WordPress Vs. Movable Type

Jul 3, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 4 Comments

So, which is the better blogging software? WordPress or Movable Type?

Movable Type is one of the older blogging packages. Once they were the cutting edge, and the most popular blogging tool. Nowadays, that title has been given to WordPress.

WordPress, though in development back in 2001, is officially successor to the old B2 blogging script. I don’t believe they share any code, though. Currently WordPress is the most popular blogging tool, thanks to it’s power, flexibility, and ease of use.

Can Movable Type still compete with WordPress? Let’s see.

WordPress

WordPress is my absolute favorite blogging software.

  • Installation (4/5): Installing WordPress is pretty darn simple. You FTP the files to your server, and point your browser to the installer script. In about three steps, the whole thing’s installed.
  • Write Post Page (5/5): Very neat and organized, with plenty of advanced features.
  • Admin Panel (4/5): The color scheme of the admin panel is getting a little boring, but other than that it’s great.
  • Themes (5/5): There’s an abundance of pre-made themes available for WordPress, and it’s real easy to make your own, using the “template tags”.
  • Plugins (4/5): There are plenty of innovative plugins available for WordPress, and they’re fairly easy to install.
  • Software License: Totally free.
  • Importing Content (5/5): WordPress can import posts and comments from a wide selection of blog systems besides its own. Blogger, Blogware, DotClear, GreyMatter, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Typepad, RSS, and Textpattern. Pretty impressive list eh?
  • Feature Set: 4/5
  • Overall: 5/5

Movable Type

I tried-out Movable Type for a little while, and I’m not all that impressed…despite a lot of major websites (think Leaky Cauldron, Rocketboom, Washington Post) being powered by this Perl app.

  • Installation (3/5): First you FTP a large amount of files, then you adjust permissions on certain files, then you launch the installer script. You go through about five screens prompting for information, then the script installs.
  • Write Post Page (4/5): A nice and simple editor, though it can be extended to a more advanced editor with ease.
  • Admin Panel (3/5): Kind of odd looking, but the worst part is the Blogger.com-type “Page Rebuilding” required whenever you publish a post.
  • Themes (4/5): The default theme is atrocious, though themes aren’t too hard to edit.
  • Plugins (4/5): Plugins are available.
  • Software License: You can get a free “Personal” license, but if you want to have more than one author you need to pay for a different license. This is changing with the new MovableType.org Open-Source project.
  • Importing Content (2/5): Movable Type cannot import content from other blog systems.
  • Feature Set: 4/5
  • Overall: 3.5/5

Well, there are some people who like Movable Type. It’s not for everyone though. WordPress is the de facto standard for blogging software, as it’s been since WordPress version 1.5 (currently we’re at 2.1).

EDIT: Apparently MT can import from other platforms. I must have missed the feature when I reviewed it.

  • mtuser

    You wrote: “Movable Type cannot import content from other blog systems.”Not true: http://www.movabletype.org/doc.....-type.html

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  • http://www.vitalvector.com/ Matthew

    Installing Movable Type is much easier if you can unpack the files directly on the server using, for example, the “unzip” or “tar” shell commands. That eliminates the need to FTP individual files or fiddle with permissions.

    The Blogger-style publishing is actually quite nice. By default, a user browsing your Movable Type blog will not hit the database or run any scripts on your server. Web servers are optimized to serve static HTML pages under high loads.

    The PHP and database queries that WordPress runs for each request will bring your server to its knees if an entry gets dugg. The only solution to this problem is WP-Cache, which still runs some PHP, or something more elaborate.

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