Like may other Movabletype users, I decided to make a change after the recent decision by SixApart to put in the crazy price structure. Now I do have multiple blogs but I don't have multiple authors (hey, it's MY website and MY soapbox where I can say and do whatever I want... not gonna share my spotlight, nuh-uh, no way!) so the new structure was not going adversely affect me too much. Still I was a beta tester for MT3 and for all the money that SixApart, was asking for something that really wasn't an improvement Movabletype just wasn't worth it to me any longer, so I went hunting for a new blog tool.

After playing with b2evolution (which I could never get to work properly), Expression Engine (great out of the box software and I got a free copy but I didn't want to be stuck in the same lurch as I was with MT a year from now and I was thinking about upgrading again), Textile (which is actually quite lovely and if I wanted to spend a hell of a lot more time on my site, I might have chosen. It is quite a flexible blog tool!), I made the decision to do what many in the blog community decided to.

I went with WordPress.

Now this was not a decision I made lightly. I really didn't feel like doing a redesign and for the most part, Movabletype was addressing my needs-

Except I have a lot of entries and I was getting tried of the rebuilds.
I was also getting sick of the spam, even with my updated MT-Blacklist

So off to WordPress I went.

Now I need to say that initially, just to set up the WP software was a breeze and a snap. It literally took me 3 minutes and I was up an running with a fully functional if basic blog. If I wanted to stop right there, it would have been a snap.

But I wanted to get personal. It wouldn't have been my site if I didn't make it do what I wanted it to ;).

And here is where I ran into a little trouble. WP's newest stable release is 1.2 "mingus". The new release allows for the easy addition of 3rd party plug-ins. This is actually a pretty sweet feature as that it allows you to add more flexibility and customization to the software. It does this by allowing for very little end user interaction with the core code. All a person needs to do to add most plug-ins to WordPress is to upload the plug-in directory, log in and activate the plug-in. Word Press also allows for the use of legacy "hacks" with a "my-hacks" file that allows you to add some of the older toys that have not been turned into plug-ins yet.