Bye Movable Type! Hello WordPress…
After many months of virtual arm-twisting by my friends Armand Morin, Sherman Hu, Denis de Bernardy and others, I decided to finally dump Movable Type and go completely WordPress. Woohoo!
I love WordPress. But not just for its incredibly usable features, but also because Sylvie (my fiancée) and I have been running a battery of tests in the background with WP and the various plugins it offers.
Can you believe it? One blog we had for an extremely, highly searched keyphrase became #3 on Google and #1 on MSN (and many others, too) within just 5 days. (And went to #1 on Google in 9 days.)
We’re using it right now to develop monetized content sites (using AdSense and some of our “secret weapons”). That is, we’re using WordPress not so much as a blog but as a content management and delivery system (or “CMS”).
For some great resources, check out Semiologic CMS (Semiologic is the system I now use for The Copy Doctor’s membership site). And best of all, you need to subscribe to Sherman’s WordPress Tutorials.
My personal blog is now completely WordPress-driven (I had to customize the templates all by myself to ensure it looks, works and processes information the same way Movable Type did).
But if you want to know the finer (and more step-by-step) secrets about the tests Sylvie and I are running — that are making us a nice chunk of change right now — I recommend you come and see us at the next Internet Marketing Superconference in Las Vegas, where Sylvie and I will both speak on stage about our “discoveries.”
(Sylvie will also speak by herself on a technique she calls “managed outsourcing.”)
Browse around and get a feel for the site. Tell me what you think! (And help me test this blog, too.) Just enter your comment below. Thanks!
About the Author
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Success Doctor, Inc. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.
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Posted by Michel Fortin on May 15th, 2006. Filed in Events, Launches, News, Resources. Tagged as blog, cms, content, movable type, plugin, semiologic, tutorial, wordpress. Follow responses through the RSS feed.
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From Pavel Berestneff
Wow, Michel! Looking good! I know, you are fanatical tester
well, it seems to me that your choice is very reasonable… I’m confused a little bit ’cause using Movable Type for my blog. Now I’m serious to change a blog engine… Thanks again!
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From Chris Knight
Good move Michel! After using MT for 2 years, I couldn’t take listening to my dev team consistently asking me to switch to WordPress. A few weeks ago I gave in and never looked back.
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From My Automatic Downline
Hi Michel…I’m just getting into blogging recently and I hope to learn a few things by observing your blog. I might just have to make my way to Vegas to hear you two speak about your “discoveries.”
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From Dave
Nice move…
WP is an incredibl tool to use, has great 3rd party production and is endless to the modifications.
-Dave
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From John Hocking
I have been experimenting with Rapid Niche Website
http://www.rapidnichewebsite.com/
I basic lets you turn WordPress into a Content Management System (CMS)
Your site looks more like a tradiational website but is completely powered by wordpress. When you add new content, the blog directories are notified.
It is the BEST of both worlds.
John Hocking
http://www.blogging-resources.com
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From Mike Sigers
As the owner of 13 blogs, with several in the pipeline, I’ve looked at their system before. I’d buy it, with a more in depth review and a fews more ” Why’s ” answered.
Can you tell us why this is superior to an install of WP and all the plugins we currently use ?
Why only on The Copy doctor membership site and not here ?
Author's Website May 15th, 2006
From Michel Fortin
I use several free plugins from Denis (that are part of the Semiologic Pro package) on this blog. Like the recent activity page, for example. But Semiologic also has a ton of plugins and themes that are more centralized and usable.
Plus, and more importantly, unlike a blog, a membership site has a front page that needs to be static — either as the salesletter or once you log in. And Semio has that plugin, too. (Either page or posts that remain static on the front page.) Sure, you can create the page yourself. But using the plugin makes it easy to do within the WP interface and maintains the theme’s style and format.
Sherman’s WordPress Tutorials goes into great depth, not only on WP but also on the Semiologic system. If you want to truly see it in action, you can subscribe to Sherman’s site. (You can also ask Sherman directly, if you wish. He’s pretty much on the up and up about helping people out. And he knows Semio far more than I do.)
There are more “behind-the-scenes” admin improvements. And Denis is very gracious to provide top-shelf support, including customizations I asked for.
But more importantly, very soon he’ll be adding a subscription/password-protection plugin, which is a must for membership sites. Also, there’s a newsletter plugin, an affiliate program plugin, a testimonial manager plugin, and so on.
To answer your question, yes, I will be adding Semiologic’s complete package here. Right now, just converting it from MT to WP was a lot of work. (And I needed a few of Semio’s plugins to do what MT did that I didn’t want to lose.)
So stay tuned.
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Dave Cushion
Many months ago, I finally chose Wordpress over Moveable Type. And I’m so happy that I did. WP is so functional and easy to use.
But, it was Semiologic, with great support from Sherman Hu and Denis that was the real clincher. Both have offered great help whenever it was needed. And you really don’t ever need too much help.
In response to a previous comment, another plus is the very active and large forum. I have found the answers to many questions there.
Sherman’s videos are extremely thorough and very well done. He presents the info in a well-organized manner and is a great speaker. They were well-worth the money to me… I saved a lot of time and set up my blogs better.
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Mike Sigers
THAT’S what I was after ! Thanks Michel and thanks Dave.
Now I feel comfortable about purchasing. Say, Michel, maybe you should write for a living…….
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Jeff
Michel - looks like its finally time to change mine over as well - I’ve been suffering with MT for a while now, watching all the great plugins for WP passing me by.
Without taking too much time, can you give me a sense for what the biggest challenge is for converting exsiting MT to WP? How much time do you think it will take?
Cheers…
Jeff
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Michel Fortin
What took me the longest was playing with the theme to make it look as close as possible to my MT blog. More of a personal preference, not an actual challenge.
WordPress has, on its codex/support pages, an extensive migration tutorial. But the beauty is:
1) WordPress has a “import” from MT feature within the admin.
2) There are plugins to help, such as “redirect” plugins for redirecting your old MT articles to their new, respective ones.
3) There’s a plugin to convert dashes to underscores in filenames (MT uses underscores, based on post slugs, while WP uses dashes).
The longest part was a choice I made. The redirect plugins and hacks (very simple), in #2 above, help a lot — but you must keep your MT files intact. (Copying WP files in a MT blog directory is no problem, as all the WP files come with the “wp-” prefix. So both can co-exist without any problems, and the redirects work without a hitch.)
However, I wanted to remove my MT completely. So I personally did three things:
1) MT cuts off filenames based on length. So I had to query my SQL database to reduce the WP filenames created (after the import) to the same as MT — this is all explained on WP’s site, in the codex in the section on the import feature.
2) Change permalink structure to reflect the same as MT (this is braindead easy, just a click or two).
3) Do a redirect in my .htaccess for the RSS feeds (again, braindead easy). Basically, it redirects MT feeds (like index.rdf, index.xml, atom.xml, index.rss, etc) to blogurl/feed/ … that’s it.
The Google sitemap feature and BAStats are awesome. The former is what helped my blog get indexed a heck of alot faster. The latter is a stats program — like any other — for WP specifically. From referring pages, to hits, to search phrases your blog was found under.
And of course, tons more.
I highly recommend it, Jeff. Good luck with your move!
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Jeff
Awesome - thanks Michel, appreciate the response. I’ll head over to the WP site and plan my attack!
Cheers…
Jeff
Author's Website May 16th, 2006
From Andy Castle
You must be kidding about Semiologic. From my reading of the Semiologic offer from your site I’m amazingly being offered (from the first line of the “package” ) a copy of the latest version of Wordpress plus templates and skins. Wow. All for the bargain price of $295. Perhaps Mr Fortin should be also pointing out that Wordpress is FREE for all to download and that there are HUNDREDS of free templates available on the net using Wordpress and many of these are optimised for adsen / se. Mr Fortin if you are using this Semiologic site as a new income generator you are seriously undermining your hard fought for credibility.
Author's Website May 17th, 2006
From Michel Fortin
I appreciate your comment, Andy. But I don’t think you read the website. To me, I think it’s a question of convenience and valued-added service. I don’t want to search, scour, find, tweak, customize, etc, etc, etc. And I don’t want to do this with every blog I own. (Just one Semio package can be used on as many websites you own, too. So it’s a one-time fee only.)
What I like about it? It’s all optimized (for SEO, blogging, content management AND AdSense, etc). Yup, Semiologic’s package, which is comprised of unique themes, plugins and tweaks to the native WordPress code, includes a copy of WordPress to simplify and centralize your download from one location.
(And since WP’s native code had to be tweaked, this makes it easier… I don’t have to download free WordPress and tweak manually according to a set of instructions each time I install Semio. So you’re paying for convenience more than anything.)
I’ve turned to Semiologic because it’s optimized for SEO, and offers plugins and value-adds not available elsewhere. Including service. And there are a bunch of new plugins coming soon (I’m a beta tester, so I know). Like subscription management, affliate program, newsletter management, testimonial manager, etc.
And downloading it from one location makes it convenient. Yes, almost everything (but not everything) is available somewhere. However, you need to find them, tweak them and customize them (and some don’t work with other plugins as they are not made to work with one and other, or the semio package itself).
Personally, I prefer Semoilogic for membership sites. Not necessarily for simple blogs. But I am using Semio’s plugins on public blogs, too.
Author's Website May 17th, 2006
From Chris
I have to completely agree… WordPress is the BEST!
Author's Website May 19th, 2006
From Bailey
Michel, I am so glad you’ve upgraded to Wordpress. And as an extra bonus, it appears the scripting that MoveableType had looped to run ad infiniteum (not sure which script it was, but it always kicked up an error message for me on Firefox, and would sometimes crash my browser!) is now running perfectly.
Looks great, Michel!
Author's Website May 22nd, 2006
From Russell
Michael, I can’t believe it’s taken you so bloody long to change. I’ve been using WordPress for nearly 3 years now and I love it. My new WordPress blogs always go to PR4 by the next update from when I start them, without fail.
As a CMS, I know of people using WordPress as a store front, as a photo album, as a video blog… you are limited only by your imagination.
Author's Website May 31st, 2006
From Edward Han
Hi Michel
Great move. Everything looks much better and user friendly as many people including myself have been using WP.
Author's Website May 31st, 2006
From Steven Porcaro
Hi Michael,
I am very familiar with Wordpress and the work of Denis de Bernady, what took you so long! LOL
Wordpress is a great asset to the online world hopefully people do not ruin it. However as long as it is valubale content you cannot ruin a great product like this.
People are amazed what I can do with websites now however I am an implementer and marketeer like you not a designer. That is for Denis who is a great guy by the way.
All the best and congrats again on discovering wordpress!
http://www.stevenporcaro.com
Steve
Author's Website June 1st, 2006
From internet marketing
wordpress is a great tool, but i get sick and tired of seeing the same templates and boring discussions over the same things. glad you have done it properly !
Author's Website April 3rd, 2008
From lissie
WordPress is one of the modern wonders of the technological world IMHO! I still cannot believe that something so useful is free and the latest version WP2.5 is just fantastic. I am certainly looking at using at using it as a CMS in the future.
Author's Website May 11th, 2008
From Niche Store Writer
It’s truly amazing how WordPress has taken over the blogosphere. I use WordPress on my self-hosted sites and with the large community of users, plugin developers, and modders I can’t see ever switching over to anything else. WordPress has so many priceless plugins like the related post plugins (which I see used here on this website), that just make it so darn appealing.
Author's Website May 12th, 2008
From John from the writing agency
Nice article - and i bet WP has got even better since you wrote this. You’ve just persuaded me to use WP anyway!
Author's Website May 30th, 2008
From Jimmy blue
congrats on a very wise decision, and i am happy you were able to keep your cool design
Author's Website June 13th, 2008
From Bob
Wordpress is the way to go. It just gives way too many options for optimization, seo, pinging, just way too many options. I really like your theme 2.
Author's Website June 20th, 2008
From wormdahl
Wordpress is the best by far it is great to get instantly indexed and I love my blogs.
Author's Website June 25th, 2008
From Chris
Yeah wordpress is a powerful SEO tool. If done right they rank very quickly. I’ve had a couple wordpress sites rank in google in less than 24hrs.
Author's Website July 10th, 2008
From Maks
Wordpress certainly is a good system, but certainly very demanding to resources. It happens even at slowing in vds, even more so for in virtual hosting.
Author's Website July 10th, 2008
From Clint
What’s Movable Type?
I’m sure by now you know that you made the right choice. Even with it’s flaws, I haven’t seen anything that even comes close to its ease of use combined with its powerful capabilities.
Author's Website July 12th, 2008
From Don
Indexed in less than 24hrs? Wow! Do you have any documentation on that? Very fast results… seems to good to be true, but I’ll definitely research it more. Thanks!
Author's Website July 13th, 2008
From Anya Cook
Hi,
WordPress is great …..
thank you !!!
Author's Website July 16th, 2008
From Tammy Powell
WordPress ROCKS! I hired a ‘web design’ company 1.5 years ago to build a website for me, paid them thousands of dollars and got sooo frustrated every time I needed a change to it - as it took days for a simple paragraph change and another bill from them for $100 or more! once I learned wordpress, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to become ‘master of your own internet’. Thanks for sharing such great video and information Michael! Cheers, Tammy
Author's Website July 17th, 2008
From Jason
Yeah Wordpress has many features that make it a really good blogging system, and the plugins really work wonders. You have to always make sure that you are updating it though, because there have been some bad security holes in the past with WP. I’m switching over to Drupal, so I’m getting used to this robust CMS which is fun and challenging.
Author's Website July 25th, 2008
From Jak
I didn’t know using wordpress would affect your google ranking, this is a great bonus to the easy software.
Jak from http://dobermansden.com
Author's Website July 28th, 2008
From ayhan
You are right there are some vulnerability problems but it is so easy to upgrade wordpress to latest stable release in general. Also that’s true for plug-ins. And no other software has such rich features compared to wordpress especially for novice bloggers I guess.
Author's Website August 1st, 2008
From Make your own Website
Wow, so google gives preference to WordPress Blogs? That’s great info to have… might be the best piece of advice I’ve heard in years. I’ll definitely be trying it for one of my blogs, am a pretty committed squarespace user but might be convinced to change!
Author's Website August 17th, 2008
From doctorate
No argument here! I love wordpress. The info is very informative and helpful.
Author's Website August 20th, 2008
From The Hip Zone
Perhaps wordpress needs a minimal effort to optimize a site for search engines due to its great plug-ins. I have been using many plug-ins which do my job automatically which can eat several hours of my day. One bad thing is, its editing WYSWYG utility. It is even worst if you need to put some images around. Anyhow it is very good at optimization.
Author's Website September 14th, 2008
From san diego wedding photographer
wordpress for the iphone makes working from home and the road easier not to mention the possible overtime!
Author's Website September 15th, 2008
From Alexey Balyabo
I do not think it’s possible to make a blog #3 on Google in such a short period.
Not now.
Author's Website September 24th, 2008
From Remont
Wordpress is more simple though and it’s easier to operate than Semiologic CMS
Author's Website September 25th, 2008