MovableType From a Freeloader's Perspective

I've been using MT for the 3 years I've had this blog, starting with version 2.661 and updating regularly, now on 3.33 (3.34 was just released). When I started, many personal blogs were on MT and it was recommended to me as the tool of choice. Shortly after, Six Apart changed their licensing for personal use, seriously restricting what the 'free' version could do. They've since turned back to an unrestricted, free, personal license, but not before loosing many personal bloggers to WordPress. In fact, if I were starting a blog today, I most assuredly would be told that WP is the tool of choice for personal blogging.

I've stuck with MT because I'm comfortable with the way it works, I'm impressed with the depth of its capabilities, I don't want to go through the pain of switching and I'm just plain stubborn. I've deliberately avoided looking at WP because I don't want to be tempted to switch. :-D

In the past year or so, it seems that 6A is focused on other things like the integration of it's acquisition of LiveJournal and more so it's recent launch of the acclaimed (and cool looking) Vox service rather than MT, it's flagship product. Actually, MT has gotten a couple of significant updates, but the experience of using MT (getting help, learning about functionality, plugins, finding styles, etc.) for the personal MT user, has been frustrating. As I said, I think that 6A ignores us 'freeloaders' to their potential peril. After all, how many businesses get into blogging because of one or two employee's passion for it? If that employee has had a great experience with a blogging platform like MT, who's going to get the recommendation to the higher ups?

All that said, here are some things I've noticed that I are frustrating from my perspective:

Plug-in Directory - A couple of years ago, 6A took over what was (I think) an independently run directory of MT plugins. It's now run by 6A and is a part of their web site. I had hoped that it would get more regular updates, better plugin documentation and more accurate information. I was wrong. It's a hard to search, incomplete and sometimes out dated resource with a patchwork of styles and organization. What's more is that nearly every link (in the title) to the developer's page for a plug in is broken. Every single one. Even plugins that have been updated this year. I've pointed it out to them, I'm sure others have, but it remains broken. As a personal blogger who's paying nothing, it's annoying, if I had paid for MT I would be angry. (OK, it turns out this assertion is only half right. In each plugin listing there are 2 links: a big 'Download' button and the title, which is also, as one would expect, a link. The link in the title is broken nearly universally, but, it turns out, in many (most? all?) cases the download link isn't really a download link. It's a link to the developer's page. I hadn't figured that out because I assumed that 'Download' meant, you know, download the file. I went for the title link so I could read up on it first. So, not quite as bad, but still broken and also confusing.)

What I was really hoping for is a little more involvement from 6A on the plugins. Some of them have annoying bugs and incomplete at best documentation. They can be hard to figure out, don't quite work at times and can be difficult to get support for. This is really not 6A's fault, these plugins are developed by third parties. However, it seems there could be more clear interaction between 6A and the plugin community. Clear standards on what it takes to get a plugin listed. Perhaps an evaluation and rating on the site checking off things like instructions, help available from the developer, tested by 6A, version compatibility, etc. Does listing mean it met some sort of requirements, and if so what? How about working with them to help them develop adequate documentation and providing working links to the developer's site and how to get support. (News! 6A just announced the hiring of Arvind Satyanarayan as an intern to work with the plugin directory, among other things. Great move.)

Support Forum - The MT community forum is mostly a great resource, but I challenge you to find it from the main MT page. There's a 'Support Quick Links' section of links on that page, but it's not there. Neither is it at the 'Developers' link or the ProNet link in that list. You need to click 'Technical Support' to find the link to the forums under Help and Documentation. The irony is that personal users like me know that they are not entitled to 'technical support' and therefore may be unlikely to search there for assistance. I looked there only after I couldn't find it anywhere else. The real question is why bury the link to the forums? Even the paid users can benefit from the forums and certainly the personal users could benefit from the knowledge even more.

Make that forum a prominent part of your support base. Utilize and leverage the community of MT users and build it up, don't hide it.

Bundled Plug-ins - Over the years, 6A has incorporated several plugins into the distribution of MT. Recently, 2 powerful ones have been SpamLookup and Stylecatcher. Great tools, however, they came in with precious little documentation and little additional has been added to the MT help files. I still don't completely understand how these work and how I can utilize them fully on my MT installation. SpamLookup is particularly frustrating at installation. It's a powerful and expandable set of anti-spam tools, but it comes completely unconfigured and with little insight on how best to configure it to beat the spammers that can strip blogging of its joy. I suspect many a potential blogger is scared way when the spammer's find their site and start flooding it. Soon, more time is spent in spam management than blogging. When I installed the first version of MT with SpamLookup, I had to go searching for a good starting set of keywords for the filters. Ironically, I found one on a WordPress site. Why should I have to do that? Why not ship it with a robust set of filters and instruct the user how to tweak them to their desire.

Adopting these strong plugins into the code of the MT package is a great move, however they cannot simply be thrown in without thought. MT is marketed as a high end package, not a cobbling together of several folks' side projects. These plugins should be fleshed out to a higher standard, particularly in documentation, before bundled with MT.

ProNet - The ProNet is a community of advanced users and developers that can bounce ideas off each other and take a peek at where MT is headed. At least that's what I think it is, I have tried to join up but haven't been able to as the sign in up mechanism is broken (ironically, I think it's an issue with Typekey, another 6A service). I've filled out the lengthy, multi page questionnaire more than once trying to sign up. At the end of the form, there's no indication if my 'application' went through or what happens next. I want to contribute to the community, particularly since I'm not paying for what I'm using. I've done so by helping to flesh out documentation for a couple of plugins (1, 2) developed by others and beta testing plugins as well, but I'd like to join the ProNet so I can do more and be more informed. I've emailed 6A as well as folks connected with 6A but I still cannot get in, nor have been told why or that I'm not able to join for some reason. It's been broken for months. Why? Why put up obstacles to folks getting involved?

The Style Archive - I know that The Style Archive is not a 6A sponsored site. Serious kudos go to the folks who put together The Style Contest which led to the the creation of The Style Archive. This was done, I think, largely on their own time because they wanted to see there be a wide range of styles available to MT users. So, I can't fault 6A for the problems with the site. The comments on the site don't work, searching is painful and unpredictable, the style browser frequently doesn't work and many of the styles don't display properly in the Stylecatcher plugin. I don't have a huge beef with the developers of the style archive site, they did this out of their own hearts and their free time for the benefit of the community. How can you find fault with that? Even with its bugs, it's a great resource.

The beef I do have is why didn't 6A step up and officially sponsor this after the contest was done? There's a plug in directory, why not a style directory? Why didn't they step in and say "Thanks guys so much for all the hard word you've done for the MT community. If you don't mind, we'd like to step in and take this to the next level and make it a repository that's easy for the community to use and contribute to." Seamless integration with Stylecatcher. Clear instructions on how to use it (which would mean documenting Stylecatcher).

All these things make using MT as a personal blogger frustrating. This is a world class product, the product that made their company, their flagship, their most expensive offering and the one they want to see businesses buy. There was an opportunity to take the strong community they developed and leverage it and expand it into something bigger and more profitable. Instead, they've ignored that base of personal users and it's dwindling away. Very few personal plogs I read or just stumble on are MT blogs anymore. It seems every new one I find is either Blogger or WP. Of the 26 blogs in 'The Daily List' at left, at least 8 of them have switched blogging platforms since I started reading them, all to WordPress. Most moved from Blogger, but two of them had been MT. One of those once on MT is now running his own blog hosting business, run on Wordpress.

Perhaps 6A would prefer to see personal bloggers use Typepad (not free), Livejournal or Vox and wants to concentrate it's energies on servicing the paying corporate customers. I can understand the desire for more paying customers than us freeloaders. I think that abandoning or ignoring the personal MT blogger is a mistake, because they are the ones who will influence the corporations when it's buying time. For me, I don't think any of those other 6A platforms will do all I want to do with my blogs (a private group blog for my family being the big one) but I'm not sure. I do know that MT does it all and does it well.

I've written this to point out what I see, not to tear down the good folks at 6A. I hope it will help make some changes for the better in the MT world. As I said, I love MT and enjoy using it. I've been a supporter of MT and spoken up on it's behalf on a few sites. I just wish it were a little more friendly to us freeloaders.