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MovableType 4 vs. Wordpress 2.2

mashable.com — Many bloggers, when first setting things up, are faced with one of the most critical decisions any blogger can make, that is, which CMS to use? There are many out there, all with their respective pros and cons. In this post, I ’ll be looking at several key aspects pertaining to two of today’s premier CMS: Wordpress 2.2, and MovableType 4.

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  • BluKnight, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14Good comparisons and readability. Definitely worth a look.
    • mark2005, on 10/10/2007, -8/+2Agreed
    • Sartori, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5One thing not mentioned is that Wordpress only works with MySQL, while Movabletype runs on multiple backends including PostgreSQL a file-based database. I literally can't use WP on my webhost, so I use MT. I'm surprised that the comparison didn't include this.
    • lava, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2it seems MT really wants to gain market share now. Anil Dash, VP of Six Apart, even commented on a post where I say I'm switching to wordpress. He was asking why I didn't go with MT. It was surprising, since no one gives a ***** about my blog. You can read his comment here... http://www.herecomesthescience.com/general/switching-to-wordpress/
  • firefox15, on 10/10/2007, -3/+22Wordpress just has more backing IMO. The vast amount of themes and extensions outweigh what MT can offer.
    • Sarawanan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Yeah, I use WordPress for themes and plug-ins. Hopefully WP dashboard looks better in future releases, I guess next major one would be 3?
    • sint4x, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Which makes MT excellent for the serious professional who wouldn't mind theming it (if they could) or paying to get one themed.

      The blog stats - although I do not know what they are for - are something I would like to see on WordPress.
  • nontitle, on 10/10/2007, -11/+12Personally, I use drupal because it looks cleaner and it is a bit easier to use. Although wordpress is more powerful, i prefer drupal.
    • anewname, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2Second. It seems faster too.
    • ahknight, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1No idea why they're burying you, Drupal runs everything I have, from simple blogs to whole sites.
    • championchap, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3From what I heard it was the other way around?
      I thought Drupal was more powerful, but a little difficult to set up compared to wordpress.
      I've never actually used Drupal though, so could somebody perhaps enlighten me?
    • jared9985, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1yeah you definitely have it backwards. Drupal is a lot more powerful that Wordpress. That is a well known fact among the development community. Saying Wordpress is more powerful than Drupal is like saying PHPbb is better than vBulletin... while PHPbb is a great alternative, it just can't compare to the complexity of vBulletin
  • limezor2, on 10/10/2007, -14/+15Down after 25 Diggs? Must be using Wordpress.
    • tedhead2k, on 10/10/2007, -1/+23That would be funny if the site was actually down.
    • phoenixkiula, on 02/04/2008, -0/+0WP 2.3 is every bit as powerful as EE, and significantly more powerful and simpler than MT4. Most of the real functionality in MT is hidden behind the PRO version, so it's a moot discussion. And if you want your WP site to stand up to digg-ing, use WP-Cache and eAccelerator, as every sane person does.
  • tamarindwolf, on 10/10/2007, -18/+0WTF is CMS?
    • thorbergdt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Content Management System... obviously you probably don't need either WP or MT
      • tamarindwolf, on 10/10/2007, -9/+0Thank you. but.. don't you dare use abbreviations again.
        • Atomic1fire, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Wordpress is not a cms
          its a blogging software
          phpnuke or e107 is a cms
          you dont see forum modules for wordpress or movable type now do you
          • dtxcon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1WordPress can be used as a CMS, with the blog appearing on an inner page. I've used Joomla, Drupal and PHPNuke, among others. For my needs, WordPress is a better solution for most of my small business clients. Here are a few forum modules for WordPress: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Forums I've personally integrated SMF, PHPBB and vBulletin forums with WordPress.
          • Icebox3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0WordPress IS a CMS as it's a system to manage content - but revolving more around the blogging side of things.
    • Sarawanan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Content Management System
  • wofldibofl, on 10/10/2007, -14/+2Wordpress is a friggin joke... i mean comeon, have you ever seen a wordpress page not down after getting dug ?
    • Sarawanan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Yeah, I've had my wp powered sites hit frontpage during peak times. No damage ever done, it's just a matter of hosting or lack thereof.
    • grammarpolice, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10Dude, most wordpress sites go down because of cheap hosting. When setting up the installation it asks for the database server info, and most cheap hosting providers gather all of its customer's databases onto one server. To not let every customer's site go down when one site goes very popular, they cut off that persons access to more hosting. There are many sites that use wordpress, and when they hit the front page they don't go down because they have awesome hosting plans and processing power.
    • Icebox3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2To think a site goes down because of WordPress is incredibly dumb. There are millions of people using WordPress - if, for some bizarre reason, a site could go down because of that software, don't you think the creators of WordPress would've fixed it? Please, think before you type.
    • sint4x, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2We all know you could certainly run MT on a 133 Mhz machine and it could handle digg no problem!
  • wjackson, on 10/10/2007, -7/+1CMS = Content Management System, man.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
  • DudleyInnocent, on 10/10/2007, -6/+0I personally prefer PHP over Pearl always since I've found it's easier to jump in and start patching code if I see fit.
    • timdorr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2So, you're saying Wordpress is better because you have to modify the source code to get it to work the way you want? o_O?
    • Eleo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If I'm not mistaken, Movable Type is currently using a bit of both, but I'm not sure which language is handling which tasks.
    • sint4x, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I think the benefit here is that its is easier to make your own plug-ins if you are familiar with the platform it uses.
  • toxicityj, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8its like Opera v. FireFox. Opera is just as good, if not better in some areas, than Firefox as far as browsing experience goes. It's just that firefox has the massive community and endless supply of skins and plugins. Same goes for this MT4 v. WP2 thing. they're both great (better than the other in their own way), but in the end WP2 has the community and skins/plugins.
  • darkfate, on 10/10/2007, -4/+5I give a plus to wordpress for using php. CGI is the biggest pain because with most hosts, they have to be in a specified folder (which can be changed via htaccess, but it gets sticky) and you have to make sure you have certain modules.

    Although I've looked at some core code in WordPress and I think there are a couple ways to change things, but MT seems more clunky with the recompiling all the time.
    • eczarny, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I find that most web applications written in PHP have "clunky" code. I haven't seen an open source PHP web application written well. However, if you give some time to look at the MT source you will find that it is VERY well designed and thought out.

      I do agree though, recompiling entries all the time is a bit cumbersome.
    • OrangeTide, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Just use ScriptAlias in your vhost and you can even keep the cgi binaries out of your html trees, also you can do the path trick if you ScriptAlias directly to the executable instead of to the path the executable is in. Keeping php files in the html trees is one of the inherent security flaws of php. (the other being running php as a userid that has write access to your *.php files)

      PHP is tough to debug and maintain compared to other solutions. I think past a certain point it's extra work to use php. The advantage is you can run your own php junk on someone else's server without having to tweak server configs. assuming they already have mod_php and mysql installed, which I do not use on my servers.
      • phoenixkiula, on 02/04/2008, -0/+0PHP is nowhere near as clunky to maintain than CGI. And WP itself is pretty well thought out too. EE may win out in the design prowess (and their Code Igniter is pure poetry) but it lacks performance and the wide plugin support of WP. WP's performance and maintainability at the end is second to none if you know what you're doing. (And if you don't then WP is hands down the best choice anyway).
  • danlovejoy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5We jumped from MT several years ago when we discovered it was going to cost us $1,500 all of a sudden to upgrade. We needed a multi-blog platform, so we went with ExpressionEngine, which cost us $149 at the time. I think that upgrade (3.0?) was a huge market loss for MT.
    • titlesaysitall, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I despise Expression Engine with every bone in my body, at least from my experience with it. Compared to Wordpress, the later just beats it dead with a club and then hauls the carcass off a cliff into the ocean. The interface is ugly, limited and does not friggin auto save. I love Wordpress on my Blog but my boss has stuck with EE and has designed custom themes around it so switching is out of the question.
  • shadowspawn, on 10/10/2007, -10/+5wordpress is the worst on servers. it's easy to tell, almost all digg'd (dug?) articles linked that use wordpress are dust in around 40 diggs.

    I even have a few responses from their tech support people; they are smug and elitist in their responses to inquiries about performance. To sum up wordpress: basically... it sucks the donkey's left gonad.
    • prammy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I see a lot of wordpress blogs linked to digg which do _not_ go down.
      A big part of the problem is that the database servers on these shared hosts cannot handle the load. Which is easily fixed by adding the wp_cache plugin so each request does not have to spawn all those queries.
      • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Why the hell is this a plugin? Isn't it critical to cache category lists etc that hardly ever change? Cacheing isn't a feature you can plugin, it should be a neccesity.
  • ishkur88, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1hmmm,... idea; write your own software. it will do exactly what you want it to.... and work the way it needs to...
  • PicklePower, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Are there any good CMS solutions that are free, focusing on running a website? I know WordPress can do that, but it focuses on blogging more. Something similar to ExpressionEngine, but free?
    • chuckstep, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Drupal
    • prammy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Drupal and Joomla to name two.
      There is a huge list of open source cms at http://www.opensourcecms.com
    • Crusty, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There's a free version of ExpressionEngine called Core. It might be what you're looking for.
    • svenjick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The best interface (i.e. usability) and mental model is proposed by Spip, IMHO. (now "is it a CMS" is another question which can be discussed...)
    • firefusion, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Textpattern and Modx. I prefer Textpattern
    • plasticmind, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The unsupported version of MT4 is free; if you couple that with MT's RightFields plugin, you can create your own CMS.
  • cwk1337, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0PHP-Fusion is great, www.php-fusion.co.uk .
  • zushiba, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5WORDPRESS ERROR
  • shadowspawn, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4for all those WP fanboys digging down anyone that's saying anything bad about WordPress, all one has to do is look at digg.com and any articles that are spammed from WordPress blogs.

    If anything, WordPress is one of the reasons digg mirrors are in action. It *is* kinda obvious how WP works under load, after all.
    • Icebox3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It has nothing to do with WordPress - it's the crappy server it's running on, that can't handle a large influx of traffic.
      • anonym41414, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0No, actually it's WordPress. Movable Type has always had a static-publishing model, which means it generates flat HTML files which the server serves up. WordPress is interpreted on every request, which means it takes considerably more CPU horsepower (both for the PHP and the database hits) to handle the same number of requests.

        Movable Type has a dynamic publishing option, and there's a caching plug-in for WordPress, but right out of the box, Movable Type is far, far more scalable.
        • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0Agree. I can't believe wp-cache isn't part of the original install. Why does WP have to redraw front pages etc from the database for every hit? This is an absurd waste of resources and it's no wonder WP sites go down so easily.
  • darkhero, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Mashables runs on wordpress and has been for a while. Why don't they run on Moveabletype and try it out for a while. I have used both, if you don't want too many features and a reliable blog get Moveabletype. If you have a small blog and want many features get wordpress.

    http://mashable.com/wp-login.php
  • afosterw, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2If you have ever looked under the hood you will never want to touch wordpress again. Uhhhhhhg what a mess.
    • fatdog789, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Agreed. I use to write plugins for WP...it was a horrible experience. Especially because they kept changing the damn hooks with every point release. In the end, it was easier to just hard-code in stuff that should have been abstracted.
  • VeniceCA, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Mess or not Wordpress runs well for the average user and is also engining some fairly big sites. I've been very happy with it.
  • bakkouz, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13Ok people. stop saying that Wordpress goes down after being dugg, this is not Wordpress's fault, its the server that hosts the website that has to do with it, not Wordpress!
    • thatsiebguy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Actually, its the person running the WP page and the fact they don't use WP_Cache.
    • MoneyShot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2My WordPress blog once made the front page of Slashdot and had zero problems weathering the storm. I credit the WP_Cache plugin I use for that. I also admin the server the blog runs on and was carefully watching stats.
    • eczarny, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Every time a user hits a Wordpress page, PHP is invoked and the database is hit. Every time a user hits a compiled MT page, it's just a static fetch.
      • phoenixkiula, on 02/04/2008, -0/+0Yes, PHP may be invoked, but no, database is not hit if you are using WP-Cache. It just picks a precompiled version of the page. Please do your homework.
    • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I wish people would stop making this an either / or (either WP or the server) - it's a combination of both. WP is wasteful of resources nevertheless.
  • V1ncent, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I use b2evolution.
  • thatsiebguy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I used to use MT, but got annoyed that every time I updated my server, I would have to do a full reinstall of MT and import all of my posts. Bleh.. WP could care less, it just keeps on chuggin.
  • hlcno, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2joomla baby
  • mr804, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2We ran MT until they decided to charge a crapload of money for something that was free before to us. Then we ditched it and started running Wordpress. MT's comment system was slow as donkey balls when you had a huge spam filter back in the day. I hope that's improved.
  • Piroon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2In my opinion Wordpress is very, very slow and sluggish which makes it impossible to use. The amount of plugins available is geat but I have no idea why wordpress is as popular as it is. I've tried Movable Type 4 aswell and that's even worse. It's the slowest least efficient blogging software available that's complicated and annoying to use. If you're starting up a blog try a free open source one but searching for "list of blog software" on wikipedia. I recommend Textpattern.
    • darylsws, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I agree with Piroon, Textpattern rocks and is a piece of p*** to set up!
  • SavageBlackCat, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Ability to survive more than 2 hits per hour: anything other than wordpress.
  • Forshman, on 10/10/2007, -5/+0Neither, use Joomla...works great for me at http://www.johninjapan.com
  • Nightfall, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Who cares what you use? Both MT and Wordpress are great bloggers. I use Wordpress and it works great for me, but MT has its advantages as well. Not that you see me kicking myself over the decision I made and others shouldn't do the same.

    If a site is going down that fast by the way, the webhost has more to do with that than Wordpress or MT for that matter. A lot of these shared hosted sites can't take a digg effect. :)
  • austintheheller, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0We're using WordPress on one of our sites, but installing Movable Type on the other for its ease of customization. I've always thought Movable Type was clearer in how it treats template editing. Still, WordPress does have an outstanding user interface.
  • MRCOPIATECH, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I definitely vote Wordpress and have been using it for several years now.
  • carolinaws, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I personally prefer Serendipity (www.s9y.org). It has a very active developer community, is easy to set up and very easy to customize. I have used WP as well and like it very much. But when it comes to bending the blogging software to do any and everything I need, s9y is much easier to dive into, IMHO.
  • kru1e, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1anyone else notice the site is running wordpress, bias much?
  • plasticmind, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Am I the only one who thinks this article is lame for using screen shots from MT3 to talk about MT4?
  • jamesey, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1b2evolution is better than both
  • dualaudi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Someone should of told DRUPAL to up their server power before people started giving them props... http://www.drupal.org and http://www.drupal.com seem to be down! I wanted to try them too...
  • mpn401, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2* >>>>>>>>>> Wordpress
  • GreedKills, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3MovableType only went Open Source because they noticed how WordPress was growing and expanding so much. MT was in the toilet, they had no choice but to go open source or die out.

    Lots of sites that gets dugg, goe down, its not just WordPress, $7-10 dollar hosting only goes so far
    • thailand1972, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I run a couple of dedicated servers. I *had* a WP blog on one of them (my own one). After hearing about WP and CPU issues, I went to see how much CPU the WP blog took up just with one user on the site - it was horrendous - 50-60% CPU usage per page hit. I couldn't replicate this CPU usage with any other site on the server. I would not put any WP website on any of my servers now because I don't want to imagine the kind of problems of even a moderate amount of traffic on a WP site. Even before the server dies, if you take up too much CPU you're slowing everything down. People just tend to think in black and white, but there are dark shades of grey bad performance when a site is using up a lot of resources.
  • AkumaPC, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Joomla is a very nice CMS platform which I've been experimenting with and being open source has helped tremendously in getting people to develop extensions for it. At the moment there are well over 1000 free and commercial extensions available and that number is growing daily! IMHO Joomla is to CMS what ubuntu is to linux... their name is a phonetic spelling for the Swahili word "Jumla", which means "all together".
  • ishkur88, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1what do people have against coding their own software? if you want a job done right, its usually a decent idea to go ahead and write your own scripts. you know exactly what it's doing, and you know what it's capable of. don't knock it 'til you try it. =
  • regtweakerchris, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I am totally WordPress's bitch. I run my site off it. And I get off that.

    Wait what?
  • RoblesTheodore, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.
  • Lorwik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Joomla is one of the best CMS's around, it's what I use at http://www.hdrjapan.com/
  • Forshman, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1I built my site on Joomla: http://www.hdrjapan.com How does that CMS stack up to all of these blog based CMS's?
  •  

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