Countdown to MT 3.1

OK – the great project of the summer of 2004 is almost done. My editor is looking it over while sipping her tea. So far, she has not made any marks on the paper so I must be doing well.

Time to get back into the blogoverse. I’ve been looking at various blogware packages as part of my research for the big summer project, and I am impressed with the quality of what I have seen. I think that MovableType is still the best in field, but some of my upcoming projects would involve fairly substantial licensing costs. I think I can tweak some of the open source packages to do what I need, but I’m holding off until the release of MovableType 3.1 before I make any decisions.

Some of the open source packages that I think have a great deal of potential are:

• WordPress
• b2evolution – both WordPress and b2evolution are based on the now defunct b2cafelog project.
• BlogCMS, which is based on Nucleus CMS (also worth looking at, if you are looking around)

I think that the winner so far is sticking with MovableType. Its the tool I’m most familiar with. The licensing cost is a bit restricting for my needs, but Ben and Mena have worked hard to make it so great and I think they deserve some kind of recompense for their work. If MT 3.1 doesn’t move me, then the winner so far is WordPress, especially once I saw this hack to implement multiple blogs from a single instance of WordPress! Cool hack!!