The Dangers of Movable Type

Movable Type is a great program. Its customizability and its flexibility make it possible to do just about anything when it comes to using it to power your web site.

But therein lies the danger (yes, danger) of Movable Type. Because there is so much you can do with it, it’s very easy to start playing around with it, tweaking your blog, and doing fun things and not find time to actually write anything – (presumably) the whole reason you started your blog in the first place!

I’ve been finding myself guilty of this lately as I begin to delve a little deeper into customizing MT. The steep (for me at least) learning curve had put me off doing any more than the basics for a while, plus the sheer volume of plugins and hacks available is somewhat overwhelming.

But now I’m starting to play around with it, and believe me, once you start it’s hard to stop.

A couple of hours can easily pass, at the end of which you’ve made some (possibly) interesting cosmetic improvement to the way MT renders your site, but have you actually written anything that someone (you, your friends, family or peers) might want to read – heck no!

So, for me at least, I’m going to remind myself to keep the MT tweaking in line with writing actual content. After all, anyone coming to my site does so not to check out the fancy latest feature I’ve added but to read the content written on that large, featureless area called the page.