Moveable Type

[Sunny Thaper]

I figured some of you guys, haveing news sections on your site that need constant updating, might be interested in this.

http://moveabletype.org/

Basically MT is a perl based page generation tool which allows you to have multiple authors and even a comments system built right in in order to ease development time and even increase interest in your site altogether. I use it personally on my site.

http://www.iamynnus.com

[Brandon Martus]

I'll second this, and say that I've used it once, and MT is a good blogging/news tool.

[jonathan lall]

I intend to start using it as well on my personal site down the road. I can't decide if I should for my team's site, but it is by far the best publishing system out there.

Six Apart is also releasing something called Typepad, geared more toward the mainstream blogger. I'd recommend that to most people before trying Movable Type.

[Sunny Thaper]

Typepad is actually MT (with a few additions) but hosted on Six Apart's servers meaning you have to pay them a monthly service fee to use the system. If you want to use it on your personal site, your best bet Is MT because Typepad is quite a bit expensive. There are a few other solutions out there too but MT is my personal favorite.

[jonathan lall]

The thing about TypePad is it's based on MT, but has options for a more simplistic interface and is generally easier. Six Apart borrows from Blogger and other such company services. It is basically a blog-superiority widget that works on MT's 'failings' with less experienced or blog-only users.

[Sunny Thaper]

Originally posted by jonathan lall
The thing about TypePad is it's based on MT, but has options for a more simplistic interface and is generally easier. Six Apart borrows from Blogger and other such company services. It is basically a blog-superiority widget that works on MT's 'failings' with less experienced or blog-only users. If you have the money to burn ;) Just reading the documents on the site is enough for anyone to become an expert with Moveable Type, provided they do understand HTML a bit. Typepad is great and much easier I agree but since it is a pay to use service that is hosted on another companys machine, it is not a viable solution for most teams/people.

[HFWang]

There are alot of CMS's out there.

I've seen some really crazy ones (seen the krysalis PHP CMS? It requires the latest and greatest XML parsing modules, but it is... impressive).

I have yet to see a site really break down all the options available though.

b2 and its child, wordpress are pretty good... MT is good too. Haven't really tried the rest out.

[djcapelis]

Then there's postnuke et. al, slashcode, and numerous others...

Anyone used those extensively? I prefer to write my own code... or use the internal CMS system that our company is working on.

[HFWang]

I ended up having to roll my own for the stuff that I work on. It was a fun summer project, but it also means that I'll probably have to help the people I work with forever, because nobody knows how to use the admin interface.

I REALLY liked Krysalis, but most hosts don't have that level of DOM support available, so... *sigh* I tried some others, and PHP seems to have alot of average CMS but... I ended up rejecting them for various reasons. It also depends on what you want in a CMS. Stuff like postnuke lets you post articles/news, but if you want something that'll grab page content from a database (and also keeps the site "tree" in the db, so you can prettify URLs and such) you're going to be looking for a very long time.

[Petey]

*shrugs*

pMachine works fine for me.

www.toydestruction.com

I'll check it out though, as well as some of these other ones.

--Petey

[Sunny Thaper]

The thing with all the other CMSs you guys mentioned is they are all dynamic meaning search engines typically don't like them. With my MT website I have received tons of random hits from a variety of search engines. Also MT does an automatic rss feed meaning people don't have to go to your site to see updates. And quite possibly the greatest thing about MT and it's kind of CMS is that you can use external windows or mac programs to update the site, making it easier to update and even faster.

[HFWang]

Originally posted by Sunny Thaper
The thing with all the other CMSs you guys mentioned is they are all dynamic meaning search engines typically don't like them.

I know for sure b2 can do URL rewriting... so that the URLs end up like MT's do if you put the work in.

[Sunny Thaper]

I didn't mean the urls but the actual pages themselves. The other CMS make them php or other scripting lang but MT makes all the files HTML as if you had created them manually.

[HFWang]

which then has nothing to do with search engines. :D

if you wanted, i know you could write an output buffer that would dump everything to the filesystem... :P then it'd be the exact same thing as MT except you could turn it off and not have to rebuild. :D

[Sunny Thaper]

Originally posted by HFWang
which then has nothing to do with search engines. :D

if you wanted, i know you could write an output buffer that would dump everything to the filesystem... :P then it'd be the exact same thing as MT except you could turn it off and not have to rebuild. :D What do you mean it has nothing to do with search engines? HTML pages, since they are static, are completely archieved in search engines meaning much more content for search engines to archive.

[HFWang]

Search engines don't care WHAT makes the html they're parsing.

<h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a PHP script is the exact same as <h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a Perl script (which is what I believe MT is).

A static webpage is a completely different entity than what google caches. Google caches "snapshots" of the page. Thus, what is outputted by b2 is going to have the exact same weight as the output of MT. Do you understand what I'm saying thus far? For the purposes of actually parsing the HTML and all that, it doesn't really care what makes the page (and probably can't tell anyway)

Now then, what DOES make a difference, and maybe what you were thinking of is the fact that google does figure out that pages are dynamic. (I believe this occurs when you have querystrings, IE: index.php?view=foo). What googles does is then not index as deeply, because its dynamic, who knows, it might go into an infinite loop (the URLs are all different, say for a visit-tracker)

HTML pages, since they are static, are completely archieved in search engines meaning much more content for search engines to archive.

Repeat that? I'm confused? Either there is circular logic or I'm missing something.

Oh, and why must you make every post orange? I have some serious vision impairments, and its causing me problems reading your posts. :-X (Excessively bright color on relatively bright color)

[Sunny Thaper]

Rather than going on about this debate I employ you to read a little into what I am talking about. In general HTML only pages are better than on-the-fly pages everytime, guaranteed. Secondly, most of these content management systems have no standards support thus hindering their performance even more. MT is the best standards supported CMS and it creates static pages, that's just about the best you can do when trying to get hits and improve your website presentation. RSS feeds is another good addition that MT has that these other CMS systems do not and finally all your MT blogs will be automatically advertised by MT themselves, makeing an even greater impression. Now the article: http://www.alistapart.com/stories/seo/

[HFWang]

Originally posted by Sunny Thaper
In general HTML only pages are better than on-the-fly pages everytime, guaranteed.
Really? Everytime? Can you make HTML only pages dynamic? Also, what is HTML-only? I have yet to run PHP client-side. ;-) To the search engine, it still gets the same HTML code, it doesn't care whether it was generated dynamically by a script or (generated dynamically, then) dumped from a file.

Give me an actual arguement better than "its better". That isn't an arguement, thats an opinion.

Secondly, most of these content management systems have no standards support thus hindering their performance even more. MT is the best standards supported CMS and it creates static pages, that's just about the best you can do when trying to get hits and improve your website presentation.
I'll forgive you for not having looked at b2, but the criteria I use for selecting cms's (which in a way, b2/mt/etc are not, because they're really blogware, but thats not really up for discussion here) is total control over output. That means the template that it uses uses standards. Heck, I can make my b2 pages fully XHTML2 compliant, up to and including the mime-type. Can MT do that? Again, its nice that it creates static pages, but that has no bearing on website presentation NOR hits. People will visit your sites, and search engines will rank it the same regardless of whether html is generated dynamically or read from a file. HTML is something that exists independent of the device used to generate it!

RSS feeds is another good addition that MT has that these other CMS systems do not...
Funny. Given complete control of the output, I could make RSS just as well as MT does. Heck, b2 comes with an RSS template, just like MT!

and finally all your MT blogs will be automatically advertised by MT themselves, makeing an even greater impression.
Funny, b2 does the EXACT SAME THING! and, do you honestly think people will visit your robotics site because it is listed in a big list of sites that use their blog software? I sure haven't ever looked at the sites in those lists...

Now the article: http://www.alistapart.com/stories/seo/[/COLOR]
That is all well and good. I agree well-formed, standardized HTML/CSS is a "Good Thing(TM)". What does that have to do with HOW the HTML is created? No matter how you chop it, the characters sent over the internet by MT and b2 (assuming same content, same template, etc etc) will be the EXACT SAME. You get NO benefit from static vs dynamic. You get NO benefit in search engine ranking, and no benefit in "validating better"

[Sunny Thaper]

Really? Everytime? Can you make HTML only pages dynamic? Also, what is HTML-only? I have yet to run PHP client-side. ;-) To the search engine, it still gets the same HTML code, it doesn't care whether it was generated dynamically by a script or (generated dynamically, then) dumped from a file.

Give me an actual arguement better than "its better". That isn't an arguement, thats an opinion.

Alright, I guess I will get into this. We can all agree that Google is possibly one of the biggest if not the biggest search engine out there correct? Alright with that said, this is directly from Google's site. "# We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index." Taken from http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1 and that means that with dynamic pages you will probably not be archieved correctly and completely. By "HTML Pages" I mean pages that do not use php in any form and have an extension of .htm or .html And also there are search engines out there that cannot browse dynamic pages like you stated.

I'll forgive you for not having looked at b2, but the criteria I use for selecting cms's (which in a way, b2/mt/etc are not, because they're really blogware, but thats not really up for discussion here) is total control over output. That means the template that it uses uses standards. Heck, I can make my b2 pages fully XHTML2 compliant, up to and including the mime-type. Can MT do that? Again, its nice that it creates static pages, but that has no bearing on website presentation NOR hits. People will visit your sites, and search engines will rank it the same regardless of whether html is generated dynamically or read from a file. HTML is something that exists independent of the device used to generate it!

Also this post wasn't about the best CMS system it was about a good one therefore trying to force B2 into this makes no sense. But since you threw it in, you making your B2 copy "fully XHTML2 compliant" lends me to believe you are wasting time because MT already comes scripted to be standards compliant without haveing to change anything.

Funny. Given complete control of the output, I could make RSS just as well as MT does. Heck, b2 comes with an RSS template, just like MT!

Nothing I can say for that except good for B2! But one thing that you keep making mention of is control of output... MT gives you complete control of output in everyway, templates, posts, and you can use external programs through MT's API.

Funny, b2 does the EXACT SAME THING! and, do you honestly think people will visit your robotics site because it is listed in a big list of sites that use their blog software? I sure haven't ever looked at the sites in those lists...

It's true no one will go through a list of pure urls but you did leave out one possibility for this which is actually my main point. The more links you have to your site the greater the chances are that a search engine will visit you hence if MT links to you and since it is quite a popular site you will get hit by search engines. And again, I am not debating that MT is better than b2 or vice versa, merely showing people that MT is a good tool.

That is all well and good. I agree well-formed, standardized HTML/CSS is a "Good Thing(TM)". What does that have to do with HOW the HTML is created? No matter how you chop it, the characters sent over the internet by MT and b2 (assuming same content, same template, etc etc) will be the EXACT SAME. You get NO benefit from static vs dynamic. You get NO benefit in search engine ranking, and no benefit in "validating better"

Again with the information above I have more than proved my point that having standards and a lack of dynamic content lends itself to be a good thing.

[Sunny Thaper]

Also I am not making fun of b2 or saying it is bad, in fact I quite like b2 as it is almost the same thing as MT. But there are many differences that do not make me like b2 for instance, b2 uses all dynamic content which I have already addressed, b2 needs to be installed anew for each blog you want to maintain whereas MT does not, MT allows you to have notifications and subscriptions to posts, and the MT interface is just much more professional.

[HFWang]

Originally posted by Sunny Thaper
Alright, I guess I will get into this. We can all agree that Google is possibly one of the biggest if not the biggest search engine out there correct? Alright with that said, this is directly from Google's site. "# We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index." Taken from http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1 and that means that with dynamic pages you will probably not be archieved correctly and completely. By "HTML Pages" I mean pages that do not use php in any form and have an extension of .htm or .html And also there are search engines out there that cannot browse dynamic pages like you stated.
Correct. What that means is that it won't parse through sites that use querystrings (which b2 uses by default, BTW: I'm using b2 as an example because I am really familiar with it.)

HOWEVER! And this is the point you seem to be missing, I can make b2 create URLs like foo.com/b2/archives/2003/09/03/ just like in MT! Not only that, but even that is not the full story. :-P You see, you can even customize the URLs that are created. :D

Also this post wasn't about the best CMS system it was about a good one therefore trying to force B2 into this makes no sense. But since you threw it in, you making your B2 copy "fully XHTML2 compliant" lends me to believe you are wasting time because MT already comes scripted to be standards compliant without haveing to change anything.
I used b2 as an example because I am familiar with it. However, I brought it in because you were talking about how other blogs hurt your search engine ranking. I used it as an example of a toggleable feature that could then nullify the difference (it is toggleable because activating it requires access to .htaccess...)

Now then: standards compliance: I brought it up because you brought it up. The default template is MORE standards compliant than MT's. b2, by DEFAULT uses divs instead of tables to create containers and create the layout. I'm just saying that MT makes it harder for you to make XHTML2 sites (as opposed to HTML, or even XHTML1). XHTML2 requires a mime-type of (I think) Application/XML or something like that.

Nothing I can say for that except good for B2! But one thing that you keep making mention of is control of output... MT gives you complete control of output in everyway, templates, posts, and you can use external programs through MT's API.
Thats exactly my point. Most blog tools let you do that. Its a really moot point to tout MT for having "templating". That is a required feature.


It's true no one will go through a list of pure urls but you did leave out one possibility for this which is actually my main point. The more links you have to your site the greater the chances are that a search engine will visit you hence if MT links to you and since it is quite a popular site you will get hit by search engines. And again, I am not debating that MT is better than b2 or vice versa, merely showing people that MT is a good tool.
And I'm saying that MT isn't a be-all end-all. I don't hate MT, I just hate it when people talk about google and make generalizations. However, think of this. Google, and quite a few other search engines penalize link exchanges (sort of.) Ever see those sites that have a never-ending list of links? Search engines then just assume that its a way to drum up traffic and ignore it. Thus, moot point. :P

Again with the information above I have more than proved my point that having standards and a lack of dynamic content lends itself to be a good thing.
You haven't more than proved it. You have yet to make a case that lack of dynamic content is inherently superior.
Standards = good. You're preaching to the choir here though.

Again, WHAT advantage do you gain from static content that isn't more than made up for by the simple fact that dynamic is dynamic, write a template, and update content on the fly? URLs can be rewritten with apache (thus negating your google arguement). And that appears to be your only arguement on that regard.

Here, I'll repeat that arguement, so that you'll get this, because that is the ONLY reason I started talking.

You can rewrite URLs in apache, so that search engines think you're just giving them files from off a hard drive in a directory struture, so that they don't realize that its a dynamic site!

And here was my clarification that I posted a few posts back which argued against the exact point that you just stated.


<h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a PHP script is the exact same as <h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a Perl script (which is what I believe MT is).

A static webpage is a completely different entity than what google caches. Google caches "snapshots" of the page. Thus, what is outputted by b2 is going to have the exact same weight as the output of MT. Do you understand what I'm saying thus far? For the purposes of actually parsing the HTML and all that, it doesn't really care what makes the page (and probably can't tell anyway)

Now then, what DOES make a difference, and maybe what you were thinking of is the fact that google does figure out that pages are dynamic. (I believe this occurs when you have querystrings, IE: index.php?view=foo). What googles does is then not index as deeply, because its dynamic, who knows, it might go into an infinite loop (the URLs are all different, say for a visit-tracker)

[Sunny Thaper]

I never said that changing your mod_rewrite (yes I do know what you are talking about) isn't a good solution, it most certainly is but think about it like this. You start off with b2 as is, you install it for your site, that's all good and done. Now you say you have to edit some settings etc to get the urls to work properly. Alright fine, assuming your host lets you do that (I am sure most do). Well you just did something that not every team in FIRST can do but kudos to you except now many other teams that don't know how to do this will already be affected.

Now you have a site with good urls, but it still uses some tables for layout of the site which you now have to change if you want to have good standards related site design. Though using tables is fine by w3c.org, it's still not a good way of laying out content unless you have tabular data. Now that's another thing which some FIRST teams may not know how to do but it's not too big.

So now you have something that is very very comparable with MT but the fact is you just wasted time to create something that was already existant. In the end you get the same result but my point was that MT default config is perfect in every way for search engine placement. So you can use b2 since you are familiar with it but please do not think that everyone else is as technologically savvy as you are. Sure I generalized that dynamic pages are worse than static but there is reason to my claim. Once you deal in a professional web enviroment you will learn that it becomes easier to teach people a tool that is close to perfect instead of making one that is.

One last thing about b2, it still doesn't have the notification system builtin which is another reason I suggest teams not to try it out and the absolute worst thing about it is you have to install a fresh copy each time you want to add a blog, this again is very unproductive.

With all that being said this thread is basically dead to me so please dont' expect a response to anything else. People now have more than enough information to pick what they believe to be best.

[HFWang]

Too bad you are wrong?

b2 uses a theme similar to the bluerobot theme to begin with. (which I mentioned earlier. b2 does NOT use tables, except for the calendar!)

BTW: MT and b2 are written in different languages. I chose b2 because for a long time I didn't have perl, but did have PHP.

Whats the notification system? I'm not familiar with that?

[Sunny Thaper]

The notification system sends an email out to you whenever you get a reply to your blog and it also allows you to add people to a list so that when your blog gets updated they get an email.

Also, one more thing about dynamic vs. static... if anyone is familiar with gzip they will know that it only works on static pages. What gzip does is compress your page and send it over the net so the end user actually gets the page faster than if they did without it. Of course your host has to support mod_gzip for this to work but most do.