I’ve been playing with the cool stuff included in Six Apart’s new article on speeding up Movable Type. I’d already switch to dynamically generated archive pages, but even so I was able to find some good speed tips. The best are those related to pagination. I’ll have to admit that is one feature of pMachine’s Expression Engine that I’ve been longing for. There is a Movable Type plugin for pagination, but it doesn’t work with dynamic pages. Fortunately the solution was available using the Smarty rendering engine included in MT 3.x.
On another technical note I finally had the “aha” moment concerning Wizbang’s redesign. All I can say is it’s and “thinking outside of the box” kind of idea. Some of the changes I’ve been making to (both visible and behind the scene) are in preparation for the new layout. The new layout is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changes though. I’ll have more to say about those changes later. It will be the Wizbang you know and (hopefully) love, just more so…
How’d the dynamic rebuild converstion go? I tried it a couple months ago, and screwed it up so bad that I just about destroyed my whole site.
I’ve heard other nightmares, too.
I’ve done the conversion to dynamic templates on a few of the sites I’ve worked on, and I’ve tried it on my own site. I have the usual mix of plugins, as did the sites I worked on. Oddly enough, my site is the only one where I couldn’t make it work.
On a related note, frankly, 6A’s documentation could stand some improvement. I suspect that over half the problems people have when implementing MT features is due to the manuals. It’s not that the manuals are wrong, as much as it’s a case of the manuals having been written by people who already know the material inside-out, and who consequently make faulty assumptions about the knowledge level of the reader.
(I say this as a former writer of technical “how-to” docs for a Major Tech Company The Name Of Which Rhymes With “Disco.” I know inadequate documentation when I see it, and I know the problems that can lead to it.)
Looking forward to it. I finnally updated my site.
The documentation for ExpressionEngine may be the worst. Fortunately their support forums take up the slack admirably, with even the CEO of the company checking in and helping out with questions and problems sometimes.
Hmm. Pagination. That would be interesting. I wonder if there’s a wordpress plug-in for that? Can’t wait to see the new design, etc.
I’ll second that, Russ. The docs, online help, and error handling in MT are often incomplete and generally lacking in useful examples. They were barely adequate back when it was a free application, but when you’re paying for it the standards have to be a bit higher. I think it’s clear that they need to hire someone to redo their support materials.
And while I’m complaining, let me also say that MT needs to address the needs of Windows users better. The previous major release had an incredibly frustrating path-mangling bug that was clearly the result of inadequate testing under a Windows environment. And the poor docs made it even harder to tell what was wrong.