Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the first release of Movable Type, which was one of the first well-featured blogging systems for self-hosting users. It allowed people who had hosting space but only limited technical knowledge to blog on their own site without needing to rely on Blogger – probably MT’s main competitor at the time.
Whilst the first three years of its life were good, the switch to a more restrictive license with version 3.0 in 2004 was probably the start of its downfall; WordPress had recently released version 1.0 and it was available under the GPL. Over the years, more and more blogs moved to WordPress.
10 years on, and there aren’t many blogs still using Movable Type. A quick look through my blogroll suggests only four still use it, and of those only two – Kottke.org and Anil Dash – are big names (no disrespect to Kevin and Dave2…). Even the 10th anniversary announcement was a footnote on its official blog, which in turn was the first post in over 3 months. After holding out with MT longer than most, I too switched earlier this year, and joined the WordPress bandwagon.
Still, Happy Birthday Movable Type. 10 years is a long time.
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October 11, 2011 at 18:57
I don’t know if John Gruber is on your blogroll, but daringfireball.net also runs MT. His site gets some significant traffic.
October 12, 2011 at 07:50
Does that mean you don’t read my blog anymore?