So I’m tempted to migrate to WordPress (from Movable Type) I think I’ve got it all figured out on how to even retain my current URLs (as crummy as they are) so that I don’t have a bunch of broken links.
One of my worries is right now a lot of my pages score pretty good in Google searches, amazingly good sometimes, especially since my site doesn’t rank super high anyways, and I’m afraid of losing that rank. I’m not sure if it’s just that I built my pages well? or maybe my meta tags or if the structure of the page helps? or what? It’s just always done pretty good so I don’t mess with it.
What will I lose if I convert? What might I gain?The other thought is to leave my Movable Type site alone, delete the index page and use WordPress from now on but have links to the old pages. I’d need to keep the MT software so that comments and search would still work (I’d modify the WP search pages to say “you only searched the new site, click here to search for old stuff”). But I’d still have to maintain updates and such on the old site and check for spam and more….
Hmmm…. I’m either talking myself out of keeping the old one separate or possibly not migrating at all. I’m not sure which…
Hi Gary, I work with the Movable Type team, and I’d love to know if you’ve given MT 4 a try? THe new version 4.2, which is due out imminently, has tons of new features, a completely new UI compared to the version you’re on, and features tons of new performance improvements and other options.
Frankly, I’d hate to see you give up the option to have multiple blogs, or miss MT-exclusive features like Action Streams or OpenID authentication. And MT’s was the first platform with support for the iPhone and the upcoming Facebook connect. On top of all that, with MT, you haven’t had to do constant security updates or put your site at risk of being removed from search engines, as happens to hacked WordPress blogs so frequently that Technorati actually posted warnings that the vast majority of WP blogs were susceptible to being removed.
In short, we’ve done a ton of work on MT since the version you’re on, and it’s totally free for you to leap into all these new features I’ve described, *without* the pain of having to redo all your templates. Plus, MT4.2 supports TypePad AntiSpam right out of the box, which is free open-source antispam service which is rated better than WordPress’ similar Akismet service, which isn’t open source and costs money depending on how many comments you get.
There’s a lot more, but you can read up on movabletype.org to find out for yourself. Let us know if we can help.
Migrating to WordPress from Movable Type
So after 5 years of using Movable Type, and talking about sticking with things yesterday, I’m planning on switching this blog to WordPress. As I said a few months back – I think WordPress is easier to setup and it’s also easier for beginners to do quit…