Moving to Movable Type

What is this wonderous thing we call "blog"?
Why is it that everyone and his dog want's his own blog?
Why am I writing a blog?

This thing called blog is one of the next steps in the evolution of the internet along with other things like chat, telephony, video, etc. etc., but I'm sticking to the "written" word right now. Blogs allow any dodo brain to become his or her own self-absorbed "published" author, thus allowing us all to "think more highly of ourselves than we aught". Blogs also give us, all of us, the opportunity to exercise that beautifully American (and sometimes perverted) right of Freedom of Speech. I may not be able to get on TV, or get an article in the newspaper, but, by golly, I can put some tripe up on the internet, and someone might read it.

So now I'm joining in. The point to this article is my moving to Movable Type (MT), but my inspiration was sending my eldest child off to college. She wanted a blog, and I was dragging my feet in getting one set up (in the 21st century, I think that setting up a blog may be something like giving a kid his or her own phone line back when I was 18). Alas, I was already Textpattern which is blog software, or more precisely a Content Management System (CMS), to power most of websites, but It required me to work real hard to make it look nice.

Since my domain host is a Movable Type Hosting Partner, I thought I would give 'em a try. (even though I would have to pay for it) Maybe it would be "easier" then Textpattern. Well, sort of. MT seems to be a bit more powerful, and easier to get up and running, and hannah so likes the interface a lot better than with Textpattern. But MT is also a bit slower to work with because it's a little more bloated. Nevertheless, I like it.

So I thought I would seek out the development community, and learn how to do different things...then I discovered the most interesting detail. THIS version of MT is brand new. About a month old. So, most of the articles, helps, and websites which deal with MT, deal with the earlier version, and the new version is WAY different. There's a bunch of stuff I would like to do, some of which I know exactly how to do with Textpattern, some of which are a bit more advanced. But finding the information is proving to be a challenge. In theory, many of my questions will be answered, and the features I want will become easier to implement as the product ramps up. In the mean time I'll be a bit confused.

Not that I dislike Textpattern, far from it. Textpatter is a lot easier, and more flexible, to use from the design perspective then Movable Type. In fact I have yet to figure out how to get some of my fancy navigation tricks (like in Paolino Painting LCC) to work natively in MT. Fact is I haven't figured out if you can automatically generate sections (sub directories) like you can in Textpattern. So Text pattern definitely has a place.

More thoughts later from this dodo brain