Sunday, May 16, 2004
Open Source Options
As everyone knows by now, Six Apart is ready with their MT 3.0 and there was much complaining, most especially about the pricing structure.
MT has been pretty good except for installation which irritated the hell out of me because the instructions were not written for someone who is just starting out and I had to get assistance, but I’m thinking of moving on.
I am tired of having to “rebuild” every single time I change something or a comment comes through. In IE my rebuild takes forever although it does build faster in Mozilla. Nonetheless, one quick click is really all this should be taking, not 4, 5 or 6 clicks.
Further, I have read around and there are a lot of goodies out there that offer much more than MT does and it’s just another thing for me to learn.
Finally, I guess my real concern is that I’ll become reliable on MT and they’ll pull the rug out from under me in the future and charge everyone, regardless of authors or number of blogs.
Anyway, I know we all like to see what the hell we’re getting before we get it and find out later that we hate it...especially a publishing system. Cripes that’s too much work to go through just to realize it sucks.
So, here is a great page with several “try before you install"links.
I’m currently looking into Serendipity (and hoping HM will run their tests soon too.) The reason I even looked at it in the first place is simply because of the name. I love that story. I checked out some designs and layouts and snooped around on several current users sites and I like what I see so far.
I have yet to actually play around with their control panel as it seems to be down or “refreshing” right now but if I like the control panel, Serendipity it is.
Of course, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing and this website may disappear for 30 seconds to 3 days...depending on how much damage I inflict with my novice skills.
Nonethless, I’m pretty positive I’ll be leaving MT behind. The backlash they received over their pricing and licensing did a lot of damage and although none of it pertained to me, it did make me aware of several other options mostly because many webloggers have been talking about those other options or they are already switching over.
Anyway, if you were thinking of switching away from MT or even if you are one of those still on Blogsnot, click the OpenSource link above and start playing around. You may find yourself creatively and pleasantly surprised.
[update] Anyone who uses Hosting Matters, do NOT attempt to install Serendipity. Here is what they say about it:
The process spins on itself until it utilizes all available apache connections on the server, which results in apache failing for new requests until we kill it and restart it. Until we can go through the code for the admin file(s) for that package, we’re asking that people not attempt to use it.
Oops. So, at least for the time being, see if you can find something else you would rather use.
