A Nerd Vent
December 29th, 2004I know I’m supposed to be all “dude, 2004 was awesome and here are 7,000 links to all the awesome stuff.”
Can’t do it. This is a geek entry. It shouldn’t make Leta less cute, though. Plus, Leta was born in 2004. That’s all you need to know, right there.
Anyway, I was going to write a big long message to the Movable Type Developer’s Network, because a certain hot-button issue came up for me. Namely, the way categories are used (and under-used) in Movable Type. Bear in mind that I have a headache, it’s late and I’m too lazy to go back through and change all the MT’s to Movable Type. If you see MT below, I meant to type Movable Type, but couldn’t due to holiday delirium.
Here’s what I was going to send:
I may have been a little glib about the category implementation, but I think the ability to have a template that is specific to a category (or group of categories) should be application-level functionality, not reliant on plug-ins. Regardless of philosophy about what the software does and where it’s going, the app [Movable Type] currently provides categories (and now sub-categories) as a way to display and sort content. It doesn’t allow for a very full range of options. As a result, brilliant plug-ins have been written to make up for the shortcomings of how Movable Type deals with categories. I just think it’s time for MT to step it up in this regard, and having spent three years using MT, it’s been my biggest hangup. MT has created such an enormous level of empowerment, I would love to see it get more powerful from the inside.
When we redesigned Dooce, we used a method described here to get the various category archives to render differently. My real-world reason for venting: what happens when a category is added? The main user (Heather) has to tell me she’s added a category and I have to go in and code all those includes and templates.
How should it work, then? When I make a new category, I should be able to assign an archive template to it. So for categories 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 15 archives, use Template A. Categories 3, 5 and 10 use Template B. How sweet would that be? Everytime the user adds a category, they associate an archive template with it. My life would be awesome.
I know that TextPattern has something like this, but why doesn’t Movable Type?
What if I wanted to do a site that had nothing to do with publish date but relied solely on categorization for it’s architecture? I’d have to jump through some big hoops with MT to accomplish this, particularly if I wanted the app to build my navigation. Previous and Next entry within a specific category isn’t something that I can do very easily with MT, either. I believe this should also be core application functionality, particularly for large sites that have loads of categories.
The other major issue with categories being juiced would be having to not sweat plug-in breakage with every major upgrade. That the tutorial and methodology linked to above is dated 2003 speaks to the need for a hard look at categories and their functionality within MT. It’s not just the template per category issue, either. It goes deeper into the app. Let’s say I want to show lastn entries for a particular category on every page of my site. It won’t work without some major gymnastics. It shouldn’t be so hard.
Jay Allen, I was being cheeky in my earlier email. Chalk it up to too much eggnog and chocolate and Aunt Lola’s toffee. But categories, man. Categories. Kind of like in The Graduate where the guy says, “Plastics, Ben, Plastics.”
I’m now going to upgrade my cloak of invisibility to a level 30 and throw a 20-sided die to determine whether or not my gonads will remain attached or put in the freezer. o
December 31st, 2004 at 10:28 am
“Jon mentions only using MT for client work, and that seems dangerous to me. I’m not sure what type of clients you have, but I doubt every client wants a blog. MT is quite inflexible.”
Actually, in my previous life before joining Six Apart, I did web consulting. One of my major tools was MT precisely for it’s simplicity and it’s flexibility.
The fact is, MT is a fabulous data entry and publishing engine if you set it up correctly. It has a large code base that does storage and data output better than I could code it myself in such a short time. What’s more, because of it’s APIs, my client never had to see the MT interface, as I could easily hook up a PHP front end that did all of the management my client needed without all of the other things that MT offered.
MT can really do anything — not just cookie cutter blogs. Just as an example, go and see http://www.jadfair.com. Every piece of content on that site is published by MT.
All you have to do is throw away the default templates and realize that the MT tags represent placeholders for data. Combined with the hundreds of plugins and the APIs, MT is anything but inflexible.
Plone, on the other hand, is a FAR more complicated system that would have been totally unsuitable for my clients. If I had given them that, they would have cursed me for ages, I promise you.
MT gave me the ability to give my clients exactly what they wanted at a very low price and provided the ability to grow as their needs grew.
December 31st, 2004 at 10:41 am
Jay - first, I love Jad Fair!
Second, I think we have fundamentally different clients, and I think that provision was covered above to a small degree. I see that MT can do more than cookie-cutter blogs, and the phrase was misused, certainly.
My clients most often need powerful publishing systems with workflows, document management, real search abilities, premium content items, tight integration to Web service providers (Salesforce being a big example), etc. I think the difference in clients is really what I wasn’t fully taking into account.
I agree that Plone is pretty complex, but it’s quite powerful and easily extensible with Python. I honestly don’t use it for anything but simple Intranet work, but I’ve seen it deployed for clients with needs similar to those of my own clients.
I’m sure MT has a place in client services, and was clearly ignoring smaller work like the example you provided. To that effect, my unsolicited advice was off mark. I assume folks who use MT exclusively would turn down work with requirements MT cannot easily provide via plugins.
December 31st, 2004 at 11:09 am
“Jay - first, I love Jad Fair!”
Yeah, he’s a hoot. Total technophone but yet loves what the web does for him in connecting him with fans.
“My clients most often need powerful publishing systems with workflows, document management, real search abilities, premium content items, tight integration to Web service providers (Salesforce being a big example), etc.”
Yeah, that’s not MT’s domain. No doubt about it.
“I assume folks who use MT exclusively would turn down work with requirements MT cannot easily provide via plugins.”
I would hope so. But then, I don’t know any developer who uses MT exclusively.
Happy New Year, by the way! (14 hours early)
December 31st, 2004 at 9:13 pm
Hijack. What size memory card should I buy for my new D70. Need to take it with me for a week (300 medium-sized shots) at a time. Also, I spend most of my life in the 2nd/3rd world where it’s hard to recharge batteries. Any thought on that one?
December 31st, 2004 at 11:11 pm
Jay & Tobyjoe:
FYI, I use Movable Type to do my portfolio: http://www.smoghat.com/jon/
It’s definitely not a blog.
Mimi: Get a SanDisk 1 gig or Kingston 1gig. Buy an extra battery, charge it and take it into the wilds? Don’t use your flash so much? I’ve shot about 1,000 shots before charging, but that’s natural light and minimal monitor usage.
Thanks everybody for a GREAT thread!
January 2nd, 2005 at 6:27 am
“Neither Wordpress nor TextPattern have a full-time shepherd, not to mention a team of highly talented people who are paid good money to focus solely on development and support of the software.”
I work on WordPress full-time — I can’t claim to be talented but I am paid. We do have a rather large talented base developing the product, but just because they work for love and not money doesn’t mean their contributions are any less valid.
As for the long-term viability of Open Source code, I think it’s more stable than propietary alternatives because the license is a known quantity rather than liable to change with the current owner, pricing structure, corporate strategy, or weather. That’s why companies like IBM and HP are betting the horse on Open Source and a majority of the internet is built with or served on Open Source products.
What blog software should you use? Whatever works for you.
It’s 2005 now, there’s no reason for anyone to be dogmatic about blog software when there’s such consistently high quality amoung the main players in the field.
January 2nd, 2005 at 11:13 am
Matt,
You are right about software like FreeBSD and Apache and sendmail.. However, I think my original rant was directed at Six Apart for a reason: I want to use their product for things besides blogs. Blogging software has come a long way in the past half dozen years, and by enabling easier publishing, content management and implementation, it seems logical to push blogging software to do more than blogs.
If any of the alternatives (open source or not) are suited to this kind of development, it would be an effort focused on publishing and on developing products around publishing.
I think it’s great that you are paid to work on WordPress. The web publishing space is getting interesting. I don’t think you can fault Jay for being excited about new directions that his company and his product are moving. I don’t think he was trying to invalidate other software, just plug his baby.
Thanks for your comment.
January 3rd, 2005 at 8:36 pm
I don’t think you can fault Jay for being excited about new directions that his company and his product are moving. –djblurb
You are absolutely correct.
I don’t think he was trying to invalidate other software, just plug his baby.–djblurb
I have to disagree here. Jay was either: intentionally positioning MT above the open source alternatives by highlighting a perceived down-side, or he has a real problem with wording things.
Not that I have a problem with him highlighting what he perceives as an added value that MT has that is absent in WP et al, I just think we should call a spade a spade. I have a lot of respect for Jay and MT so now harm no foul, and I think Matt would say the same.
I mean he has actually *hung out* with those… people.
January 7th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Oh, jay-sus people. No, I wasn’t denigrating WordPress, TextPattern, Open source or grandma’s apple pie. I was expressing excitement for the future of Movable Type.
As I said above, Movable Type hasn’t had a full-time guardian in years. That’s a MAJOR thing. And as amazing as open-source is about collaborative development, having the same team working on the software as their main job (as opposed to doing it at night after work, after the kids go to bed, when they have some time) is a major thing.
I’m not denigrating open source software. I LOVE open-source software. I’m just saying that MT’s development has been hampered in the past by conflicting and muddy focus and the building of a business from two people to 70+ (and growing).
Now things are back on track.
Matt said: “I work on WordPress full-time”
CNet pays you to work on WordPress exclusively? I had no idea. That rocks and I’m duly impressed with CNet.
“We do have a rather large talented base developing the product, but just because they work for love and not money doesn’t mean their contributions are any less valid.”
DEFINITELY don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t saying that at all. I was saying that there is a difference between working on something full time and working on something in your off-time when you get the chance.
Anyway, again though, I don’t really care to compare between WordPress and MT. What I WAS meaning to compare was MT in the past to MT now.
“I mean he has actually *hung out* with those… people.”
Huh? Who’s he and “those…people”? Should I be insulted?