Rodent Regatta

Is it my imagination or has the team from Six Apart become amazingly silent since announcing that they were going to further revise their licensing plans?

Is there some ”insider” communication vehicle or are things really as quiet as they seem?

I was a Macintosh user during the early 1990’s. ”Is there something equivalent to that for the Macintosh?” was a frequent question after seeing a piece of software running on the Microsoft platform.

Studying the steps required to migrate to a new weblog tool I find that same question coming up again. Others come up as well. Is there a comparable plugin? Will that script work? Is there any way to make this template work?

Experienced designers of XHTML and CSS sites are continuing to make the switch from Movable Type to WordPress. Om Malik has made the switch according to Matt.

It’s obvious to me from the experiments I’ve done thus far that I don’t have the know-how to move my existing sites to any new tool. The design portion of that work, which entails properly modifying XHTML markup, CSS stylesheets and the tags within the weblog templates, requires skills I don’t yet possess. To change a site without that knowledge will essentially cripple it during the trial-and-error of the move.

Being fair to everyone, Movable Type still has stronger documentation than any of the other tools I’ve considered. Properly placing a Movable Type tag within the appropriate XHTML markup and CSS styling remains a challenge in spite of hours in the doc.

• Until you can take a blank page in Notepad and enter the proper DOCTYPE declaration (preferably from memory)followed by everything it takes to produce an XHTML page that validates, you’ll never style your own weblog.
• Until you can take a blank page in Notepad and enter all of the rules associated with a style sheet (CSS) that validates, you’ll never style your own weblog.
• Until you can identify precisely where each and every tag from your weblog tool of choice belongs within the XHTML template (and styled by the CSS), you’ll never style your own weblog.
• In short, unless you’re a designer or you’re willing to ”settle” for one of the standard templates that comes with your weblog software, you’ll not style your own weblog to suit your wishes.
• Textpattern doesn’t come with a ”styled” template that’s ready for public consumption in version g1.18


• Perhaps there are designers for hire in the Textpattern world.

It’s a shame to start a Saturday so early and be frustrated mere hours later. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. with an eye toward installing Textpattern and learning a bit about the interface. I attempted to follow the instructions carefully. Now, when prompted for a login and password, I log in and I’m taken to the main entry screen. In Textpattern it’s a tab called ’write.’

Any link or button I press on that screen takes me back to the login screen. I haven’t been able to figure out what the cause is. I had such high hopes for my ability to become more self-supporting with Textpattern than I have been with either Movable Type or WordPress. Seems as though the common denominator is ”ignorant user.”

All I really want to do is get my two sites moved to a CMS tool without major disruption. I’d like to have test versions of each so that I can tamper with the layout without experimenting on the live sites.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars buying XHTML courseware, design services, software licenses and reference books. Once trapped with a given tool that works and a given design that is working, I guess you are there to stay until you’re prepared to spend more money getting things changed by someone ”in the know.”

No way to start a long weekend. This stuff shouldn’t be this hard.