Before coding this website, I had a bit of trouble deciding which publishing platform to implement on mtsix. I had come down on two systems - MovableType and WordPress.

Both of these are well-known and the most popular blog types. They both had really attractive features, yet differentiated themselves with tools that I had never experienced. After trying both, by which I mean installing, skinning, testing, and posting, I finally decided to go with WordPress.

Here’s a more specific comparison:

Out look

I was not impressed with either of the two default looks. The internal coding (html and css) are both really organized; however, the design was not the bee’s knees. If I had to choose a default skin, I’d have chosen WordPress (Sample). However, since I was going to skin this blog myself anyway, this didn’t matter much.

Functionality

I was overwhelmed by the number of options and functions that MovableType had. Although WordPress is still ahead of most blogs, MT has really outpowered WP with its direct outputs.

Skinning

This feature was probably the one of the most important that I was looking for. Without any doubt, MT certainly has a more organized internal skinning syntax and organization. Each template is divided into pages where it’s rebuilt after each post. However, after studying WP’s default skin, I found that WordPress’s skinning format is actually more sentimental, quick and painless. WP actually embeds its functions, such as displaying a post, into your page, instead of vice versa. This is more structured as if it’s like a series of functions that can be added to a php page.

Usability

For some reason, MT rebuilds each page according to the template, and makes an archive of it for every post. I find this incredibly disturbing, as each piece of information stored in the database is reproduced to take up more space and bandwidth. This can also be irritating when updating a template. MT will have to rebuild all of the pages again, even if there are a few hundred posts. Wordpress, on the other hand, dynamically pulls data out of the database and disaplays it accordingly. Power to the Press.

Personal Taste

I was born with PHP, not CGI, which MT uses. Even though using a blog system whose abbreviation is the same as mtsix would be cool, WordPress has won me over.