Weez Blog

ch ch ch changes

Liz directed me to pMachine which was having a special offer of Expression Engine ($199.00) for free to the first 1000 folks who emailed them requesting the software. The only requirement was that one had to have been running another blog application for the last 6 months.

I'm in!

I'm still working out the bugs, but its been mostly painless.

I'm documenting my process and will submit it to them for making multiple blogs running on different subdomains.

I played with WordPress for a bit, and it is truly free. An opensource blogging tool. Being mostly a geek under duress rather than by recreation, I found it funtional and fast. Because it is offered through my hosting provider, installation was a no brainer. It allows for multiple authors - not multiple blogs. So it would simply need to be installed repeatedly.

Expression Engine, on the other hand, has a list price of $199.00. For that, you get a very clear and (for me) highly satisfactory GUI. It's like how leather seats will add no funtionality to your car, but make for a real sigh of enjoyment whenever you sit down.

The layout needs to be done in a way that my siblings and parents don't have to think. When they hit publish, they'll get this screen (I chose the black and gold skin, there's a blue and white one by default).

Here's a screen shot of the entry composition screen. I know basic html tags, Beau and Elaine have figured out how to do links. That the various flourishes are available via buttons is good. (WordPress does this as well).

How does it compare with MT?

It's sexier.

One thing MT does have, that EE does not, is an easy way to upload and post images. In fact, MT's TypePad (Plus) has a lovely photoblog utility. If MT had that capability, it's make the package much more sexy and (I think) more appealing for its price tag.

Blogging daily for almost a year, I've racked up a lot of entries and comments. Again, not being so much a techie as a Gui-slinger, was annoyed by increasingly long rebuild times. That's because MT builds static pages. Each entry has its own .html page. The categories are agregates, and those too are built as static pages. So posting is taking a perceptively long time, as de-spamming.

Don't know yet about the Spam filter that EE has, however, pages are created dynamically from the database. Liz warned me that I wouldn't feel the rebuild, but users would feel the pain if this blog ever got popular for a moment (like if I was SlashDotted). Unlikely. I'm not that interesting.

I should have paid attention to this last year when Liz was telling me porting woes over bench presses...

All my MT entries are named by number. (If you select an individual entry, you'll see something like "http://weez.oyzon.com/archives/000953.html#2676"). Suppose Elaine posts something. She also gets counted in the entry number. (http://nain.oyzon.com/archives/000951.html#2691).

When I port things over to a new database, it's just my stuff that gets moved - not the entire db. So then all the numbers get screwy. Should have started having entries named by name...but then, I didn't expect to be switching from MT - complacent wench.

By default, EE names entry URLs by name, so this will be a non-issue in the future.

Yeah, I'm probably switching for real. (Provided I can work out the bugs). The end line? EE is better (experientially) than MT. It's interface and ease of use are lovely. That's comparing apples and apples. Both purchaseable applications.

WordPress is an orange. It's opensource and free. PMachine Free is not open source, but is a light version of of pMachine which is sister to Expression Engine. B2 Evolution is a sister to WordPress - and that one handles multiple blogs and authors. Haven't looked at Drupal at all.

So, I'm likely switching to Expression Engine for all of the Oyzons and its subsidiaries (tax and liscense no included). As to my courses - Liz has made such lovely MT courseware, it is seductive to stay with it there. She's my support goddess and I will probably follow her lead in that arena.

Posted by weez at May 17, 2004 06:46 AM | TrackBack