The conversion to MoveableType

For the most part, it’s done. I still have some visual improvements to make over the next few days, but the weblog has moved from Blojsom to MoveableType. It was a bit of a painful transition but well worth it.

I still like the Blojsom weblog. Having it bundled with OS/X Server is absolutely wonderful and will probably meet most people’s needs. But there are some limitations with Blojsom:

• The version in OS/X Server is a little bit behind the times and it has been “crippled” in a few areas. There are pros and cons to this. The bottom line is that the bundled weblog is simple, easy to use and, because of that, has is not really open to customization and fine administrative control.
• Blojsom is not as widely used as MoveableType. That means fewer tools, such as blog editors, work with it.
• Blojsom does not have as much built-in publishing control as MoveableType. For instance, automated trackback exposition and fine control over how articles are presented (I can post long articles that are automatically summarized in MoveableType).

Of course, the one big advantage Blojsom has is that it’s free. Also, if you have OS/X Server, it’s pre-installed and ready to go.

MoveableType requires some configuration and, while you can get a free, limited license, if you use it for anything beyond a single, personal weblog you’ll need to purchase it (currently for a reasonable fee of about $70).

Unfortunately I was not able to automatically convert my previous blog posts to MoveableType. While there is a powerful import feature, I chose not to use it. This is a new weblog and I deemed it easier to manually re-post using ecto rather than figure out how to do an automated RSS import from the old weblog to the new.

With a bit of luck I’ll have the templates, look and feel “back to normal” within a few days. Please bear with me while I put everything back together and start posting again.