Like any good Movable Type user, I've been testing the betas of Movable Type 4. On the face of it, there are at least a number of improvements that make the effort worthwhile. However, there are far too many plug-ins that I use that are incompatible with it.
Keyvalues doesn't work; Media Manager stops the whole blog from working; MT-Blogroll is broken; Smart Rebuild stops any rebuilding ('republishing' as it now is in MT4); and Fast Search, which I eulogised about earlier, is going to need an update too.
SimplyThreaded and MT Compare are classed as unnecessary in MT4 because there's equivalent functionality. Well that's all right then, isn't it? All I have to do is check all my templates are rewrite them accordingly...
As it is, it looks like with Keyvalues down, I'm going to have to split the blogs up into two separate installations so that some can use the new MT4 features and others can keep working.
The trouble with the MT4 beta, apart from the bugs, is there's so little documentation. It's fairly easy to report bugs and say “these features have stopped working on my blog”, but it's a lot harder to talk about the shiny new features when there's no clear idea on how to implement them.
Some of the new features are also at 0.1 status - so while I love the new ability to authenticate via LiveJournal, OpenID, etc, the Google account plug-in is optional and gives anyone using it a generic name if they sign in.
How do I implement the threaded comments properly? How do I implement the recommendations framework? So many things, so little to work with.
I'm just going to keep adapting my templates to the new modular approach taken with MT4 and feed in the extra capabilities as they become clear. It should, I hope, be worth it.
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Hi Rob,
Fast Search will be updated for MT4. Early indications are that it will require quite a bit of work under the hood. As soon as Six Apart releases some developer docs in this area, I will be doing an MT4 version of Fast Search -- hopefully it will be ready for the MT4 launch, if not before.
SmartRebuild should become unnecessary in MT, but I have not yet checked the MT4 code in this area. But not long after I released SmartRebuild, 6A checked in a very similar fix into a development branch of the MT code. I assume that made into MT4, but I am not sure.
Thanks for letting me know. Fast Search is a really invaluable plug-in, particularly for reducing server load, so I definitely won't be going to MT4 until it's been updated.
Fortunately, one of the latest betas fixed the problems that were causing most plug-ins to work, but I'm still waiting for documentation and MT Media Manager and MT Blogroll as well before I make the leap.
Hey Rob, came across your blog whilst googling for a media player plugin for entries. Good read. Version 4 was long overdue and I was really expecting more from Six Apart. At the very least they should have had made sure that most of the popular plugins were MT 4 ready. Not to mention some nice command line importing/exporting and rebuild scripts just to make upgrading that little bit easier. There's this huge reliance on the community for these sorts of things and i think its kinda cheeky considering MT is pretty much commercial software, despite this step toward free additions and an Open Source version...