But I achieved the two basic things I wanted: post speed is higher by default and I can post from my phone easily.  So I figure I may as well just go for it.

I think I’ve managed to keep old links working thanks to all the static html MovableType left around for me.

I really need to do some theme/css tweeking.  And set up a little photoblog roll in the front page.

I think my MT archives/links are going to actually move over more or less intact also which is a plus.

The iPhone WordPress app is working.

Managing the site is sooo much faster now.

• WordPress seems very much influenced by MovableType, coming from the latter.  Who knows…maybe it was the other way around with MT4.  Either way the UI is all very similar.
• I run a server with multiple IPs and which hosts multiple domains.  Some of those have a blog.  It is unlikely I’d ever do anything other than have multiple domains on the machine, each with a single blog.  With MT I have to do multiple MT installs as best I can tell and admin them all.  Same for WordPress.  Although WordPress-MU potentially offers a way around that.  WordPress and WordPress-MU also are integrated into my OS’s package system.  If the blogging software is packaged with the OS and I only have that single instance installed, administration is easier.  I’ve got a fair amount of digging here to see if I can actually do what I want, but it sounds possible (Multi-Site Manager plugin?).  In MT I probably also could move to a single install of MT, but it’d still be a tarball I plunked down in the fs somewhere and managed manually.
• Security: I really like that it is very simple to tell WordPress that all user logins and administration should happen over SSL.  With MT this isn’t horribly hard, but involves a bit configuring in apache.
• Plugins:  At first it looked like I needed a special plugin just to send mail which seemed crazy.  Again, as with MT, I’m apparently not the normal WordPress user.  Most seem to admin their own WP instance in a virtual host that somebody else provides.  So they’d not be allowed to run a mail server and have to do mail via POP.  But I did end up getting a mail from WP so this did “just work”, but the config made it look like it wouldn’t.  I’m generally not crazy about having to run lots of plugins.
• Themes: I used to comprehend MT themes a bit, simple CSS and simple MT specific mark-up.  WP seems similar, but my first attempt at minimally making a mod’d theme doesn’t appear to have worked.  More poking to do I guess.

All things considered things look very similar between the two.  MT’s a bit more polished.

Next step is to try importing all my old content, checking if links were correctly preserved or if there’s apache url rewrite magic I can do to make them be, do some performance comparisons and try posting from my phone.

1. Performance: MovableType’s rebuilding is very annoying. My blog is fairly small, but post times are getting intolerably high. I think for my usage I’d sacrifice (or at least consider/compare) having the fast load time static pages for not having to build static pages frequently and being able to manipulate my blog/site quickly.
2. iPhone access: MovableType’s fine here if your blog is hosted by them. If you’re in their “power user” class of self-hoster, you’re just out of luck. You can browse to your blog, log in and painstakingly create simple text posts. But WordPress has a very clean simple app for phones which allows easy photoblogging.

I’m on vacation for a few days which gives me a chance to play with WordPress and learn a bit about how to admin it in my environment which isn’t the standard type of install for either WP or MT.
Some first impressions of WordPress:

• WordPress seems very much influenced by MovableType, coming from the latter. Who knows…maybe it was the other way around with MT4. Either way the UI is all very similar.
• I run a server with multiple IPs and which hosts multiple domains. Some of those have a blog. It is unlikely I’d ever do anything other than have multiple domains on the machine, each with a single blog. With MT I have to do multiple MT installs as best I can tell and admin them all. Same for WordPress. Although WordPress-MU potentially offers a way around that. WordPress and WordPress-MU also are integrated into my OS’s package system. If the blogging software is packaged with the OS and I only have that single instance installed, administration is easier. I’ve got a fair amount of digging here to see if I can actually do what I want, but it sounds possible (Multi-Site Manager plugin?). In MT I probably also could move to a single install of MT, but it’d still be a tarball I plunked down in the fs somewhere and managed manually.
• Security: I really like that it is very simple to tell WordPress that all user logins and administration should happen over SSL. With MT this isn’t horribly hard, but involves a bit configuring in apache.
• Plugins: At first it looked like I needed a special plugin just to send mail which seemed crazy. Again, as with MT, I’m apparently not the normal WordPress user. Most seem to admin their own WP instance in a virtual host that somebody else provides. So they’d not be allowed to run a mail server and have to do mail via POP. But I did end up getting a mail from WP so this did “just work”, but the config made it look like it wouldn’t. I’m generally not crazy about having to run lots of plugins.
• Themes: I used to comprehend MT themes a bit, simple CSS and simple MT specific mark-up. WP seems similar, but my first attempt at minimally making a mod’d theme

doesn’t appear to have worked. More poking to do I guess.
All things considered things look very similar between the two. MT’s a bit more polished.
Next step is to try importing all my old content, checking if links were correctly preserved or if there’s apache url rewrite magic I can do to make them be, do some performance comparisons and try posting from my phone.