I've been not-terribly-happy with the Movable Type experience for a long time now. On the other hand, here I am still using it after something like 9 years. Inertia overcomes ambivalence, up to a point.
Recently Six Apart, makers of Movable Type, announced that they're going to shift focus to become a 'modern media company', SAY Media. The Movable Type software itself is not going to be quite as important a focus for them as before. Ambivalence.. rising.
Dave Cross, Perl hacker, has since switched his blog from MT to WordPress. In his post discussing it, he put into words several points I've also been pondering:
WordPress [Perl Hacks]
[In 2002] Movable Type was the only real choice in this area and it had the bonus that it was written in Perl so I could hack on it if I wanted to. Of course I never got round to doing that.
... There just isn't the community of people producing themes and plugins for MT that is for, say, WordPress.
... Oh, and just to head off some obvious comments - yes, I'm using a blog engine that is built in PHP, not Perl. My operating system isn't written in Perl, nor is my web browser or, indeed, most of the software I use from day to day. It would be great if there was a powerful and popular blogging engine written in Perl. But there isn't, so I'm using this instead.
A commenter asks the next obvious question, "What about Melody, a community fork of Movable Type?"
Oh, I know all about Melody. I'm watching with interest and I'll try out their first release when it appears in the next month or so. But it's going to be some time until they have a community to rival WordPress's.
Related: The Future of Movable Type is Melody [OpenMelody.org]
...we are pleased to announce that we are in the final stages of our first official beta release of Melody 1.0, due out this November. Not only is this release one that fixes a multitude of bugs affecting Movable Type customers today, and not only is it a release that adds plenty of new features people will enjoy using, but it is also a release that looks to the future by folding into the core platform essential infrastructure to support the next generation of designers, developers and users of the platform. It is a release that signals a new era for the platform.
So, I haven't switched to WordPress yet, but I'm strongly considering it. Lyn has had some issues with installing WP upgrades from time to time, but we always get through it somehow.
At the same time, OpenMelody is intriguing and still in Perl.
On the third hand, there's Cross' "Of course I never got round to doing that." Is 'hacking on the blog engine' really ever going to make it onto my todo list? And even if so, I could just as well be hacking on WordPress.
Continuing to ponder.
