work than it needs be, though it’s a small annoyance most users will probably not notice when operating just the one blog.
However, selecting multiple categories is very easy and simple, simply requiring a click on each category you wish to post to. This is a very useful feature for creating useful information-rich pages across related content.
Editing
Editing of posts, pages, and categories is very simple. As it runs on a PHP/SQL backend, everything updates immediately. It is a very simple and uncomplicated system to manage.
Spam
All comments and trackbacks are set to moderated on a default install, which offers immediate protection against spam, especially for the novice user. Additionally, for the more experienced user, there is an anti-spam system that allows you to filter comments and trackbacks automatically according to a keyword list, and you can customise this list and directly upload new sets from WordPress itself via the admin panel. Additionally, there is even an in-built option to filter out open-proxies, which are IP addresses open for use and abuse by third-parties.
Generally excellent blog spam protection.
RSS
WordPress offers both Atom and XML formats, in almost everything it does. The main blog doesn’t simply have RSS functionality, but also offers feeds for each category by default. Each topic also has an RSS feed if required.
Price
WorldPress is completely free.
Support
WordPress only offers support via the WordPress community forums, which are based on WordPress’s own somewhat curious attempt at forum software. However, although not the most intuitive interface to use, you will likely get replies to your questions relatively quickly – though prepare for a little haughtiness from php coders.
Conclusion
WordPress offers a very simple and powerful blogging and content management tool, packed with pretty much all of the feature that the new to moderate experienced webmaster should require.
However, although sleek and simple for the individual user, WordPress lacks the sophisticated vision of multiple blog administration, and therefore falls down in terms of ambition.
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