Update – The MT 3.3 Beta has been released. I encourage MT users to get on board and help test – I’d like to see this release go GA shortly, it’s got some REALLY cool features. I’m not planning to upgrade this-here space yet (not ’til they get to at least beta version 2 or […]
Update – The MT 3.3 Beta has been released.
I encourage MT users to get on board and help test – I’d like to see this release go GA shortly, it’s got some REALLY cool features. I’m not planning to upgrade this-here space yet (not ’til they get to at least beta version 2 or 3), but it’s looking pretty solid in my beta-testing blog and I’ve seen no major bugs yet.
SixApart are about to start a beta test of Movable Type 3.3.
The plan as of now is to install that here – maybe not the day it comes out, but shortly after. I’ll likely (If I have time) install 3.3 as a separate installation first to drive it around and see what’s different. If any of you-all who have m’sphere blogs are interested, I’ll point you to it.
I have not seen a change list to see what they’ve added, but I’m hoping it’s 1) good stuff and 2) doesn’t break anything.
While I think MT is the best bloging platform out there, I’m not sure how confident I am in SixApart these days; they seem like they’re letting things get away from them on TypePad and of course they’re spending cycles supporting LiveJournal, which is possibly the worst blogging platform around, if the one with the largest customer base. I’m hoping they get control of that shortly.
of course they’re spending cycles supporting LiveJournal, which is possibly the worst blogging platform around
It is an ARGH of the most ARGH-ness.
You know, I trust you implicitly in pretty much anything you want to do. So go wild.
And as for LJ: yeah, it’s pretty bad. But strangely it makes sense for most of middle America; It’s the simplest interface I’ve seen, and it comes with communities and ready made friends so it has that social network feel. And for a lot of folks that’s what they’re looking for in their blog. I’m glad you’re not, though.
why is lj so bad in so many people’s minds? You know I’m on it, and I love it. I’ve looked at blogspot and places like that, but livejournal meets my needs. I love my “friends page”. I don’t have to go to various websites, etc.
Mel, there’s no question LJ does the trick for certain bloggers. The good thing about LJ is that it straddles the line between blog and community forum; it has all sorts of abilities to show and hide posts by friends lists, and a good threading in the comments.
That’s the good stuff – and the bad stuff.
I don’t want to run a chat room in my blog. If I wanted to run a chat forum I’d install a chat server; my blog is my space. Some bloggers feel different (Hiromi is one such, and she could use a threadded comments feature, which I hope the next gen MT has).
But none of that really covers why LJ sucks. Personally, I simply find it to be a pooly engineered product; as a geek/hacker type, I want something where I have more control of the layouts and functions, where I can make modifications, where I can get to the database. I want something that doesn’t have limited features. I want something where I can batch-delete or publish entries. LJ lacks all this. I’m also no fan of blogger, I think it’s even weaker in many ways than LJ; it lacks some of LJ’s features without really adding much.
Both tools are also annoying in that you have to sign up for local accounts, and they want to keep you inside. When I comment, there’s no way to re-direct you back to my blog if you click on me. Both take you to my dummy blogs on those systems, though of course I’ve found a hack-around for LJ by double-posting everything here and at LJ.
The thing with LJ is that if they could fix the stuff that doesn’t work well, they’d have a great product. But I’ve seen no evidence that they want to fix it, I think they want to eventually roll it into typepad or something. The stuff that’s wrong looks untouched since sixapart took it over.
I like LJ for some reasons. It was the first thing I used (similar to how I used to arguably equally crappy ezBoard as my first forum), and it has most of my friends on it. So, when I wanted to completely switch over to my site, I found myself in a bit of a bind. How to keep up with my friends whilst having more freedom? Luckily, I found the cross-poster off your site.
I agree that it seems to have been a bit ignored since the switchover. I can’t blame him, but its key coder and founder is now the CSA for SixApart, so his additional duties probably keep him away from LJ. And now SA has announced this new product, Vox, which appears to be SA’s attempt to take the best parts of MT, LJ, and Typepad, which is kind of annoying.
Quick question: How do you do the thing where your comments are a different style? Is it some template tag?
Yeah, michael, I’m not sure I like the way SA are going with VOX but – well, we’ll see. I’d like to see them going after something like joomla, a higher-level CMS system, rather than trying to do more of that sorta stuff.
To do the comment style thing, start here:
http://www.learningmovabletype.com/archives/001532how_to_style_author_comments_differently_on_your_mt_blog.php – you need to install a plugin, and then do some surgery on your templates and your stylesheet. It’s not hard if you’re comfy installing plugins and hacking templates but it’s not just a push-button deal. Basiacally the style changes set up how your comments look, and then template changes just say, ‘if commenter is foo@bar.com, use this style’.
Let me know if you need help with that…
Well, that doesn’t look too bad. I’ll have to try it out once I’ve caught up on some sleep. Thanks.