Leaving Movable Type for Word Press

I have been using Movable Type blogging software for nearly four years now, the whole of the life of this particular blog. And early on, I was amazed at how I was able to get such a powerful and elegant bit of software for nearly nothing. About a little over a year ago, the difficulties dealing with the templates and making this thing look like I wanted it to were just taking way more time than was reasonable. Plus, the tsunami of comment spam that I had to deal with didn't have any simple solution with MT. I thought each successive version upgrade would be a magic bullet. I tried using something else when I launched Gallery Wire using Word Press, a free and open source blogging tool. Wow. It was just what I was looking for: much simpler, much faster, much more usable. (I've also been using Tumbler for my work-related blog, Designing Innovations. It's also a pleasure to use, for a completely different set of reasons.)

Movable Type 4 was released a few months ago, and I gave it one last try. At first, I was pretty impressed, but the more I used it, the more aggravated I become. The last straw is that insane "Photos" module you see to the right. I can't figure out how to shut it off and the template structure of MT has gotten so Byzantine I just figure it's simpler to throw the whole thing out and start over with Word Press. So I have.

You can see the new, updated Gallery Hopper for a week or so at http://www.walkernewyork.com/galleryhopper/. If you have any suggestions or questions, leave a comment here. I'll be switching over to the new installation in the first week of 2008.