Mixed Signals
On their Signal vs. Noise weblog, Jason Fried reports that they've been having a lot of problems with their Movable Type installation. In the comments he says We’re definitely going to roll our own blog engine for our own use here on SvN (no plans to make that into a product).
In a later comment he explains Because [MT is] really slow. Posting a comment can take 20-30 seconds and posting a new item to the blog can take over a minute now. Plus we’ve had a few corruption issues so it’s time to move on.
37 Signals decision to switch tools is not a surprise given thier background as evangelists for less, Ruby on Rails and hosted "Web 2.0" applications.
Stating that they will roll their own
does surprise me though because its inconsistent with what they've been preaching. So has taking outside money which they now have done. Granted it was for access to Jeff Bezos. Seems they're having a change of heart on some key issues.
Writing an application is a pretty significant undertaking for a less than critical return on what their business is about. Once more, they've clearly not tried to work within the constraints (a reoccurring theme of their mantra) of their existing tool. Moving to a hosted solution like the services they offer would also be understandable. Creating their own tool is not.
I've admired the company's achievements and the philosphy on business and design that they so steadfast in communicating. With decisions like these I'm beginning to wonder what's happening to them. I'm not the only one either.
This all aside, most complaints of MT running slow is self-inflicted and fixable. Usually these publishing slow downs are a result of unoptimized sidebars where intensive data queries are repeatedly run and re-run while building all of the pages. The usual offenders include recent post, recent comments and archive lists. Second place goes to having too many index templates getting needlessly rebuilt with each new entry or comment. A distant third place goes to multiple archive templates.
Confirming my suspicions, MT pro Su did some sleuthing and discovered that the SvN weblog is producing 3 syndication feeds instead of the one in addition to producing monthly and category archives it doesn't link to. This is all unnecessary work that MT will perform with each new entry and comment slowing the publishing process.
Database corruption is a serious issue though. I'm not sure which database they are using to power their blog. I’ve never heard of MT data corruption other then with BerkeleyDB which Six Apart has been recommending NOT be used for years now. While the default database because it is universally available, BerkeleyDB generally slow and prone to corruption's. I asked in the comments, but still haven't gotten a reply.
More can be done by Six Apart to avoid these issues, but I'm skeptical that they can completely design MT to save a user from shooting themselves in the foot.
As I've said before Movable Type is not without its warts, however it can perform extremely well when used correctly. If you are looking for someone to help you with these issues contact us or file a support ticket with Six Apart.
