Slashdot Mirror
Using MovableType?
piecewise asks: "Everyone seems to be using a Webblog these days and I'm interested in getting my company into it in a big way. We have three web servers and use Akamai to keep the website cached and happy. How many Slashdot readers are webloggers? Have you used MovableType, on a large scale? Are there any security issues? Security's very important. Is there a solution to the 'cache problem'? In other words, as people input messages, might the data running across the net become out-of-sync? Thanks for any thoughts/experiences."
get your company a private sid and let the subscribers cover the bills !
Moveable type is very cool. It really has helped make printing workable. I recomend it highly over wood cuts or hand lettering (caligraphy is very nice but just too slow for the fast pace of the modern office)
My biggest problem with MT is the default templates are full of really crappy css code, and I've not yet been able to get a custom template to actually _work_. Other than that, it's good stuff, though the reports about their 'funky RSS' are rather troubling.
I'm looking forward to new features in MT Pro. I'm hoping they'll have a registration system and polls included, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Since Slashdot is probably the largest weblog on planet Earth I would say that maybe... all of them?
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
While you're asking specifically about MovableType, I have to ask "what are the requiremens" first. Before you decice on any piece of software you first need to define what you're trying to accomplish. You mave have done this, but your post doesn't really suggest that it was a thorough investigation.
Do your servers meet the requirements of the weblog s/w? Do you need it to integrate with your existing AAA security services? Do you have perl expertise on staff or is there more familiarty with PHP? What type of usage pattern is expected? Is this for Intranet or Internet use (the post suggests Internet...scary business letting employees post a weblog to the Net).
There are lots of weblog s/w choices. Providing more input will help folks provide an assessment for you.
Mind the gap...
Weblogging is something people do for all sorts of reasons, but I can't imagine doing it as part of work because I have to. I am not even sure if that is what you plan. I more think down the line that you want to offer weblogs for users as a sort of application service provider. Is this true? If so you will have to look at more than one system. There will never be one system that fulfills all requirements for the different weblogs. Same as there will never be one car that is useful for everything .. or a content management system in terms of internet...
Anyway.. I suggest you check out many more weblogs than just one system. I personally don't know movabletype but I found it only support MySQl and BerkelyDB ... and Oracle and PostgreSQL are only planned... looks like they don't have a db abstraction layer.. now that is not good...
Manfred
If security and worldwide replication are your core requirements, you ought to be using something that fulfils the requirements, such as IBM Lotus Domino.
(Implementing a weblog in Domino is pretty trivial. I've done it for myself.)
As it is, it sounds like you've found a Golden Hammer--you already know you want to use it as the solution, you just need to work out how to get it to fulfil those pesky requirements...
((Disclaimer: I work for IBM.))
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
From a geek standpoint, one of the best weblogging programs that I've used is blosxom. It's by Rael Dornfest, who edited the Google Hacks book, among others. I use it for my web sites, and it's a very simple, powerful, and flexible tool. Depending on how you need to use it, this may be a good way to go.
I have not used Moveable Type, so I can't comment on that. But I've had good experiences with blosxom.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I used MovableType until recently for my own personal website. Both as a blog and as the engine to power the news of the website.
:-)
.wml file template was very simple.
The advantage to MT is that it can store the info in one of 3 different databases (including a local file if you don't have SQL of some sort) and the only time the Perl application is accessed is when you're either adding a new entry to the blog or when someone is posting a comment. Everything is generated as HTML so when a user views the page, they're not calling any scripts. Keeps overheads down and allows for bigger sites on smaller servers.
Caching I found an issue. The HTML is static. So I quite often had to manually tell Squid to refresh the site if it was getting updated lots and I wanted to see those updates.
Multiple authors per blog is useful. Its pretty decent as far as permission system goes. I dislike the fact that a user can make certain changes (such as altering where on the file system their blog gets created) but this can be turned off simply enough with only minor loss of functionality to the end user themself. Then again, what they don't know they could've had, they won't miss.
Security isn't so bad. You can use HTTP authentication to stop the users getting in to the directory with the Perl app and then their username/passwd to access the prog itself. This gets complicated if you want to permit comments. However, Security concerns are few and far between. 2.64 takes care of all known bugs and when bugs are announced, a patch is pretty quickly released.
Remember, the average Joe doesn't need to even get near the Perl application if you disable comments. All they get is straight HTML.
People complain about the CSS and so on. I haven't had a problem with this myself. I found it pretty simple to modify the entire look and feel. The template structure is pretty straight forward and expandable. Adding something like a WAP
Hunt around, there are a heap of plugins for it. Including plugins that allow you to use WikiWord formatting and more.
While it was of use to me, it suited my purposes very well. Its very quick and scalable. I had about 30 blogs plus a news page running from the single install on a P200. Because the Joe is getting HTML and not running the Perl scripts to generate it every view, it doesn't need a major box.
AFAIK, MT always requires that the web server have write access to the area where MT is installed. The only safe way to deal with this is to run the MT cgis under a suexec wrapper, so they execute as your user. Otherwise, you have to make the files world-writeable, which is a terrible, terrible idea. I've seen many posts on MT forums telling people to do a chmod 777 -- don't listen to them!
What do I use now?
When more and more friends started wanting blogs and then more of their friends started wanting blogs, I wanted something that I could use for a whole lot more than just personal blogs. I also wanted to have the option to put subscription fees on it (when things started getting expensive to host) and that was a live and ongoing project.
So now I use the LiveJournal code. Its Perl (will run on nearly every platform from IIS to Apache to iPlanet to....) and SQL backed. Its scalable (like you wouldn't believe. Look at LiveJournal.com, over 1,000,000 active blogs) and its not slow.
It allows for full management of the user and also offers the abillity to move to a subscription model without having to change anything. There are various levels of subscription as well... Free, Paid, Permanant, Admin. You can also define more and levels within each.
I could ramble on further, but if its what you might find useful, check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/code/
They call it "Open Source/Free Software" with links to both opensource.org and fsf.org.
You may also want to checkout Greymatter... it has some cool features and is open source as well. I've seen some nice sites that use it.
About.com is an example large scale site using Moveable Type.
Are you sure MT is what you really want? I'll bet a wiki would be a better choice; we just installed one here at work and we're going crazy-go-nuts with it. We've installed PhpWiki, but Twiki looks useful, too.
The "home" of wiki is at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki, and the main book on the subject of wikis, The Wiki Way, has a companion website with downloadable code at http://wiki.org/.
Briefly, a wiki is a website that allows one to create and edit web pages without having to mess with accounts and permissions--just type in one's text into an edit box, click "submit", and it's up and running. We use it as a knowledge base, and I'm going to use it to record billable events and notes.
"The simplest possible database that could possibly work"--Ward Cunningham
After looking around at numerous [we]blogs and having my own hosted at LiveJournal, I decided not to go with a pre--packaged solution. Instead I wrote my own. Using PHP and two MySQL tables I've created what I consider a pretty robust blog. It lacks some of the administrative stuff at the moment, but it presents the reader with a uniform and obvious interface.
Writing your own blog isn't super-difficult if you have experience with PHP and MySQL. I found it to be a really fun project. Highly recommend going this route.
Another advantage of doing it this way... You can add anything you freakin' want.
Movable Type does not scale. 'rebuilding' the site consumes huge resources; luckily, this makes static sites which causes very little load for accessing the site.. but the rebuilding feature does not work too well on 'shared hosting servers'.
It should be fine, however, if you rebuild the site locally and then rsync it to the server.. this would require a bit more effort.
If you're running it on your own co-located or dedicated server then you shouldn't need to worry.
Movable Type is non-free software and I suggest you avoid it entirely. Both of Movable Type's licenses (their personal non-commercial license and their commercial license prohibit distributing the software without written consent. There is also language that tries to restrict what you can do with the software (even though U.S. copyright law doesn't allow placing terms on merely executing the software) and claims agreement to its terms under a click-through agreement (which are not valid everywhere) or by merely installing or using the software.
I suggest one use or make Free Software instead. The FSF and the GNU Project publish information on which licenses are free. I suggest staying away from software licensed under the Creative Commons licenses. They are doing great work but their licenses are not intended for use with software.
Digital Citizen
Their website makes this claim, but I do not believe it is true. They apparently changed the license for the software from something else to a Creative Commons license. The Open Source Initiative does not list the CC licenses on their approved license list (hence, Greymatter is not "open source") and CC licenses are not intended for software.
Until Greymatter chooses a Free Software license, I recommend steering clear of Greymatter. The Free Software movement stresses treating all users as equals. The Open Source Initiative has approved some licenses, including the Apple Public Source License, which do not treat all users equally.
Digital Citizen
It's been said a couple of times here all ready that you should make sure you're using the most appropriate tool for the job (a good philosphy in general). If you wanna check out some of the open-source CMS (Content Management Systems) out there to see what suits you best, you can visit OpenSourceCMS it has live demos of various CMS solutions that you can get a feel for--you can even log in as an admin and check out its admin interface. These are all free, but they're also all php/mysql based. I don't know if there's a similiar sites for other CMS/blog systems (MT uses Perl, for example), but Google probably has a pretty good idea. ;-)
;-)
I'm a bit partial to e107 myself, but I'll admit that I haven't tried a whole lot of them.
Happy blogging!
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I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
-- Dr. Seuss