Regime Changed
Last year I helped beta test a content management system called "Textpattern":http://www.textpattern.com, created by a man named Dean Allen, who runs a web site called "Textism":http://www.textism.com (with the dog of all dogs, Oliver [and now "Hugo":http://textism.com/photos/?s=48, also]).
Well, then Dean dropped off the face of the planet and I got bored. The getting bored part didn't take nearly as long as it did for Dean to resurface and announce a web service based on a more advanced version of Textpattern. Anway, I was long in the arms of "Moveable Type":http://www.moveabletype.org/ by then.
And so we arrive in the present. Textpattern is in gamma release, at version 1.19. It's very robust, if a little rough around the edges. It's also a pleasure to look at (you'll have to find the screenshots of the administrative pages to know what I'm talking about) and a joy to use. Dean is also the creator of a markup system called "Textile":http://textism.com/tools/textile/, which makes (are you ready for this?) marking up text for display on the web a quick and simple process.
So this evening I spent about 3 hours migrating from Moveable Type to Textpattern. The transition was relatively painless (I only had to touch the PHP code twice), and I was able to import all of the articles and comments from my Moveable Type install. I had to recreate my templates from scratch, but copying and pasting HTML text from MT templates turned out to be a snap.
So, we'll see how it goes. This is the first post under the new regime, and hopefully the beginning of a beautiful relationship.