Comments on: Rebuilding Movable Type

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:13:51 +0000

We’re currently on MT 3.21 and looking for a long overdue upgrade. Held out for the community features. But would gladly switch to WordPress if someone assured me that it’s plugins had powerful community features.

So, currently looking for someone who can help with an upgrade or migration for a nominal fee.

By: tom sherman

tom sherman — Thu, 11 May 2006 05:27:02 +0000

As folks have said, there are advantages to MT's static pages approach (particularly with lots of traffic) and WP's dynamic pages. Although I'm intimately familiar w/ MT and pretty familiar w/ WP, one thing I've never been able to figure out is whether most, or even a decent number of MT plugins are compatible with dynamic publishing. I have extremely tweaked MT templates and when I looked into switching to dynamic publishing, nothing worked. Anyway, the "30 minute page rebuild" problem is caused in part by category archives. I've written up a post describing the problem and providing an optimized template. You can cut down on your rebuild times significantly.

By: Doug Kenline

Doug Kenline — Wed, 10 May 2006 07:48:46 +0000

Thanks guys.

What about Blogger?

Seems to work well for Atrios. 130,000 visitors per day.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Tue, 09 May 2006 22:56:04 +0000

I agree with Dale and Tim – all I’m saying is that when I rebuild my largest MT site it takes well over half an hour (and I have a decent server). I wouldn’t say it as a sweeping statement for all sites. On my smaller ones it can take a few minutes – but I guess in comparison to my WP blogs where changes are immediate even a few minutes can be annoying.

By: Tim Houghton

Tim Houghton — Tue, 09 May 2006 22:48:28 +0000

In addition to Dale’s comment above, it’s worth noting that the rebuild time is also highly dependent on your server’s speed. If you have ultra cheap shared hosting on a lowly 2GHz Celeron then slow rebuilds shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 09 May 2006 19:40:19 +0000

I have blogs running both MT and WP and I like both for different reasons. My main blog actually runs on TypePad and it runs quite nicely. It is a bit of a concern that TypePad won’t export really large blogs and I hope Six Apart addresses that.

Mike Rundle’s comparison is pretty handy, thanks for the links Darren.

By: Dale Cruse

Dale Cruse — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:05:51 +0000

Saying that an MT rebuild takes 30 minutes is completely misleading. It strongly depends on how many files have to be rebuilt. Smaller sites will do it in seconds. Larger sites will take longer. But to blindly say an MT rebuild will take 30 minutes is just unfair.

Also, in MT, the default value is to rebuild 40 files at a time. You can actually increase this number, which will give you a slight speed increase.

By: Murdoc

Murdoc — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:09:59 +0000

I use MT’s dynamic building for all pages except the home page of my site. At over 3000 posts, rebuilding the entire site did take a long time. But setting the templates to ‘dynamic’ took me all of five minutes. It’s a few check boxes. You certainly don’t need to be a “technical person” to do it.

WP certainly seems to be the one many are going with these days, though…

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:53:06 +0000

My Movable Type site is by no means large, but I found it helps if I do the rebuilds in stages. At the time of the change, I’ll rebuild just the posts that appear on the front page plus the 5-10 most popular entries according to my stats.Then I’ll do the complete rebuild of all the entries later when I don’t care how long it takes.

By: This Blog Is Full Of Crap

This Blog Is Full Of Crap — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:52:01 +0000

A watched progress bar never completes

I’ve been watching Problogger for the helpful tips for a while, but this complaint about the length of MT rebuild times caught my attention: This is a difference that has made me start all my newer blogs with WP. There’s…

By: Hatem

Hatem — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:19:18 +0000

In this case your hosting provider isn't really worried about server resources - when your site overload the server other sites on the same server will slow down. That's why they usually limit memory usage per account, and when this limit is exceeded server start killing scripts automaticly. I talked about this in january when my hosting provider have even suggested me to find another provider :-P

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Tue, 09 May 2006 10:42:40 +0000

Hatem – actually I don’t have my own server. I’m not sure how many other sites are on the one I have but my sites are not the biggest on it

By: Hatem

Hatem — Tue, 09 May 2006 10:29:09 +0000

Darren you have your own server, so its different … I’m talking about the majority of bloggers … does a problogger have to buy his own server since the first day ? or start with small account then upgrade when he need to …

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:06:36 +0000

With plugins like WP-Cache2, WordPress has much better chance guarding against slashdot effect, even on shared hosting. PHP is still loaded, but cached files are sent back before most of the WP files are imported. Check this performance benchmark for the effect of caching on an otherwise slow WP backend. Although I do agree that "code is poetry" doesn't really apply to WordPress, but it is definitely getting better and cleaner.

By: Paul Short

Paul Short — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:39:55 +0000

I've used MT in the past and found it to be ok, but yeah, the rebuilding after every post was annoying. Never did use it enough to get a high volume of posts and experience the 30 min. delays tho. As for wordpress being dynamic, the newest version uses a type of cache system. I'm not tecchie enough to know exactly how it works, but it speeds up database calls and decreases server load for heavy traffic sites or spikes like when you get slashdotted or dugg. If you're interested in making your wordpress post url's look like static pages, I put up a short tutorial (and use the technique outlined) at my newest blog. It works like a charm for me.

By: Clark

Clark — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:29:53 +0000

For me the main difference between Wordpress and MT is the responsiveness of the admin. interface. MT is an absolute dog! It’s pitifully slow.

There are some advantages to having a single admin interface to multiple sites – it is a bit easier to manage. If only they could improve the responsiveness of the application …

By: Errol

Errol — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:15:04 +0000

If you are planning to build a large site or multiple sites I would recommend TYPO3. I use TYPO3 to publish 5 websites all from one database installation. You can serve just dynamic pages or publish as static. It is also 100% customizable. It has a couple blogging extensions to choose from and many other features you would fine in enterprise level content management systems costing $60 000 plus but TYPO3 is 100% free GPL. It take a little time to learn but if you are planning to build a network of sites it will be worth the time you spend learning it. Check it out at http://www.typo3.com.

By: eszpee

eszpee — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:12:57 +0000

Honestly, I didn’t realize setting up dynamic publishing for MovableType was such a problem for so many people. New item on my article-ideas list for sure! :)

In my experience, MT with the possibility of mixed static/dynamic templates provides the best solution.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:08:32 +0000

Hatem – interesting.

Having been slashdotted on both WP and MT blogs I’ve never had a crash.

Like Mike in the linked post I’ve found my larger MT blogs can take a long time to rebuild (ie blogs with close to 3000 posts).

I guess it’s about finding something that suits your expertise and goals in blogging and going with it. I’ve no doubt that MT fits the mould for some.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 09 May 2006 06:34:43 +0000

Interesting point there Hatem; I can see where you would benefit from MovableType with a much larger site.

For those of us in the “magic middle” though, Wordpress seems to be an easier platform all around. I switched about a month ago with my site and I have found that it allows the semi-pro blogger a little bit more leg room in the way of design, time, and expandability.

For my money, the dynamic rebuild is a feature that should not be sacrificed by a blog of any size. If you are advanced enough to get MT working dynamically, then you are truly skilled. For those of us who rely on a much more simple approach, I think Wordpress will always do the trick…