WordPress or MovableType?

[yesthattom]

I need to set up a web site using with either WordPress or MovableType. Can you help me choose?

I have very strict requirements:
-- I need a plug-in that lets me pull in posts from an RSS feed.
-- I need a template (or help making one) that has 3 columns: A blogroll (left column), the blog (middle column), rectangular icons of my design (right-hand side). I have no idea where the navigation or links to archives would go.
-- The ability for 1 person to post new entries, and another “editor” role that approves them before they appear.
-- Some way to control comments. We’d just turn them off until we can get some kind of moderation plug-in/feature working


It would be nice if there was an easy way to make a list of icons for “add this to your {so and so}” for various blog-reading services.

Suggestions?

Comments

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

I just downloaded and started looking at WP as an alternative to LJ, due to their censorship and downtime issues. They seems to have a lot of cross platform support, the product looks pretty mature, and there are a lot of plug-ins to do all kinds of interesting things for it.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I use WP, from what I gather of MT, MT is cruftier, and WP is Just Plain Easier to Use. I don't know if it has the features you desire specifically. MT has its following and WP has a lot of non-techies...MT seems to be for the "condescending Unix types" -- you know, "here's a nickel, go buy yourself a real operating system" type folks.

[mrfantasy.livejournal.com]

I'm using WordPress as well. I think it supports everything you're asking for. There's millions of styles out there so surely one does what you want. Moderation and approval is there. Comments can be controlled with Akismet which has pretty much stopped spam on my blogs (which I was moderating out anyway). You can also do things with WP like post from email, and probably other things I haven't figured out yet.

Updates involve untarring the new version over your existing one, and running one PHP script from a browser. Patches have been fast and furious but they do seem to fix known problems quickly.

[ckd]

WP definitely has pull-from-RSS functionality of some sort, since the admin dashboard gives you the WordPress blog feed so you know when you need to update.

I'm sure 3 and 4 are supported.

For 2, there are about a gazillion WP themes you can steal from adapt to your needs.

[petdance.livejournal.com]

I'm using MT4 right now as we start up http://perlbuzz.com and I love it. And it has all the features you list.

[sfo2lhr.livejournal.com]

I posted the same question over at the Well a couple of weeks ago, minus the specific requirements (which I can't speak to), and the count of resulting recommendations was: WP 9, MT 0.

I haven't installed WP yet, too busy with other things, but I did play around with it a little as a user at wordpress.com.

[baerana.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for word press - I've used it on several sites. We'd discussed it briefly - I thought there were 2 templates you needed? anyway, I know a designer who does a lot of wordpress templates, she's $65 an hour - and I've also been creating some templates lately - so i'd love to help you if I could.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'll try to find a site with similar style that I'm looking for and contact you by email.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

can you put her in contact with me ASAP?

[baerana.livejournal.com]

ok, i've sent you both each other's email address

let me know how it goes!

[darkvervain.livejournal.com]

I've been playing around with PSG (http://www.projectsteveguttenberg.org/).. not sure if it does feeds. It might do. It's completely open source and doesn't need a database backend. :)

WordPress WordPress WordPress

[dannyman.livejournal.com]

Tom,

I switched to WordPress in 2004 after trying out MT.

Do you need to continually import posts from an RSS feed? WP has a manual "import" feature that relies on RSS . . . that's how I converted my content into WordPress. :)

I think the writer-editor thing should work. At the WP conference they revealed work ahead to improve the pre-publishing drafts interface, and I know that blogs hosted on wordpress.com have an improved interface. (I saw it in their blog ...) You may be able to pull the code from WordPress "trunk"

Comment spam has been a non-issue for me, thanks to Akismet, which is a plugin backed by wordpress.com that uses the aggregate of WordPress blogs to detect spam. The policy on my site is new posters are held for approval, so the very few messages that get posted before they are found in Akismet get held for moderation anyway.

Hacking WordPress themes starts out preetty easy, and can get rather involved. Some day I'll write up some of the tricks I used in re-designing my web site last month.

Cheers,
-danny