A little over a year ago, I wrote about Movable Type Community Solution. I was critical of it, and then someone used by comments as a springboard for the great WordPress v. Movable Type debate. My comments were taken out of context, and I hope that does not happen again. I am back to point out a few more items, good and bad.
Movable Type 4 has come a long way since its initial release. My first interaction was with MTCS 4.0 and 4.1, and it needed some polish, especially in the way templates were put together, widget sets, in particular. I can recall voicing my irritations with Anil Dash over IM, he seemed to understand where I was coming from. MTCS was eventually rolled into MT Pro, and 4.2 came out with pretty much every issue I had had with 4.1 addressed. Life was good, except I now had to go back into my 4.1 based templates and make the changes.
Our new BG Views Blogs site is based on the code from Tristan Blue 4.2, the Community Blog and Community Forum templates. These tempate sets are a very solid jumping off point -- and that is what they are, nothing more. It is up to the designer to make them work for your application. I originally tried working with the base 4.2 templates, but have strayed a bit to achieve the site you see today.
Movable Type 4 has come a long way since its initial release. My first interaction was with MTCS 4.0 and 4.1, and it needed some polish, especially in the way templates were put together, widget sets, in particular. I can recall voicing my irritations with Anil Dash over IM, he seemed to understand where I was coming from. MTCS was eventually rolled into MT Pro, and 4.2 came out with pretty much every issue I had had with 4.1 addressed. Life was good, except I now had to go back into my 4.1 based templates and make the changes.
Our new BG Views Blogs site is based on the code from Tristan Blue 4.2, the Community Blog and Community Forum templates. These tempate sets are a very solid jumping off point -- and that is what they are, nothing more. It is up to the designer to make them work for your application. I originally tried working with the base 4.2 templates, but have strayed a bit to achieve the site you see today.
Now that Motion, or MT 4.25, is released, I have to take a similar
approach from the 4.1 to 4.2 transition. However unlike the 4.1
templates, Motion uses widgets sets very wisely. Design wise, it has
taken very little work to bend the default Motion template set to my
will. So far I have the header for my Motion template set complete, which is pixel perfect to my Community Blog template, the three column layout dropped in with little work too. Click to enlarge. Please note this template is not complete, WORK IN PROGRESS.
After talking with a couple people, namely Byrne Reese, I came to the realization that it would be far easier to make the Motion template set look like my already designed site, and not add Motion to my existing templates. This turns out of be by far the best method for integrating Motion into your site, especially if you are not starting fresh with MT 4.25.
After working in Motion for about a week now, I have two complaints. One is easily solved with a bit of smart template code, the other I have not found a way around.
I don't really consider myself an advanced Movable Type designer, but maybe I am becoming one, because when I look at the default Motion template set, I see so much untapped potential with regard to template variables, modules and the like. While it would be nice to use the standard Motion templates so that they only take a simple "refresh" command once a newer version of the software is shipped, that is not feasible for me. This is mainly due to the fact that I have grown to rely on the mt:SetVarBlock tag, and while Motion does use it well, it does not use it to its full potential.
However you should keep in mind that these template sets that Six Apart provides are just a starting point, and they have even gone so far as to literally state this in the default Motion footer: "The Motion Template Set is a great example of the type of site you can build with Movable Type."
If I were going to compare this to WordPress, I would say that there is no way I would be caught dead using a default theme I found somewhere on the web for a proffesional project. Likewise, it would benefit any WordPress designer to visit the Codex to find out how much more can be done with templates beyond basic templates you find.
My second gripe has more to do with structure than with design. A Motion Template Set has many System Templates that previous Template Sets do not. The Login Form is unique to Motion, as is Profile View and others. This is quite a change, as previous to Motion, these were all Global System Templates. So, if you are mixing Motion and non-Motion based blogs together, you get two different looking login forms for your end user. (If you are not mixing Motion with other template sets, this doesn't mean a lot to you).
Translated, you can now make blog-level changes to templates that used to be system wide, but on the other hand, if you want to make a system wide change, you need to do it on multiple templates. The issue of aesthetics and usability also comes into play. I do not want my users to see both the MT 4.2 login screen some of the time and the new Motion login screen some of the time. It is easy to change the Global System Templates to look like a Motion blog, it just comes at the expense of duplication.
I also happen to prefer the new Motion-based System Templates, so I am more than willing to make the sacrifice.
The bottom line is this: How long will it take me to modify Motion to look like my live site? That is what matters to me, because time is money. It has taken me little time to mimic my previous Community Blog template set, design wise. I am going the extra mile and making use of smarter template syntax as well. The trade off means template refreshes will not be a quick and easy affair. But I am more than accustomed to the templating language by now to be able to manually add enhancements that come down the pike.
It would also be good to note here, before someone else calls me a hater, that we have built a blog network for BG Views, not just a simple blog, or couple blogs for that matter -- my requirements are quite a bit different than others. Much of the templating is done on a global scale and processed across many sites, on multiple domains (this is one reason template variables are key for this application). This flexibility is one of the major benefits to Movable Type, and one of the reasons I chose it for this project.
Also Notable:
After talking with a couple people, namely Byrne Reese, I came to the realization that it would be far easier to make the Motion template set look like my already designed site, and not add Motion to my existing templates. This turns out of be by far the best method for integrating Motion into your site, especially if you are not starting fresh with MT 4.25.
After working in Motion for about a week now, I have two complaints. One is easily solved with a bit of smart template code, the other I have not found a way around.
I don't really consider myself an advanced Movable Type designer, but maybe I am becoming one, because when I look at the default Motion template set, I see so much untapped potential with regard to template variables, modules and the like. While it would be nice to use the standard Motion templates so that they only take a simple "refresh" command once a newer version of the software is shipped, that is not feasible for me. This is mainly due to the fact that I have grown to rely on the mt:SetVarBlock tag, and while Motion does use it well, it does not use it to its full potential.
However you should keep in mind that these template sets that Six Apart provides are just a starting point, and they have even gone so far as to literally state this in the default Motion footer: "The Motion Template Set is a great example of the type of site you can build with Movable Type."
If I were going to compare this to WordPress, I would say that there is no way I would be caught dead using a default theme I found somewhere on the web for a proffesional project. Likewise, it would benefit any WordPress designer to visit the Codex to find out how much more can be done with templates beyond basic templates you find.
My second gripe has more to do with structure than with design. A Motion Template Set has many System Templates that previous Template Sets do not. The Login Form is unique to Motion, as is Profile View and others. This is quite a change, as previous to Motion, these were all Global System Templates. So, if you are mixing Motion and non-Motion based blogs together, you get two different looking login forms for your end user. (If you are not mixing Motion with other template sets, this doesn't mean a lot to you).
Translated, you can now make blog-level changes to templates that used to be system wide, but on the other hand, if you want to make a system wide change, you need to do it on multiple templates. The issue of aesthetics and usability also comes into play. I do not want my users to see both the MT 4.2 login screen some of the time and the new Motion login screen some of the time. It is easy to change the Global System Templates to look like a Motion blog, it just comes at the expense of duplication.
I also happen to prefer the new Motion-based System Templates, so I am more than willing to make the sacrifice.
The bottom line is this: How long will it take me to modify Motion to look like my live site? That is what matters to me, because time is money. It has taken me little time to mimic my previous Community Blog template set, design wise. I am going the extra mile and making use of smarter template syntax as well. The trade off means template refreshes will not be a quick and easy affair. But I am more than accustomed to the templating language by now to be able to manually add enhancements that come down the pike.
It would also be good to note here, before someone else calls me a hater, that we have built a blog network for BG Views, not just a simple blog, or couple blogs for that matter -- my requirements are quite a bit different than others. Much of the templating is done on a global scale and processed across many sites, on multiple domains (this is one reason template variables are key for this application). This flexibility is one of the major benefits to Movable Type, and one of the reasons I chose it for this project.
Also Notable:
- In Action Streams 2.1 there is Technorati Search and Twitter
Search, where you can add a search term for it to pull information on.
That is a nice addition to Action Streams. Community Streams are also a brand new addition to Action Streams in Motion, publishing notes on favorites, comments, entries, and following users. This makes the community much more interactive.
- The WordPress.com OpenID, AOL OpenID, and Yahoo! OpenID plugins are no longer needed. They are now built in to MT 4.25. I am sure this was said in a readme or in release notes, but I figured it out once I installed a vanilla install for testing.
- There is a new Custom Field type, Embed Object, which makes sense as that is a type of post you can make in a Motion-based blog. Motion blogs actually rely on Custom Fields to be able to publish five different kinds of content from the "Quick Post" area.
- One of the best takeaways for the end-user when looking at Motion v. Community Blog (I think of Motion as what they wanted Community Blog to be in the first place) is that you can now tag entries where before Motion, that field was not accessible via front-end publishing. Allowing users to tag items can get a little messy, sure, but that is where a moderator comes in, but it also gives your users more control over the content they write for your community.
- Arranging field order is now part of Display Options on the Entry screen. They seem to stay in place better than before, too.
- Along with Google account login, a slew of Japan-centric registration methods are supported as well. Facebook Commenters is improved over the Motion beta, though still needs tweaking "out of the box."
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