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45 Responses to “Movable Type vs. WordPress, My Opinion”

chrispian Says:

First, I don’t really like MT that much. That said, building static files is a bonus. The sites I use WP, Nucleus and others on are rather big and with the amount of traffic they get the database server takes a hit. Static files are available even if the database server is not. Pages load faster. We have to use a caching server on our larger sites, which we wouldn’t have to do if the files were static. Something to think about.

May 9th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

Su Says:

MT still has a large Perl backend, and Windows XP still runs on DOS — it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.
WP is built completely with PHP so it is future-proofed so to speak.

I’m sorry, but what do these two statements actually mean? I’m completely baffled. You seem to be equating speed issues in MT with Perl itself rather than say, what MT is doing with it. And how is PHP “future-proofed?”

[Re: MT] Up until the latest release, all your pages needed to be generated

Been there since at least 3.14 according to my archives.
(We’re not going to quibble over major and minor releases, and let’s do keep in mind that 6A actively chose to slow down their release schedule and version number increments. Also, I think WP is using a different numbering scheme, though I’m not sure.)

One of the primary places I see Wordpress winning over MT is the Pages feature. There’s still no particularly elegant way to make a single, essentially static page with MT. On the other hand, something like page templates isn’t that big a deal.

As I’ve said elsewhere, in some ways, I see the theme system WP has built-in as possibly representative of a fundamentally different approach. Whether acknowledged or not, MT seems to have more “get your hands dirty” requirements. Yeah, there’s StyleCatcher, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it in the wild. I do think that new bloggers are leaning toward WP for sheer ease, among many other reasons, and have openly asked if MT is possibly reaching the point where they need to just say it’s a developer tool, and suggest that less invested users be steered toward Livejournal/Typepad/Comet, but we’ll have to see how all that works out.

May 9th, 2006 at 12:07 pm

Mike Rundle Says:

Su, I was just noting that you don’t see many Perl-based, active, open-source publishing frameworks around anymore (were there many to begin with?). Publishing software like EE and WP that use PHP are more friendly to the current breed of developers who may not have the Perl experience but certainly know PHP.

May 9th, 2006 at 12:11 pm

Alan Says:

There’s a couple of other excellent applications out there: ExpressionEngine and TextPattern. The core version of EE is free and worth checking out. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen both running some 9rulers’ sites. :)

May 9th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

Su Says:

Off the top of my head?

• Bloxsom(and derivatives)
• Bricolage
• WebGUI

Or did you mean popular/in the spotlight? Totally different question *grin*
And yeah, that sort of continues my musings just previous about user levels. There are lower-level apps out there; I just wasn’t interested enough to pay much attention to them.

May 9th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

grant Says:

Slashcode (used by Slashdot) is perl based, afaik.

May 9th, 2006 at 1:01 pm

Mike Rundle Says:

Gotcha, yeah I’m sure that there are a number of Perl-based web publishing tools available, but like Su said, they’re probably not as popular. PHP and Ruby on Rails are the more popular web development languages/frameworks out right now, so my thinking is that people would be transferring their skillset over to PHP and RoR instead of still working hard using Perl. Just a guess though.

May 9th, 2006 at 1:03 pm

Jesse Says:

The biggest negative about MT for me was the install. Back when I knew nothing about php, xhtml, css, or any of that stuff. I was able to install wordpress in 20 minutes. About a month ago I decided to give mt a try, and after 45 minutes of fudging with Perl I gave it up. When an average to advanced user can’t install something, you need to give it a long hard look (and yes, I realize I’m not the brightest guy alive, but really)

As for the template tags, MT is very Blogger-esque from the sound of it. blogger uses stuff like $blogitemtitle$ for the different template elements. But the way wordpress runs, it’s really not too different. ?php the_content(); ? isn’t all that much different than $thepost$ or whatever it acually is.

Good post, though, I don’t know much about MT so this educates me a bit

May 9th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

Alvin Says:

Two points which I disagree.

perl is outdated, php is future proof.

You know they used to say the same thing about perl back then and that python was outdated. It always depends on how well the developers get a grip on good programming practice (agile, OO, optimized query…), never much on the programming language itself. The reason why you think php is being used more than perl is because you hang out in ‘that’ circle, that bloggie, web 2.0 cum stylegala circle. Check out sourceforge.net for some really awesome perl projects :-).

..I would never design a WP theme and give it away for free, for the simple fact that I don’t like doing work without getting paid, but I can see the allure for younger designers trying to gain a foothold or get some recognition.

So I guess I’m one of those rare designers who charge 115USD per hour and still released two WP themes. It might sound like a cliché, but funnily for me, my job is/was never about the recognition or the money. Releasing a theme is the same thing too. It’s for the same reason why you would buy a wordpress’s t-shirt or make a donation. Like you mentioned, this is what a strong community is all about. My schedule is jammed with projects too until the end of this year, but in between that, I craft design mockups that have not been used or that I reboot my site and everyone can have my old personal theme. I bet you never done a pro-bono site before either, eh. Those ‘thank you’ notes in emails can mean so much more than any monetary value can bring you, my dear fellow designer :).

May 9th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

Mike Rundle Says:

Alvin, I have, and still do pro-bono work :) I think there’s a mental difference though, between doing a free site for a good cause versus putting my hard work up for anybody to use, for any purpose. That could just be me though, what do you think?

” The reason why you think php is being used more than perl is because you hang out in ‘that’ circle, that bloggie, web 2.0 cum stylegala circle.”

Haha I love that quote! I admit, I haven’t done any hardcore programming in a few years (used to though) but now that I’m strictly on the web dev/design side of things the grass on my side of the fence is PHP and RoR colored. I do appreciate all the great things going on in the Perl community (and all the hot stuff that Amazon does with it) so please don’t get the impression I’m discounting any of that.

Are schools still teaching Perl? I know that a few quarters after I left RIT they were thinking of dropping the Perl course I took and switching over to 100% PHP (3 out of 5 web dev courses were taught in PHP, 1 J2EE, 1 Perl), but I don’t know if that panned out or not.

May 9th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

James Says:

With regards to schools teaching Perl and what not, I just wanted to chime in on my alma matter Kansas State University. While I was there, we never had any classes that taught, or used, programming languages specifically for the web. All our programming was Java, C++, or, *gasp* a COBOL class. However, I learned that right after I graduated, they removed the COBOL class, thank god, and put in a class geared towards web development. In it, I believe, they use PHP.

May 9th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

Ken Says:

Awesome to see another RIT grad out there putting out some great material. Thank you for this primer. As someone who dropped out of blogging for the time being, I’m looking to get back into it, and then this article shows up in my RSS reader.

I’ve always wondered what the fundamental differences were in real world terms between MT and WP.

This primer is just what I needed. Thanks!

May 9th, 2006 at 1:49 pm

Geof Harries Says:

Thanks for this, Mike; exactly what I was seeking.

May 9th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

Sherwin Techico Says:

Wow. Didn’t mean to cause a stir. But I was expecting a reply like this.

Points of interest:

* I agree with the fact that high-traffic sites shouldn’t use dynamic publishing as it might just pound their system(s).

* WP’s strong and active community. I might have to agree with this one too. Long ago before I ventured into the blogging world (after feeling the need to do more with what Blogger provided), I made this a high-priority on my checklist. This was MT’s strongpoint vs. b2cafe, etc.

But I guess we all knew what happend when MT’s pricing was released, and previous MT-users were introduced to this little thing called WordPress. Anyways, I’d still like to point out that there is still a strong and active community in MT, but more led by ProNet members.

* I’m still waiting for when a more well-known designer (Doug Bowman, Shaun Inman, Jason Santa Maria, Didier Hilhorst, Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman, Andy Budd, D. Keith Robinson, etc., etc.) puts out a WP theme, but somehow I doubt that will happen, for the reason I stated above.

…I don’t know about them not doing one for the reason you stated. I think its because they’re busy creating great reads for the rest of us =)

Anyways, thanks for the writeup Mike. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see a marriage of pros between the two. Or, even have a three-way comparison which includes ExpressionEngine. Maybe inviting Veerle, Bryan and others along (peeps who have tested various platforms or have recently switched) to give their valuable insights.

May 9th, 2006 at 2:52 pm

Lindsey Says:

Jesse - the current version of MT takes little to no effort. It’s a matter of uploading the files, chmodding the .cgis to 755 and throwing in some quick database (if you’re using one) and config information. I can install MT just as quick as WP. Well, perhaps not just as quick, but not counting uploading time MT may take 10 minutes (maximum) to get started with. I think the problem with Movable Type is that the User Manaul over-complicates the process.

May 9th, 2006 at 3:58 pm

callistawolf Says:

Another bonus to WP, as far as bringing in new bloggers vs. MT is the fact that it’s included in many webhosts “one click installation” features. I know MT is featured on some webhosts, but more often than not, in my line of work, I run into sites who offer WP over MT. New users will ultimately choose what’s easiest for them.

May 9th, 2006 at 8:08 pm

kristin Says:

Nice writeup.

I was a former “Greymatter” user and converted to b2 because it took so long to publish the static pages (this was wayyyyy before wordpress was around). For this reason I’ve avoided MT. I wasn’t aware that MT doesn’t use the static pages anymore. I’ll have to check it out.

I love the fact that Wordpress uses PHP code for their template tags. It might not be handy for someone who doesn’t know much about php, but I think it makes it much easier and flexible for advanced users.

May 9th, 2006 at 10:54 pm

billg Says:

I decided to give mt a try, and after 45 minutes of fudging with Perl I gave it up.

I’ve installed MT several times and I don’t recall fudging around with any Perl. Yes, you edit a config file that happens to carry a Perl file extension. But, any number of other packages also require editing of raw config files, be they Perl or PHP or whatever. That’s a weakness they share.

Granted, if your server lacks some needed Perl libraries, you’re gonna need to do some installation work. But, the parallel holds true for any language.

I use MT over WordPress because I don’t want to be chained to someone else’s theme and because I don’t know PHP and have no intention of learning it.

In point of fact, though, if you don’t mind the restrictions of a hosted product, there’s no strong reason to go the DIY route with either MT or WP for a run-of-the-mill blog. It’s a parallel to mail servers. Even those of us who know how to run our own mail servers don’t do it because it’s a lot easier to let someone else suffer all the pain.

May 9th, 2006 at 11:07 pm

drk Says:

Thanks for this.

I’ve been using MT internally and externally for a while now and had wondered about alternatives.

Now I know why I should try WordPress.

Now I’ll have a go and see.

Thanks again.

May 10th, 2006 at 7:30 am

boult Says:

Great to see a RIT grads posting here! I do have a site that use MT and is in Dynamic Publishing mode and I average about 40,000 visits per month. When I make small changes to template. the rebuilt time is so short. that’s because I do not have to rebuild all individual pages. I have over 8K enteries which I started since 2002.

I am extremely pleased with MT and I look forward to newer version of MT someday that include more PHP as well as Perl. Perl is not bad thing. Perl is very active in their developer circle. The Plugins directory are big now..

Installation is not the issue. Once it is installed, you forget about it. The only thing you should be concerned is adjusting templates and tweaking since the install is working already. The speed of install is nonissue.

It is intersting to see that my MT site is faster than my PHP based forum, Invision, both use MySQL! That’s because my PHP based forum is pulling lots of sql queries. MT pull fewer queries.

Anyway, It is a thrill to see some RIT grads here..

May 10th, 2006 at 11:17 am

Anil Says:

I have (as you might imagine) lots of comments about this, but the most important thing that I think is overlooked with Movable Type is that we at Six Apart are *very* invested in building the economy and ecosystem around Movable Type.

That manifests itself a few ways:
* We don’t compete with consulants for services, we refer business to our Professional Network members.
* We encourage template developers and plugin designers to charge money for their work, instead of assuming that their products aren’t worth being paid for.
* We encourage authors and community members to profit from their knowledge, which is why there’s half a dozen books on Movable Type in English alone. (If you count non-English languages, there are probably another 20 books worldwide that cover MT.)
* We sponsor people’s work with efforts like our plugin contest and the current style contest, and with our Affiliate Program that lets people make money on our platforms.
* We’re working to require less technical knowledge for creating blogs, meaning you can focus on your actual business. So you can build a Movable Type blog in Dreamweaver or GoLive, define default templates for all your blogs, manage them all in one place, and then focus on helping create content or devise strategy.

There’s lots more, but I think those are some of the highlights of how we’re trying to move the focus of business blogging from software and technology and into higher-level benefits. Blogs can help achieve really important goals, like building your business or improving your communications… that makes simple comparisons like Perl vs. PHP pale in comparison.

(Of course, we support both PHP and Perl plugins. ;))

May 10th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

toni Says:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=movabletype%2C+wordpress&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all

May 10th, 2006 at 6:21 pm

Ed Charles Says:

I’m using both as a non technical person. Installing MT is pretty easy but trying to install plug-ins is a nightmare. I’ve totally given up on Stylecatcher and others. With Wordpress it all seems so easy – and it’s themes are easy to import – although you are right that the interface isn’t as polished. I know this sounds pretty stupid to a lot off tech types but part of the poit of blogging is to make it easy for the non-tech types and too much user documentation is written by tech types.

May 10th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

Su Says:

Toni, would you care to tell us what that graph means to you?

May 10th, 2006 at 8:53 pm

pillguy Says:

I have tried MT, WP, Joomla, Mambo (the fomer), Nucleus, Geeklog, and Drupal.

I am still on Drupal after a year. Wonderful CMS. Anyone use it?
http://www.drupal.org

May 10th, 2006 at 11:42 pm

Jesse Gardner Says:

Certainly an important discussion to have. I climbed aboard the MT boat about a year and a half ago, so I’m a bit of a latecomer to all of this. A few thoughts from an avid MT supporter who hangs out with avid WP supporters:

First, there will always (?) be the divide between MT’s and WP’s pricing. I completely understand Six Apart’s reasoning behind charging for the business platform: investment capital. Companies support a team that in turn supports a product and enhances that product. The drawback however is that as all our web design younglings get their hands on free copies of WP, they become familiar with it and–you know the drill–you often use (and suggest to customers) what you know.

Second, I agree that MT’s install is difficult. I can do it now in about 7 minutes flat, but most people I know could not do it on their own. We throw around ‘chmod’ and ’set up databases’ like they’re out of a children’s book. But remember from whence we came; we were not always so smart. So we realize that MT requires a bit more know how, but is the payoff worth it?

It has been in my case. Typical scenario: Client A asks me to design a site. I suggest MT to power it. I install, I customize, I tweak until updating the site is easier than spitting watermelon seeds and the client never has to look at the templates. Thus PROGRAM INTERFACE takes precedence, and thus the native hue of WordPress is sicklied o’er with a pale cast of difficulty. In fact, despite that the MT interface is much easier to get around in, I still think there’s much further to go towards making it easier, especially with the current explosion of Ajax-rich apps. If they can do it with TypePad, they should at least offer plugins to do it with MT.

Finally, there’s the Six Apart factor. If a problem comes up with a WordPress installation, Company A rants to Web Designer Jones, the guy who installed it. Jones then turns to the WordPress community for answers. Now, in a perfect world, we’d all hold hands, dance naked with flowers in our hair and respond to a community need at the drop of a hat. But in the real world, a company is more likely to look for support from a company that gets paid to do what they need, rather than from a volunteer effort. Most decent sized companies don’t mind throwing down a few hundred bucks for the peace of mind that comes with a company-backed product. (e.g. MS Office vs. OpenOffice)

I have not sworn allegience to any side, but I’ve really been satisfied with MT’s community as well as the company. I guess I’d sum it up like this: WP may be easier to slip on and get comfortable in, like a pair of jeans you wear around the house; but when it’s time for the business meeting, you take the extra time to shine the shoes, iron the shirt, knot the tie…

May 11th, 2006 at 12:05 am

toni Says:

Su, the graphs means to me that assuming that Google search volume is a reasonable proxy for the growth and vitality of a product, WP is doing a lot better than MT.

May 11th, 2006 at 1:15 pm

Jesse Says:

“I use MT over WordPress because I don’t want to be chained to someone else’s theme and because I don’t know PHP and have no intention of learning it.”

I don’t know PHP either, but I can design wordpress themes.

the fact that there’s a <?php ?> between everything doesn’t make it php. It’s actually very close to a template system, as you have tags for everything (the comments, the loop, etc.)

May 11th, 2006 at 2:08 pm

James Says:

Someone posted a Google Trends link above, however it lacked possible spacings in the names, here is an updated link:

Google Trends for: movabletype, wordpress, movable type, and word press

May 11th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

Anil Says:

Using the same technology, I have proven that sudoku is more popular than God. Or, it could be that people don’t talk that much about established technologies, whether it’s PowerPoint or iChat or FTP. After a while, you just start using a tool, instead of searching for it.

May 12th, 2006 at 2:16 am

Jesse Says:

Come now, Anil. The difference is that God is on a flat level, while sudokus have gained popularity recently. Movable type is on a slow decline on the graph while wordpress is on a spike. there’s a fairly obvious difference

May 12th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

Su Says:

(Mike, sorry for the double. Slippery fingers.)
And Wordpress also had a release much more recently, then a security update, then a major plugin, then the April Fool’s joke, which I seem to recall got a good bit of attention itself.

So. We’ve learned that people make large assumptions when viewing graphs(without axis labels![1]) whose underlying logic they don’t necessarily understand and which don’t use a full data set in the first place while making unspecified “approximations”(read the footer), and that linking to said graphs without comment is probably a bad—and definitely useless—idea.

How about debating something you can actually back up?

[1] Why is this important? Well, it’s obviously scaled, because apparently almost nobody talks about OS X at all.

May 12th, 2006 at 3:28 pm

mustaq Says:

i found finding good mt themes its very hard any suggestion

May 13th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

Sam Says:

On the topic of Wordpress’ admin, have you see Broken Kode’s work on Shuttle? It’s looking very very nice.

May 14th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

Jesse Gardner Says:

Hey Mustaq… if you’re looking for some MT themes, check out The Style Contest. We’re still in mid-contest and we’re pushing 80 individual themes, many of which support multiple layout structures. Not all of them are great, but you may find something there you like!

May 14th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

Jesse Gardner Says:

I’m sorry… here’s the working link for The Style Contest. Sheesh.

May 15th, 2006 at 8:56 am

la vie viennoise Says:

Looking forward to the improved backend for WP. I agree about the MT install. It put me off MT for life. A lot less technical issues with WP. Have a Typepad site and a bunch of WP sites though. The presentation with MT has always been top notch. A privilege to use.

Jesse, I don’t like your graphs on OS X. Try this or this or this instead.

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

May 22nd, 2006 at 3:29 am

John Athayde Says:

Like Kristen, I was a greymatter user after I tired of Blogger’s setup. MovableType came out around 2000 or so and was far more stable than Greymatter had been. I’m still running movable type, but currently skipping right over WordPress in favor of Typo. Since everything else I’m building is in Ruby on Rails at this point, it made sense. Typo isn’t the end all be all of a weblog engine mind you. It’s just another variant.

At the end of the day, does the tool help you communicate? if not, trash it.

May 24th, 2006 at 3:30 pm

Tom Webster Says:

Enjoyed this, Mike–since (as you know) I chose to stay with Movable Type for our site redesign. I think there is another aspect to this debate–one that might not be as important to many of the developers and designers who read this blog, but one that is very relevant to folks like me. I blogged about it here, but essentially it all comes down to where I can put support in my budget–as a fixed cost, or a variable (and unknown) cost. What makes Wordpress so attractive to so many is the fact that it is free–but I don’t want free.

June 3rd, 2006 at 12:30 pm

Praca John Says:

yes…. i prefer movable type! but… i don’t have cash;) to buy licence for multiuser…. and… wordpress is for free… so i’m using wordpress;)

July 29th, 2006 at 3:13 am

dj Says:

Hey all — was hoping that someone could clue me in on a total n00b CSS issue:

I’m trying to customize the Random Image Theme for Wordpress, and I’m running into a small — but *incredibly annoying* — problem.

I’m trying to make the background of the content area white. The background of navigation column that runs down the right side is not plain white (FFFFFF). Rather Photoshop’s color picker claims that it’s F9F9F9 — but this isn’t anywhere in the style.css file. There is a .alt that has a background set at F8F8F8, but when I change that to FFFFFF, it doesn’t help.

Where is that shading coming from?

many thanks…

July 31st, 2006 at 8:55 am

zooplah Says:

Granted I’ve never used MT, but it seems those XML-like tags would be limited. WP, OTOH, allows you to use PHP programming constructs. Doing simple things like surely doesn’t have much more of a learning curve than , but in actually doing something, the WP way would be more powerful. Unless of course, MT allows embedding of Perl in your templates, but then Perl is a much fussier language than PHP.

Maybe there’s an inherit difference between MT and WP *users*. Most MT blogs I’ve seen use the dull, minimalist default theme, but nearly all WP blogs use a third-party theme (or at least tweak the defualt theme a bit). Different strokes for different folks, you know.

August 11th, 2006 at 11:43 am

NetChick Says:

Hi! Thanks for this very detailed overview of your impressions between the two solutions.

I’m migrating from B2, which I understand has some basis in WordPress now, and have decided to go in that direction based on the overview above as well as the consideration of porting over all my current 800 or so entries and comments to the new system.

I’ll be back, Mike!

August 23rd, 2006 at 12:31 pm

Pozycjonowanie Says:

I am extremely pleased with MT and I look forward to newer version of MT someday that include more PHP as well as Perl. Perl is not bad thing. Perl is very active in their developer circle. The Plugins directory are big now..

November 1st, 2006 at 4:26 pm

Private Label Rights Says:

IMHo Wordpress is the best, there are so many contributors right now so it’s not just a blog platform, you can build everything with it.

June 7th, 2009 at 4:48 am

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