Well, I’ve been reading up in detail on WordPress, and it looks like I’m going to have to change the URL for the Zoinger RSS feeds. Sorry in advance for any inconvienience this is going to cause.

I’ll probably be changing over in the next day or so, but will let you know what the new feed URL is/are when I do the change over. I’m planning on keeping the entire MT site live so old URLs to the posts won’t break.

As I’ve written about previously, I’m in the (slow) process of moving my blogging application from MovableType over the WordPress. WordPress has got momentum behind it, so I think it’s going to be more future-proof than MT.

Anyway, a sneak preview of my WordPress blog is available here. I’m obviously still working on the sidebar links and such.

I installed a new theme over the weekend, which was a piece of cake. I also did some quick edits to the main CSS file to change the look and feel a bit. I’m a little unsure about how I’m going to do the transition… I’ll thinking that I might move the pointer for Zoinger.com to my WordPress directory, or I might create a jump page for Zoinger.com which will have links to the blog. WordPress also allows you to create a manage static pages.

So far, I’m really impressed by the easy-of-use and great documentation of WordPress.

Alexa is an Amazon-owned site which among other things attempts to measure the reach of web sites.

WordPress, an open-source content management system (blogging software), has been gaining popularity, especially since SixApart changed how it licenses it’s MovableType application — and from the ensuing controversy. WordPress’ recent gain in popularity seems to correlate to it’s growth in reach as measure by Alexa.

Wow! I kind of like it… WordPress that is. Like they say the world-famous five minute install is spot on. I might have even beaten that mark.

So far, I have noticed that it’s really fast when compared to MovableType. Sometimes MT just seems to hang for a bit when saving posts.

It took me a while, but I finally found (it took a long time to find one that actually worked) and installed (this was fast) a Textile2 plugin that I then had to debug (this took a long time too). Textile2 is a text-to-HTML interpreter that lets you more simply add HTML to your posts (test it out here). Anyway, the plugin for WordPress is called Text Control. On MT I’ve been using Brad Choate’s great Textile2 plugin.

The “bug” with Text Control has to do with the zip download file text-control.zip. This zip file didn’t automatically create a text-control sub-directory. This sub-directory is where all the files in the zip download should be placed with the exception of the main text-control.php file (i.e., into wordpress/wp-content/plugins/text-control/). By moving the files into this new sub-directory, I “fixed” the bug. It took a while to figure out what was going on, since the plugin kind of works without the text-control sub-directory — you can set up Text Control in the options menu, but it will not actually function and gives errors when publishing.

Aside from the minor plugin WOT, I’m really liking WordPress. I’m probably going to move my blog over to it, once I get more familiar with the interface and tweak the templates a bit.

Update: 2005_03_26
Jeremy Zawodny posts his thoughts on the future of WordPress and MovableType here. The comments section of the posts is worth reading if you are considering WP or MT.

errh, that’d be over 100K downloaded.

I’m looking at installing a copy of WordPress to try it out. It has some significant advantages over Movable Type such as: password-protected posts, multiple authors and instant publishing with no rebuilding. In addition, there is a very robust plug-in community. And with Six Apart now concentrating on Typepad (instead of just Movable Type), WordPress’ advantages vs. MT will probably grow in the future.

Here’s a handy how-to on migrating from MT to WordPress, and here’s a thread on WordPress’ site on MT vs. WordPress.