Steamd

When I first started this blog last October, I chose to use Movable Type instead of MODx to power it. It actually was a pretty difficult decision mainly because of my belief that MODx is a good solution for just about any scenario due to its inherent flexibility. However, my final decision was narrowed down based on one factor: the iPhone. Although I’m sure I could still find a way to use MODx and blog with an iPhone, I simply didn’t want to invest the time it would take to accomplish this goal. It would be nice if I could eat my own dogfood, but given that this was to strictly be a blog that I could post to on-the-go, it simply just wasn’t achievable at the time. A MODx installation just couldn’t beat the sheer speed of deployment and the use of an iPhone webapp plugin for Movable Type.

With the launch of the iPhone 2.0 update and the iTunes App Store, things have changed with the addition of a few blog specific native iPhone apps. Two in particular that I looked at was TypePad and WordPress for the iPhone. TypePad for the iPhone looks great but it only works with the hosted TypePad service. I have my own hosting provider and want to customize the hell out of my blog so…that’s a “no” for TypePad. What was noticeably absent though was a native app that would allow for blogging to your own installation of Movable Type as well as what these apps provide. That left WordPress for the iPhone.

For the nine months or so that I’ve used Movable Type, I can say that it’s a great blogging platform. However, there are two things that really bug me about it. First, publishing pages seems to take a long time and, at times, you have to republish your entire site to get everything to work. I’ve also noticed that Movable Type can cause a bit of a strain on a server when you do this. Now, I don’t know if the use of CGI scripts has anything to do with this behavior…but it did leave me a bit concerned about the stability of the app as my database gets bigger. Second, I planned on updating my template a bit but upon looking at the code kind of frowned at the idea of doing so in Movable Type. Although Movable Type has a very powerful templating engine it’s still not the easiest thing to develop for.

So I took another serious look at WordPress and, after looking at the new features in WordPress 2.6, was sold. Templating is much easier, content editing has been greatly improved, there’s a wealth of great plugins available, and overall WordPress has turned into a great blogging platform. And with the addition of a native iPhone app it’s even better. There’s just something about being able to take a picture with my iPhone and post it to my blog on the fly that I find very appealing.

As of today, my blog has been completely converted over to WordPress 2.6. One of the things I did was update the design a little bit using the 960 Grid System. It’s more or a work in progress so the design isn’t complete. However, the fact that I was able to throw it all together in a single weekend just amazes me. As time goes by you might notice a few things changing here and there. 

The WordPress iPhone app is the really cool part. It’s a very simple app, really, but still powerful nonetheless. Although writing and posting blog posts is easy enough, it doesn’t appear that you can write in landscape mode just yet. Adding photos to a post is breeze, giving you the option to choose a picture from the iPhone photo gallery or take a new one from the built-in camera. The differences between TypePad and WordPress for the iPhone are very minimal. The main difference though is that the WordPress app allows you to use your own installation as opposed to using one that is hosted for you. That’s a big plus for me.

I’ve always said that the advantage of stand-alone apps is that they can do one thing really well. It may not be MODx but as a stand-alone blogging app WordPress is a great app. Hats off to the developers. They did a great job.