I’ve spent a bit of time this weekend upgrading my Movable Type experimental blog to the latest MT version 3.2 released on 25 August.
Installation of the new version was pretty smooth, no real issues with it, thanks to the excellent installation guide in the new 3.2 manual.
I do have issues, though, with expectations on what you should reasonably expect to be able to do with your blog after installing the new version of the platform.
As I’ve commented in my other blog, I’m pretty disappointed with the hurdles I’m now jumping following the upgrade.
I’d certainly expect the release version of a blog tool like this it to be a lot easier to dive into after installation and do what you want to do with the new features and functionality that supposedly are ready and usable. And I’d certainly expect the help system to be a bit more complete – every question-mark link I clicked on from within my MT installation got to the online MT help system with pages saying “Coming soon…” That’s just not good enough.
So I’m spending far too much time scratching my head and trying to figure out why something doesn’t work. It looks like quite a few others are doing their own head-scratching as well.
As a complete MT newbie, maybe my expectations on what I can do with 3.2 out of the box, so to speak, are a little unrealistic. Yet I would argue that Six Apart has set a high expectation level on what almost anyone keen to use the tool should be able to do relatively easily.
Am I being wholly unrealistic in my expectations for Movable Type 3.2? An unfair critique of Six Apart? I want to use Movable Type. But maybe I should just go with WordPress – that seems far easier to use.
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.