Radio vs. Movable Type
Christian Crumlish
Each of these comparisons seems to take more time than the previous one, and I'm sure as always that I've missed some crucial features, but this entry should serve as a good starting point for anyone making a decision.
Here are some of the differences between Movable Type and Radio UserLand:
Where the Client Lives
The Radio client is a browser-based application that runs on your (Macintosh or Windows, only) desktop. The Movable Type client is also browser-based but must be installed on the web server hosting your site. (MT is built mainly out of Perl scripts.) Thus, you can access your MT installation from any computer.
In fact, if your computer is always online, you can install Movable Type directly onto your own computer—at least I know this is possible with a Mac running OS X with an Apache server, I'm sure it's possible with a Linux box, and it's probably doable with Windows as well.
To access a Radio installation from anywhere, you need to make sure that your main computer is visible on the Net (and not protected by a firewall), and then log into it remotely.
Where Your Data Lives
In both of these blog applications your content is stored in a database and then combined with a template when the pages are rendered. The Radio database resides on your own computer, while the MT database resides on your host server. In neither case are you dependent on the software company's servers for access to your data. For both, if your site is damaged, you can rebuild it easily by republishing the rendered pages from the database.
Where Your Site is Hosted
Radio offers you the option of hosting your site on servers they manage (Userland.com, Weblogs.com, or Salon.com for Radio) or of creating your blog pages on your own server or any third-party hosting account via FTP.
Movable Type does not provide any hosting space and the assumption is that you are publishing directly to the same server (remote host) where you have installed the software. The provided-hosting option for Radio users is easier for newbies getting started and for those who do not wish to pay for traditional ISP hosting or manage their own web servers.
According to Bladam of Smilezone (who contributed a lot of helpful suggestions to this comparison), "one kind woman has offered up her domain and webspace to people who want to blog but can't afford to pay for blog software or hosting. Each person gets their own subdomain.sovereignmagic.com, with MT pre-installed."
Ease of Installation/Getting Started
As I've compared Blogger, Radio, and now Movable Type, I've come to the conclusion that Blogger and Radio are both fairly easy for a beginner to get up and running, and Radio and Movable Type both offer more features and a more easily extensible framework.
Radio seems to straddle the widest range from ease-of-starting to geeky hacker possibilities. Installing Movable Type is probably the greatest barrier to adoption (although they offer a fairly cheap paid service to help you get going and helpful troubleshooting tips), especially if one is relying on a paid remote host with restrictions on things like what sorts of CGI scripts can be run.
Having said that, MT also seems to offer the greatest amount of functionality right "out of the box." It matches Radio's categories functions, message-board/comment features, and templates, while also offering it's new TrackBack feature, better entry-to-entry navigation, built-in recent headlines generation, and perhaps most importantly, an unlimited number of blogs manageable from a single installation of MT.
Radio only permits you to create a single blog, although the categories function can be kluged to simulate multiple blogs. I think you have to upgrade to the $899/year Manila product to get the multiple-blog feature—along with a lot more full-featured CMS functionality, of course.
For many people, one blog is probably more than enough, but if you are involved in the maintenance of more than one website, then you may find that you'd like to generate one or more unique blogs for each site. For this reason, MT's multiple blog feature appeals to me.
Design Templates
For writers, geeks, and other nondesigners, and those who do not want to delay their blog while they master the fine art of web design, both Radio and Movable Type offer default templates for rendering the look-and-feel of the blogsite. Radio also offers a set of alternative templates.
Movable Type comes with only the one set, but I there are alternatives available for exchange online (such as at this site). For some reason, MT sites often look more sophisticated to me than Radio sites, but that may be a reflection of the more experienced web developers who are opting to install MT.
Both Radio and MT make it fairly easy to change templates and both enable customization of the templates, although this requires getting over squeamishness about markup and code, and learning to work with macros and variables. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it does present a barrier that some will find daunting.
Both products offer the potential of a great deal of customization and extensibility. Movable Type also anticipates upgraders from products like Blogger and GreyMatter, and offer practical advice for converting templates from other systems into their syntax.
User Interface and Ease of Use
Both interfaces are reasonably easy to work with, but I must say that Movable Type has perhaps the most beautiful interface design of any web application I've ever seen. It's a matter of subtlety for the most part, and an elegant combination of cmpact graphical buttons and a smartly laid out UI. Radio's interface, by contrast, seems a bit stuck in the early days of the web, heavily reliant on a page model and big, sprawling web forms.
Radio's interface is really a front end to a set of scripts and files that more advanced users feel comfortable plunging into and manipulating directly. Movable Type's interface includes a button on each view offering you the option to customize the page and add or subtract features. As with the earlier Blogger vs. Radio comparison, I think the deciding factor here might be a matter of taste or gut intuition about what seems easier.
Multiple Authors
Like Blogger, Movable Type has a built-in Team function that enables multiple authors to contribute to a single blog (creating some of the functionality of a Slash-type site). Radio doesn't permit multiple authors without hacking.
Community and "Culture"
Both Radio and MT have a built in option for pinging Weblogs.com to announce when you have posted a new article. Movable Type also now features Track Back which enables you to ping a blog when you are commenting on it in your own blog and, likewise, enables you to show excerpts from blogs that have pinged you when commenting on your posts. This feature is a step in the right direction towards the greater weaving together of the blogosphere, permitting more easy navigation back and forth between intercommunicating blogs.
Blogs made with Radio and Movable Type (just as blogs made with Radio and Blogger) project different images to the viewing world. The principals behind Radio and Movable Type (as again, with Blogger) are all influential in the blog world. To some small extent, using a Radio blog identifies you as part of the Radio community and implies some kind of affinity with Dave, John Robb, and the other influential leaders in the Radio/Manila/Frontier space.
Similarly, using Movable Type identifies you as an experienced/advanced blogger. It somehow suggests that you are a sophisticate. Megnut, for example, has had to include a brief explanation of why she, a founder of Pyra associated with Blogger, uses Movable Type.
There is an implication that bloggers "graduate" to Movable Type after starting with Blogger. I'm not sure if there's a similar migration path from Radio to Movable Type, since Radio does offer most of the sophisticated features of MT and a few others of its own.
Documentation and Help
As with most inexpensive or free products, both Radio and MT could use better documentation. Radio's docs seems scattered all over the place, although the community is remarkably helpful in solving problems and suggesting hacks. MT's documentation is actually quite well written and helpful but the difficult installation procedure sometimes exceeds the helpfulness of the docs.
(I successfully installed MT on my TiMac but it did involve tracking down answers to various questions until I got everything running. I'm currently stymied in the process of installing MT on my remote Linux server—issues I've run into include: deciding whether to use the native database or MySQL and then trying to figure out how to create a new database in MySQL, trying to determine whether I have suexec and/or cgiwrap installed on my server, modifying httpd.conf to make sure that the CGIs are executable and don't just dump their script into the browser window. I'm waiting for help on some of these issues from my trusty sysadmin.)
While I have used neither, I am told that Movable Type‰s support forums are more robust than Radio‰s.
"Blog This"-Type Bookmarklets
Both Radio and MT can work with bookmarklets for ease-of-posting when browsing the web. The Radio bookmarklet is caled Radio Express and it doesn't come with the basic installation but it's easy to find on the Web. (After writing my earlier Radio vs. Blogger comparison, someone pointed me to it.) The MT bookmarklet is another marvel of interface design, truly a pleasure to use.
MT's interface, by the way, offers the ability to write short and long versions of the entry as well as an exerpt, so the RSS feed can be set to just send out the short version—a neat trick. I assume you could also style the excerpt as a pull quote. (I'm still playing with the templates.)
The bookmarklets are all "installed" the same way. You drag a Javascript link onto your browser's custom toolbar to give yourself a doo-dad that enables you to grab the link to any site you happen to have browsed to, write up some description, quote part of the page (it will capture whatever you've got selected automatically), and instantly publish the new entry to your blog.
With MT (as with Blogger), if you have multiple blogs, you only need one shortcut and you can choose which blog to publish to on the fly.
In addition to Radio Express, Radio also offers the ability to subscribe to syndicated feeds and post articles captured from the aggregator.
Full-service vs. Blog-centric CMS
As mentioned in the earlier article, Radio is more than a blog tool, as it offers an easy way to build an entire static site by dropping text files into a directory hierarchy and allowing the application to stream the new content, merge it with your templates, and build your site.
MT is also closer to a full CMS than a mere blog tool, although it does use the blog metaphor throughout. MT's multiple-blog feature makes it easy to build various dynamic features into a single website design (such as the "sideblogs" seen at sites such as MetaFilter).
Business Model
Radio costs $39.95 a year for the software with the hosting thrown into the deal. Movable Type is free for noncommercial use, but paying $20 gets you technical support and a listing on the MT home page when you update your blog. Paying $45 (these are one-time payments) gets you IM tech support from Movable Type's principals, Mena and Ben!
The MT team have also talked about releasing a paid version with additional features while continuing to offer the free version with the current feature set. Anyone who has contributed and decides to pay for the "pro" version will be credited for their payment so far.
While not free, Radio does give you a one-month trial period so that you can at least sample the wares (and perhaps get hooked on them) before you pony up the dough.
Odds and Ends
A few stray items:
- Radio has the MyPictures feature for easily upstreaming images to your blog (something I should use more in this text-heavy site!). MT lacks this feature but does offer on-the-fly thumbnailing.
- Radio offers a wysiwig editor (though I don't use it and I'm not sure it even works on IE/Mac). MT doesn‰t—which seems in line with its power-user/experience HTML-guru feel.
- Radio has a post-by-email feature built-in. MT does not.
- Movable Type has a built-in search feature. Radio does not.
The Bottom Line
Radio is much easier to get started with unless you are experienced with FTP, web servers, CGI's, chmod permissions, and so on. Movable Type offers a few more vital blog features, particularly multiple authors and multiple blogs. Either is a viable way to develop a sophisticated blog. (Radio even offers a few templates based on Mena's popular MT template designs!)
Stay Tuned
As with earlier articles, I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface here and that there are many other interesting features of Radio and MT that could be compared fruitfully. I would love to hear corrections to any of my misstatements, additions of key features or distinctions between the products, or any feedback, experiences, or other two cents.
Coming Up
Some further comparisons I plan to run include:
- Blogger vs. Movable Type
- Blogger Pro vs. Movable Type
- Manila vs. Movable Type (if I can get an evaluation copy of Manila)
- Comparisons of Slash, Kuro5hin, and Nuke group weblog tools
Other topics I also plan to address include
- Modifying blog templates
- Migrating from one blog tool to another
Related Entries
See these earlier posts for other comparisons: