We all love 901am for the content, but ever wonder about the software that powers this site, and why we use WordPress instead of Moveable Type? Here’s why:
Setup and Installation
WordPress is much easier to install. The only part where you have to any work is setting up the MySQL database.
Speed and Efficiency
WordPress generates pages dynamically, which allows flexibility in both design as well as maintenance.
Cusomization
While the default installations of both systems are quite powerful, tweaking Moveable Type can be quite a pain, while themes for WordPress can offer a reprieve. Especially when you get Pearsonified.
Pricing
Wordpress is free.
Digital Dreams has more in-depth comparison of the two platforms.
Originally posted on February 5, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
After using both, here’s my take:
1.The installs are pretty much the same.You move all WP’s files and directories into one directory on your server. Ditto MT, but Six Apart recommends ensuring one of its directories is not inside the cgi directory. Both require prior database creation and both require editing a small file to tell the system about that database. You also need to edit two lines in that same file to tell MT where your files are. (That means you have the flexibility to put files where you want them. I’m not sure if WP offers that.) Older MT releases included a long list of other options in that configuration files. Although they were all set to defaults, the length of the file could intimidate people. New MT release have removed all that.)
2. In my experience, an MT with static pages is faster for the reader than pulling stuff out of the database. Development and site-wide changes are faster on WP, as they are on any of the MySQL-PHP breed. My personal impression of posting time is that it’s annoyingly long on both platforms. MT needs to rebuild a few files at every post (not the entire site), while stuffing data into the database can take a while, especially in a shared hosting environment.
Site-wide changes in MT require a complete rebuild, unless you’ve been clever and factored out things like the header, footer and sidebar into files to be included via SSI or PHP includes.
3. WP’s theme system is a decided plus for casual/amateur users. People who don’t know HML/CSS can change the look of their site by slapping on a theme.
Six Apart needs to address this. (MT includes a default plugin to allow easy installation of new themes, but it requires setup and seems to confuse people who think it isn’t working. I.e., it’s simple, but apparently not simple enough.) Six Apart could start by putting comments into the current template files to explain what their code is doing and why it’s there. Those files are long, messy and complicated, with multiple instances of many elements, and sure to frighten off many would-be theme builders. I know they’re making an effort to standardize these files across MT, MTE, TypePad and LJ, but how long would it take to edit out non-MT code from the MT files? (Also, why was the current 3.34 release set free with “experimental” comment code left in that results in the display of two footer lines for each comment?)
That said, the reward for plowing in and figuring all that out is the ability to leverage an existing powerful framework or to start from scratch with a very fine degree of control.
3. WordPress is free. MT is free for personal use, and allows the creation of multiple sites, which stock WP does not. A single MT license doesn’t cost much and buys you support. Whether that support is better than that provided by the WP community is better judged individually. I would note that the WP wiki, et al, typically force the user to pick and choose among multiple, and different, suggested solutions to a problem.
4. Chris Pearson releases nice free themes. Getting Chris Pearson to design your site is not free.