Comments on: MT Join Fight of Dreaded 500

By: ireneQ

ireneQ — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 18:53:00 +0000

I only know basic HTML and CSS (zilch PHP) and even though Alvin says the blog design depends entirely on CSS, the way the template is done in WP is way different from MT. Danny has pointed out that it uses PHP includes and coz of that, I’m never sure what is going to appear where or which portions of the template will be affected when I change certain CSS variables. I’m using WP for another blog and I’ve given up trying to customise the look & feel coz it’s driving me crazy.

As for exporting archives and stuff, I’ve always left that up to my friend — he’s the one with the tech know-how. I wouldn’t know what to do with a MySQL database if I saw one. I probably wouldn’t even recognise it as a MySQL database

By: Edrei

Edrei — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 14:52:03 +0000

Alright…as far as I know WP HAS a way to import WP posts into MT. Not like you would need it. I’m that confidant that you’re not going to move back if you switch to WP in the first place.

The PHP in WP isn’t that hard to manage. It may take some time to get used to, but in the end it’s worth it. As was said before, how your design looks depends solely on your ability to use CSS and XHTML. The core code can be messed around later. The dynamic flexibility of WP means you won’t have to waste time rebuilding your site everytime you publish.

Would you rather waste your time or your server’s time in publishing?

By: dannyFoo

dannyFoo — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 09:28:38 +0000

Thanks for throwing a hammer at me, Liew. Didn’t notice WP didn’t have an official export capability like MT. Hmm..but I called upon the power of Google and it brought back some results. There’s a WP plugin; WPExport, by Eric Pierce and it could be useful later. How well does the export perform I’m unsure since I’ve not done it yet.

Okie, the difference in flexibility of putting what I want and where I want in MT compared to WP is quite a gap. Example: I want to put entry title in header and then later put excerpt or body in right column. When I see the WP template I see a bunch of codes in PHP. In MT, it’s just a matter of placing simple tags within a single template of the Main Index.

And before anyone starts that that isn’t part of designing a template, on contrary; it does. It does because it’s part of laying out content which is connected to designing a template. So depending on the learning curb of picking up the template tags, if they’re difficult to understand then it’ll be harder to perform.

In my WP template, it’s still the default Kubrick theme because I’m too scared of messing with the delicate PHP. However, I wanted to make 1 entry appear on the homepage and I was scrambling around the WP support Wiki just to find a piece of PHP code like this:

// ? php query_posts ( ‘showposts=1′ ); ? //

Sorry if I’m sounding harsh, but as a person who doesn’t know server side coding and can’t understand logic sometimes, I find tweaking the template makes me edgy.

However, if anyone just wanted to maintain the standard header, left column, right column and footer then you definetely don’t need PHP to redesign. Just compare the tags controlled in CSS and tweak it.

By: LcF

LcF — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 07:05:18 +0000

Temporary switch to WP? How to you swictch back to MT from WP later?

btw, you do not need to know PHP in order to design WP template. WP template tag is NOT PHP(though written by PHP).

Check out WP template tags.

By: dannyFoo

dannyFoo — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 02:37:08 +0000

Hmm, I’m using MT 3.17 and nope, it wasn’t that difficult migrating my archives into WP. Because I think in MT 3.15 and later, SixApart has solve the problem when exporting to be imported in WP. Back then, they said MT had troubles because of the time format difference. Then WP created a plugin for easier migration.

But now it’s not necessary anymore if you’re using MT 3.15 or later I guess. You could just save the exported entries as ‘import.txt’ with Firefox and place that file in the same folder as the mt-import.php or something like that. Then just type in the import URL and follow just ONE step and you’re done.