scriptygoddess

I should create a new category here for these types of posts "Drama in Blogland". LOL!

So, in a nutshell, I played with ExpressionEngine. Looked very powerful. Played with Textpattern. Looked interesting. Played with WordPress and was very impressed.

There is a lot of room for growth with WordPress. If you're looking to do "everything MT can do and more" – then you may need to wait a little longer. That's not to say it can't be done, I KNOW WordPress can and eventually WILL do it. In my mind, it's sort of the "underdog" – and I love underdogs.

I have a test area going right now trying to make scriptygoddess do (almost) everything it does now – but in WordPress, and it will take some time to complete. (It may even mean some code modifications or custom plugins I create) But that is where I'm going to be putting my energy now.

It's not about licensing for me, anymore. It's about where I think my "developmental" efforts (and public support) are best spent. The answer is WordPress.

So if things are a little quiet the next couple of days – that's where I'll be…

Because I want to encourage communication like this

I have a total of 8 ACTIVE blogs and 3 ACTIVE authors. I have two issues with the current things going on with MT – One is the licensing, which I'll address first. Basically, blogs that are highly visible, used, and/or read – I agree I should pay for. However, the small, "sub blog" or completely private, personal ones – I don't know how that fits in.

Here are the specifics of each use:

Sometimes I set up test blogs to test out a new script or layout – but then delete it later.

I technically have more authors than those 3, because of older posts on scripty (I don't want to delete the authors and then have the posts disappear) – but none of those authors are active anymore.

One of those "3" authors is for BLOGLET! (I just don't think I should count that one as a "valid" author either)

My blogs are as follows:
This one – very public – should and want to pay for it's existence.

My personal journal – password protected but used very often and read a fair amount. Should and want to pay for it's existence.

There is also a "sub blog" related to my personal journal. At the same domain, but in a different folder. It is password protected as well – not read as often as the main journal – not sure I'd be willing to "pay" for this one.

My husband has a completely passworded blog – no one but he (and I) have access to it. It's purpose is to just track certain events – and it's easier to do it online. Not willing to "pay" for this one – a "free" alternative would suit just fine – only using MT for them at the moment becuase it was "there".

I have another, "celebrity photo" blog – very minimal traffic and use. Might be willing to pay for this one.

Two other sites which get very little traffic, are hardly read – are more for "personal information storage" than anything else – Not really willing to "pay" for those either – a "free" alternative would suit just fine – only using MT for them at the moment becuase, again, it was "there".

My other issue is with the fact that they have already released a feature list for MT 3 – and as a NON-DEVELOPER (of PERL) – it was not that extensive. I've been waiting for new features, and I don't feel like I'm getting them. I think in marketing they call this perception of value? Since MT stopped adding major features, I've had to beg borrow steal people to create plugins FOR me. If there are more features in the works – I think they should have come out with that list either BEFORE or AT THE SAME TIME that they released their pricing.

So the problem still remains that whether they want $20 or $200 – my perception of value of this current release is not very high. I wanted new features. I was willing to pay for them. However, I'm not getting them.

Tutorial to move from MovableType to WordPress
(via mamawrite's sidebar this morning – but I think I've seen linked elsewhere as well – and if so I apologize for not giving the credits to you as well)

(FYI – I've got a copy of ExpressionEngine. I won't have time this weekend, but I intend to install and play ASAP! I also plan on installing b2evolution and WordPress. I may just end up running ALL THREE.)

Found this again via the LinkQueen (aka Melissa)

MT pricing update

All I'll say is – Too little. Too late. It's high time I moved to a PHP CMS – and this was just the kick in the pants to finally do it.

Psst… wanna free copy of ExpressionEngine? The first 1000 people to contact them are getting a free copy – and others a competitive upgrade. (I'm working on getting mine right now – I may still yet install and use some other smaller ones that I can tinker with – but ExpressionEngine is too feature-powerful not to turn down – especially with this deal!!)

I read somewhere that 6A is looking for suggestions on how to make things "right" – that's really tough at this point. They waited FAR to long for this release – did NOT communicate enough about what they planned to do – and this release (while I'm sure has lots of backend glitz) I was still really hoping for some snazzy cool fun features that many people have been begging for.

I think its funny that some people point at the ones that don't want to pay and say that we're cheap. But they've missed a fine point. I WILL pay for MT – in fact I already did. MT was "free" but I donated money for two "keys". HAPPILY. Because this was a good product. But it's still missing some significant features in my opinion and for what they're asking for it now – it's simply not worth it. MT PRO should be the "pay" one and MT 3.0 remain free. (Isn't this what we were lead to believe all along?) (And I'm really confused by their saying that it's still a free version – last I checked $70 was still $70. – and that license won't even cover me completely.)

The second problem is that I love PHP. I have always had to work against the grain to get what I wanted MT to do, by using PHP. I waited paitently and faithfully for them to get their act together and release a more feature-rich MT. Which they still have not done in my opinion. Again, if there were more FRONT-END USER BASED (not DEVELOPER based) features – then I would have forked over more cash.

They really put the screws in on their userbase. They've been so secretive about everything (which is really ironic when you think about it – I mean we're talking about BLOG software – software that is used to COMMUNICATE to the PUBLIC – yet they didn't) – and if they had asked their USERBASE what THEY wanted – they probably would have seen this coming.

I'm thinking that maybe they're now strictly going for COMMERCIAL end-users – and see TypePad as the option for users like me. Unfortunately, I like hosting stuff on my own servers. I like tinkering with the blog engine and hacking it to do all kinds of funky stuff. So TypePad is out.

So for me – there's not much that can be done except to do what is LONG LONG overdue and start working with a PHP based CMS. (Still remains to be seen which one I use and WHEN I finally have the time to transfer everything). But the move itself is pretty much set in stone now.

Well this is interesting. Not that I want to start a debate here about this – but I'm very surprised to see the free version of MT 3.0 so limited (in fact – based on what Melissa said, it doesn't even sound like it's even a viable option for me). (Actually, I had no idea there was going to be a PAY MT 3.0 – I thought it was going to be FREE MT 3.0 and THEN "MT PRO" – which would be for pay. Guess I missed that day in class)

I don't know that I'm willing to pay what they're charging for this upgrade – and as far as I know – it doesn't even do many of the things *I* was hoping it would.

Melissa offered a few alternatives –
Drupal
Word Press

I'm even considering writing my own (albeit limited) content management system. At least, THEN I know it will do what I want it to.

But – anyone got any other alternative publishing systems? Or thoughts on these two? WordPress looks nice.. I may download it and check it out.

Update Just wanted to update the post to add this one thing (I posted this in the comments – I'm just repeating it up here):
I'm not against paying for my content management software. I'm just not quite thrilled with the feature list of MT. Sure there's a lot that it does – but there's a lot that it DOESN'T do. Actually – that's what most of THIS blog has been about. MAKING MT do what I want. And usually in very kludge ways because I perfer to code in PHP.

I would HAPPILY pay, even what they're asking, if it would do all this on it's own. I have to WORK to get MT to do what I want – and for that I'm asked to pay a premium??

Update 2: Downloaded TextPattern – but it's only for one blog. I have at last count – 8 blogs (some private, some not) and 2 authors. So WordPress won't work for me either. Looking into ExpressionEngine now…

For some reason I thought I'd bookmarked this site already, but apparently not. I've known about it for awhile. Oh well – better late than never.

Learning Movable Type
Tons of great tutorials.

(Seen on many blogs in the last few days)

Just want to store a little javascript snippet. I needed to grey out the text in a text area depending on if a checkbox was checked or not. I'm sure there's a way to get the function to be flexible enough so that it can be passed the specific parameters of WHICH form, WHICH checkbox, and WHICH textfield to grey out – but my usage was very limited, so I didn't bother going further.
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For the past few weeks, I've been using CSS for my layouts (at work) and I can say that I think I've officially been converted. While I still struggle with the little nuances (see previous post) – it IS starting to make sense to me.

I'm now about to start using CSS in a more involved project in which I create HTML pages and then hand them off for JSP developers to work with.

Previously, one frustrating thing that would happen in these cases is that, while HTML may seem incredibly simple to me – this is not the case for the JSP developers. We would often have many back and forths about what happend on the page when they added their JSP code. What, with all the spacer gifs, nested tables, broken graphics just to maintain the "look" – admittedly, even I would have a hard time going through the markup without a WSYWIG editor handy.

But now with this project – the idea of keeping content and layout seperate suddenly makes perfect sense. I have all my layout stuff going on in a page (i.e. the stylesheet) they won't be touching (Thank god! LOL!) And the HTML they need to work with is INCREDIBLY simple and easy to follow – especially considering the alternative.

I don't have to worry about them messing up my design. And they don't have to worry about scrolling page after page through wacky html table tricks.

Now it starts to make sense