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More on the Wordpress vs. Typepad comparison.

By Barry Bell on October 18 2005

Comparing Wordpress with Typepad seems to have ruffled a few feathers. Some say it’s not a fair comparison. Some say it is. Some call it apples & oranges. Most suggested comparing Movable Type with Wordpress.

I still stand by the original post, however, I agree that the huge diversity in features between all blogging tools makes it very difficult to compare any of them, like for like – especially from the point of view of someone trying to establish a network.

True, as lots of people have pointed out, a better comparison would have been Movable Type vs. Wordpress. But hang on, an appropriate licence for MT would have cost me $999. Wordpress – free. Also, MT inherently allows multiple blogs. Wordpress currently requires a fresh install for each blog. So the comparison already becomes tenuous.

What about Blogger vs Typepad? Similar products, but again, one’s paid, the other’s free. One’s hosted, the other’s either hosted (via blogspot) or requires hosting. Plus, there’s a huge difference in feature sets. Maybe Wordpress.com vs Typepad, or even vs Blogger would be a more acceptable comparison? Not in my case – I was looking for a solution to building a network and I knew from experience that neither Wordpress.com or Blogger were appropriate for the job in hand.

That’s *not* to say that they *aren’t* fantastic tools for other purposes, though.

There are pros and cons and benefits and payoffs whichever blogging software you want to compare – blog networks are a relativey new idea, and a lot of the software out there just isn’t geared up to making that easy – or even possible in some cases.

My post was simply an account of my experiences in setting up a network using just two of the tools. And hopefully, there are a couple of useful points in there which might just help anyone else starting a network to choose the right software.

Contributor: Barry Bell

I'm a freelance writer and designer with over 10 years’ experience of creating award-winning recruitment and consumer marketing communications, together with a wide range of other creative marketing colateral. ... more »

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Contributor website: http://barrybell.com

COMMENTS

By Tack
October 18, 2005 2:24 pm

I, too, am busy comparing WordPress and other platforms – admittedly – particularly Movable type :-)
So far, I have to agree with you. Wordpress wins on:-

Cost
Configurability
support
spam protection

Ease of use? Stay tuned.
By Barry Bell
October 18, 2005 2:51 pm

Well it was definitely the cost issue that swung it for me. I was also impressed with virtually all other Wordpress features, including ease of use.

But no matter which *current* software you use as a network backend, you’re probably always going to need some kind of hack or tweak to make the network work like you want it to work.

So… I think the market is wide open for anyone thinking about developing a dedicated blog network backend tool.

Incidentally, what are you testing the software for? A network, or standalone blogs?
By Tack
October 19, 2005 12:14 am

I appreciate what you mean buy a blog network backed tool – but why don’t you think WordPress MU fits the bill? Do you want more native configurability within the platform to avoid coding/tweaking? Won’t that just lead to Bloating? I wonder if the whole point of plug-ins is to AVOID the bloat so the options are selectable on a case by case basis.
As for me – I am looking for a single user MULTI BLOG – which is do-able either with standard WP (multiple installation), WP Multi-user, or standard WP and a plug-in. Of course Single user (free) MT has this as a native ability too.
By Barry Bell
October 19, 2005 12:27 am

Wordpress MU does fit the bill… but it’s not stable and there’s no real documentation or support for it right now, apart from the forums over at http://mu.wordpress.org/forums.

I did give it a go at one point, but ran into trouble configuring it to work with subdomains (amongst other things), and it seemed like there was more hacking to do than it was worth.

I also didn’t want to start a potentially successful network with software that could crumble at any minute!

I’m able to hack php a little, but that was way beyond my capabilities – especially without any real support docs.

If a stable version of MU was released, then yes, I’d definitely consider it.
By Rob
October 20, 2005 1:00 am

After using Movable Type for a number of months, I finally moved over to WordPress. Initially there was a bug with perl that affected MT posting which prompted me to look around. Then, after looking around I found WP and was happy with it. The bug disappeared but WP was too tempting.

The user support, the easy PHP coding and templating, the simple install… I had changed over several blogs in under 20mins from scratch. The only things I miss from MT is the pretty backend and the multiple blog interface, something easy to live without now that I use http://wbloggar.com/ software for publishing.

I did look at pLog once (after the changeover) because of its multi-blog interface and OpenSource-ness but it was still in development. I notice it isn’t anymore… http://www.plogworld.net/