What we hate most about Movable Type isn’t that we actually have to pay for a multi-user license of what should ideally be free, but that we have to live with dreaded White-Screen-Of-Deaths (WSODs) and Internal Server Errors (Error 500). Yes, yes. The Internal Server Errors bug should have been resolved already. But as the announcement says, only hosts that actually bother to update their CPanels (or whatever command panel software they bundle in with your hosting plan) will actually resolve the bug.

And yes, our host isn’t one of these hosts that keep up with this kind of relatively minute mySQL updates. Apparently, many hosts haven’t resolved this problem either – leaving quite a number of frustrated MT users (normally office users). In fact, even when this “isolated bug” is resolved, other errors could as easily pop-up.

Switching hosts is an alternative, but it’s an irritating one. How we wish we could just abandon MT for WordPress right now! Now, that’s a great piece of trouble-free, and financially-free software.

P.S. A blog platform switch isn’t practical given the SERP losses that we would have to shoulder.

Given the recent migration of this blog from Drupal to WordPress, we thought now would be the right time to post about the various blog platforms used by all, or at least, most of the is-there blogs.

Here goes:

1. is-there:   WordPress 2.0.1 (previously Drupal)
2. Anime Field:   WordPress 1.5
3. The Acer Blog:   WordPress 1.5
4. House of Dell:   WordPress 2.0
5. GuPiano:   WordPress 2.0
6. EssayRep:   WordPress 1.5
7. FMAccounting:   WordPress 2.0.1
8. Towards Uni:   Movable Type 3.2
9. Lasik World:   Movable Type 3.2
10. CDC:   Movable Type 3.2
11. ZMAng.CV.vc:   Blog:CMS

As you can see, most of the is-there blogs are running WordPress – with quite a few of them still at WP 1.5. This does mean that upgrades to WP 2.0.1 are on our to-do list, but…

At this stage, you must have noticed that is-there.net has migrated from Drupal to WordPress. Why? Well, we have a number of reasons, some petty, to a few rather major ones:

1. Drupal’s anti-spam modules were failing on us. Even with both the Bad Behavior and Spam modules installed and activated, spam bots were still hitting on the site. Customizing the modules was possible, but…
2. Drupal wasn’t the most suitable CMS for a relatively non-group blog like this one. Generally, CMSes like Drupal are used for community sites and group blogs like Performancing, due to the multitude of features provided for such applications.
3. Drupal: Feed updating through cron jobs wasn’t working. Wierdly, the daily feed updates weren’t going through, forcing manual updates – which if you noticed, were occuring sporadically. WordPress offers plugins that work out-of-the-box, though it must be said that substantial effort was made in trying to get Drupal’s aggregator and aggregator2 modules to work properly.
4. Drupal was relatively CPU intensive – This isn’t really new if you’ve been keeping up with the Drupal forum. We’ve noticed a few threads addressing Drupal’s relatively high CPU usage as well. Of course, we’ll be the first to admit that WordPress isn’t the poster child for CPU usage either, but it’s still better than Drupal (in our experience, that is)
5. WordPress offers far more plugins - providing greater “one-click” customization. Now, this is probably still an understatement. Just subscribe to wp-plugins.net’s RSS feed to see the pace of updates in WordPress’ plugin community. And not all plugins go through wp-plugin-net.
6. Drupal’s admin interface just wasn’t cool enough. Admittedly, we place quite a bit of emphasis on GUI, and WordPress just won by a mile. Let’s not forget the wide range of admin skins that the WordPress community has created too (e.g. Tiger Admin).

That’s about it for now. We’re sure there are quite a few more, but they don’t come to mind at the moment. If we happen to remember more reasons why we switched from Drupal to WordPress, you’ll be the first to see the Part 2 of this series.

Nothing particularly useful will come from this post. So, if you’re looking for some hard facts or the latest news, this post is not for you. If not, read on.

I just have to ask: Do you ever get bored of blogging on the same blog software? Well, I do, and I’ve barely been blogging for months (and not many months I might add). Whether it is the all-powerful (and dominant) WordPress to the slightly out-of-favour Movable Type to the oft-praised community CMS, Drupal, I’ve found boringness seeping in.

So, my next blog will use Blog:CMS – a comprehensive blogging platform with certain CMS implementations, such as forums and wikis. Yeah, I’m not being very detailed here. Visit Blog:CMS to find out more.

Now, one reason why I find it so easy to switch blogging platforms is probably because there are quite a large number of blog software with all the essential features (or plugins) I require. The few include: categorisation, clean urls (primarily mod_rewrite support), feeds, trackbacking, anti-comment spam implementations, flexible templating through template tags, link lists, recent post and similar post listing. Of course, Adsense and Chitika modules – to make displaying in-post adverts almost work-free – and push-button plugin installations would help. Oh yeah, a strong user forum base would be nice…

I understand there are many who love the stability and familiarity that comes from using a single blog software – especially if the dream software has been found (for many, WordPress, I think). After all, why switch if you can do everything you want with the software you have? Moreover, plugin developers might very well want to stick with the software they are good at.

But, I’m sure there must be those like me, right? I can even think of one benefit of multi-software blogging: After the endless forays into the various software, open source or otherwise, you’ll probably appreciate your dream software even more.