Wordpress vs Movable Type

In the battle for the best blogging platform we found two professionally designed and coded apps, Wordpress and Movable Type.  Movable Type has been around for a while and it’s a free open source application just like Wordpress however the design and organization of this tool is far simpler than Wordpress’s, some users might prefer this tool over Wordpress because the admin interface is so much better.  In fact, the entire power of Movable Type resides in the fact that it is very well organized and thier drop down menus make things easy to manage, the power and flexibility of the tool is excellent as well.

Multi-Blog Multi-User Capabilities:

Movable Type is designed to manage multiple sites and multiple users all with just one instance of the application, they can easily be managed from the main tab which is right next to the reddish “write entry” button in the admin area.  Wordpress users are unable to manage multiple domains if they are using the basic version and not the MU (multiple-user) version.  Some Wordpress users argue that using the multiple blog functionality can be very tricky because there need to be new tables created in the MySQL database every time a new blog is added.  The guys at Wordpress have said that it is done that way because users who outgrow their server capabilities might want to segment the data during migration and this format makes things a lot easier.

Wordpress also offers a multi-domain plugin which does all the nasty work for users who are not very confident about tweaking and changing values in MySQL databases.

Template Management:

Auto-save features is what makes Movable Type very convenient compared to Wordpress’s template management system located under the presentation tab.  Movable Type has a it’s template management screen under the design tab, this screen allows you to modify index templates, archive templates, template modules, template widgets and system templates.  The appearance of the template editor is very useful because it is clean, the window can be resized by dragging its edges, each line is numerated to make it easy for users to debug errors and the main template tags are highlighted setting it apart form text or any other type of code.

Movable Type can auto-save your template modifications, this way if something happens while you are changing the templates (browser or pc crash, etc) you can easily recover your data without loosing it.  Wordpress’s template management screen is very simple and doesn’t have the nice debugging and auto save features found in Movable type.

Besides template management and multi-domain control Movable Type also offers a wide array of modules or plugins which can expand the core functions of this application but for those who need more from this tool there is a paid version which is meant for businesses, these are called commercial licenses and what they do is that they provide all the power of the Movable Type core version and then ad value to the platform by providing support and help with custom tools and plugins for the site being developed.  Wordpress in the other hand is free for all activities however there is no dedicated support if something needs to be solved, to address any Wordpress related issue users must access the forums where their questions will be answered in a timely fashion; but whatever platform you choose you simply can’t go wrong with these two blog script leaders.

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