I recently moved my blog from blogspot to a paid hosting service (blogeye). There were numerous benefits in making this move (increased reliability, ftp access, image hosting, personal domain name) but the prime motivating factor was to step up to Movable Type. I started on Blogger which was adequate, but only at first. Now that I have used Movable Type (MT) for a few weeks, I must say that it has truly surpassed all my expectations.

With just the standard installation, MT provides a great environment for writing and editing a weblog. The interface is clean and context sensitive help is provided throughout the program. The user's manual is readable and very complete. There are default templates provided as well as several CSS styles. If those are not enough, many bloggers make their custom templates and styles available for others to use. This allows HTML/CSS novices to easily control the appearance of their site.

However, the real power of MT lies is its customization features. In addition to providing different templates for every imaginable page type, it also allows generic (module) templates. The templating documentation is excellent and shows how powerful and flexible the software truly is. It takes a significant amount of effort and understanding to create a custom set of templates but the result can be amazing.

To help those who are contemplating the change or perhaps are already using Movable Type and would like to do more, I am planning on doing a series of How-To posts. I am in no way proclaiming myself as the MT Master or anything like that. I just managed to run into some interesting tricks (with the help of others) and wanted to share those with anyone who might be interested.