Sprkus

I know my blog’s physical appearance is changing more than Linda Wachowski, but I think this time it’s for good.

I hope you like the new look. I’ve changed blog publishing software back to WordPress from Movable Type and have found a new layout I like better than the last two.

Movable Type ended up being too much of a headache. The software interface, though I initially liked it a lot, never quite worked as it should. The innards of the software — that which readers never see — was very slow to respond. And the software’s “dashboard” display never ran as designed. I’m confident it was a problem with the permission settings of the software’s folders on the servers, but that wasn’t the only problem.

I upgraded from MT 4.0 to 4.01 earlier this week and all hell broke loose. At first, I could no longer preview my post before I actually published it, then when I tried to reload the software, I couldn’t publish either because of Addon code I had embedded in the pages but that were no longer installed on the software. After I got that straightened out, the dashboard stats still didn’t work properly. And I still couldn’t preview anything. After fussing around with the program all day, backing up files, reconnecting to MySQL databases, and all on interface pages that each took 8-10 seconds to respond to a mouse click, I had enough.

I’m no computer expert, but I’m no slouch either. I can usually poke around in there until I solve most issues, but this was just too much work me.

It’s too bad, because I liked the Movable Type interface looking past the problems. When they eventually get all the kinks worked out, it’s gonna be a great program. Maybe I’ll switch back by 4.5. Right now, the user friendliness is just not there. It’s still pretty rough.

And since I resolved the issue of why I originally switched from WordPress in the first place — embedded files not displaying properly in my blog — it was time to move back. It turns out I needed to update flash in my home computer. It had nothing to do with Vista or Internet Explorer, though Firefox still played the videos fine.

See, I’m not computer genius, but I get to the bottom of problems eventually.

From now on, hopefully the only thing I have to get to the bottom of, are blog posts about anything other than blog upkeep.