Giving blogs with Movable Type
This is part of a larger, ongoing series which examines how - in 2005 / 2006 - you can give people blogs. Visit the contents page to see the lot (or suggest more content!) or grab the feed to keep up with new stuff!
How can you give blogs with Movable Type?
No review of blogging tools is complete without an examination of Movable Type (MT) as one of the most mature, sophisticated and functional blogging platforms around. As a blog engine there’s little you can say to fault it, pretty much every feature you could ask for and no shortage of practitioners out there. So, as a multi user blogging system it looks pretty well placed too.
Probably the most significant positives and drawbacks come from the fact that, unlike much of the competition, MT is far from free. In a commercial setting this will set you back US$1300 for 50 users, in not-for-profit use US$325 for the same number and in educational contexts US$1300 for up to 3000 students. However, before this makes you up and run away it means that you also get technical support and installation included… which might be a fair bit more affordable that the hourly rate charged by that blog consultant setting up your open source system.
How do the blogs work?
Very simply, straightforwardly and with a minimum of fuss. Blogging from the users POV is no big challenge here although the administrators experience might be a little more difficult.
I haven’t seen (and the licensing would make me guess that there isn’t) simple ‘create new blog’ form functionality associated with this and I’ve heard more gripes about MT from an admin perspective than I’d care to mention and haven’t come across any successful LDAP integration either… although I’d happily be proved wrong here.
“Centrally managing 400 blogs was difficult with the blogging tool we used (Movable Type)”
But having said that, having an experienced company lead you through might make it all a bit easier…. and that was a several months back so things may well be quite different now.
Other stuff
No discussion of MT is complete, unfortunately, without the mention of comment spam. In many ways the tool is a victim of it’s own success in this sense as 1st gen comment spammers has little more to aim for and consequently it’s become somewhat of a spam honeypot. Anyone looking to install the free version of MT needs to be 100% aware of this…. am not sure how well later versions stack up.
Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.
About:
August 15th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
[…] ve people blogs. Visit the contents page to see the lot (or suggest more content!) or grab the feed to keep up with new stuff! How can you give blogs with Movable Type? […]
August 15th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
[…] source) 1. WordPress Multi User 2. Drupal 3. pLog 4. Blojsom 5. Roller (commercial) 1. Movable Type 2. Manila Giving a Blog - Examples 1. Blogger 2. LiveJournal 3. MSN Spaces 4. […]
August 17th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
I like MT. I’ve uploaded and launched a few MT blogs. It is, by comparison to Drupal - the other you’ve reveiwed - much more complex and ‘clunky’ in my experience.
The new 3.2 version is better, though. And, multiple blogs are easier to implement than before. Rebuilding pages, fixing templates, etc. is made easier with the new version - but, it is still clunky. MT is still more of a developer’s, or experienced hosting provider’s, tool. I know those in that community would argue with me on that, but that’s my impression.
MT is not for the faint of heart. Great software, though. Nice people in the developer community. A good sampling of plugins. Significant number of themes. All of those aspects are growing.
For spam, the only one I’ve found that really gives you a fighting chance is WordPress. And, even there, you have to implement several together - along with captcha - to do the job well.
September 9th, 2005 at 1:08 am
[…] Blojsom, Roller, Elgg e Manila). Pubblicato in Novità e aggiornamenti da Sergio Maistrello alle 16:57 | […]
September 14th, 2005 at 5:10 am
I just bought movable type 2 weeks ago to put a blog on my website http://www.education-homepage.com and can’t get it to work at my server. I was thinking about using there typepad hosting?
In the meantime I went to blogger.com and created my first blog ever and brand new blog called “Worlds Best Teachers Blog” and just posted my first post on 9-11-05. http://worldsbestteachers.blogspot.com/
I have 2 weeks left on movable type 30 day guarantee and I need some professional opinions. Is this the best software out there for blogging on my own website domain? There has to be something easier to use?
Should I keep movable type or give it back? I had consultants give me quotes to get this up on my server, but Im having my doubts on how easy is this to use once I get it to work?
What I really want is the trackback feature of movable type?
What blog software is best to create 500 blogs on one domain?
PS - I need to list my new Worlds Best Teacher Blog on some Education Blog sites, any recommendations?
October 24th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
No discussion of MT is complete, unfortunately, without the mention of comment spam. In many ways the tool is a victim of it’s own success in this sense as 1st gen comment spammers has little more to aim for and consequently it’s become somewhat of a spam honeypot. Anyone looking to install the free version of MT needs to be 100% aware of this…. am not sure how well later versions stack up.
MT 3.2 deals with the spam problem very well. I moved to Wordpress when 1.5 came out because it became intolerable on MT 3.1 - you either put up with the spam or installed a plug-in which appeared to be a factor in causing continual internal server errors. I moved back when 3.2 came out and it’s worked very well - it traps nearly all the spam and I’ve always examined the trapped posts and not found a false positive yet. I run three blogs, and it’s more convenient to have a single web interface than three Wordpress installations.