I’ve been experimenting with MT4, and have in fact imported 5 years of blog entries from the indie software created by my former student, Will Gayther. I got used to the particular rhythms of Will’s software, which was very fast and configurable. But I got tired of having to fight the spammers on two different fronts… so I’m throwing my lot in with MT for the time being. MT4 was just released, though I’ve been playing with the beta for a while.
I’m used to sub-second responses to almost every button in my old blog. This one has a rich-text editor, which will probably encourage me to start using bold keywords again. I think it’s going to be a lot easier to include images, too. We’ll see how it goes.
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The captcha should be available as an option for all blogs, including older ones. I plan to enable it by default for all new student blogs, and students who don’t want the captcha on their blogs will have to approve comments themselves.
I’m glad to know you feel the benefits are worth the hassle… this is always a dead time of the year, but there have been very few comments since I made the switch — just you and Dr. Arnzen. So it’s been hard to assess.
The benefits outweigh the inconvenience, in my opinion. Since comments drive the conversation, especially on the student blogs, I think bypassing the spam rules with the (quick and easy) captcha utility will allow the pace to keep students’ interest longer. Last year in classes I yearned for the break-neck pace of commenting that was sustained throughout my freshman year; however, I realize that we’re better for all the changes. Having the captcha option might reinstate some of that commenting craze. Will it be used on all the student blogs or only the ones that will be created this year?
Thanks, both. Any thoughts about the captcha? I confess I feel a little miffed about having to prove to my own blog that I’m a human, but the benefit is that the comment gets posted right away.
I, too, love the new look. (But you probably knew that.)
Right, that’s why I’m starting to talk about it now, so it comes as less of a surprise. I’ll temporarily disable new comments and new posts, and then make a backup of the complete site. Visitors should be able to read the site during almost all of the upgrade process — the only glitch will come when the new site is up and running, but before all the servers on the internet know to send requests to the new servers.
I’m LOVING the new look. MT4 looks promising on your site; looking forward to seeing it employed in the shu blogs (though I’m bracing myself for the change and unexpected trouble … hopefully it will be seamless.)