I’m thinking about dumping Movable Type as my blogging software of choice. It’s getting unbearably slow, rebuilding every time I make an entry; and the spam is getting out of hand. I don’t know if upgrading to their new system will make much of a difference, but since it costs upward of $100, I want to start looking at other software packages out there knowing that I”ll have to pay.
If you have a blog, tell me what software you use and what you’d recommend about it.
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I’ve been using Textpattern. It’s fast, it’s light, it uses the “Textile” HTML shorthand, and it’s completely dynamic. For some reason I have yet to comprehend, I’ve also had no blog spam since I changed over.
Textpattern is also GPL, so it’s not likely to go the way of Moveable Type.
The only problem I’ve had with it is it takes a lot of work to set up a “browse the archives” feature — which explains why Thudfactor doesn’t currently have that.
I’ve tried Mambo, Drupal, and WordPress too — in my opinion, Textpattern is the easiest to deal with and the most reliable.
Last June I switched my blog from MT to WordPress for many of the same reasons you note. I’m very happy with the change. WP uses a MySQL database and PHP to keep track of the posts and build the pages, all of which is much faster than MT.
Incidently, you don’t need to know much about either PHP or MySQL except how to set up the database with your host. With my host it involved clicking a couple of buttons and keeping the names straight. As an added bonus, it seems to be much better at blocking spam.
WordPress is a free, open source project. You can find the download and other information at http://wordpress.org