WordPress and Movable Type Love
// October 26th, 2004 // 5 Comments » // tagged: Movable Type > WordPress
I'm working on a website for a friend of mine (see the work in progress) -- and all along had planned on using MT as the backend for managing all the content. I'd even talked with SixApart about proper licensing for educational use. The only hitch was the website is hosted on the school systems servers - and they don't have perl. :banghead: And it's not really an option. (Jeff would tell me just to write my own CMS ... but why reinvent the wheel especially when I'm charging non-profit prices for my services anyway!) Sooo ... I figured I would give WordPress a whirl. A few thoughts in the extended entry ... First - I love how fast and easy WP installs. Wham Bam Thank You Maam and it was installed and working. You just have to alter a few very easily found lines in a config file and you're up and running. Second - after working with Movable Type for so long - it's a bit of a mind switch to work with WordPress and their dynamic way of creating pages. WP is super fast ... there's no rebuilding or anything. I'm still trying to figure out how to get a NICE static page url. I know you can do it ... I'll figure it out sometime today hopefully! I really don't want a question mark in my urls. I want the urls to read like www.domain.com/category/page-name. Right now they read www.domain.com/index.php?pagename. I hate that. Third - this is just something I have to get used to. Their templating. Again, I am so familiar with MT's way of doing templates. It is sooooooooooooo customizable. I love MT. Basically, whatever I can think of ... I can do in MT. I love that I can output to a .txt or .inc or .whatever file. In WordPress ... you modify the index template - and that's the template used for basically every output page. Home page, individual entry page, category page. I'm sure you can create new templates ... but where? I'll be surfing the WP forums today and trying to learn new things. Fourth - Said this already, but I have to reiterate ... WP is FAST. It's like ... instantaneous almost. That's due to everything being done "on the fly" I suppose. MT needs to make their new dynamic capabilities a bit easier to implement ... right now it feels like brain surgery. Rebuilding a site that's been online for several years takes a while. Fifth - WordPress has built-in email posting capability. Built-in is the key word there. Sixth - WP doesn't seem to have the capability to have multiple blogs? I guess you can just install it in another directory, but ugh. Seventh - Support and documentation on WP are pretty lacking. But, I have to remember that it's fairly new and doesn't have the userbase that MT does. I'm sure the support will continue to grow as more and more people start using WP. With MT, I know that if I can't figure out how to do something -- all I have to do is go over to the forums and the answer will be there waiting for me. Usually I don't even have to post a question ... I search and wala - I have my answer. Eighth - have I mentioned that WordPress is fast? :bounce: All this said ... it would take a lot to make me want to switch this blog over to WordPress. The whole static page thing bugs me - considering my entire site here is in Movable Type. Every single page - the about me, my fanlistings joined, my guestbook, contact page - everything is in MT. I love that I can create static pages like that. Output in whatever format I want. I'm sure I could figure out a way to do that in WordPress ... but why bother when MT works so perfectly for me? I love having all my entries inline -- my reviews, regular entries, links ... and that I can format them all differently according to the content. I :heartbeat: MT. BUT ... WordPress is very cool. I'm kind of glad that this site I'm working on has forced me to work with another content management system - it's good to learn new things. I'm going to enjoy learning the ins and out of WP - and will definitely consider using it as a CMS option for websites I'm working on.
He's been with us now for more than five months. We love him. He's a part of our family. We thought long and hard before getting him ... because we knew it was a lifelong commitment. This was going to be our dog for forever.
Last week, I got a phone call from the girl who wanted to take him to the pound. She wants to see him. I figured, hey ... why not. We arranged for her to come over yesterday morning. She shows up, with a guy ... and they stay for about an hour before asking us if they can have him back. They really miss him. Yes, they're living in an apartment and would have to keep this big dog inside all day long - but we miss him. :censor:
It's like -- they didn't even take into consideration that MacGyver is a much happier dog now. He's bouncing around with so much energy. He has 3 acres to run and play on at our house. We walk him every day. When we first got him ... he wasn't as active. He was used to being cooped up inside all day long. He's a SIBERIAN HUSKY. They LOVE to run. They HAVE to be active. Anyone who has read anything on the breed knows they need frequent exercise.
I couldn't believe they had the nerve to ask for him back. What did they think? We were just going to say "Oh well... here you go! It's been fun, Mac ... but they MISS you. And don't you want to go hang out in a 800 square foot apartment? Woohoo!" Uh ... no!
These two people who were going to give him to THE POUND. They weren't even going to make the effort to try and find a good home for him themselves. Huskies sell for at least $250 -- and MacGyver is a registered purebred so he would have gone for way more than that. Geez - it would have taken one ad in the pet classifieds here in Nashville to find that dog a good home. But they were just going to take him to the pound.
And now they expect us to just hand him over? So that in 6 months when they get tired of having to take care of such a big dog again, they dump him again?
:yell: Uh no. He's ours now. He is loved. He's part of our family. We have his best interests at heart ... and you don't. :mad:
So, obviously - we said absolutely not. I told them they could visit him (but I'm hoping they don't, because now I dislike them even more than I did before) - but that there's no way we could give him up. No matter what the situation.
Steve and I were even talking later - and if for some horrible reason we had to move to a tiny apartment and couldn't have Mac with us - we would give him to my parents or my grandparents who both have huge yards and they already love MacGyver anyway.
Am I being unreasonable? I don't think so.
Grrrrrrrr.
