March 11, 2008

Six Apart Takes Aim At Wordpress Users; Wordpress Pissed

Michael Arrington

101 comments »

Anil Dash, Six Apart’s Chief Evangelist, took aim at Wordpress users in a blog post today. Instead of upgrading to the new version of Wordpress, he says, consider moving over to their platform.

Now, it’s generally fair game to target your competitors, and Dash’s blog post was so tame that I can’t even find a good quote to pull into this post. But that didn’t stop Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg from going for blood. In a Twitter message, Matt says “six apart is getting desperate, and dirty.” Anil fires back almost immediately with “@photomatt desperation is resorting to name-calling and slander instead of substance — if there’s a factual error, i’m glad to fix it.”

Last week the two companies dueled in the comments to a post we wrote - See David Recordon (SixApart) and Lloyd Budd (Automattic) comments starting here.

Who’s right? No idea. Dash notes that upgrading Wordpress is not exactly easy. Wordpress CEO Toni Schneider emailed me to say that some bloggers are actually moving from Moveable Type to Wordpress.

What’s clear is that neither platform is perfect, and requires far too much work for the bloggers. They both need to watch out for upcoming next generation platforms, which may eat both their lunches.

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Comments

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Joost Schuur

March 11th, 2008 at 12:32 am

2.5 is the version of Wordpress due out today(ish).

Latest Movable Type is 4.1
Philip Arthur Moore

March 11th, 2008 at 12:39 am

I read Anil Dash’s post and nothing in it seems desperate or dirty. I love WordPress due to its ease of use, but there is a great need for alternatives in the market. Few like monopolies, and the same beliefs should apply to open source blogging platforms like WordPress and others among the same ilk. I don’t know, but the WP gang sounds a tad too sensitive about Dash’s post, which was pretty valid and opportune.
SearcH◆ EngineS WEB

March 11th, 2008 at 12:42 am

Question: How should you greet the onrush of visitors to your site when you get onto the homepage of Digg or Reddit? Answer: Not with a Database Connection Error. A lot of people have asked us over the years,

This is his selling point. Not very convincing

How may people does this apply to?

He did not mention that Digg has a mirror
Jason

March 11th, 2008 at 12:46 am

@SearcH EngineS WEB: Just because “Digg has a mirror” (they don’t, third parties provide the mirrors) doesn’t mean I’m okay with my website going down.
Florian

March 11th, 2008 at 12:51 am

updating wordpress (and most other self-hosted scripts) is to complicated i think. because technical it could be possible to make it like “new version available? do you want to upgrade? yes! updater downloads the files press install! finished”.
Scabr

March 11th, 2008 at 12:58 am

WordPress is dominating now as blogging platform. Bravo Matt!
Paul..

March 11th, 2008 at 12:59 am

When geeks attack!

http://strips.bitstrips.com/fd.....32599a.png
Julian Baldwin

March 11th, 2008 at 1:03 am

Florian,

Wordpress has a plugin for automatic updates. It doesn’t get easier than that.
Scabr

March 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am

@Paul NIce
Stephane

March 11th, 2008 at 1:16 am

@Florian : It’s exactly the way of Movable Type. When there is minor updates, they are downloaded by MT and you just have to press the button “Upgrade”. For major updates, the only thing that you have to do is copy and past the new folder over the old and clic on “Upgrade” in MT.

@Julian Baldwin: Plugins are good. Not needing plugins is better, isn’t ?

@Paul: It’s exactly the reality ^^ !
A.T.

March 11th, 2008 at 1:19 am

well, 6apart has sold already LiveJournal - it might be good for their business but for community it was shock… so WHY on Earth wordpress-ers shall even think about going 6apart? to be sold too?
Julian Baldwin

March 11th, 2008 at 1:20 am

Stephane,

Plugins are not necessarily better or worse, but I can’t imagine a small company out performing an entire community of users whose contributions are made in the form of plugins. Also, plugins let the users direct the software, allowing them to get everything they want, provided they can implement it.
Stephane

March 11th, 2008 at 1:21 am

@SearcH◆ EngineS WEB : MT publish each file on the disk so you didn’t need to access to the database when you are on a MT-powered. It’s really good on very big websites because there is no DB connection error when the number of visitors increases.
Stephane

March 11th, 2008 at 1:28 am

@Julian Baldwin : I agree with you, Plugins are good. I’m not saying that WordPress is bad because there are plugins, MT has also plugins. But I think that WordPress should integrate plugins that most users need. MT does that, and it’s pretty cool.

I use both of MT and WordPress. WordPress is really good because of its lot of plugins and beautiful themes, but there is a lot of database connection errors when you have a big traffic. MT is better for that because you don’t need db when you display a page (only when a comment is sent or a user ask for a search). So, All is about a point of view.
Atorips

March 11th, 2008 at 1:30 am

wordpress blog is good ! I like it and I used it ,Kitchen Cabinet designer ,oh…ha…
Julian Baldwin

March 11th, 2008 at 1:34 am

Stephane,

I definitely agree that consideration for the most useful and/or most popular plugins would be good thing for WP. One example, the related post plugin is becoming a standard for many blogs, WP should give users the convenience of already having access to it.
Andrew

March 11th, 2008 at 1:40 am

@A.T.,

I don’t see how selling LiveJournal has anything to do with this discussion. If anything, LiveJournal was a distraction that diverted 6apart away from their core business model - the creation of blogging platforms.
Anil

March 11th, 2008 at 1:45 am

Thanks for an even-handed assessment, Mike — it’s that kind of tone that keeps things from turning into a pile-on in the blogosphere. I have no interest in getting into personal attacks or being today’s Techmeme Drama Du Jour — I got over that crap years ago.

As I’ve said many times, we learn from everyone in blogging, and Automattic makes good tools, as do we. I think the fact that you couldn’t find a juicy attack quote really does illustrate that we’re trying to be forthright and fair. I should think that the WP community would be more frustrated with Automattic not having the 2.5 release ready (or even a release date) than with someone pointing out that there are good options for bloggers.

And honestly, it may well be that Matt isn’t used to the way that competition works when you’re a well-funded company with tens of millions of dollars in the bank. I know it took us a while to adjust to the reality of how perceptions change in that situation. But given that Automattic’s raised many millions more dollars than Six Apart, I certainly don’t think it’s unfair for us as an underdog to point out our strengths.

We do believe in competition. We’re thrilled that it’s made our product better. We also think that anybody who is on the side of getting more people blogging is doing important work. And you’re exactly right when you say “What’s clear is that neither platform is perfect, and requires far too much work for the bloggers.” So we’re working mightily on making Movable Type even better as the most powerful blogging platform around.

And yeah, sometimes we even stop to blog about it. Call me crazy.
Megan

March 11th, 2008 at 1:45 am

I think his post was just an attempt to get attention - and he got it.
Julian Baldwin

March 11th, 2008 at 1:49 am

Megan,

Do you pardon a successful blog for having attention? I disagree with your statement anyway.
Jeffrey

March 11th, 2008 at 2:02 am

Upgrading Wordpress isn’t easy? Since when?
Julian Baldwin

March 11th, 2008 at 2:04 am

Jeffrey,

http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....c-upgrade/
Michael Arrington

March 11th, 2008 at 2:19 am

Jeffrey - it isn’t the update that’s hard, it’s everything that breaks afterwards.
Peter

March 11th, 2008 at 2:20 am

Jeffrey, it depends on the user; the majority are not programming/deisgn experts and the prospect is fairly daunting.

I run a number of Wordpress powered sites and each and every one uses a different version. Why? Because I have no idea if upgrading will screw up my template, or if I’ll simply screw up the whole thing with my attempt. I have thought about hiring someone to upgrade them all for me every few months, but that’s kinda ridiculous and comes back to Anil’s main point here.

Now I’ve never really considered MT but having had a look, it might be an option. To me the main weak point is the lack of templates and designers that offer MT designing/coding. In that realm, Wordpress rules and may for some time.
Tim

March 11th, 2008 at 2:25 am

I understand Anil’s point though - upgrading wordpress every few months is a pain and they need to resolve that. Within a few weeks of launching my new site using wordpress, they came out with a new upgrade and I’m scared to venture that way.

Tim (http://timothysykes.com/)
WoW

March 11th, 2008 at 2:47 am

The Internet Hate Machine is in full effect these last few days and Twitter is it’s platform!

Imagine this type of Twitter activity at a KKK rally or something explosive such as that?
mehmet

March 11th, 2008 at 3:46 am

updating wordpress (and most other self-hosted scripts) is to complicated i think. because technical it could be possible to make it like “new version available? do you want to upgrade? yes! updater downloads the files press install! finished”.
Wordpress User

March 11th, 2008 at 3:54 am

I love WP so much but it’s quite difficult to manage. I’m going to try migrating to MT. Is it difficult?
Darren Stuart

March 11th, 2008 at 3:57 am

interesting point about something new coming up and catching them out.

I think if someone attacks a niche it would be easy to take market share.
Wordpress User

March 11th, 2008 at 4:05 am

Arrington : it isn’t the update that’s hard, it’s everything that breaks afterwards.

I absolutely agree with you Mike. Now, my blog has a database error “welcome message” on top of every page. I don’t have the time to check it.

I know programming a lot. I love to code. I’m quite expert at PHP. But I don’t have the time to analyze it. Photomatt has to find the solution to help us upgrading WP easily.

I’ll googling about MT today. Goodbye WP
David

March 11th, 2008 at 4:33 am

I love Worpdress and realize that I am trading my time (for the upgrades) for a software that is FREE.

On what might take it over - Drupal 6 may have just turned a corner in their last release. I have several wordpress blogs and a few “brochure” sites running on Wordpress that I am considering moving over. Drupal just lacks the support of the design community to make better themes / templates.
Trench Reynolds

March 11th, 2008 at 5:01 am

For those complaining about upgrades you may want to check out Serendipity at http://s9y.org

I’m not an employee just a fan.
Lou Paglia

March 11th, 2008 at 5:21 am

I’m not clear on where the “it isn’t easy to upgrade wordpress” is coming from? It seems perfectly easy to me. If it is challenging to some, isn’t that a question they should decide before hosting their own web site and installing server-side software?

Plug-ins aside, let’s look what you need to do:
- Three clicks into the database admin and export the database to your hard drive just in case
- Put your blog into maintenance mode (completely optional)
- Download the latest version of WP
- Install it and check it
- Take the blog out of maintenance mode

All in all not that many steps, and very similar to installing any piece of software on your own computer. Another thing to consider is that it is trivial in comparison to working with template language and CSS. That you need to know what you are doing. Perhaps it is me, but upgrading seems to be the least of a user concern and also seems there are much better value propositions in blogging software to attack if you are trying to get users to switch.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

March 11th, 2008 at 5:46 am

What the Movable Type team isn’t taking into consideration is loyalty. I’m sure that they may be able to win some folks over from Wordpress. But for those of us who’ve been blogging a long time, we were the same folks who were literally forced over to Wordpress when MT decided to start charging for anyone hosting more than one blog. For many of us, it wasn’t a business, but a way to provide a platform for completely non-tech-oriented friends. It was move designed solely to make more money, forcing you to either dump your friends or tell them that they had to help pay for a blogging platform no one was getting paid to use. Some people actually just blog for the fun of it.

I can honestly say that for personal use, I’d never go back to Movable Type. It could be so easy to use and install that it even does windows and I’d still stick by Wordpress. Because sometimes, it’s not about the technology, but how a company treats its users.
bob cobb

March 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am

Theres just too much support and options available for wordpress to use anything else now
Don C.

March 11th, 2008 at 5:53 am

I have been designing and building Web sites for ten years (as well as a startup CMS) and I have to say that while Wordpress has the great installation numbers — MT has a better core system. It’s built for professional use, and it looks more intimidating. But there’s more control over your blog built in, and that makes it easier to develop on the platform without using your PHP skills. They have benefited by building the core system and then opening it to open source — but that also killed their adoption rate.

Wordpress is hampered by how it was invented and propogated — one guy writes a blogging application — but that one guy made something that was easier to install and while not as pretty, was structured in a way that made it more accessible to novices. But there are so many legacy users to support, WP will forever have a hard time upgrading the codebase to have less plugins, extended functionality and an even more improved interface.

In my opinion both systems have pluses and minuses, but to me MT is a better core system. But WP benefits from the fact that Mullenweg hit a nerve at the right time — more and more people get the idea of publishing Web content — and his system was there for download and opened up a world to people who over time will expect more and more as their ‘web savviness’ grows.

And as these users learn of and then expect more and more Web site features, they won’t be just blogging anymore. They’ll be managing a Web site. Their content wont be one level deep. They’ll need to manage more complex data sets. They’ll just want functionality — not a plugin to install that functionality. My point is a true content management system does more than organize the application around posting date-centric articles — blog text is just a type of content — not an intuitive core structure for a fully featured content management system.

These people are managing websites — not “blogs”.
Chris

March 11th, 2008 at 6:00 am

We moved from Typepad to Wordpress a couple of years ago because Six Apart damaged our Google listings by (weirdly) adding ‘no_robots’ to its default header template. ‘No_robots’ means ‘Go Away Googlebot’. We weren’t informed of the change but figured it out *after* experiencing Google problems.

You need to be in control of this stuff, rather than a company like Six Apart. Wordpress allows that and communicates about upgrades in a far more transparent way. All things considered we have found Wordpress to be a far better platform to work with than Typepad (where things like domain mapping and comment moderation caused major headaches).

I did communicate this to Anil after he wrote to us to persuade us to stay with Six Apart, but we never heard back from him.
Anil

March 11th, 2008 at 6:17 am

Chris, I apologize that you didn’t get the communication you deserve from our company, and from me personally. I do want to clarify — there has never been a time when TypePad would list a block for robots unless you had specifically set your blog as private. However, that’s something that would be clear if the lines of communcation were open. I’m glad you’re still blogging, and we have an enormous number of TypePad users today who I think can vouch for the fact that it’s an excellent, powerful platform.
YDRIVE

March 11th, 2008 at 6:25 am

WordPress is the current star and that’s quite obvous? You just have to see the huge variety of themes available for WP..
ceejayoz

March 11th, 2008 at 6:34 am

MT already screwed us on licensing once - why would we risk it again?
The Zambian

March 11th, 2008 at 6:52 am

This is when products like Graffiti shine
TDavid

March 11th, 2008 at 7:07 am

Like Chris, TypePad was so screwy that it wouldn’t let me comment on my own *paid* TypePad blog. That was 2004 (see signature URL for details). Let’s hope Anil & Co. have cleaned up the mess by now. Mullenweg scores bonus community points for addressing issues with their software (he’s out there and will show up in your blog comment area to address concerns with WP) where Dash hasn’t been as directly involved, at least from what I’ve seen over the years. Frankly I was surprised he made a couple comments here.

But these back and forth ’switch to us, we have the better solution’ moves with Mullenwag and Dash aren’t anything new though.

ceejayoz licensing point aside, my problem with MT is the sheer amount of files and dependencies. It’s ridiculous how many libraries this program uses. 6A need to break out the hacksaw and produce and promote a MT lite version that has the bare essentials and nothing else. You don’t need a bunch of files for a freaking blog program. Blog software shouldn’t be that complicated.

And Wordpress isn’t getting any “lite”r either. WP already has the best plugin structure, so why the need to keep making it fatter and fatter like some gross, overweight guy hitting the desert bar for seconds and thirds? Those who want to have some bloated mess of an installation can do so already.

Versionitis in software design is a sin that makes customers run into the competition’s arms or using their own custom software. Stop it already.
AndrewZ

March 11th, 2008 at 8:04 am

twitter fight. how lame have we become.
darrylxxx

March 11th, 2008 at 8:07 am

Ooh er missus. Handbags at dawn!
Matt

March 11th, 2008 at 8:22 am

WP has been free/open a lot longer than MT… therefor WP has the benefit of a very huge team of developers and application testers. It will, for a while, be the leading provider of Blogging Software… it will take a serious effort to usurp their momentum. I don’t see MT being able to take that lead, if anything it’s like Michael Arrington said… a new player. That’s the only way WP is going anywhere… and even then, that new player will have to be a open and free as WP has always been.
Cameron Barrett

March 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am

I’m not sure what the issue is. I use both MT and WP for my personal sites, my clients and my friends and my family’s web sites. Each has pros and cons and each does different things well (and not so well). The key is choosing the right platform for what you are trying to accomplish.

I find MT’s template system much easier to work with than WP’s, but I find WP’s installation on LAMP servers easier than MT. For most of my sites, MT does not scale as well as WP but I like that MT outputs static HTML pages which is great for sudden spikes in traffic, whereas an basic installation of WP gets overwhelmed with a lot of traffic on a shared server.

A lot of people also recommend Drupal and Expression Engine, if you want to run a large community site and I don’t disagree — but like MT and WP, Drupal and EE also have pros and cons that you need to evaluate before choosing an underlying blog framework.

I’ve known the people behind both MT and WP for many, many years and I’m kind of surprised at this attempt at stirring up a pissing match. If I’ve learned anything over the years its’ that pissing matches between competitors create more problems than they help, unless all you are looking for is attention. And if that’s the case then I think someone needs to grow up a bit.
mathew

March 11th, 2008 at 9:10 am

I saw MT’s license change screw people over. I got personally screwed over by LiveJournal and saw a lot of other people get screwed too. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever trust my data to Six Apart again.

However, I might download the GPL version of MT and use that, because I’m sick of having to have 2x OpenID plugins, an Atom plugin and a comment preview plugin that break with each Wordpress upgrade. It’s 2008, Atom and OpenID and comment previews should be standard functionality.
michael s

March 11th, 2008 at 9:23 am

Wordpress guys are getting a bit sensitive…
Chris

March 11th, 2008 at 9:32 am

@Anil - thanks for the clarification. I’ll fire our lying scumbag techie! I’ve just looked at his email from 2006 and he was pretty convincing at the time…

Typepad was great for starting out and really helped us, but once you hit scale I just think you need more control. Initially we upgraded to MovableType but it was more difficult than porting the while thing to WP.

It’s really just a case of horses for courses. Now kiss and make friends. There is plenty of cake to share around.
Lloyd Budd

March 11th, 2008 at 9:43 am

Anil, you wrote “I should think that the WP community would be more frustrated with Automattic not having the 2.5 release ready (or even a release date)…”

Sure, they are disappointed and we are as well, but as I would have hoped you could appreciate they would be more far disappointed if we released software that wasn’t ready.

We work hard to learn from our mistakes, and when 2.0 was released people were disappointed with the length between releases and concerned about the initial quality. Today, 2.0 is an example of stability and commitment with it being supported for security and critical fixes until 2010.

In 2007 we had 3 major releases. It was fantastic being part of that.

Near the end of 2007, we decided that 2.5 needed a longer schedule because it was time to take the WordPress experience to a new level. It will be released when it is ready.

Mozilla says it well:
“The first and most important thing to state is that we, as a project,
are quality driven, not date driven. We use dates to set targets for
milestones, and we strive to put out the best milestones possible, but
due to the changing nature of the web, we always judge each milestone
against our basic criteria of quality, performance and usability. The
other factor how we rely on community use and testing of our betas to
help us judge their quality.
http://blog.mozilla.com/ftr/20.....its-ready/
Nag

March 11th, 2008 at 9:43 am

I only use wordpress, as most of the blogger, ( TC, GigaOm, RRW ) all use wordpress. Is it time to start using Six Apart?

I am 100% satisfied with wordpress. If 6Apart is better then wordpress, they should be rocking then.

Hope someone gives a comparison between the 2.

Cheers, Nag
Peter

March 11th, 2008 at 9:46 am

I looked long and hard at Wordpress, Drupal and Movable Type before creating my website: http://www.usbtests.com I was already familiar with Wordpress and Drupal because I’d used them before so they would have been an easy pick, but ultimately I decided to go with MT. The biggest selling point is that it creates static pages. As other commenters have said, no database access is necessary to display the page, like it is with many other CMS’s like Wordpress and Drupal. It may not matter if you’ve got a small site and don’t expect any visitors, or if your content is totally dynamic, then sure, go with a PHP based CMS. I like the piece of mind that if I do get bombarded, I will be ready. Also, do you plan to switch CMS’s if you grow large? I’d rather do it right from the beginning. I also found MT extremely easy to customize.
Joe Clark

March 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am

I don’t see two innocuous Twits as justifying an entire TechCrunch post. Now we know how little it takes.
lux

March 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am

I was a very longtime MT holdout, but finally made the move to WP last fall. The whole process was so easy and the new blog was so much easier to manage, I could have kicked myself for waiting so long.

I have no interest whatsoever in going back to MT.
Johan

March 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am

The Wordpress guys are a bit too sensitive here… I see nothing shocking in the MT blogpost.

I must say that I am a little bit disappointed in WP because of the large number of security releases that we have seen over the last couple of months. Lack of time to upgrade them means that now most of my blogs run older, potentially unsecure versions.

The biggest disappointment was seeing a preview of the 2.5 interface, it is sooo ugly! MT definitely has the overhand when it comes to interface design -which is really important for this type of application.
Yaacov

March 11th, 2008 at 10:29 am

I just taught my almost 60 yr old mom how to use wordpress in an hour. Now she’s using it for her business. So easy to use. Yes upgrades take me about 15 minutes to do, but it beats paying for a license and did I mention how easy it is to use?
leenkr.com

March 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am

this is just stupid. they should both stfu, or gtfo.
Shelley

March 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Drupal! Sorry.

One minor point of clarification:

“Wordpress is hampered by how it was invented and propogated — one guy writes a blogging application — but that one guy made something that was easier to install and while not as pretty, was structured in a way that made it more accessible to novices.”

Actually, Matt did not write the original blogging software. To borrow from Wikipedia: “b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development. WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.”

I don’t think Matt has ever been the sole programmer on Wordpress.

I thought Anil’s post was humorous, because Wordpress got its big break when MT came out with some commercial licensing and people left in droves to, what else, Wordpress. It’s a little tongue in cheek to welcome folks back.

And there are enough users for everyone.
Travis

March 11th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

For everyone complaining about Wordpress upgrades and whatnot, that’s why WP created Wordpress.com. If the concept of using plugins and editing your themes to expand the functionality of your blog is too difficult, create a blog on Wordpress.com in only a few minutes.

When it comes to standing up to the Digg effect, odds are you’ll never make front page Digg. Realize that and only worry about the possibility of it if and when it happens. Wordpress as an application isn’t mainly responsible for downtime with enormous traffic spikes, your host is. If you’re on a $3 per month plan at Dreamhost don’t go pointing your finger at Wordpress.
Foreman

March 11th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

I too would like to show some love for Serendipity: http://s9y.org
These guys make really good, reliable blog software. It just works and it’s free like Wordpress.
DC Crowley

March 11th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

I have used WP. Nice. Won’t bother with MT though. arrogance and licensing changes… and I hear the hosted blogging has had famous downtime issues. Drupal is pretty good. Not a piece of cake to learn. The upgrade is simple. Just backup the sites folder, stick in the new upgrade and copy the sites folder to the server again. Also theming in Drupal is soooooo much easier that WP IMHO. But I don’t see Drupal being a killer blog app like WP. Maybe WP should start a second product (Why not? Opera has 2 mobile browsers). CMS’s and blogging utilities that are older than 4 years don’t tend to do what we need today (because the mindset totally changes in that time).
Todd Cochrane

March 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

I use both Movable Type on my personal site and wordpress on some of our business sites and will say without reservation that I really hate Wordpress. MT is so much more powerful than WP will ever be. It simply does things a lot better the WP ever will. I manage nearly 20 blogs from a single login and can make changes to all websites with a single change to a module call.

Wordpress templates are a nightmare. Plus I have never had a MT site fall over during high volume. I cannot say the same about WP.
Todd Cochrane

March 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Response to Johan #55 Never have had a MT site hacked cannot say the same for WP it is a security nightmare. Security updates so often you cannot shake a stick at with WP.
Lloyd Budd

March 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Todd Cochrane, ouch. I’m really sorry to hear about the experience you have had. If you can share with us more information about the problems you encountered with WordPress, it would really help.

It wasn’t too long ago that you wrote: “From today forward I will no longer recommend Movable Type as a viable new media blogging / podcasting platform. I will recommend Wordpress to any and all that ask my advice.”
Nando

March 11th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Agree with Matt on the first expression (”despearate”) but on the second (”dirty”). I’d change to ugly.

Let’s not forget history here.

Movable Type lost its users when they made a lot of awful decisions and consciously abandoning a large part of their free users, years ago, with a choice to limit the number of users per installation, focused on business packages and started pricing (a lit bit too high).

For good, obviously. Wordpress is a lot better, easier and open than MT ever was. It was already big, but with MT ugly strategy for the money, it grew to be the biggest. Today WP has the strongest community, a huge ammount of plugins, hacks and themes, Matt is a cool guy and doesn’t pose as a geek who knows business and doesn’t have to buy LiveJournal to keep his oxygen. With WP you pay if you want to, for the fair amount and because of the service that is being used.

Anil is indeed a little desperate, but that’s just mirrors what’s happening in SixApart. I don’t blame him for trying to call the attention. It could be done a lot better than that, but we shouldn’t expect beautiful competition from MT.

And, of course, everyone’s free to choose.

Include the words you advertise your own product.

You just don’t choose history.
Todd Cochrane

March 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

LLoyd #64 If you look closely at my blog you will find it is not the first time that I have been critical of MT and they have done some stupid stuff in my opinion in the past.

In the end it was the lesser of two negatives to stay with MT and while I can say that MT is not for everyone. I have grown tired of having to upgrade WP every couple of weeks. While it is not that often sometimes it sure feels like it.

So while I recommend WP to people just getting started that need a single blog and not the advanced features I need I add the caveats above.
Matt Milosavljevic

March 11th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

I was under the impression that TechCrunch was no longer pointing links inside posts to CrunchBase. While I understand the SEO benefits of doing this, I would much prefer the link to Anil Dash to point to dashes.com as opposed to his CrunchBase entry.
Glenn Abel

March 11th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

I am tired of hearing from TypePad customer service, You can’t do that. Or, Only if you use Advanced Pages (so what is the point of TP, in that case).

I am tired of spending a day to upgrade WordPress, hoping nothing awful happens to my content and blog. And please don’t tell me to go to the minors just because I can’t get it upgraded on the first pass. There is a lot of conflicting information about how to do those upgrades on the WP site.

Something in between, please.
Lloyd Budd

March 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

Thank Todd for the additional insights.

I had a conversation with Niall Kennedy last year, and he explained that one of the reasons he stays with Movable Type is that he is an expert with it — makes sense. It sounds like when it comes to doing advanced stuff you have similar expertise with MT.

Still, of course, I would love for WordPress to someday completely win you over, so please do keep sharing your WP problems. With MT being a great product and open source, you can’t go wrong using it either.
Michel Valdrighi

March 11th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

I just find it oh so ironic that after Six Apart caught up with WP by supporting dynamic rendering and announcing it as one of the biggest new features in MT 3 dot something, they would trash the very feature on their news blog just to take cheap shots at WP.

As for being able to sustain a Digg front page appearance, assuming it’s as serious as Anil makes it out to be (which with a plugin that is readily installable — and that arguably should make it to the core for good someday — shouldn’t be much of a problem to bloggers who are susceptible to get this kind of attention), just how common is that?
The vast majority of blogs will never see more than 100 visitors a day on a great day, so the focus ought to be on those millions of bloggers who need a publishing tool that’s easy to install and use, rather than on those hundreds vocal users who troll for diggs all day.
Long tail, yada yada.

(Oh yeah, that’s coming for someone working for the largest blog network in Europe (probably in the world too), running on puny dynamic PHP and MySQL, if that means anything.)
Lloyd Budd

March 11th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

Michael Arrington, we really do feel your pain. Many WordPress participants are now most passionate about the issue of upgrading. It has become one of the focuses of development and will continue to be.

Things breaking on update is being attacked from a number of angles:
* In WordPress 2.3 we added update notification for WordPress and plugins. This helps people stay up to date. The sooner developers find out about problems and incompatibilities the sooner the issues are resolved. Code fresh in mind is easier to fix.
* A central plugin repository at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ gives everyone the opportunity to share their experiences about the quality of plugins and their experiences working with the developers. It allows us to better understand what are the most popular plugins and experiences, and I look forward to us getting to the point where we are proactive. Where the most popular plugins are systematically tested before release — having said that, the community does an amazing job of documenting their experiences testing plugins before the release http://codex.wordpress.org/Plu.....bility/2.5
* A similar service as extend/plugins for themes to replace http://themes.wordpress.net/ should be available before the end of the first half of this year.
* The code continues to organically mature. There are very few changes to the database structure and the underlying API in 2.5. This should mean a smooth process for plugin developers upgrading their plugins for WordPress 2.5.
* WordPress 2.5 is very likely to include the first iteration of a plugin update mechanism. The first iteration should work in most environments using http://FTP. Because of the diversity of hosting environments it looks to be a very challenging and interesting problem. Continuing this work, enabling additional mechanisms to be used, and allowing the core system to be updated in a similar manner, will be a significant focus of the future releases.

We are really focused on removing your pains
Pandrogas

March 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

So, I could pay for blogging software or I could use an open source platform with pretty decent documentation and an easy plugin integration for my websites…

Guess what I use?

I’m cheap, but I’m also a designer and I like to have control of what I’m using. Oh yeah, and: http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....p?q=openid
Gus

March 11th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

People need to switch to squarespace

http://www.squarespace.com/?as.....enthdegree
Anil

March 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

Pandrogas, you do know that Movable Type is open source? I’m pretty sure free fits into a budget no matter *how* cheap you are.
Atorips

March 11th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Thank Todd for the additional insights.

I had a conversation with photo frmaeslast year, and he explained that one of the reasons he stays with Movable Type is that he is an expert with it — makes sense.
Mark Hinkle

March 11th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

I just moved to WordPress a few months ago after looking at Movable Type, Wordpress, Typepad, and a bunch others the thing that sealed the deal for me was that the size of the Wordpress community seemed much larger they produced more add-ons/plug-ins, and templates and they seemed more engaged. No scientific data just my impression.

Maybe they should just GoogleFight it out:
http://tinyurl.com/2yawfr
Vladimir

March 12th, 2008 at 3:58 am

Michael Arrington,

Movable Type, not Moveable Type
Eric

March 12th, 2008 at 7:18 am

Maybe take another look at Blogger.com. I think the simplicity speaks for itself since Google upgaded it. People are tired of “my page is blank” or “my upgrade didn’t work” …
jas

March 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am

I tried MT and I’m currently using WP. When the community starts embracing MT more, I may give it another shot. I don’t think this will happen, though. There’s too much bad blood between SixApart and established old school bloggers.
MikeT

March 12th, 2008 at 10:19 am

I wonder how many of you WordPress snobs have actually looked under the hood of WordPress and tried to write plugins for it. I’ve done both WordPress and Movable Type, and it is A LOT easier to develop complicated stuff for Movable Type 4 than WordPress 2.3.

To each their own, but don’t kid yourselves. WordPress is very sorely lacking in developer features. If all you’ve ever done is some PHP, you will probably never appreciate things like Movable Type’s built in ORM capabilities, and the fact that it properly separates out event-handling code from the user interface, allowing you to use pure markup for your interface, and just hook Perl code in behind the scenes. Nearly every aspect of the CMS is exposed through fairly object-oriented code.
MikeT

March 12th, 2008 at 10:26 am

jas,

That’s possible, but no excuse for them to turn away from Movable Type Open Source. It’s a purely open source branch of Movable Type released under the GPL.
tagesgeld-vergleich.net

March 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am

For my blogs i use only Wordpress. Not why i think, its better. There are only more web-designers and programmers, which work with wordpress and sell it with their work to their customers.
BillH

March 12th, 2008 at 6:10 pm

Julian: Of course plugins are better. Choice is ALWAYS better. Why do I want everything forced down my throat? Why can’t I pick and choose what parts I want and more importantly what I DON’T want? That’s what makes WordPress superior. The basics are included; you can pick and choose how you want to extend the functionality, or even IF you want to extend the functionality. To use an analogy, when I buy a car I want to choose the extras - I don’t want packages with extraneous stuff that I’ll never use (but have to pay for).
BillH

March 12th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

MikeT: I am one who HAS looked “under the hood” as you say. The beauty of WordPress is you can make a plugin from pretty much anything. I took a stand-alone PHP program called CDay and made it into a WordPress plugin (of course crediting the original author of CDay). While it was a challenge to get the plugin up and running (I am more of a hackaround PHP programmer) It works. And for some strange reason, I wrote it when 2.0 came out and it still works with no modifications on the latest 2.5 nightly builds.
MikeT

March 12th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Julian,

Plugins are not necessarily better or worse, but I can’t imagine a small company out performing an entire community of users whose contributions are made in the form of plugins. Also, plugins let the users direct the software, allowing them to get everything they want, provided they can implement it.

The thing is, Movable Type is generally a breeze to develop for. I wrote a full-fledged news reader application on top of Movable Type. It was about as easy to write as any J2EE program I’ve written for work, if not easier. MT is an amazingly productive environment for software engineers to work in.
BillH

March 12th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

I am a happy WordPress user. I made the switch when Movable Type made their biggest mistake and began charging Joe Schmoe for having a personal blog. The pricing scheme came out of nowhere and surprised me, as it did MANY MT users at the time (which is why we switched to WP). With this as a company’s history, how can they expect anyone to come back from WP? (Would you invest with Enron?) What is to stop them from charging again? Nothing.

I continue to seek out other blog systems but keep coming back to WordPress. I have tried more CMS/blog platforms than I can remember on my home webserver (GeekLog, phpNuke, Serendipity, PivotLog, b2 evolution, Drupal, Mambo, Nucleus to name a few). Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. The absolute best thing about WordPress is its robust user, support and developer community. People here have talked about how hard it is to create a plugin or a theme. Well, I’ve created many of both. I didn’t have to, but I enjoy the coding process. The reason I didn’t have to is that one can search the plugin repository or the theme repository and find literally dozens of items that will satisfy any conditions I choose to set. I don’t NEED to code anything, I just have to find something I like that’s already been done and install it; much like I would with Windows programs.
MikeT

March 13th, 2008 at 3:50 am

What is to stop them from charging again? Nothing.

The GNU General Public License, that’s what. It’s the same thing that prevents Automattic from pulling the carpet out from underneath WordPress users. The normal upgrade route for bloggers seems to be to upgrade away from MT3.3 commercial to Movable Type Open Source, which is purely GPL. Once it goes under GPL, they cannot un-GPL that version that they’ve released. If they tried to fight that, you’d have 800lb gorillas like Red Hat on your side filing court briefs and possibly funding you to fight them in court.
Ben Tup

March 13th, 2008 at 9:30 am

Hey Anil: umm, it’s libel not slander. And, SixApart is kinda lame now, Matt’s right.
drmike

March 14th, 2008 at 5:08 am

Folks seem to forget that WP canceled their 2.4 release because it wasn’t ready “in time” either. This isn’t the first time that they did so as well.

I was a very happy WP user who spent a lot of time in their support forums trying to help folks. I know see how much of a pain Matt is and how much he disrespects those who volunteers or in fact are drafted into helping. A comment up above is made about the large community of WP developers out there. It’s a lot smaller group now a days since Matt has chased scores of them away. Matt’s poor manners, lack of ethics, his history of flat out lying to folks, never answering email or questions posed to him, Toni’s lack of follow through and unwillingness to actually manage his employees, etc. is what drove away this wp user. Two years ago I hosted over 900 wordpress blogs on our servers. Today it’s down to less than a hundred. We’ve moved them all over to MT and Serendipity now as well as banned Akismet from the boxes as well. We have Matt to thank for that.

Every time one of these “disagreements” occur, Matt runs out his fanboys to come to his defense. It’s a pity that he can’t or won’t just stop and see the whole picture instead of just seeing it his own way.
Joe

March 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

I’ve just spent hours to try and fix an issue with my blog on WordPress that for some reason after a month was no longer accessible for posting. Didn’t seem like a hosting issue but unless you’re a serious geek, which I’m not, there is no way of interpreting the error messages that appeared on the log-in screen. Spending a few hours browsing their forums I came across a whole number of rather snotty comments by WP moderators who more or less think that if as a user you’re not able to fix this kind of stuff you shouldn’t be blogging, an attitude that is total nonsense. Anyhow, after a total re-install of WordPress - and thank god my hosting company did that for me, as I couldn’t figure out how to do it myself after downloading it! - I’m up and running again.

Oh, btw, am glad that I still run the same blog on TypePad as well, although their admin tool is far from being user friendly.

So, a mild case of pox on both of their houses!
Abel Cheung

March 15th, 2008 at 5:30 am

(Note that I haven’t used MT before, so my comment can be a bit biased.)

As an international user, my most annoyance against WP is Matt’s blatant discrimination against international users. Though I won’t be directly hurt if the concerned change is backed out, this simple message tells Matt’s mindset clearly. Not to mention, no translation is ever bundled with WP, and default theme translation is absolutely forbidden to enter official code repository, all because of “simplicity”, which means international users are completely unimportant. Although there are others in WP core team who care, and a person is added to WP team to coordinate I18N effort a few months ago, they can only do the best within what their power allows.

And for Matt’s manner, I suppose quite some people here may have already known his classic example of default ruling of Browserhappy stuff. Just a tip of iceberg.

Criticism put aside, I think constructive comment works better for everybody. If MT does well in I18N area, resolving I18N issues in tagging, line wrap of CJK text, RTL support, rendering broken multibyte text (notorious for any PHP software), MT can get a big advantage in terms of user base, which would be so much bigger than solely relying on English-speaking users in the upcoming few years. Granted, WP is still leading in I18N area, particularly when many newer blogging software has almost non-existant or fake I18N support. All others need to catch up if they want to win the heart of other half of the world.