Tonight I upgraded Unspun™ to the latest commercial version of MovableType. So far, it’s provided a terrific user interface for administration — I can much more easily get to all the Comments posted, as well as Trackbacks.

It does appear to have some pretty major drawbacks right now, though — severe enough that if I’d known what I would encounter, I might not have upgraded. (Sixapart, if you’re listening, that means a couple hundred dollars in lost sales to you if I’d known what I was in for.)

Many technical issues of administering this blog are going to be much easier.

As another example (in addition to the terrific administrator’s interface), should I wish, I can implement various types of control over the blog, including only allowing registered users (i.e., people who fill out a form and are validated by me as really existing) to post. This could cut down on Comment spam without needing to maintain a Blacklist. (Although Jay’s mt-blacklist has been an amazing tool!)

However, the killer — the reason I would not have done the upgrade had I realized this would happen — is that my posts appear to no longer automatically update the MovableType website. Sine approximately 1/4 or 1/5 of my daily readership comes from the Recently Updated list, this is a major blow to my blog.

Hopefully, Sixapart will eventually respond to my support request on this.

Until then, I warn fellow MovableType bloggers: If you care about the Recently Updated list, you may wish to avoid upgrading at this point in time. There are apparently still a few bugs to be worked out in this new version.