Great Movable Type Support

They are probably weary of me by now, given that I am not exactly part of that high-end developers’ community they need feedback from for 3.0, but Movable Type support folk have been terrific (and terrifically kind).

I finally “get” the templates (although I won’t be doing too many tweaks without extensive tutorials or model templates from the likes of Elise), the tags make enough sense that I was able to replicate my favorite features and even implement a three-column style, and I now have comment registration working properly on the forthcoming new site for Free Range Librarian. (I’m not publishing the URL just yet, since I’m still tweaking the code, but if you think really, really hard, you can probably figure it out…)

I leapt into a 3.0 installation rather rashly, primarily because I feel the need to upgrade before I start the MFA program later this month (and plunge into a 2-year work/school abyss). Despite that, my blogs never actually broke, support staff were amazingly responsive, and three days later “I” (as in, I and the Movable Type support staff) have resolved all of the issues.

While I did make it through an upgrade, more or less, if I had to do it over again, I would save all of my templates, export the data, archive the existing MT installation (I actually did steps two and three), delete the existing MT installation, do a new install of 3.0, and recreate my blogs. I had to update the templates anyway, and my choices were to install new ones and add the edits, or fiddle with the old ones. (Procrastination awarded again: I’ve been foot-dragging about moving my main blog to its new domain, so I was able to blow away that blog and start over with all-fresh files I can tweak at relative leisure). Plus one of my problems had to do with several modules that I missed when uploading the files for MT 3.0. Had I simply taken a scorched-earth approach, and put up a barebones “watch this site” message, I could have had my existing blog up and working in at least a primitive fashion within an hour of getting MT installed.

I’m one of those folks who should not execute Perl commands without close adult supervision, I’m so low-end that I’ve been using the same 20 Unix commands since 1991, and yet I made it to the other side of 3.0. I’m sure it has its bugs, some of which will no doubt be made manifest the night before a major deadline for work or school, but I’m still rather pleased that I was able to get this far, and I owe that to excellent, patient tech support from MT (and a few good tip sheets from Elise, who is a treasure).

And among other nice features, I love, just love that comment registration!

Stay tuned for FRL’s new, improved face.