Ben Tshin

My sister is back home and we got talking about techy-geeky things and blogs.

We took a look at something on her site and she complained about how tacky or boring it looked. I think it was still using the original design style from Movable Type. So being familiar with WordPress and blogs in general I know that it’s relatively easy to change styles since it’s all in the CSS. So we find the thing to choose designs and off we go. But for some reason MT messed everything up with the sidebars.

I am my sister’s tech saviour. I provide hardware (i.e.: Canon PowerShot A560, Western Digital Passport 120GB, et al.), software (Windows & Office) and most importantly movies and TV shows (i.e.: Ugly Betty, Prison Break). So now I am my sister’s blog saviour.

I’ve used MT on my previous blog, and my brother currently [nominally] uses it as well. The gripe is the user interface (or user experience) for MT3.33 is clunky, static and just plain yuck. WP2.3 just seems light years ahead. I feel like a geek to say it, but WP is just better web.

But that’s not the big issue. The main issue is open source software. SixApart, a for-profit company) is the primary developer of MT. So they took the originally open source MT2.x and made it “closed source” for MT3.x. Lots of Movable Type developers fled and created WordPress.

Now look: MT4.x is once again being released as open source (Movable Type Open Source). And now SixApart is playing catch up. Too bad. Movable Type was a pioneer, but WordPress is the new king of the playground. Just don’t mention Google and Blogspot/Blogger.

So my mini-task for this week: migrate my sister’s blogs from MT and Blogspot to WordPress. I pray for clear skies and strong tailwinds.